ABSTRACT
Students participating in a summer field school in historical archaeology held at the site were given a thorough orientation by Glassie and then sent out into the community in search of informants. With respect to the role of archaeology in the social history of the farmstead, the goal has been to coordinate feature-oriented excavation with research into the architecture of the standing house and the documentary data regarding the Motts and their social position within the Portsmouth community. There are several social and economic factors which must be controlled, but this can be done by consulting documents and archaeological informants. This aspect of research will also be continued during the coming field season. The cultural inventory approach can serve to generate hypotheses about the symbolic nature of material environments which may then be tested in more traditional archaeological contexts.
