CLASS, GENDER, AND THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT - DERIVING SOCIAL-RELATIONS FROM CULTURAL LANDSCAPES IN SOUTHWEST MICHIGAN

The houses, barns, and gardens that comprise cultural landscapes embod y information about their makers because the built environment activel y serves to create, reproduce, and transform social relations. Members of society use space to reinforce and resist relations of power, auth ority, and inequality by organizing the landscape to facilitate the ac tivities and movements of some individuals, while concurrently constra ining others. Historical investigations indicate that the occupants of the village of Plainwell, Michigan, have witnessed political, economi c, and social changes at the local, regional, and national levels sinc e the mid-19th century. Yet, archaeological investigation of the Woodh ams site (20AE852)-a residential homelot in Plainwell-provides evidenc e for considerable continuity in class and gender relations, despite t ransformations in American society at these multiple scales of analysi s.