ABSTRACT
This chapter is concerned with the importance of the material world in the dynamic processes through which Jewish-American ethnic/religious identities were continually negotiated and constructed in Boston communities, c. 1840–1925. Historical archaeology has progressed from simply identifying the ethnicity or race of site inhabitants based on distinctive house styles or artefacts (e.g. Deetz 1971; Schulyer 1980) to more complex analyses of the diversity in ethnic material culture due to class or economic divisions (e.g. Geismar 1982; Clark 1987; De Cunzo 1987; Henry 1987; Orser 1987; Shepard 1987). Further, material culture diversity due to behavioural variation across intersecting gender, class, racial and ethnic social divisions has been analysed (e.g. Deagan 1983; Spencer-Wood 1987: 20–4, 1991a: 260, 265–7, 274, 1994; McEwan 1991; Whelan 1991; Scott 1994).
