University of Tennessee, Knoxville TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange Doctoral Dissertations Graduate School 12-2019 Consumer Behavior and Household Complexity: Households and Consumption in Three Localities of the 18th-Century Atlantic World Eric Schweickart University of Tennessee, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_graddiss Recommended Citation Schweickart, Eric, "Consumer Behavior and Household Complexity: Households and Consumption in Three Localities of the 18th-Century Atlantic World. " PhD diss., University of Tennessee, 2019. https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_graddiss/5716 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. It has been accepted for inclusion in Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized administrator of TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. For more information, please contact [email protected]. To the Graduate Council: I am submitting herewith a dissertation written by Eric Schweickart entitled "Consumer Behavior and Household Complexity: Households and Consumption in Three Localities of the 18th- Century Atlantic World." I have examined the final electronic copy of this dissertation for form and content and recommend that it be accepted in partial fulfillment of the equirr ements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, with a major in Anthropology. Barbara Heath, Major Professor We have read this dissertation and recommend its acceptance: Tim Baumann, Kandi Hollenbach, James Fordyce, Julie Reed Accepted for the Council: Dixie L. Thompson Vice Provost and Dean of the Graduate School (Original signatures are on file with official studentecor r ds.) Consumer Behavior and Household Complexity: Households and Consumption in Three Localities of the 18th-Century Atlantic World A Dissertation Presented for the Doctor of Philosophy Degree The University of Tennessee, Knoxville Eric George Schweickart December 2019 Copyright © 2019 by Eric George Schweickart All rights reserved. ii Acknowledgements I would like to thank Dr. Barbara Heath for serving as my PhD advisor at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. I am deeply grateful for all the support, advice and guidance that she has given me over the last five years, without which this dissertation would not have been possible. I would like to thank Mark Freeman, who taught me the value of open data and made my attendance at UTK possible. I appreciate the time Dr. Kandi Hollenbach, Dr. Tim Baumann, Dr. Julie Reed, and Dr. Jim Fordyce spent serving on my graduate committee and I thank them for their comments and advice on my work. I would like to thank Dee DeRoche and Dr. Kate Ridgeway at the Virginia Department of Historic Resources, Kelly Ladd-Kostro at the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, Dr. Tim Baumann (again) at the McClung Museum, Dr. Emily McDowell at the North Carolina Office of State Archaeology, and especially Miranda Panther at the Tribal Historic Preservation Office of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians for providing me access to their collections. I would like to thank Dr. Jan Simek and Sierra Bow of the UTK Analytical Archaeology Laboratory and Howard Cyr of the UTK Geoarchaeology Core Facility for providing me with the training and pXRF equipment necessary to complete this research. Finally, I would like to thank Lindsey Cochran, Kendy Altizer, Mark Babin and Meagan Dennison for their support and comments during the writing of this dissertation. This research project would not have been possible without the dedication of the many archaeologists who excavated, recorded, and interpreted the sites that I drew upon, often for far too little pay. I am very grateful for all that you have done, both for me and for the memorialization of the past. This project was generously funded by the Wenner-Gren Foundation, the University of Tennessee, Knoxville Graduate School, and the University of Tennessee, Knoxville Department iii of Anthropology. I deeply appreciate the support of these institutions have shown me and my work. I would like to thank my family for their unwavering love and encouragement over the years. Mom and Ed, thank you for your guidance through the world. Dad and Joanne, thank you for providing me with perspective. Eston and Sarah, thank you for listening to me, no matter what. Ashley, it will take me a lifetime to express my gratitude for everything you have done for me. iv Abstract This project examines the intersection of household formation practices and consumer behavior in the 18th-century British Atlantic world. Scholars have argued that more complex households, comprised of extended family and/or non-kin residents, limit the consumer choices available to constituent members more than simple, nuclear households do. I test this assertion by comparing patterns of variation in the material attributes of copper alloy buttons from several households in three separate localities, Williamsburg, Virginia; Brunswick, North Carolina; and Chota, Tennessee. The degree of similarity between each household’s assemblage of these globally- traded artifacts, when placed in the context of the distribution of object variants available at local marketplaces, is a key indicator of the degree to which individuals living at these sites were able to choose consumer goods that fit their personal tastes. Differences in household complexity, both synchronically across localities and diachronically within a locality, are tested as a causal factor for variation in the consumer choices evident in household assemblages. Using these data, I demonstrate the significance of household complexity as a factor which influenced the rise and spread of consumerism in the 18th century and provide archaeologists with a generalizable method for comparing the internal dynamics of multiple households. v Table of Contents Chapter 1: Introduction ................................................................................................................... 1 Problem ....................................................................................................................................... 2 Research Questions ..................................................................................................................... 4 Archaeological Sites ................................................................................................................ 5 Button Data ............................................................................................................................ 11 Data Analysis ......................................................................................................................... 12 Hypotheses ................................................................................................................................ 15 Outline ....................................................................................................................................... 16 Chapter 2: Literature Review ........................................................................................................ 18 Consumerism ............................................................................................................................. 18 The Scholarship of Consumerism.......................................................................................... 19 Archaeological Consumerism................................................................................................ 31 Implications for My Own Research ....................................................................................... 34 Households ................................................................................................................................ 36 The Scholarship of Households ............................................................................................. 37 Some Relevant Strands of Household Research .................................................................... 40 Archaeological Households ................................................................................................... 46 Implications for my Own Research ....................................................................................... 50 Chapter 3: Buttons in the 18th-Century Atlantic World ............................................................... 53 Introduction ............................................................................................................................... 53 Raw Materials ........................................................................................................................... 56 The Copper Alloy Production Process ...................................................................................... 57 The Organization of the Copper-Alloy Industry ....................................................................... 62 Button Manufacturing ............................................................................................................... 64 Data Collection .......................................................................................................................... 72 Conclusion ................................................................................................................................. 83 Chapter 4: Localities ..................................................................................................................... 85 Introduction ..............................................................................................................................