A middling gentility: Taste, status, and material culture at the eighteenth-century Wood Lot, Wanton-Lyman-Hazard site, Newport, Rhode Island

Can we assume that social rank predicted consumer choice in colonial Anglo-America? Did the middling sorts simply emulate their social superiors? If not, how might we think about their choices' relationships to deeper social structures? These questions are central to this historical archaeological dissertation on middling identity in 18th-century Newport, Rhode Island, on the northeastern coast of the United States. Colonial Newport---distinguished by burgeoning trade and a climate of religious tolerance---epitomized the successful American entrepot. The central data set for this study is an artifactual assemblage from the Wood Lot area of the Wanton-Lyman-Hazard site, including over 15,000 fragments of 18th-century household goods and food remains. Select printed sources and archival documents contextualize these finds.; Artifacts recovered from the Wood Lot are direct evidence of the middling individuals living there ca. 1720--1775. These materials and related documents describe: changing ideals of property use and hygiene; preference for fashionable drinking over dining and for non-alcoholic over alcoholic beverages; strategic investment in clothing and sociability; and conflict over gendered authority and values, particularly those governing consumerism and leisure activities. Given this evidence, we should not dismiss middling consumerism as an imperfect emulation of elite consumerism, as middling consumerism typically has been in American historical and material studies. Notions of "tasteful consumption" and "middling gentility" are productive alternatives to "emulative consumption" and "elite gentility."; During the Georgian period, non-elite homes throughout the British empire were developed as social spaces that shaped values and personal identities. Provincial British in America and elsewhere did not mindlessly pursue an essentialized, elite culture; they adapted/interpreted a heterogeneous, partial, and contested one based on particular circumstances. This study challenges assumptions embedded within our understanding of colonial America, namely, that 18th-century forms of gentility were inevitable, desirable, cohesive, and elite. It also provides needed historical context for the development of modern American class systems.