Archaeology of Citizenship

While the subject of citizenship has often been examined from a sociological, historical, or legal standpoint, historical archaeologists yet to fully explore what it means to be an American from a material perspective. The Archaeology of Citizenship aims to fill that gap. Since the founding of the United States, the rights to citizenship have been carefully crafted and policed by the Europeans who settled and formed the country. Immigrants have been either extended or denied citizenship in various legal and cultural ways. Using a late-nineteenth-century California resort as a case study, Stacey Camp discusses how the parameters of citizenship and national belonging have been defined and redefined since Europeans arrived on the continent. In a unique and powerful contribution to the field of historical archaeology, Camp uses of the remnants of material culture to reveal how those in power sought to mould the composition of the United States as well as how those on the margins of American society carved out their own definitions of citizenship.