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HST 401/501—Topics in American History: Field Methods in Community History Research
Special Session 13: July 9-August 4, 2007
Instructor: Christine L. Ridarsky
Finger Lakes National Forest Farmstead
Archaeology & History Project
The Finger Lakes National Forest Farmstead Archaeology & History Project began in 2000 under the director of LouAnn Wurst, Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology, SUNY Brockport. The project seeks to understand the lives of the people who once occupied the lands that are now the Finger Lakes National Forest in the towns of Lodi, Seneca County, and Hector, Schuyler County, New York.
The territory that makes up the present-day national forest sits atop the Hector Backbone, a high ridge that separates Seneca and Cayuga lakes. It was once a patchwork of privately owned family farms. Most of these farms were settled in the early to mid-nineteenth century and occupied through the early part of the twentieth century. After World War I, however, the national farm crisis that preceded the Great Depression took a toll on the families on these lands. Many of the farms on the Hector Backbone were abandoned during this time, and the families that remained faced economic hardship.
Between 1936 and 1940, the United States government purchased more than 100 of these upland farms. The land purchase program had a dual purpose of aiding economically distressed farm families while also conserving natural resources by removing lands with poor soils from agricultural production. The houses and barns that once dotted the hillside were razed, and most of the land was reforested.
Today the Finger Lakes National Forest consists of 16,212 acres and is used for public recreation (hiking, horseback riding, picnicking, camping, etc.), cooperative livestock grazing, education, and timber and wildlife management.
The remains of the former farmsteads constitute an archaeological record of cellar holes, barns, and outbuilding foundations, artifact scatters, and field boundary walls, all readily visible on the landscape. Over the past six years, Professor LouAnn Wurst has overseen archaeological excavations at 11 of the former farmsteads in the Finger Lakes National Forest. Three additional sites are scheduled to be excavated in Summer 2007.
Information on SUNY Brockport’s Summer 2007 Archaeological Field School (.pdf format)
These archaeological excavations are geared toward investigating changes in architecture and farmstead layout, household and agricultural production strategies, the use of space for productive and maintenance activities, and the material culture associated with the farmstead sites.
Meanwhile, historical research is providing additional information on the people who lived on these farms, as well as on the communities with which they associated. Among the issues being analyzed are the size and cycle of these farms’ families; the structure of their households; the size and location of their social networks; the role gender, class, religion, and education played in community relations; residents’ involvement in the national marketplace, both as consumers of mass produced goods and purveyors of agricultural products; agricultural productivity; the nature of work, both on and off farms; the size and location of business and economic networks; and the effect “outside” influences, including progressive reformers, agricultural experts, and governmental policymakers had on individual residents and the community as a whole.
The information generated by this research will be used to examine changes in life ways, land use, and economic practices during a period of rapid and dynamic changes in culture, agricultural technology, and regional economy between the early nineteenth century and the 1940s.
Ultimately, the goal of the Finger Lakes National Forest Farmstead Archaeology & History Project is to develop a rich understanding of the daily lives of the farm families who occupied the lands now in the national forest and to elucidate the changes they experienced as a result of national socio-economic transformations.
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