Linda France Stine
University of South Carolina, Columbia
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Gender, race, class, and status are interrelated, both as social categories of analysis and as negotiated aspects of human social life. This paper discusses their direct and tangential affects on the agrarian material record, using data from ethnoarchaeological investigations in the community of Harmony, North Carolina, at the foothills of the Brushy Mountains. As an historical archaeologist, I deal with artifact assemblages, features, sites, communities, and regions. I also investigate documents, standing structures, and cemeteries, and frequently conduct oral interviews. As an anthropologist, I am interested in exploring issues of social differentiation and inequality across time and space. As such I need to investigate the structural and relational interplay between social differentiations such as race, gender, and class. Generated archaeological data can be related to social action and institutions. This can be accomplished by using a landscape approach. Landscape serves as an organizing perspective. It helps to integrate three great variables of archaeology: time, space, and form. A landscape approach concerns human and land connections, and their transformations over time and space. An individual's knowledge of her environment is created by culturally-shaped perceptions of the natural world; it is joined to individual preferences and abilities. As a result, individuals interact with the natural and social environments in culturally informed ways. Grounding archaeological research within a landscape perspective allows for integration of data concerning dynamic physiographic and and social structures and their processual relations (Butzer 1982, Crumley and Marquardt 1987). In Meentemeyer and Box's words, "A landscape may appear to be heterogeneous at one scale but quite homogeneous at another..." (1987:15). Both physical and social space may change over time, and such changes are often visible in the archaeological record.
Theoretical OverviewSocial differentiation is common to most facets of human social life. Social stratification, the "systematic ranking of categories of people, especially in their access to livelihood and power" is, according to Berreman (1981:4), both "pernicious" and "pervasive". Categories become imbued with specific, negotiated cultural meanings, and as such, become powerful forces in social life. These meanings are embedded within specific historical contexts, and are subject to the dynamics of change. According to researchers such as Lloyd Fallers (1973) and Michelle Rosaldo (1980:396) social differentiation often takes the form of asymmetrical relationships, or relations of social inequality (Fallers 1973; Berreman 1981).Fallers (1973) points out that social inequality is both a moral and a structural phenomenon; Berreman (1981:4) adds that such inequalities have behavioral, existential, and material aspects as well. Categories of
Page 104race, ethnicity, class, status, age, and gender are interrelated, conjoined in issues of social inequality.As so aptly demonstrated by Andre Beteille (1981), human variation is not somehow "naturally" vertically ranked. There are no natural categories of social inequality; human beings create certain categories and call them natural to justify differential access to various resources. As Rosaldo has stated, we often think of gender, for example, as "the creation of biologically based differences which oppose women and men, instead of as the product of social relationships in concrete (and changeable) societies" (1980:393). In 1976, Kelly-Gadol stated that "the relation between the sexes is a social and not a natural one" (1976:809-810). Barbara Fields (1990) has demonstrated that the commonly held idea that race is based on "natural" biological differences underlines the pervasiveness of social inequality in our own society . I and others argue that we can not understand issues of social inequality without looking at the interrelationship of variables, moving away from isolated studies of a single component (Stine 1990). Rosaldo writes that researchers "...fail to probe the systematic ways that personal facts, like gender, are in all societies bound up with other forms of social inequality" (1987:289). Gender relations, for example, permeate all other social relations. In Flax's words "the experience of gender relations for any person and the structure of gender as a social category are shaped by the interactions of gender...and other social relations such as class and race. Gender relations thus have no fixed essence; they vary both within and over time" (1987:624). The present study of a North Carolina community examines gender relations and some other forms of social differentiation related to agrarian life from about 1900 to 1940. Data is drawn from oral histories, architectural studies, documentary research, and archaeological investigations. The focus of research is Harmony, a small cross-roads community of rolling red clay hills. In particular, two farmsteads were surveyed and tested. These farmsteads, that of the Nichols, an African-American family, and the Stines, Euroamericans, share a border. Both families had from six to eight family members at any particular point in time. Members of these families owned their own homes, having climbed the agricultural ladder from tenant to small farm owner. Nonetheless, both were often cash poor. The Stines and the Nichols were from the same relative class stratum. Their status stratum in the community was similar. Most members of both families are discussed with much respect by various community members (Stine 1990). Through a series of interviews, it appears that racism was not explicit in the immediate study neighborhood. In fact, a sense of community appears to have cross-cut race. Families such as the Nichols and the Stines were engaged in reciprocal labor exchange. They depended upon each other to plant, weed, and harvest their subsistence and cotton cash crops. The women tended to help each other with household related labor, the men, with field labor. The children were expected to help anyone who needed it (Stine 1989; see related discussions in Cleland 1983:42, and Waldbauer 1986). However, one should never forget that racism was present, if much more muted than anticipated. Reciprocal labor and reciprocal social interactions were permeated by a sense of what should be, as opposed to what was. For example, Ms. Emma Nichols would come over to Ms. Essie Stines for lunch occasionally. She would help cook in the kitchen, and would always indicate that she would eat there, instead of in the dining room with the Stines. Every time this happened, Essie would say "Lands sake no, Ms. Emma, you eat right here with us in the dining room" or something to that effect (interview with Margaret Prekler, in Stine 1989). At a Stine family wedding, overflow kin were asked to stay with the Nichols next door. They were assured that the Nichols' house was "cleaner than their own". In fact, standards of being a good neighbor, of cleanliness, and of being good, moral citizens- all aspects of status stratum- appear to cross-cut some affects of racial differentiation in the study area (Stine 1989, 1990). If one thinks of race as more of an imposed category, and ethnicity as a chosen category (see Berreman 1981), then certain material correlates to ethnicity should be visible and appropriate for study. For example, both the Nichols and the Stines were amazed at the physical abilities of Ms. Lizzie, who came to the Stine place every day to collect three buckets of water. She would carry two in her hands, and one on her head. Her husband was the local well digger, and was slow in digging her a well of her own. Her abilities were linked to her African heritage by both the Stines and Nichols family members (interview with Kenneth Stine and Curt Nichols, in Stine 1989). When compared, artifact classes and functional groups (South 1977) from the two archaeological sites were not too different. Statistical tests of association demonstrated that chance could just as easily account for the range of goods found as could ethnic differences. The ceramic sherds from the two farms were significantly related using a Chi-square test of association at the 0.05 level (x2=52.82, d.f.4). The Stine assemblage contained more plain whiteware sherds. Flowerpots and stonewares dominated the Nichols assemblage. The whitewares from the Nichols site were more often
Page 105decorated, the Stines preferred decorated porcelains. Comparison of artifacts by minimum vessel counts did not yield a similar result, indicating that a differential sherd breakage rate may account better for the relationship than a cultural variable such as ethnicity. In fact, it appears that their shared access to economic resources or their similar class influenced their artifact choices more than factors of gender or ethnicity (see discussions in Stine 1989 and 1990).In a comparison of the standing structures at the two farmsteads, few differences were noted in material culture. The Stines lived in an I-house, the Nicholses in a hall-and-parlor house. The houses are almost mirror images. Each house had two porches, one front, one side. These structures were initially built facing the road. These ballon-framed structures were similar in design. They have a central hall balanced by two rooms on either side. The Nichols appear to have invested slightly more money and energy in ornamenting the interior of their house. The Stine house was much plainer inside, and was larger in overall floor space. Perhaps the Nichols felt obliged to keep a lower profile in terms of conspicuous consumption. An ornate interior may have been one form of resistance to social inequality (pers. com. Dee Dee Joyce, 1991). Nate Shaw, an Alabama sharecropper and small farm owner from this period, mentions that one African-American was told he could not build his house right on the road like a white man (Rosengarten 1982). Turning to a regional analysis, the material culture of Harmony and environs was varied, but the range of house types was not large (Little-Stokes 1978). Houses, outbuildings, stores, mills, and other features of the landscape occasionally represented social and sometimes economic differentiation. Farmstead facades would not help an outsider predict a family's wealth, social status, or ethnic background. Having a single, as opposed to a double-, story home does not seem to have suggested lesser status or class position. Having unkept homes, yard, and fields, however, did help neighbors stratify others into lower positions on the social scale (Hagood 1977:86, 148; Daniel 1985:67; Stine 1990). Institutional architecture in the community did differ. The local A.M.E. churchyard and cemetery were very different in appearance than the local white Methodist cemetery and yard. The black cemetery was much less regimented looking, with fewer permanent markers, less grass on the graves, and more planted flowers, trees, and shrubs. The white cemetery was highly groomed, clipped, and ordered. This may indicate differing ethnic perceptions of the afterlife (pers. com. Cynthia Connor 1989; Stine 1989). Racial inequality, not just differences, may be seen in a comparison of the public schools. Institutionalized school architecture appears to have symbolized differential access to funds. The small African-American school (now a residence) was a simple frame building, one story. The Euroamerican school (destroyed) was a complex consisting of a large brick building and associated specialty structures of wood (Stine 1989, 1990). Institutional architecture serves as a material symbol of certain aspects of ideology, such as racism. Schools also serve as places where students enter a specific institutionalized social landscape. The Victorian ideology concerning the Cult of True Womanhood, Angel in the House, and/or separate public and private spheres (Welter 1973), was promulgated at state schools such as Harmony High. Susan Archer Mann (1987) writes that southern schools first introduced the cult of domesticity in home economic classes in the 1880s and 1890s. Thus African-American women were not only being prepared for factory, assembly-line labor like other public school students, they also were being trained for "fitting" work as house and kitchen maids (Mann 1987:26; see also Jones 1985). The nineteenth century doctrinal version implies that feminine labor was rightfully subordinate to an ultimately masculine rule. As women's household labor became devalued in inverse relation to their wage earning counterparts, the rhetoric of the Cult of True Womanhood was non-parelled (Hume and Offen 1981:264-278; McMurry 1988:97-98). By the turn of the century, Progressives had developed a doctrine of Separate but Equal spheres of gender labor. The literature of the time is full of farm women railing against the drudgery of their work and society's lack of appreciation. Increased mechanization in fields helped save some labor for outside (read men's) work, but little was done to improve inside (read women's) work. Progressives launched a series of reforms aimed at modernizing farm, field, and household practices (McMurry 1988; Marti 1984; Richards 1912; Sturgis 1986). The separation of labor based on separate spheres was institutionalized in the developing American land-grant colleges and other public schools. For women, they developed programs in Home Economics, for the men, Agricultural Science (e.g. Daniel 1985, Marti 1984, Sturgis 1986). Even Agricultural Extension Office literature illustrates this dichotimization of roles, with women pictured dusting or canning inside, while men are shown laboring in the fields (Bailey 1912, McMurry 1988). What happened when a woman wanted to buck the system and take agricultural coursework?
Page 106At Harmony High in the 1920s, Margaret Prekler excelled in all her classes. She was still not allowed to take science, being forced to stick to Home Economics (interview 5/27/87, in Stine 1989).The annual round of farm-related labor was undertaken by all household members. During times of more intensive work needs, families often called upon their immediate neighbors and/or close kin for help. Rural farm families usually carried a workload ranging from 11 to 14 hours per day. They labored in the fields and the house. They also had to keep buildings, tack, and other assorted equipment in constant repair (Ginns 1977:51, Jensen 1981:162, Vanek 1980:424). Household members in agrarian families do appear to have shared a certain perception of appropriate gender labor. Adult men were seen as being in control of the labor and decisions related to field crops. Decisions and work related to the house were more often relegated to women. Age of the family member was also taken into account, with the very young working with their mothers, regardless of gender. Older children were primarily field helpers, although a young women would be more likely to help her mother in household tasks as needed. Women were in charge of the nearby kitchen garden. Women and children were also responsible for tending livestock, although men occasionally took over the care of larger stock (Hagood 1977:42, 58, 86, 87, 159; Jones 1985:80; Mann 1987). Hagood studied area rural tenant women in 1939. She found that "Patriarchy prevails in form, but not always in practice" (Hagood 1977/1939:163). The shared or ideal perception of the appropriate division of labor by gender was often overlooked in practice. Many women refused to do most of the cooking or sewing, many of their husbands enjoyed those activities. Some farm women loved field work, preferring it to household labor. This was true regardless of economic status or ethnic background in North Carolina. (Ethnicity played a vital role in Canadian farmstead labor- with English women tending to prefer indoor labor, following their cultural ideal. Women of Eastern European and Native American origin often scorned them as "weaklings". The "genteel" farm wife, in turn, scorned those "peasant" laborers (Cheney 1989)). Hagood found that over 7/8s of Virginia and North Carolina piedmont tenant women "prefer field work to housework, and were prouder of their prowess in the field and in the tobacco shed than in the kitchen" (1977:vi). Hagood's informants (1939) often stated that they were secretly proud that each could labor "like a man" (Hagood 1977:89). Appellations such as "tomboy" or "mannish" were not uncommon for those women who preferred to labor outdoors. Many women would call themselves "mannish" (Abbot 1983:43, 155 Thomas 1981:intro). In Harmony in the early decades of this century, Margaret Prekler was often called a tomboy. She was nicknamed "Tommy" for playing at "boy games"; the name still slips out occasionally, sixty -odd years later (Stine 1989). The division of labor by gender on the farms is described in the literature (e.g. Hagood 1977; McMurry 1988). It is also seen in the actual physical structure of farmsteads. Humbka (1984:151) states that the typical New England farmstead reflects this division. The feminine sphere is centered on the main house and related yards, the masculine on the fields and related dependencies. These areas are spatially separated (Loyd et.al. 1982; see also Bailey 1912). The garden, ells, and yards lying between the barn and house are areas of mutual interaction, mediating the dichotomy between house and barn. The artifactual patterns at the Nichols and Stine farmsteads do not support this model, at least revealed through archaeology. In fact, there was no real significant patterning of the data (Stine 1989). However, when looked at at the scale of structures and extant material culture, a division of activity areas can be seen. There is some overlap: a few agricultural items are stored in the houses at present, a few household items in the granaries. However, overall, household goods are used most often in the house, barnyard items in the barns. Artifacts in themselves do not seem to be simple markers of activities related to ethnicity or to gender. Broader patterns of features can sometimes be correlated with social actions. For example, soap making was an integral part of farm life. It was perceived to be a female task, although husbands and children often helped (Hubka 1984:150). At the Nichols farm, archaeological and documentary evidence for this activity was uncovered. The dark staining and layering of ash from soap-making activities was clearly evident in the red North Carolina clay. This was later confirmed as the site of the Nichols family soap production by a Nichols family member (see Stine 1989). Margaret Prekler Stine and her sister Betty had to not only work in the fields, but the barns, the garden, the orchard, the henhouse, and in the house as well. Their brothers only had to work outdoors. Both sisters still do not think that was fair. The Nichols divided their labor along similar lines (Stine 1989). The Stines have a picture of their mother dressed in overalls and slouch hat. On the back she has poignantly written "see how ugly I am" because she has on male clothes. However, she had to work in the fields whenever her labor was needed and should not have been ashamed of wearing serviceable clothing. But she was (Stine 1989). This and the consistent description of being "mannish" for wanting to work outside indicates that even poorer agrarian women held to a version of the ideal of true womanhood. The exigencies of farm life
Page 107meant that they often had to labor outdoors, even if such was supposedly frowned upon. Many held the ideal, even when these women really preferred working with their families outside.Nate Shaw (Rosengarten 1984) states that his mother and siblings would have to labor in their croplands without their father's help. His father tended to go hunting about every day. He says he can see her with her dress "rolled up nearly to her knees, just so she could have a clear stroke walkin'. Pushed up and rolled up around her waist and a string tied around it and her dress would bunch up around her hips" (Rosengarten 1984:121). Shaw felt his mother was sorely abused. He never wanted his wife to help in the fields and he also helped her with the housework (Rosengarten 1984:121). These data show that researchers should initially keep questions about gender attribution epistemologically separate from questions about actual behavior. The relationship of ideological notions of gender and actual social actions could then be compared, as in the present case. For example, Schlegel describes how the Hopi seem to have multiscalar meanings of gender. The first is very abstract and general, or idealized; the second is specific, "the definition of gender according to a particular location in the social structure or within a particular field of action" (1990:24). These specific and general meanings sometimes support, sometimes contradict one another. They are mediated at various levels and using differing means. For instance, at the household, clan, and village-wide levels gender relations have different tones and effects. Archaeologists should be able to find correlates of ideology in the manipulation of material symbols across the landscape. These symbols should be evident at the scale of artifact, feature, site, community, and region. In the present study, gender and racial ideology is visible in the daily interactions of the participants. Material evidence for those ideals is not very obvious until one shifts scale to the community and region, looking at institutionalized architecture such as found in schools and churchyards. Notions of separate but equal gender spheres can be seen at the regional level as well: in the curriculum of the schools, and in the literature and art of the period. At the level of the farmstead, household structures have been physically separated from barnyard dependencies, visually evident to the archaeologist. It has been shown, however, that specifically, at the scale of individual actions, farmers interpreted cultural ideas and suited them to their own needs and desires. Studies of gender, race, and other variables of social inequality indicate that interpreting artifact patterning in light of normative activities is a chancey undertaking, and perhaps a sterile one. It would be more appropriate to concentrate on the relationship of ideology to the variable activities and institutions. Of course, it is much more difficult an undertaking. In summation, material culture studies can add to our understanding of social differentiation by broadening the dimensions of time and space. Exploring the relationship of material culture to activities and ideology is a fruitful avenue of research. As such, archaeologists should be able to contribute to the debate on issues of social inequality.
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