Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Pages: 328
Trim: 6½ x 9½
978-0-7591-1096-0 • Hardback • November 2017 • $123.00 • (£95.00)
978-0-7591-1097-7 • eBook • November 2017 • $116.50 • (£90.00)
E. Pierre Morenon professor of anthropology at Rhode Island College, former director of the public archaeology program. He serves as a commissioner on the Rhode Island Historical Preservation and Heritage Commission
1: Forgotten Childhoods
2: Children Lost and Found
3: Child Narratives in Unexamined Records
4: Recording Archaeological Details and Creating New Child Narratives
5: Collaborating
6: Do Archaeologists Overlook Children?
7: Dependent Children in Context
8: Neglected Children as Civic Responsibility
9: From Victorian Landscapes to a Child’s Treatment Center
10: Unearthing Cultural Details
11: Play and Community Relations
12: Bureaucracies, Power, and Punishment
13: Why Don’t I Know This?
Appendix A: State Home and School Project Timeline (2001–2010)
Appendix B: Rhode Island State Home and School/O’Rourke Children’s Center: Oral History Project
Appendix C: POST-2002 ARCHAEOLOGICAL FIELD PROTOCOL
This is an intriguing case study and the volume includes considerable detail about the archaeological remains and the history of the institution.
— Current World Archaeology
Morenon (anthropology, Rhode Island College) uses historical archaeology to examine the Rhode Island State Home and School, a late-19th- and 20th-century state institution that housed children whose parents were unable to care for them. The author situates the State Home in its historical and cultural contexts as a Gilded Age response to social changes resulting from urbanization and industrialization. He weaves together various strands, including archaeological data, architecture, life histories, and institutional records to highlight the importance of the site and the relevance of studying relatively recent institutions. Building on a long tradition of research in historical archaeology, the volume sheds new light on those who have been forgotten, focusing on the lives of children, a significant population that rarely sees careful archaeological study. Theoretically informed and methodologically sound, Morenon's study highlights the importance of an archaeological approach for understanding the recent past. Poignant and powerful, this is an excellent contribution to the archaeology of institutional life and an important example of the scholarship of civic engagement and public responsibility.
Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower- and upper-division undergraduates; graduate students; professionals.
— Choice Reviews
Rediscovering Lost Innocence offers a rich and multi-faceted interpretation of the Rhode Island State Home and School. . . Because residential institutions were such a widespread phenomenon from approximately the mid-nineteenth to mid-twentieth centuries, this book is a useful comparative piece for those working on institutions anywhere in the United States, including the Midwest.
— Midcontinental Journal of Archaeology
• Winner, Choice Outstanding Academic Title (2018)