THE ETHNOARCHAEOLOGY OF URBAN GARDENING

This study seeks to understand the processes which structure the behavior of urban gardeners. It is based upon eighteen months of ethnographic fieldwork among gardeners in Boston and Cambridge, Massachusetts and Providence, Rhode Island as well as a variety of suburban and rural communities. The goal of the study is to examine the social and environmental variables which influence the behavior of urban gardeners.; The study was conducted between 1984 and 1986 involving observations of 373 gardens. Data were collected on a variety of subjects including what plants were being grown, what problems gardeners faced in the city, and what techniques they devised to overcome those problems. To this body of data collected through interviews was added information gathered from secondary sources concerning the economic and demographic structure of the different communities and neighborhoods in which gardens were observed.; As part of the study, theories of ecological succession were reviewed for their possible application to the examination of urban gardening. This body of theory was employed in the study as a means of identifying the critical variables that would be examined in the study. With succession theory as an entering wedge, data were collected concerning the influence shade, soils, space and competition had on the processes of succession in the gardens examined.; The results of the study suggest that succession theory is an effective tool for examining the factors which influence the behavior of urban gardeners. From this examination specific archaeological implications are generated which should allow the archaeologist to identify former garden areas. Several experiments conducted as part of the study provide specific archaeological signatures of activities associated with gardening. The result is a set of general principles concerning urban gardening, succession and human behavior which provide the necessary prerequisite for an archaeology of gardening.