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Silent Sentinels: Archaeology, Magic, and the Gendered Control of
Domestic Boundaries in New England, 1620-1725
C. Riley Auge
The University of Montana
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SILENT SENTINELS: ARCHAEOLOGY, MAGIC, AND THE GENDERED CONTROL OF
DOMESTIC BOUNDARIES IN NEW ENGLAND, 1620-1725
By
CYNTHIA KAY RILEY AUGÉ
Master of Arts, Greenwich University, Norfolk Island, South Pacific, 2002
Bachelor of Arts, The University of Montana, Missoula, Montana, 1992
Dissertation
presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
in Anthropology, Cultural Heritage Studies
The University of Montana
Missoula, MT
May 2013
Approved by:
Sandy Ross, Associate Dean of The Graduate School
Graduate School
John Douglas, Ph.D., Chair
Department of Anthropology
Kelly J. Dixon, Ph.D.
Department of Anthropology
Richard Sattler, Ph.D.
Department of Anthropology
G. G. Weix, Ph.D.
Department of Anthropology
Ellen Baumler, Ph.D.
Montana Historical Society
COPYRIGHT
by
Cynthia Kay Riley Augé
2013
All Rights Reserved
[2]
Augé, C. Riley, Ph.D., May 2013
Anthropology
Silent Sentinels: Archaeology, Magic, and the Gendered Control of Domestic Boundaries in New
England, 1620-1725
Chairperson: Dr. John Douglas
Abstract Content:
The following dissertation is an historical archaeological study of the material culture of
gendered protective magic used by Anglo-Europeans in seventeenth-century New England as a
tactic to construct boundaries that mitigated perceived personal, social, spiritual, and
environmental dangers. Such boundary construction was paramount in the seventeenth-century
battle between good and evil epitomized by the belief in and struggle against witchcraft. This
dissertation sought to answer three interrelated research questions: 1) What constitutes protective
magical material culture in seventeenth-century contexts and how is it recognizable in the
archaeological record? 2) What signifies gender specific protective magical practices and what
can these differences relate about gender roles, identity, and social relationships? and 3) In what
way and to what degree is the recourse to traditional beliefs significant in coping or risk
management contexts? Synthesizing data from historical and folkloristic sources, and reviewing
all accessible archaeological site reports and inventories from State Historic Preservation offices
and principal site investigators for domestic structures in New England ca. 1620-1725 provided
data to catalog and develop a typology of potential magical items. Analyzing these data then
allowed the assessment of domestic and gendered patterns of magical risk management
strategies. Magical content was frequently embedded within or symbolically encoded in
architectural or artifactual details, whose gendered association tended to correspond with gender
role activities or responsibilities; however, the general omission of magical interpretations in
historical archaeology limits the visibility of potentially magical objects in site reports and
inventories, so it is likely a wider range of materials and contexts exist. The final result of this
dissertation was the construction of a criterion model for the identification and interpretation of
magic in historical archaeological contexts, which extends the notion of ritual from specialized
places and materials, and communal behaviors to include quotidian objects and settings, and
individual practices. Ultimately, the results of this dissertation extend the field of the archaeology
of ritual and magic in particular, and the broader field of archaeology more generally by
providing theoretical and methodological tools for understanding and recognizing how magical
belief contributes to physical and metaphoric boundary construction and maintenance.
[3]
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Time and space limit my ability to officially credit all those who have been instrumental
to my overall success and specifically to my present undertaking. The first person to whom I
owe a debt of gratitude is Dr. Henry Harrington who planted the germ of doctoral aspiration in
my head on my last day as an undergraduate in his Victorian British Literature class many years
ago here at UM. My life has taken a long and circuitous route, but I found my way back to the
University of Montana to fulfill the dream Dr. Harrington first inspired. Dr. Kelly Dixon’s
enthusiasm and support for and confidence in my abilities have opened important and
challenging new doors for me for which I will be eternally grateful. I would not be where I am
now were it not for her. To Dr. G.G. Weix and Dr. Richard Sattler I extend heartfelt thanks for
their time and commitment to my success through their rigorous academic expectations. As my
non-departmental committee members, I could not have hoped for a greater expert in his field
than Dr. Kenneth Lockridge to share his knowledge, insights, and passion for historical inquiry;
and Dr. Ellen Baumler for her enthusiasm and otherworldly perspectives. Throughout the entire
process, Dr. John Douglas, although originally designated as a surrogate advisor, has proven to
be an invaluable guide and facilitator ever ready and willing to offer constructive critiques of my
work to push me to greater heights of achievement. To all I offer sincere thanks for their
generous gifts of expertise, mentoring, and patience.
I would also like to acknowledge others who have assisted me with the acquisition of
source materials or have read and/or listened to my ideas as they have coalesced into this
dissertation. Many thanks go to Donna McCrea of Mansfield Library; Rolene Schliesman of the
Montana Historical Society; my fellow graduate students and colleagues, Helen Keremedijiev,
Bethany Campbell, Matt Walsh, and Mary Bobbitt; my academic colleagues engaged in the
[4]
archaeology of ritual and magic, Dr. Owen Davies, Dr. Christopher Fennell, Brian Hoggard, M.
Chris Manning, and Dr. Ian Evans; my sounding boards, kindred spirits, inspirations, and dear
friends, Ann Atkins, Melanie Knadler, and Louis Sexty; Riley Workman, Ronald Newbury, and
Amanda Atkins for their time and efforts proofreading various drafts; to Caitlin Sterchi for the
beautiful original artwork painted expressly for this dissertation; and the numerous interested
parties who have attended my conference presentations and provided feedback. No expression
of my gratitude would be complete without mention of the event and associated people that
literally changed my academic and personal life and set me on the course that eventually lead me
to my present pursuit. I am forever indebted to Drs. Robin Reid, Judy Ford, and Verlyn Flieger
and the NEH Tolkien Summer Institute for showing me a new path.
As grateful and indebted as I am to all the aforementioned people, my greatest and most
heartfelt appreciation goes to my family: to my parents for instilling in me a profound sense of
personal, familial, and social obligation, for teaching me what is truly important in life, for
encouraging me to always strive for excellence by reaching for the stars without losing a firm
footing on the ground, and for enfolding me in their generous and boundless love and support
through all my life’s ups and downs; to my elder son, Peter Newbury, whose quiet reserve
conceals a creative force and fierce integrity that endlessly surprise and inspire me; to my
daughter-in-law, Bobbie Newbury, for providing a model for determination and perseverance,
and for her support and commiseration as we have both pursued doctoral degrees; to my
granddaughters, Isa and Alora Newbury, for all the great adventures, road trips, and dancing in
the rain that keep me young in body and spirit; and to my younger son, Riley Workman, whose
thirst and talent for life radiate in his eyes and smile and brighten my world like a nova. I love
you all more than words could ever express.
[5]
This dissertation is dedicated to my father, Donald A. Riley (1932-2011),
the foundation of my life;
and my brother, Robert W. Riley (1957-1991),
my eternal best friend.
[6]
LIST OF MAPS, FIGURES, AND TABLES:
MAPS
Map 1.1:
New England colonies
Map 3.1:
Origins of English colonists
Map 3.2:
Native settlements and trails
Map 3.3:
New England village type distribution
Map 4.1:
17th-century New England domestic archaeology sites
Map 5.1:
Distribution of North American witch bottle finds
FIGURES
Figure 2.1:
Witches exiting house through chimney
Figure 2.2:
Seventeenth-century house as embodied space
Figure 2.3:
Indian kolam
Figure 2.4:
Turkish evil eye bead
Figure 2.5:
Romanian embroidered door cloth
Figure 2.6:
Frontice piece, A Most Certain, Strange, and True Discovery of a Witch, John
Hammond
Figure 3.1:
Christian trinity
Figure 3.2:
Sara Safford gravestone, 1712
Figure 3.3:
Witch post
Figure 3.4:
Pentagram and pentangle of Solomon
Figure 3.5:
Rowan berry pentagrams
Figure 3.6:
Writing box with hexafoils carvings
Figure 3.7:
Furniture chest with whorl carvings
[7]
Figure 3.8:
Dancing in forest under full moon
Figure 3.9:
Night as a supernatural realm
Figure 3.10:
Devil and demons making thunder
Figure 3.11:
Nucleated village model
Figure 3.12:
Swimming test
Figure 3.13:
Ducking stool
Figure 3.14:
Providential storm
Figure 3.15:
Title page, The English Housewife, Gervase Markham
Figure 5.1:
Gendered magical material culture from general historical sources
Figure 5.2:
Gendered magical material culture from Salem witch trial records
Figure 5.3:
Devil distributing poppets
Figure 5.4:
Physical and metaphysical boundary fears by category from Salem witch trial
records
Figure 5.5:
Physical and metaphysical boundary fears by sub-category from Salem witch trial
records
Figure 5.6:
Hotspots of boundary violation fears in domestic and public spheres
Figure 5.7:
Hotspots of boundary violation fears in domestic spheres
Figure 5.8:
Common marks found in English houses and outbuildings
Figure 5.9:
Encircled Spanish-American hexafoils
Figure 5.10:
Hexafoils in England and New England
Figure 5.11:
Apotropaic circles
Figure 5.12:
Triple heart motifs on New England furniture
Figure 5.13:
Gender associated magical material culture against supernatural beings from
folklore sources
Figure 5.14:
New England house with apotropaic flora
[8]
Figure 5.15:
Chadbourne site plan, Maine
Figure 5.16:
Horseshoe and stirrup from Chadbourne site, Maine
Figure 5.17:
Door lock mechanism and symbolic motifs from Chadbourne site, Maine
Figure 5.18:
Door key from Chadbourne site, Maine
Figure 5.19:
Cock’s head hinge from John Alden site, Massachusetts
Figure 5.20:
Site excavation of Chadbourne site, Maine
Figure 5.21:
Horseshoe from John Alden site, Massachusetts
Figure 5.22:
Cock’s head hinge from John Alden site, Massachusetts
Figure 5.23:
Knife blades from John Alden site, Massachusetts
Figure 5.24:
Pins and scissors from John Alden site, Massachusetts
Figure 5.25:
Unexplained stone from John Alden site, Massachusetts
Figure 5.26:
Site Excavation of John Alden site, Massachusetts
Figure 5.27:
Jireh Bull Garrison House site plan, Rhode Island
Figure 5.28:
John Howland site plan, Massachusetts
Figure 5.29:
Apotropaic spoon from Farrington House
Figure 5.30:
Stoneware Bellarmine jug and witch bottle with contents
Figure 5.30:
Cradle and butter churn. House interior, Plymouth Plantation, Massachusetts
TABLES
Table 2.1:
Gendered fears of 17th-century women and men
Table 2.2:
Sample application of Walker’s Artifact Use Identifier
Table 3.1:
Regional origins of New England immigrants
Table 3.2:
Occupations of New England male immigrants
[9]
Table 3.3:
17th-century New England Blue Laws
Table 4.1:
State Archaeological Archives and Records
Table 4.2:
Details of 1620-1725 domestic archaeological sites
Table 5.1:
Magical material culture from general historical sources
Table 5.2:
Magical material culture from Salem witch trial records
Table 5.3:
Pattern coding from court and general historical sources
Table 5.4:
Physical and metaphysical boundary violation fears according to gender
Table 5.5:
Pattern coding from folklore sources
Table 5.6:
Gendered attribution of apotropaic plant usage
Table 5.7:
Potential apotropaic finds from New England sites
Table 5.8:
Details of North American witch bottle finds
Table 5.9:
Northampton Concealed Shoes Index concealed shoe patterns
Table 6.1:
Apotropaic magical material culture typology
Table 6.2:
Apotropaic magical material culture manifestations and locations
Table 6.3:
Renfrew and Bahn’s criteria for identifying ritual in archaeological contexts
Table 6.4:
Criteria for identifying magic in archaeological contexts
Table 6.5:
Women’s fear related use of magical material culture
Table 6.6:
Men’s fear related use of magical material culture
[10]
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Acknowledgements
4
Dedication
6
List of Maps, Figures, and Tables
7
Chapter 1: Introduction
1.1
The Archaeology of Magic and Ritual
1.2
Dissertation Research Goals
1.3
Chapter Summaries
Chapter 2: Background to the Study of Seventeenth-century New England Magic
2.1
Chapter Overview
2.2
Defining Magic
2.2.1 Comparative Look at the Nature of Magic
2.2.2 Comparative Look at Gender and Magic
2.3
Archaeological Study of Magic
2.3.1 Theory and the Archaeology of Magic
2.3.1.1 History of Anthropological Theory of Magic
2.3.1.2 Psychological Theory of Fear
2.3.1.3 Agency Theory
2.3.2 Recent Archaeological Research in Magic
2.3.3 Archaeological Research on Magic in New England
14
18
26
28
29
52
61
61
64
72
75
94
Chapter 3: Cultural Context: Seventeenth-Century New England
3.1
Chapter Overview
3.2
Worldview and Magical Mindset
3.3
Origins, Motivations, Expectations, and Tribulations
3.3.1 Origins and Motivations
3.3.2 Environmental Challenges
3.3.3 Native Contact and Interaction
3.3.4 Colonial Society
3.4
Gender Constructs
98
105
128
128
132
142
146
156
Chapter 4: Research Methods
4.1
Chapter Overview
4.2
Historical Research Methods Overview
4.2.1 Court Records
4.2.2 Letters and Firsthand Accounts
4.2.3 Other Primary and Secondary Historical Resources
4.3
Folklore Research Methods Overview
4.3.1 Folklore Collections
4.4
Archaeological Research Methods Overview
163
164
165
168
170
172
173
175
[11]
4.4.1
4.4.2
Archaeological Site Reports
Additional Archaeological Artifact Data Sources
178
183
Chapter 5: Analysis and Interpretation
5.1
Chapter Overview
5.2
Data Overview
5.2.1 Historical Data
5.2.2 Folklore Data
5.2.3 Archaeological Data
185
185
187
213
228
Chapter 6: Conclusion and Future Directions
6.1
Chapter Overview
6.2
Dissertation Goals
6.2.1 Magical Material Culture Typology Construction
6.2.2 Risk Management and Boundary Construction
6.3
Future Directions
6.3.1 Archaeological Research Recommendations
6.4
Conclusion
269
269
270
294
299
300
303
References Cited
305
Appendix A: Witchcraft Accusations by Colony
Appendix B: Supernatural Creatures
Appendix C: Magical Flora of the Seventeenth-Century and
Their Apotropaic Locations
Appendix D: Historic and Folklore Raw Data Tables
353
360
363
[12]
372
The Old Woman and Her Cats
John Gay (1685-1732)
Who friendship with a knave have made,
Is judged a partner in the trade.
The matron who conducts abroad
A willing nymph, is thought a bawd;
And if a modest girl is seen
With one who cures a lover’s spleen,
We guess her not extremely nice,
And only wish to know her price.
‘Tis thus that on the choice of friends
Our good or evil name depends.
A wrinkled hag, of wicked fame,
Beside a little smoky flame
Sate hovering, pinched with age and frost;
Her shriveled hands, with veins embossed,
Upon her knees her weight sustains,
While palsy shook her crazy brains:
She mumbles forth her backward prayers,
An untamed scold of fourscore years.
About her swarmed a numerous brood
Of cats, who, lank with hunger mewed.
Teased with their cries, her choler grew,
And thus she sputtered: ‘Hence, ye crew.
Fool that I was, to entertain
Such imps, such fiends, a hellish train!
Had ye been never housed and nursed,
I, for a witch had ne’er been cursed.
To you I owe, that crowds of boys
Worry me with eternal noise;
Straws laid across, my pace retard,
The horse-shoe’s nailed (each threshold’s guard),
The stunted broom the wenches hide,
For fear that I should up and ride;
They stick with pins my bleeding seat,
And bid me show my secret teat.’
‘To hear you prate would vex a saint;
Who hath most reason of complaint?’
Replies a cat. ‘Let’s come to proof.
Had we ne’er starved beneath your roof,
We had like others of our race,
In credit lived as beasts of chase.
‘Tis infamy to serve a hag;
Cats are thought imps, her broom a nag;
And boys against our lives combine,
Because, ‘tis said, you cats have nine.’
[13]
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION
Ritual and magic were formerly part of everyday life, but by association
with fantasy fiction and occultism they have now acquired an aura of
sensationalism that has discouraged investigation….[Yet]like all human
activities, ritual customs, intended to gain advantage or avert disaster by
supernatural means, have left their mark on the archaeological record
(Merrifield 1987:xiii).
1.1 The Archaeology of Magic and Ritual
Although written over twenty-five years ago, Merrifield’s assessment of the
archaeological consideration of magic and ritual as cited above, remains surprisingly valid today,
especially in the field of American historical archaeology where fewer than forty publications
and graduate theses combined have specifically focused on magic. This lacuna in archaeological
investigations of the historic past, and particularly of the seventeenth century—usually
epitomized by the Salem witch trials—seems ironic considering the historical documentation of
the often tragic consequences of this belief system. The paucity of attention to this area of human
experience prompted me to undertake research into the practice of gendered magical belief
systems by Anglo-European colonists in seventeenth-century New England. Studying ritual and
magic as tactics to mitigate perceived personal, social, spiritual, and environmental dangers and
as empowering strategies in dangerous, unfamiliar, and unpredictable landscapes provides a
viable approach toward a more comprehensive understanding of the spatial and material
constructs past people used to negotiate their worlds.
A plethora of extant historical documents and folklore sources describes the use of
magical objects by Anglo-European colonists in seventeenth-century New England (Mather
1692; Drake 1869; Bacon 1896; Steiner 1901; Hazlit 1905; Burne 1913; Carpenter 1920; Villiers
1923; Read 1925; Thompson 1932; Burr 2002 [1914]), yet no focused archaeological study of
[14]
magic from this time and place has been undertaken to date. What is known about seventeenthcentury Anglo-European beliefs and practices comes primarily from British scholarship (Davies
1999, 2007; Easton 1999a, 1999b, 2011; Davies and Blécourt 2004; Hoggard 2004). Only five
historical archaeologists have pursued general studies of magic use in the United States and
Australia that span wide geographic areas and temporal ranges, usually focusing on a particular
behavior such as intentionally concealing apotropaic objects or particular artifacts like witch
bottles, shoes, or cats (Becker 1978, 1980, 2005; Geisler 2003; McKitrick 2009; Evans 2011;
Manning 2012a, 2012b). As important as these general studies are for establishing the temporally
and spatially widespread continuity of traditional Anglo-European beliefs, they provide only a
broad cultural explanation of the practices without consideration of gender, age, social relations,
or localized circumstances. To flesh out the data from these few archaeological studies, it is
necessary to add folkloristic and historical accounts of magical practice in seventeenth-century
New England and compare these with archaeological site reports for the same temporal and
spatial domain. Using these three interdisciplinary datasets of magical belief and practice
provides a basis from which to (1) develop a model for ritual identification criteria by which
variability of belief systems can be measured in the everyday context of vernacular sites and (2)
assess domestic and gendered patterns of risk management strategies.
The need for and potential benefits of such a research agenda is clear. For decades
historical archaeologists have uncovered seemingly anomalous artifacts that they classified as
rubbish, ritualistic, or simply unknown. They have also examined and misidentified magical
mundane objects and misinterpreted the associated deposition formations of those artifacts by
viewing them through a morphological functionary lens that gives primacy to utilitarian
explanations over belief-based interpretations (e.g. see discussions in Merrifield 1955, 1987;
[15]
Becker 1978, 1980, 2005; King 1996; Walker 1998; Leone and Fry 1999; Fennell 2000, 2007;
Gazin-Schwartz 2001). Thus, many of these artifacts, and the insights they can provide about
risk management and boundary construction and negotiation, may lie hidden in archaeological
site reports misidentified or misclassified.
Only within the last ten years have American historical archaeologists seriously
considered the significance of magical artifacts in the United States; futhermore, those
researchers comprise a very small group and are almost exclusively concerned with African
slave or African American contexts (Whitten 1962; Becker 1978, 1980, 2005; Klingelhofer
1987; Brown and Cooper 1990; King 1996; Samford 1996; Stine et al. 1996; Wilkie 1997; Leone
and Fry 1999; Fennell 2000, 2007; Brown 2001; Manning 2012a, 2012b). Lawrence (2003:1)
explains the lack of attention to Anglo-American traditions in archaeology noting that, “Because
of their ubiquity, the British have been an unproblematised category that is frequently the silent
‘other’ in archaeological studies that encompass identity, gender, race, domination and
resistance, culture contact, [and] post-colonialism…” To understand the processes of cultural
interaction and admixture, the maintenance of traditional beliefs, and the genesis of new
responses born from the challenges and conflicts inherent in colonization contexts, it is not only
valid, but essential to give equal consideration to the magical expressions of all cultural groups.
Anthropological, historical, and folkloristic studies have long recognized and
documented the use of magic to mediate risk in cultures around the world (Merrifield 1955,
1987; Turner 1969; Thomas 1971; Kittredge 1972; Weisman 1984; Renfrew 1994; Walker 1995;
Frazer 1996 [1890]; Davies 1999, 2007; Fennell 2000, 2007; Renfrew and Bahn 2000; Levene
2002; Davies and Blécourt 2004; Paine 2004, 2008). However, historical archaeologists have
virtually ignored this risk management stratagem in Anglo-European contexts within colonial
[16]
New England. As magical belief and practice were integral factors influencing daily decisionmaking regarding personal safety, identity, and interrelationships in the seventeenth-century, it is
vital that archaeologists gain a better understanding of the forms and functions of such beliefs.
Without recognition of these objects and behaviors, researchers lack critical data that help
explain how and why past peoples negotiated and constructed particular spheres of authority and
security. By cross referencing a survey of folklore sources, historical primary documents and
secondary sources, and reviews of archaeological site reports, this research project seeks to
verify evidence of magical practices that have been overlooked or misinterpreted in the
archaeological record to provide archaeologists with a more expansive approach for
reconstructing the life-ways of seventeenth-century New Englanders (Yentsch 1991b; King
1996; Walker 1998; Gazin-Schwartz 2001).
Understanding risk management strategies through time can provide insight into how
people manage space as defensive, offensive, and empowering mechanisms that define
distinctions between and relationships with others. Additionally, because women were most
often associated with witchcraft and magic in seventeenth-century New England, attention to the
ways in which gender affects these strategic constructs can offer new perspectives on the use of
material culture, the organization of space, the interaction with natural and built landscapes, and
the negotiation of social and familial relationships. People of the past used magical material
culture as supernatural agents to establish protective barriers (albeit invisible) around their
homes, their property, and themselves. Evidence of this eternal concern for mitigating the social
boundaries between safety and danger (i.e., the “us” and the “them”) by erecting protective
barriers around one’s home and community is still visible in the twentieth and twenty-first
century phenomenon of gated communities (Blakely and Snyder 1999; Low 2004). Both these
[17]
studies emphasize the continuing “drive to redefine territory and protect boundaries” (Blakely
and Snyder 1999:99) as a response to perceived rather than actual dangers (Low 2004:11)—a
behavior conceptually linked to the responses to perceived dangers in historical contexts like the
seventeenth century. Ultimately, the research presented in this dissertation constitutes a novel
approach to studying human history by using archaeological evidence to understand fear, and
particularly gendered dimensions of fear, that can contribute to a broader comprehension of the
range of human responses and boundary constructions in the face of perceived dangers.
1.2 Dissertation Research Goals
This dissertation research focuses on the area of seventeenth-century New England that
experienced a high occurrence of witchcraft related events, specifically Connecticut, Maine,
Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island (Map 1.1). Of course, seventeenth-century
MAP 1.1. New England Colonies. America: A Concise History, Third Edition. © 2006
Bedford/St. Martin’s.
[18]
magical practices and beliefs were not restricted to witchcraft. Magic was also used for
divination, medical practice, fertility, and protection against a host of enemies, both natural and
supernatural. However, it is within the witchcraft trial depositions that the everyday usage of
magic was often recorded. These five New England states have the greatest number of
documented number of witchcraft accusations and legal actions during the seventeenth- and early
eighteenth- centuries of all colonial American regions (Weisman 1984; Karlsen 1987; Godbeer
1992; Demos 2004).
The extant court documents from these areas include descriptions of magical and
countermagical objects and behaviors employed by the Anglo and European citizenry of early
New England, a few examples of which have been identified in the archaeological record (Baker
2001; Hoggard 2004; Becker 2005; Manning 2012a, 2012b). Additionally, there are numerous
British folklore collections of beliefs, customs, and proverbial wisdom as well as seventeenthcentury magical texts like grimoires, almanacs, and physick books available that can be
historically and culturally linked to the people who settled these particular areas (Thomas 1971;
Kittredge 1972; Fisher 1989; Davies 1999, 2007, 2009). The wealth of available resources for
the period 1620 to 1725 for Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Rhode
Island provides a significant body of data to effectively cross-reference magical beliefs,
behaviors, and material culture of the time to the archaeological record. The dates chosen for
this project reflect the inclusive dates for which there is historical documentation for witchcraft
accusations or belief in New England, beginning with the establishment of Plymouth Colony in
1620 and concluding with the last official witchcraft accusation in Maine in 1725 (against Sarah
Keene of Kittery, Maine). These dates do not imply that belief in magic and the subsequent use
[19]
of magical material culture was bounded by these parameters; rather for the purpose of this
research, these dates provided a feasible starting point from which to reassess the archaeological
record to more accurately interpret the role magical strategies played as gendered coping
mechanisms in a turbulent time and place. Thus, the research was framed around three broad but
interrelated questions:
1) What constitutes apotropaic magical material culture in seventeenth-century contexts
and how is it recognizable in the archaeological record?
2) What signifies gender specific apotropaic magical practices and what can these
differences relate about gender roles, identity, and social relationships?
3) In what way and to what degree is the recourse to traditional beliefs significant in
coping or risk management contexts?
Although essentially exploratory, this dissertation contains the general hypothesis that
seventeenth-century New England Anglo colonists employed magical beliefs as part of a greater
belief system to empower themselves in averting or mediating perceived personal, social,
spiritual, and environmental dangers. In order to analyze the magically associated objects,
behaviors, and themes found within the folklore and historical accounts, I established three
patterned categories of use and behavior: crisis patterns, gender patterns, and physical patterns.
Data concerning crisis patterns allowed testing of the hypothesis that apotropaic use fluctuates
and is most prevalent in times of increased social, political, or environmental instability. The
gender pattern data provided insight into protective magic use differentiation amongst women
and men, as well as across age, status, and familial standing. Special focus was given to the
gender pattern since less attention has been given to understanding the role of gender in the use
of protective (apotropaic) magic in either Anglo-European or African-American contexts than
has been applied to more generalized cultural practices (Karlsen 1987; Seifert 1991; Wilkie
1997; Demos 2004). Finally, data related to physical patterns revealed concepts and issues of
spatial control and boundary permeability.
[20]
The datasets used to support this dissertation’s goals included:
1) Historical Documents and Sources: To locate firsthand accounts of magical use
required a perusal of historical documents including court records, essays, pamphlets, sermons,
letters, diaries, magic books, and almanacs. It also included consideration of artistic motifs found
on gravestones, boundary markers, furniture, textiles, and art work. Specific persons, locations,
and forms associated with the use of magical objects along with more general confirmation of
magical belief was gleaned from these sources, which were then cross-referenced with the
folklore data.
2) Folklore: This component comprised the collection and systematic analysis of folklore
sources applicable to the inhabitants of seventeenth-century Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts,
New Hampshire, and Rhode Island, to compile a typological, gendered, and contextual inventory
of magical objects and behaviors that should be visible in the archaeological record. This
inventory noted all particulars (e.g. gender, age, season, restrictions, orientation, placement,
material composition, etc.) associated with the belief that would relate to cultural, gender, and
physical patterns.
3) Archaeological Site Reports: After accessing the archaeological site reports for the
five states covered in this project and selecting those domestic sites that match the 1620-1725
parameters, I cross-referenced the inventory compiled from the folklore and historical document
data to the objects and contexts described in the site reports. Where these items intersected or
where potential reinterpretations seemed evident, all pertinent information was gathered,
analyzed and formulated into a model for identifying and interpreting evidence of gendered
magical folk beliefs in the archaeological record and how those beliefs operated as risk
management strategies.
[21]
The first step in analyzing the above data entailed identifying magical categories and
creating a typology of apotropaia found in Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire,
and Rhode Island from 1620 to 1725 similar to Roper’s (2003) endeavors in typologizing
medieval to twentieth- century English charms. Roper is primarily interested in a comparative
study of English and European charms, while this research focused on understanding the
maintenance of a broader range of seventeenth-century Anglo traditional risk management
strategies as well as their adaptation in unfamiliar environs. Apotropaic characteristics including
material composition (metal, ceramic, floral or faunal, etc.), form, function, orientation,
seasonality, deposition, gender association, and intent were coded and corresponding data from
folklore and historic sources charted and compared to determine what patterns, if any, of magical
belief and practice would emerge. By coding the various apotropaic themes, it was possible to
isolate the three patterns (crisis, gender, and physical) of related factors that were then compared
and cross-referenced with artifact assemblages from specific archaeological sites.
The second outcome of this project was the development of magical identification criteria
by which variability of belief systems and their gendered signatures can be measured in domestic
sites. Turner (1969) and Renfrew and Bahn (2004) (see Table 6.3) formulated a criterion model
for identifying ritual in archaeological contexts based primarily upon the premise that ritual and
its associated material culture are anomalous and isolated. This criterion model is insufficient for
understanding magic and ritual in domestic contexts, however, as researchers familiar with folk
belief practices have demonstrated that often magical objects are neither unique nor spatially
separated from mundane contexts. Historical archaeologists working both in Anglo-European
and African-American sites admit many everyday objects used as apotropaic devices are
misidentified, thus leading to misinterpretations of human agency and motivation (Merrifield
[22]
1955, 1987:20; Samford 1996:107, 109; Wilkie 1997:102; Walker 1998:249; Leone and Fry
1999:374; Gazin-Schwartz 2001:273). The model derived from this project is intended to
provide a starting point for new identifications and reinterpretations and to complement the
Renfrew and Bahn model, as this expanded model delineates mundane rather than anomalous
characteristics and contexts that have potential magical associations. The model can then be
used to reevaluate previously excavated site materials as well as provide guidance for on-site
excavation procedures and interpretations leading to a better understanding of how people
through time intentionally and actively cope with their fears and insecurities by manifesting
apotropaic devices as risk management strategies.
In studies of African and African-American slave and freedman sites, the mapping of
magical assemblages according to their physical orientations and correlations with threshold
spaces has been compared to African cosmologies and mythologies to reveal their underlying
meanings (Brown and Cooper 1990; Samford 1996; Wilkie 1997, 2003; Leone and Fry 1999;
Brown 2001; Davidson 2004; Joseph et al. 2011). Each of these studies employed a behavioral
analogy to West African practices in which direct correlates to the use of symbols, colors,
directional correspondences, and materials were compared to the cultural traditions and
geographic origins of enslaved Africans. It was my goal to see if a similar approach using
behavioral analogies to Anglo-Celtic magical beliefs and practices in Britain would likewise
explicate how seventeenth-century New Englanders perceived, demarcated, and protected
personal, social, political, and spiritual thresholds.
My previous and ongoing research related to threshold spaces as paradoxically vulnerable
and reinforced, as liminal negotiating places, and as spaces of potentiality and transformation,
dovetailed seamlessly with this dissertation’s goals as each of these constructs has historically
[23]
been addressed through a variety of magical applications at vernacular dwelling sites. In
particular, magical applications primarily associated with boundaries or threshold spaces in
Anglo-European contexts principally served as risk management strategies to empower people in
a dangerous and unpredictable world. The ultimate goal of this dissertation is to provide a new
intellectual framework that inspires further research into magical boundary marking as a
gendered strategy of control and negotiation, drawing attention to the ways in which belief
affects how and why men and women use material culture, organize space, interact with natural
and build landscapes, and negotiate social and familial relationships.
A review of the articles published over the past forty-five years in the journal Historical
Archaeology indicates that most historical archaeological research emphasizes the
socioeconomic aspects of past peoples; an approach that Merrifield (1987:1) challenges by
asserting that enactment of magico-religious beliefs:
…has produced immense activity that must have left almost as many traces
in the archaeological record as any of the basic human activities that are
concerned with satisfying hunger, constructing shelter, or providing defence
against enemies. In a sense it must be regarded as even more basic, since it
concerns man’s view of himself in his earthly environment, and activities
arising from it inevitably pervade all other fields of human action.
The mundane and pragmatic focus on socioeconomics central to much archaeological research,
excavation, and interpretation often precludes consideration or incorporation of the underlying
belief systems that shaped the material culture found in the archaeological record. Only when
particular artifacts stand out as particularly enigmatic or anomalous are ideological
interpretations sought from alternative sources like religion or folklore (Klingelhofer 1987;
Brown and Cooper 1990; Deetz 1996; Samford 1996; Wilkie 1997; Leone and Fry 1999; Fennell
2000, 2007; Brown 2001). An archaeological study of magical material culture, being inherently
[24]
linked to supernatural belief systems, requires theoretical grounding in these ideological
traditions.
Two theoretical frameworks often guide comparative research of belief systems.
The first, diaspora studies of culture contact and assimilation presuppose either a creolization or
concealment of traditional beliefs (Brown and Cooper 1990; Wilkie 1997; Barth 1998; Davidson
2004). The second, cultural continuity theory, advocates the idea that cultural groups
intentionally adhere to traditional beliefs and life-ways to retain group identity and cohesion,
especially in times of extreme stress (e.g., emigration, epidemics, natural disasters, and spiritual
insecurity) or self-imposed isolationism (Glassie 1971, 1995; Oliver 1976; Dorson 1986; Fischer
1989; Barth 1998; Fennell 2007). While not the primary theoretical approaches to this research,
in reviewing the data for this dissertation, I considered the accuracy of these two theories in
regards to Anglo-European beliefs systems in seventeenth-century New England, as they do play
a part in the overall understanding of the choice and use of traditional strategies in risk
management. The belief in and use of magic represents a complex suite of psychological,
emotional, cosmological, and pragmatic considerations, and, therefore, no one theoretical
approach can account for the archaeological evidence of such behaviors. Since the use of magic
as a risk management strategy implies both the existence of threat and the intentional recourse to
tactics to directly mitigate that threat, approaching this study through a combination of
functionalist theory (Malinowski 1955[1925]), psychological fear theory (Douglas 1985; Gray
1987; Tarlow 2000; Lerner and Keltner 2001; Bourke 2005; Callanan and Teasdale 2009; Sayfan
and Lagattuta 2009; Carro and Vidal 2010; Tucker 2010) and agency theory (Fishbein and Ajzen
1975; Foucault 1984; Milledge 1997; Vyse 1997; Gell 1998; Barrett 2000; Cowgill 2000; Dobres
and Robb 2000; Wobst 2000; David and Kramer 2001) provided the most sustainable
[25]
explanatory scheme to account for the motivation and agentic power behind magical material
culture.
1.3 Chapter Summaries
The remainder of this dissertation is divided into five chapters organized as a progression
from general background information to narrow consideration of the specifics of data collection,
datasets, and analysis.
To ground the study of magic and archaeology in seventeenth-century New England
within the broader field of magical belief scholarship, Chapter 2 provides first a general
discussion of magic with definitions and comparative cultural examples of gendered practices
succeeded by an explication of the theoretical underpinnings of this dissertation. Beginning with
the historical background of the anthropological and archaeological theories of ritual and magic,
it continues with a consideration of multidisciplinary theories, including the psychological theory
of fear and agency theory, as viable explanatory frameworks through which to understand the
use and material manifestations of magical material culture in seventeenth-century New England.
This discussion is followed by a brief overview of recent historical archaeological research on
Anglo magical material culture in New England and elsewhere in British regions to ascertain
what has and what has not been considered and/or accomplished as yet.
Chapter 3 establishes the cultural context for this dissertation by first examining the
worldview and magical mindset shared by seventeenth-century Christians. It then proceeds to an
explanation of the British geographical origins and the motivations, expectations, and
tribulations that contributed to the Puritan colonists’ overall experience as one of heightened
anxiety and fearfulness. To highlight the relationship of gender to the magical mindset and to the
tribulations of the colonial experience in New England, Chapter 3 concludes with a discussion of
[26]
the rigid and explicit delineation and enactment of Puritan gender expectations. Together these
chapter topics serve to establish seventeenth-century New England as a time and place especially
disposed to the belief in and practice of magic.
Chapter 4 presents the process of locating and evaluating the historical, folkloristic, and
archaeological data sources used in this dissertation to both make transparent the completeness
and validity of the datasets and to assist future researchers with ideas about the relative values
and potentialities of multiple resources.
Following the outlining of data sources presented in Chapter 4, the succeeding chapter
turns to analysis and interpretation. Chapter 5 is comprised of the detailed historical, folkloristic,
and archaeological datasets and their analyses. The results of which provide the information for
the construction of usable and meaningful apotropaic material culture typologies.
Finally, Chapter 6 revisits the dissertation goals expressed at the commencement of this
dissertation to draw conclusions about apotropaic material culture and its archaeological
presence, gender, risk management strategies, and boundary construction based upon the data
abstracted, analyzed, and interpreted through this research. At this point a revised criterion model
for recognition of magic and ritual in the historical archaeological record is offered for future
researchers as a complementary model to the ritual identification model that is currently
referenced (Renfrew and Bahn 2004:416-417). Lastly, recommendations are proposed for
continuing historical and archaeological investigation of magic, ritual, gender, and risk
management.
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CHAPTER 2: Background to the Study of Seventeenth-century New England
Magic
2.1 Chapter Overview
Before presenting the research methodology, datasets, and analysis of archaeology and
Puritan gendered magical practice, several background components need to be discussed. First,
to understand the force of magical beliefs and situate the Puritan mindset and experience in a
wider anthropological framework requires a comparative consideration of the cross-culturally
shared conceptions of the nature of magic including the definition of key terms. Secondly, the
premise that magical practice can and does have a gendered aspect must be substantiated through
known examples as comparative models, which may provide valuable insights for both
recognizing and interpreting gendered magical behaviors in New England contexts. Finally, to
corroborate the viability and importance of magic as an archaeological topic in general and as a
meaningful approach to colonial New England archaeological studies in particular, a review of
the history and current state of the archaeology of magic is provided.
This chapter begins with a designated section providing a clarification of terms associated
with magic, including the distinction between religion and magic, and the relationship of ritual to
both. Additionally, it expressly delineates the parameters of domestic and boundary guarding
(apotropaic) magic that form the focus of this dissertation. Following the presentation of these
definitions and dissertation parameters is an examination of the virtually universal nature and
workings of magic with their emphasis on sympathetic associations and threshold spaces, which
also underlie the seventeenth-century Anglo-European understanding of magical power. As
illustrative cross-cultural examples that demonstrate these characteristics of magic and to
specifically provide evidence of gendered associations with magical practice, this chapter section
[28]
concludes with discussion of Indian kolams, Balinese and European apotropaic needlework, and
African-American domestic magic.
The second section of this chapter moves from the more broadly anthropological
consideration of magic to its archaeological significance and study. The first half of this section
provides a discussion of the theoretical frameworks that have historically guided the
anthropological study of magic and the three theories, that when combined, furnish the
interpretive lens for this dissertation. This section concludes with a review of the state of the
archaeology of magic and ritual within historical archaeology, emphasizing work addressing
North American sites and cultural groups; and a review of the archaeology of magic focused
specifically on colonial New England.
Together, the first section of Chapter 2 detailing the particulars of magical belief and
gendered practice and the second section assessing the approaches, contributions, and lacunae of
historical archaeology’s undertaking of the archaeology of magic and ritual, furnish the
foundation upon which the data presented in the succeeding chapters rest.
2.2 Defining Magic
2.2.1 Comparative Look at the Nature of Magic
Any exploration of magic and its associated devices necessitates a clarification of
terminology. The terms apotropaia, amulets, talismans, and charms appear in various works in
synonymous use; however, some scholars (Gonzáles-Wippler 2003; Paine 2004, 2008; Skemer
2006) assert the terms carry related but distinct meanings and purposes. Borić (2003:48)
integrates all magical terms and strategies under a broad construct he refer to as the “technology
of protection” and specifically denotes as “ ‘apotropaism,’ i.e. protective cultural practices as a
means of fighting the calamities of life.” He (Borić 2003:60) goes on to define apotropaism as:
[29]
…the powers attributed to symbols, images, decorations, objects, places or
practices that serve to protect from the harm that ‘other worldly’ beings
and immaterial spirits (demons that inhabit the world) can inflict on vulnerable
and unprotected individuals….apotropaic actions and images stop or ‘trap’ the
evil forces; on the other hand, they can undo negative…events that have already
occurred.
For the sake of clarity, in this dissertation the term apotropaia follows Borić’s definition above;
amulets comprise the group of apotropaic objects worn or attached; talismans are objects or
written scripts that possess the ability to protect and to radiate an innate power; charms attract
positive power or luck as well as work to control persons or situations and may be written,
symbolic, or of other material form. One additional term, spiritual midden, describes the
collections or caches of apparent refuse ritually concealed as apotropaia.
Glucklich (1997:vi) observes in The End of Magic, the word ‘magic’ itself has become
overworked in the sense that we currently use it to describe a myriad of joyous feelings, aesthetic
phenomenon, illusionary entertainments, ritual experiences, occult practices, superstitious
beliefs, and fairy tale fantasies. In reality, however, belief in and practice of magic as a
metaphysical force continues to flourish in varying degrees and manifestations throughout both
non-Western and Western cultures around the world including the United States (e.g.; Briggs
1962; Glucklich 1997; Vyse 1997; Gell 1998; Ankerloo and Clark 1999a, 1999b, 2002; Davies
1999; Dohmen 2001; Paine 2004, 2008; Lehman et al. 2005; Bailey 2007; Milnes 2007;
Anderson 2008; Evans 2011; Manning 2012a, 2012b). Some of these practices and beliefs
represent continuous, dynamic traditional lore (Hohman 1820; Gell 1998; Davies 1999; Welters
1999; Paine 2004, 2008; Bailey 2007; Milnes 2007; Evans 2011; Manning 2012a, 2012b) while
others have more modern origins in the New Age movement (Jones 2004; Luhrmann 2005).
Regardless of their provenance, magical beliefs and expressions continue to play vital and active
[30]
roles in people’s lives around the globe in the modern world (Shweder 1977; Rozin and
Nemeroff 1990; Rozin et al. 1995; Søresen 2007). A comparative examination of magical belief
and material culture historically, synchronically, diachronically, and cross culturally may provide
insight into the popular magic of seventeenth-century New England, its characteristics,
dynamics, practitioners, material manifestations, and meanings.
In addition to distinguishing among the terms for apotropaia, we must also consider the
term magic as a multivalent concept. As Kieckhefer (1989) reminds us in his book Magic in the
Middle Ages, the definitions and applications of magic are both culturally and temporally
determined. Even within a given culture, time, and spiritual mindset, there exists a range of
distinctions concerning magic’s existence, power, use, and virtue. The medieval and early
modern distinction between demonic magic and natural magic is of primary importance when
studying the use of magical objects as domestic apotropaia and understanding how and why
magic could be employed to protect oneself and one’s domicile without spiritual compromise.
According to Kieckhefer (1989:13), it was the source of the magical power that mattered.
Demonic magic derived its power from demons while natural magic manifested itself within
nature, and thus was not in violation of or opposition to Christian doctrine, but was rather
understood as one aspect of the doctrine of signatures. It must be kept in mind, however, that
this was not always so straightforward, as the same natural substances (like herbs, metals, and
animal parts) may be used in both demonic and non-demonic magical practices and rituals.
The terms magic and ritual require further explication and definition. Both magic and
ritual defy simplistic and bounded characterization, being by nature inadequate abstractions
coined to collectively express the interface of objects, processes, and relationships, oftentimes
between the natural world of humankind and supernatural realm of deities, spirits, and demons as
[31]
noted above by Kieckhefer. As a result, numerous definitions of magic and ritual have been
formulated by researchers (Evans-Pritchard 1933; Malinowski 1955[1925]; Lévi-Strauss 1963;
Turner 1969; Thomas 1971; Mauss 1972[1902]; Merrifield 1988; Keickhefer 1989; Tambiah
1990; Bell 1997; Glucklich 1997; Renfrew and Bahn 2000; Gazin-Schwartz 2001; Aure 2004;
Insoll 2004; Davies 2012). I am concerned with magic and ritual as systemized practices whose
symbolic structured enactments express an underlying belief in the connection and power
between the elements involved (e.g., material manifestations, texts, gestures, and temporal and
spatial prescriptions) and the efficacy of the desired outcome of the performance. I also assert
that while rituals may not necessarily incorporate any magically based belief or behavior,
magical practice always involves ritualized observances. A brief review of various
conceptualizations of magic and ritual will help clarify my usage of these two terms.
Bell (1997) provides a useful historiographical examination of ritual theory and
definition. She points out that, “Traditionally, ritual has been distinguished from other modes of
action by virtue of its supposed nonutilitarian and nonrational qualities” and adds, “A number of
theorists have used these distinctions in even subtler extensions, such as distinguishing religious
rituals from magical rituals” (Bell 1997:46). These distinctions posit that nonutilitarian rituals
constitute religious worship while nonrational (but utilitarian in seeking a practical end) indicate
magical practice. Insoll (2004), Malinowski (1955[1925]), Mauss (1972[1902], and Thomas
(1971) particularly attempt to define magic as a distinct system of belief and practice
distinguishable from religion and one often embedded with a negative connotation of
superstitious ignorance or demonic implication. Insoll (2004) explicitly omits any discussion of
magic in his Archaeology, Ritual, Religion; Mauss (1972[1902]) likewise overtly attempts, with
little success, to distinguish between religious belief and ritual and those constituting magic.
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Although Thomas’ title, Religion and the Decline of Magic, implies these two constructs
represent different and incompatible belief systems, he actually demonstrates that the subtle
distinctions between Anglo-European religious and magical belief and ritual from the Middle
Ages to the nineteenth century depended upon the practitioners’ perspectives more so than any
formal structure or purpose attributed to either construct such as those implied by the
nonutilitarian and nonrational characterizations noted by Bell.
Bell’s (1997:x) review reveals “that there is no clear and widely shared explanation of
what constitutes ritual or how to understand it. There are only various theories…all of which
reflect the time and place in which they are formulated.” This statement, while referring to the
theorists and their relative temporal and social positioning, also applies to the practitioners and
participants of ritual and magic as it is ultimately more relevant to understand these concepts as
they were perceived by the people of the particular time, place, and culture under study.
Crapanzano (1980) concurs by stressing the cultural relativism of ritual, an idea he substantiates
through his study of circumcision rites in Morocco in which he demonstrates that although a
particular ritual element may be practiced by numerous cultural groups, the ritual forms,
functions, and meanings are not universal, but rather unique to the given group.
For the purpose of my research, I do not confine ritual to a public performance as is often
assumed of religious observances, rather I view ritual as encompassing a wider latitude of
variation from periodic, private, personal, and secret (as many applications of seventeenthcentury popular magic would have been) to regulated, public, social, and overt (characteristic of
formalized religious and political ceremonies). This definition allows for a continuum of
ritualistic variations combining public/private and covert/overt aspects in numerous degrees and
permutations. A ritual performance entails varying combinations of texts, objects, gestures, and
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acts believed by the participant(s) to work in communion by virtue of some metaphysical
relationship between the ritual components and a naturally inherent force or power. In the case
of magic, for example, this power might be the belief in sympathetic associations, in other
words, that objects bearing any similarity to each other can affect each other. In formal religious
services, it is divine power that is tapped and channeled through ritual performances. However,
petitioning or invoking this same divine power frequently also underlay magical medicinal
remedies and apotropaic charms and amulets. Rituals, then, provide a multidimensional conduit
through which symbolic messages and metaphysical power can flow for the participants’ benefit.
The spatial, temporal, and material rules defining any particular ritual are culture and context
specific.
Any belief in the supernatural constitutes a worldview that accepts the unverifiable
existence of beings, forces, and influences inhabiting an invisible metaphysical realm. This
realm invariably coexists and interacts with the empirical terrestrial world. Technically, all
formal religious belief and practice with its sacred texts and objects fits the definition of magic
stated above: enactments expressing an underlying belief in the metaphysical connection and
power between the elements involved and the efficacy of the desired outcome of the
performance. For the purpose of this dissertation, I am, however, not concerned with religious
magical practice and paraphernalia. Rather, my focus is on the manifestation and
implementation of magical enactments by laypersons in domestic contexts, particularly those of
seventeenth-century New England. Such practice is known as popular magic to distinguish its
participants, praxis, material culture, and contexts from either official church rituals or activities
of the intelligentsia involved in alchemy, astrology, or necromancy (Thomas 1971; Butler 1979;
Kieckhefer 1989; Hoggard 2004; Davies 2007; Bever 2008).
[34]
The range of magical beliefs and applications, of course, spans a wide latitude. Virtually
every undertaking in societies around the world may have at some point included magical
components as attested to by numerous anthropological studies ranging from Malinowski’s
(1955[1925]:28) observations on Trobriand islanders employing magic in fishing and gardening;
to Hauser-Schäublin et al.’s (1991:117) exploration of the Balinese embedded conceptualization
of magical power in textile designs; to Gmelch’s (2005:294) discussion of American baseball
ritual magic. Magic has been utilized to divine the identities of thieves, witches, and future
spouses; to promote luck, prosperity, and successful hunting; to bring rain and enhance plant,
animal, and human fertility; to punish or harm enemies; to heal and protect body and property; to
prognosticate the future; and to appease, propitiate, or petition spiritual forces. To expound upon
all forms and purposes of magic is beyond the scope of my research. Instead, in this dissertation
I am concerned with magical practices that fulfill the two criteria stated in the dissertation title:
magic associated with domestic domains, broadly conceived and gendered behavior.
Additionally, the focus here is the material magic expressions employed in various cultural
traditions as boundary apotropaia rather than intangible verbal or performance charms. However,
an understanding of the multiplicity of magical materials will assist in determining which
manifestations may be retrieved from the archaeological record and which may prove too
ephemeral to leave a recoverable footprint.
Boundary and Threshold Concepts
To understand supernatural and magical folk belief associated with boundaries necessitates
understanding the conceptual ideology of threshold spaces, an ideology that finds expression in art
and literature as well as religious and folk belief. Novelist Günter Grass (1964:130) captured the
universal attribution of supernatural forces with thresholds when he wrote, “as everyone should
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know, a doorway is the favorite dwelling place of evil.” Numerous scholars note the importance of
threshold spaces as supernaturally powerful in African and African American belief systems (e.g.
Oliver 1980; Walton 1980; Ferguson 1991; Leone and Fry 1999; Brown 2001; Anderson 2007).
Likewise, Layard (1937), Gell (1992), Huyler (1995), and Dohmen (2001), demonstrate through
examination of the apotropaic practice of kolam construction in India the centrality of thresholds in
those traditions. Similar protective attention is given to thresholds space in China (Allan
1999:107), the Middle East (González-Wippler 2003; Paine 2004); Belize (Awe, lecture 2009) and
Europe (Merrifield 1955, 1987; Essabal 1961; Evans 1971; Kittredge 1972; Puhvel 1976;
Kieckhefer 1989; Johnson 1993; Lloyd et al. 2001; Flipovic and Rader 2004; Hoggard 2004).
Thresholds are conceived as both physical and intangible, as both literal and metaphorical.
The physical boundaries of buildings and properties were often perceived as the literal and
metaphorical liminal thresholds between the living and the dead; the material and the spirit; the
public and private; the decent and the indecent; the sacred and profane; male and female; single
and married; insiders and outsiders; and danger and security. While the evils of the world hovered
around the exteriors of home and farmstead, the people within found themselves negotiating a
sense of control and safety through their belief and faith in apotropaic threshold applications. The
concept of negotiation is here apt due to the inherently paradoxical nature of thresholds as they
represent and function as the most protective and the most vulnerable points in any structure. For
example, doors provide entrance into space sheltered from the natural elements, physical threats, or
intruders, while they simultaneously breech the integrity of a structure’s wall. Thus, the very path
to safety is also one of the most inviting for danger. Windows permit essential light and air
enabling inhabitants to conduct their daily activities; however, windows also allow outsiders to be
privy to insiders’ movements, possessions, and secrets.
[36]
FIGURE 2.1. Witches using hearth chimney as entrance/exit point to house. Seventeenth-century
English woodcut.
Smoke holes or chimneys conduct the hearth-fire smoke up and out of the home, but unlike
windows and doors, can never be closed and, thus, invite free commerce for any malicious traffic
directly into the house through the hearth (Fig. 2.1). In each instance, those openings that establish
a sense of well-being and security paradoxically produce feelings of unease and vulnerability.
Thresholds have long been envisioned as having three dimensions. Not only are they the
demarcations for the dichotomies of in/out, us/them, and safety/danger, but they simultaneously
establish a liminal zone that operates both physically and psychologically: physically because the
threshold itself is neither inside nor outside the structure and thus creates the concrete boundary
between inhabitants and evil and provides a solid surface upon which amulets can be attached;
[37]
and psychologically because liminality suggests existence within a spatial and temporal sector
outside mundane reality. Probably the penultimate place of liminality is a crossroads embodying
four thresholds. As Puhvel (1976:167), notes, “In the recorded folklore of many lands crossroads are associated with the appearance and activities of various, generally uncanny creatures—
ghosts, witches, and demons of many kinds. They are a place where mysterious preternatural
phenomena occur and magic rites of multiple sorts are performed.” It is in this liminal realm,
whether a building’s threshold, a property boundary, or a place perceived as the portal between
worlds, like a crossroads, that supernatural forces reside and, therefore, it is where apotropaic
agents would be the most effective guardians.
Because the physical liminal spaces represented the points most vulnerable to permeability,
they were most likely to be reinforced through the application of magically empowered objects and
rituals. In order for the objects to be efficacious in the realm of the supernatural they, too, needed
to cross the threshold from the material realm to the spirit world. Thus, the objects were often
either beyond their usefulness or were ritually “killed” by being intentionally damaged in some
way to transition across to the otherworld. Bent pins in ‘witch bottles;’ broken swords in rivers
and peat bogs; worn out shoes in chimneys, walls, and roofs; and sacrificial animals or other
objects intentionally destroyed in the process of magical ritual represent a few variations of this
concept (Merrifield 1955, 1987; Eastop 2001; Hoggard 2004; Anderson 2008; Evans 2011;
Manning 2012a, 2012b). Additionally, placement of material objects at liminal crossroads,
thresholds, or intersecting points (e.g., corners of buildings or property lines) constituted their
transition into the spiritual realm. This placement may be visible as in the case of Indian threshold
designs called kolams (Layard 1937; Oliver 1980; Gell 1992; Huyler 1995; Dohmen 2001);
Philipino hanging pots on porches (Peterson 2005); or Anglo-European burn marks on rafters and
[38]
stable doors (Lloyd et al. 2001); but, they may also be rendered invisible through intentional burial,
submersion, or concealment to further emphasize their status as spiritual agents. Due to their
concealed depositions, these artifacts have the highest chance of survival in the archaeological
record and so comprise the largest and most varied sample of prehistoric and historic magical
material culture from around the world ranging from cave pictographs (Alves 2001) to Babylonian
Demon Bowls (Bohak 1995; Levene 2002) to Hoodoo or Voodoo charms (Cochran 1999; Leone
and Fry 1999; Anderson 2008) to Anglo-European witch bottles (Merrifield 1955, 1988; Becker
1978, 1980, 2005).
While architectural thresholds or geographical boundaries appear relatively
straightforward, they symbolize a more complex interface between the built environment and the
human physical and spiritual body. Architectural historians like Gaston Bachelard (1994),
Robert Blair St. George (1998), Paul Oliver (1980), Matthew Johnson (1996), and Kent Bloomer
and Charles Moore (1977) along with archaeologist Dušan Borić (2003) espouse the
metaphorical implications of the human body with the threshold points of architectural
structures. Each explores the symbolic anthropomorphizing of doors as mouths, windows as
eyes, roofs as heads, and hearths as hearts and the subsequent correlation between the well-being
of the protected structure and the well-being, both physical and psychological, of the inhabitants.
Based on his research in South East Asia, Tore Hakansson (1980:84) asserts that:
Throughout man’s known history he has decorated his body with signs and
symbols in the form of ornaments, tattooing, costumes and dresses. In particular
the orifices had to have magical protection from demons and evil spirits. This
need for magic protection was also extended to man’s dwellings and homes, and
especially to their entrances.
While Hakansson’s connection of body to house in this quote is only implicit, he expounds upon
the connection more explicitly in his discussion of youth houses constructed by the Kiwai
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Papuaus of British New Guinea. These houses incorporate carved human figures as support posts
that are believed to animate and magically protect the structure and its inhabitants in a mimetic
interplay between humans, architecture, and supernatural forces.
The cosmic relationship between human body, architecture, and divine power may find
its most overt expression in Balinese architectural construction. According to Eiseman
(1990:190-191), “Using an ancient doctrine of architectural principles, the Asta Kosala Kosali, a
Balinese architect seeks to design a building that is in physical, environmental, philosophical,
and organizational harmony with the human body, which itself is nothing but a scaled down
version of the Balinese cosmos.” He continues with detailed descriptions of how the household
compound head male’s bodily measurements are used as the measurements for the buildings and
their placement and orientation to each other. Elaborate rituals accompany each step of the
construction process to ensure approval and protection of the gods, with each undertaking guided
by prognostication of the most auspicious day and time for harmony, balance, and prosperity.
Blair St. George illustrates that a similar cosmos-architecture-body concept underscored
the Puritan vision that found explicit expression in seventeenth-century sermons. He argues that
“New England houses…were guided by an aesthetic grounded in the poetics and politics of
communion and covenant theology” and “signaled the persistence of a deferential concept of the
social and political body that retained the hierarchic body of Christ as its key cultural metaphor”
(1998:145). Thus, malevolent breaches to either physical body or house represented violation of
the other and, ultimately, as an attack upon the sanctity of the Christian community, which was
metaphorically described as both a house and a body.
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FIGURE 2.2. Illustration of the seventeenth-century house as an embodied space. (St. George
1998:137)
Obviously, there exists a metaphorical as well as phenomenological connection between
people and their domestic structures. The experiential relationship between space/place and
human well-being lies at the core of many magical practices as a means to protect both life and
property. According to Foucault, “Space is fundamental in any exercise of power” (1984:252),
an idea that Price-Chalita (1994) and Smith (2007:85) translate as expressing a language of
power:
Spatial language clearly represents power differentials in a variety of ways.
People lacking access and power may be expressed in an abstract or unnamed
manner as people denied space, displaced, or placeless. Spatial language is also
used to represent the relational and explicitly the oppositionality of social relations,
using the relation of other spaces in such metaphors as margin/center, periphery/core,
or inside/outside. The spatial metaphor of power difference may also be well
defined in terms of (and control over) spatial concepts such as the body, borderland,
or home.
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While this intimate connection between body and space centralizes power in the actual control of
space, this represents but one aspect of people’s ability to wield authority over their designated
domestic spheres. To understand other aspects of power and their part in magical belief and
practice requires consideration of the nature and functions of magic.
W. R. Halliday stated in an early twentieth-century article, “All magic is in a sense a
conflict” and that anthropologists recognize “that magic is based on power” (1910:147). While
these may seem rather obvious assertions, Halliday builds upon these two concepts to explain the
secret and terrifying nature of magical belief. According to Halliday, everyone innately
possesses power that resides in even the minutest of bodily parts like hair or nail clippings. As
concentrated containers of an individual’s essence, they can both inflict harm upon others and be
used as conduits to harm their originator. In fact, as Halliday notes and as substantiated in
numerous sources, it is generally the weak, the young, the ill, the dead, the unbaptized or
uninitiated, and animals that are considered most susceptible to magical harm (Halliday 1910;
Dundes 1992; González-Wippler 2003; Paine 2004; Milnes 2007). Healthy, strong adults
inherently possess essential power; sorcerers or witches are attributed with wielding a greater
degree of this power but not with monopolizing it. The belief that all people manifest some
degree of innate or essential power accounts for the confidence in their ability to create and
utilize counter-magical efforts against the magic of maleficent persons and forces. Magic is
indeed about conceptualizing, weighing, and generating one’s power in response to specific
circumstances.
In instances of bewitchment, demonic possession, casting of the evil eye, or similar
confrontation with malevolent power, Halliday’s equating of magic to conflict is incontestable.
However, in practices like scrying (using a reflective medium to prognosticate the future) for
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divining one’s prospective spouse or carrying a holed stone for good luck, the notion of conflict
seems less applicable. It can be argued that even these practices express, albeit more
subconsciously, a sense of antagonism toward and fear of those persons or forces that may
inhibit one’s success, prosperity, and happiness. Magic as a fear/conflict construct can serve as
the general theory from which context and cultural specific examples of magic as risk
management strategies like those espoused by Malinowski (1955[1925]) for the Trobriand
Islanders, Wilkie (1997) for African American slaves, or Peterson (2005) for the Philippinos can
be understood. Beyond, or rather implicated with, risk management lays magical practice as an
empowering agentic. In undertaking the effort of gathering the appropriate materials and
ritualistically assembling and activating them, the magical practitioner demonstrates a
confidence in his or her own authority and power to manipulate or otherwise affect supernatural
forces for personal advantage. Communally recognized skill in constructing apotropaic devices
like intricate kolam designs (Figure 2.3), mouth-blown evil eye beads (Figure 2.4), or elaborate
embroidery patterns (Figure 2.5) may contribute to the individual’s sense of empowerment.
FIGURE 2.3. Indian kolam. Canadian Museum of Civilization 2000.
.
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FIGURE 2.4. (below) Turkish evil eye bead. Photo by author.
FIGURE 2.5. (below) Romanian embroidered door cloth. Photograph by Bill Neely. Used by
permission.
As manufacturers of magical objects or merely as wielders of magical power through the
implementation of such objects, these individuals enact a sense of personal and social identity.
Personal identity as a skilled craftsperson can be evinced from the quality of products one
produces and the acknowledgement of such by one’s community. Additionally, one’s social
identity as one successfully enacting expected social and gender roles may in part be
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demonstrated through magical practice if the use of magic to protect or enhance one’s family or
livelihood is interpreted as an extension or further dimension of one’s duty.
As previously noted, magical objects may be overt and readily recognized for their
magical purpose. Evil eye beads hung over doors or in windows in Turkey, complexly woven
fencing in Romania, ceramic ‘beckoning’ cat figures in Japanese windows, white paint under and
around windows in Yemen and Cameroon, and horseshoes placed above house and stable doors
in Anglo-European contexts all rely upon their observability in order to trap or repel malign
influences (Paine 2004). Others require an element of stealth to capture or affect intended targets
unawares. This is the secret aspect Halliday alluded to. In particular, he suggested that the
concealment of a magical charm and its subsequent rumored existence, are sufficient to cause the
target terrifying unease. Wilkie (1997) and Anderson (2008) offer similar interpretations of
African and African American based uses of magic in Conjure, Hoodoo and Voodoo traditions.
In these traditions the magical objects are usually buried at threshold or crossroad points over
which the intended target would normally pass, or they would be disguised in the target’s food or
drink to secretly cross the bodily threshold.
These are hardly the only types of secrecy. Certainly, the restrictions inherent in the
notion of taboo must be understood as a type of secrecy that enhances the potency and efficacy
of magical objects and their handlers. Taboo entails the customary designation of people or
things as prohibited, sacred, or accursed and imposes a system of restrictions built around those
taboo entities. Taboo often dictates what can be known, named, spoken, seen, touched, heard,
eaten, or owned. Both the possessor of the taboo object or knowledge and the uninitiated
participate in the secrecy surrounding the taboo: the possessor by keeping the secret, and the
uninitiated by having but a vague peripheral understanding that he or she is not privy to the
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particular secret (Douglas 1979). Another type of secrecy can be equated with Edgar Allan
Poe’s short story, “The Purloined Letter” in which the sought for letter was concealed in plain
sight (Poe [1902] 1985). In other words, magical objects may appear as Poe ([1902]1985:197)
says, “hyperobtrusive,” or so obviously in plain sight that they are completely overlooked or
dismissed as worthless or irrelevant. The planting of certain trees like rowan, oak, yew, or
hawthorn by house corners and entrances might be considered merely ornamental or shade
producing by those who fail to understand the plants’ association with magical protection
(Gazin-Schwartz 2001; Poole and Stokes 2006). Unfortunately, many archaeologists also
overlook the hyperobtrusive magical material culture at archaeological sites that remain hidden
from their eyes disguised as quotidian household objects, thus emphasizing the power of long
held secrets.
Finally, silence may be construed as a variant form of secrecy. In societies where a
particular group has limited venues for verbal expression, such as women in seventeenth-century
New England who were schooled to “govern their tongues” (Bauman 1983; Willis 1995;
Kamensky 1996, 1997; Craun 2007), or African slaves whose access to reading and writing was
forbidden by law and their opportunities to speak openly rigidly restricted (Klingelhofer 1987;
Ferguson 1991; Samford 1996; Wilkie 1997; Cochran 1999; Leone and Fry 1999; Fennell 2000,
2007; Brown 2001; McCarthy 2001; Anderson 2008), the use of magical objects that are neither
spoken or written of, provide a secret language through which these disenfranchised groups can
metaphorically communicate their fears, identities, hopes, and strengths.
Up to this point I have emphasized the conflict and conflict resolution nature and function
of magic that include forms of risk management, empowerment, identity maintenance, and
agency. In each instance, there is an implied expectation of change with the practitioner in
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consort with the magical objects acting as catalyst. Much like the trickster figure of folk tales
whose actions instigate a series of events, often with destructive consequences before order is
restored, magical practitioners’ use of magic to identify evil doers or to protect themselves by
harming others seeks to retain a social order by affecting some change. Mauss (1972 [1902]:76)
asserts that the magical practitioner “is always conscious that magic is the art of changing.” In
this sense, there is a pragmatic rationality behind magical use that the practitioner employs to
achieve his or her desired end. This notion of dynamic change contrasts with other functionalist
ideas that magic is used to maintain a status quo (Malinowski 1955[1925]). However, magical
belief and practice cannot be confined to such limited functional repertoires.
Early anthropologists including Edward Tylor, Sir James Fraser, and Lucien Lévy-Bruhl,
characterized magical belief and practice as pseudo-science and primitive irrationality
occasioned by the believers’ undeveloped evolutionary stage (Tambiah 1990). For these people
magic simply functioned as a poor substitute for scientific understanding. Anthropology has
moved far beyond these early ethnocentric theories. Not only is a magical worldview no longer
considered a misconception of scientific principles, but magical beliefs and practices are now
being analyzed for their experiential, psychological, and neurobiological attributes, which will be
discussed in greater detail in section 2.3.1 below (Tambiah 1990; Gell 1992, 1998; Glucklich
1997; Boyer 2001; Whitehouse and Laidlaw 2004; Bever 2008). The phenomenonological
aspect of magical belief and participation extend beyond the rather pragmatic functions of risk
management and social maintenance. Akin to religious participation in a spiritually charged
world, magical practices can connect adherents to a supernatural realm. Glucklich succinctly
summarizes this academic shift in magical analysis by stating:
According to the worst misconception, magic compels natural or supernatural
forces to obey human will, whereas religion acts by supplication to a god who
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may or may not respond. With the rise of symbolical interpretation of magic,
this distinction has stopped making sense. If the magical act is a form of
expressive speech, which is not compelling but meaningful, then magic and
religion become two types of one phenomenon: a symbolic rationality in relation
to the sacred (1997:221, emphasis in the original).
Understanding magical practice as a meaningful and personally gratifying experience, which
may include notions of aesthetics, sacredness, or even apotheosis, requires broadening both
expectations of the material manifestation of magical material culture and how to interpret them.
Demarcating the Domestic
Beyond the understanding of the nature and functions of magic, including the
conceptualization of threshold spaces, any examination of magic associated with such threshold
boundaries must explicitly consider what and where such boundaries lay. For the purposes of my
research it is necessary to specifically delimit the parameters of the ‘domestic.’ This task,
however, proves more problematic than one might initially assume. The domestic sphere cannot
simply be contained by a house’s four walls or by the fence enclosing the household and its
garden. Neither can a domestic sphere—whatever spatial area that may encompass—be wholly
attributed to one gender’s authority as the domestic arena equates to the inhabited domain of
both men and women, albeit in various patterns and permutations across cultures. Domesticity
incorporates both the built landscape of a residential habitus and the symbolic bearers of the
domestic concept. The line between domestic and non-domestic overlaps and blends under
particular circumstances while it may attain a marked clarity at other times.
This fluidity of domestic boundaries and associated gender roles can be seen in
seventeenth-century New England where the domestic realm generally included house, garden,
and immediate yard and outbuildings, while the outlying fields and commercial undertakings
constituted the non-domestic. Women’s work primarily occurred within the domestic realm;
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however, when required by their husbands’ absence, illness, or lack of ability, they were
expected to extend their working sphere to that normally designated as the non-domestic male
purview including both field and town (Earle 1898; Clark 1920; Koehler 1980; Ulrich 1982;
Hawke 1988; Duby and Perrot 1993; Hufton 1995; Mendelson and Crawford 1998; Holliday
1999[1922]; Crawford and Gowing 2000; Wiesner 2000; Schutte et al. 2001). In such cases they
assumed the responsibilities and demonstrated the skills of a deputy husband (Ulrich 1982:41).
Does the extension of women’s work beyond the boundary of house yard, extend the boundaries
of the domestic as well if women were the embodiment of domesticity? Men shared the
immediate domestic sphere with women, working, eating, relaxing, and sleeping in overlapping
space. Additionally, this domestic space was sometimes shared with live-in servants and
apprentices. In what sense does the engagement in commercial or other business associated
activity within a household space render the space non-domestic? As Ulrich (1982:38-39)
asserts:
…we described an imaginary boundary stretching from house to yard, separating
the domain of the housewife from the world of her husband. It is important to
recognize that in reality no such barrier existed. Male and female space intersected
and overlapped. Nor was there the sharp division between home and work that later
generations experienced.
This fluidity of boundaries makes direct association of magical material culture with
gender and household space problematic in these semi-autonomous overlapping spheres. It does
not, however, preclude the possibility—even probability—that particular forms of apotropaic
practice were gender related. Both women and men, occupying and utilizing the same domestic
space, would have incorporated magical material culture into that shared space, but likely with
different signatures and foci (Seifert 1991).
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While acknowledging the artificiality of discrete domestic and non-domestic spheres in
seventeenth-century New England and the possibility of alternative conceptualizations of similar
spheres in other cultural traditions, it is nonetheless, necessary to demarcate manageable spatial
parameters when undertaking an archaeological study. Therefore, for the purposes of this study,
I define domestic space as all land and built structures comprising a household’s holdings. This
would include the dwellings, yards, outbuildings, gardens, fields, and forests that cumulatively
constitute a household’s owned and regulated world. By including what may be conceived as
ever widening circles of influence radiating out from the center of the dwelling to the outer
boundaries of field and forest, not only are all potential boundaries accounted for (from hearth to
property line), but additionally, consideration of apotropaia associated with each type of
boundary and activity area provides for more nuanced interpretation of the gendered connection
to magic and its contexts.
Magical materiality
Virtually every type of material and expressive medium has been employed as magical
material culture. In domestic contexts these materials and mediums derive from quotidian
sources in contrast to the specialized objects usually associated with religious or otherwise more
formalized rituals as explicated by Renfrew and Bahn (Renfrew 1994; Renfrew and Bahn 2000).
Magical material culture includes everyday utilitarian objects constructed of wood, metal,
minerals, glass, and ceramic; plants, animals, and soil; foodstuffs; textiles; and human
components like hair, nail clippings, and excreta. Many of these forms or substances comprise
the totality of the magical object (e.g., animals, horseshoes, ceramic pots, and pierced coins);
however, some serve as canvases upon which practitioners work magical designs (e.g., wooden
furniture and embroidered textiles) while others are the medium used to create the magical
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design, text, or object (e.g., rice flour for kolams, paint around windows, and blood for text).
The ubiquitous and mundane nature of domestic magical material culture can obscure the
magical associations since the objects or substances may vacillate between non-magical and
magical use or may be used as both simultaneously.
Magical materials, their usage, and expression differ culturally, but many traditions seem
to share similar conceptualizations of magical agency. One common idea holds that evil
(whatever shape it takes) can either be diverted, confused, or trapped by objects that engage its
sensibilities. These objects usually capture evil’s attention through complex designs, bright
colors (especially red and blue), shiny or reflective surfaces, diverting sounds, or imitative
images (like eye beads to deflect the evil eye) (Merrifield 1987; Dundes 1992; Gell 1992;
Welters 1999; Dohmen 2001; Gazin-Schwartz 2001; González-Wippler 2003; Hoggard 2004;
Paine 2004; Peterson 2005).
Another widespread aspect of magical belief concerns the connection between objects
and victims/practitioners and their source of power. Sympathetic magic, first formalized by Tylor
as early as 1871 as “the association of ideas” and further developed and expounded by Frazer in
1890 (1996[1890]) and Mauss in 1902 (1972[1902]), premised the belief that like affects like;
however, their subsequent consideration of sympathetic magic revealed that it finds various
permutations throughout the world. In some cases the sympathy may reside in a physical
resemblance or symbolic similarity between two objects, in which case an object that looks like
or is perceived to express shared qualities with another has the ability to affect the other. This
can manifest in three ways: like produces like, like acts upon like, or like cures like (Mauss
1972[1902]:84). The object of similarity need not be concrete; abstract images or names may be
sufficient. In other situations the sympathetic notion, termed “contiguity,” posits that any part of
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the whole represents its totality and thus any manipulation of the parts (like hair, nail clippings,
etc.) will result in a like manipulation of the whole. Contiguity also refers to the apparently
causal relationship between events and objects that occur either simultaneously or sequentially in
the same time or space (Zusne and Jones 1989:16-17). Related to contiguity, sympathetic
contagion espouses the belief that anything a person or animal has had contact with retains a
direct connection with that person or animal and can be used in the same way as actual bodily
parts. The final form of sympathetic magic—sometimes termed ‘antipathetic’—sees a
correspondence between opposites. Although conceptualized as a distinct aspect of magical
belief, theoretically antipathy is the underlying relationship in like cures like because the same
element or quality produces the opposite effect (i.e., Sucking on a frog to cure a ‘croaking’
cough produces the opposite state of non-croaking or non-frogginess) (Thomas 1971; Kittredge
1972; Mauss 1972[1902]; Frazer 1996[1890]; Wilkie 1997; Kieckhefer 2000). Today
psychological studies are proving that even if people deny holding any magical beliefs, they still
reveal deep-seated notions of sympathetic, contagious, and contiguous associations between
humans, objects, and contamination or danger (Shweder 1977, Rozin and Nemeroff 1990; Rozin
et al. 1995; Sørensen 2007).
The material culture of domestic magic associated with gender considered in the
following section of this chapter includes examples of magical objects that repel or capture evil
through complexity and diversion as well as magic that works through the various modes of
sympathetic association that illustrate these sympathetic correlations.
2.2.2 Comparative Look at Gender and Magic
Published anthropological, archaeological, and historical works discussing ritual magic
and magical material culture proliferate; however, within those works researchers more often
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focus upon the ritual or the magical objects than on the relationship between the magical
enactments and the particular people involved. Consideration of how gender, age, social
position, or any other distinguishing human factors are integral to or constituting of the magical
practices commands less analysis. In cases where gender seems directly correlated to magical
practice, the connection frequently receives implicit rather than explicit recognition and
consideration. Occasionally researchers stipulate if production of particular apotropaic objects
has a gendered component. Only men create Turkish evil eye beads, for example (Akyüz 2002).
However, the relation of gender to magical production and practice remains unexplored. In this
section I will briefly present three comparative examples of domestic magical material culture to
illustrate and question the engendering of particular magical practices: Indian kolams, Balinese
and European needlework designs, and African American charms.
Indian kolams
The daily creation of Indian threshold kolam designs provides a highly visible case of
gendered domestic apotropaic behavior. These intricate interwoven knot-like or continuous loop
patterns created with colored rice flour (traditional) or chalk (modern) appear on thresholds twice
a day, at sunrise and again in late afternoon, across India (Figure 2.3). Always constructed by
women, they cross both regional cultural differences and caste boundaries (Layard 1937; Gell
1992, 1998; Dohmen 2001). According to Dohmen, “The drawing of the designs, as stated, is an
exclusively female domain and is considered to be part of housework activities” (2001:13). As
with other household chores, girls learn and practice creating kolams from a young age. While
Dohmen equates kolam creation with the ideology of traditional womanhood and domesticity
and discusses them in terms of negotiating modern global vs. traditional rural Indian identities,
she makes no connection between these apotropaic devices, women, domesticity, and the
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magical properties and meanings expressed through the kolams’ designs and ritual creation.
Rather she treats them primarily as an unrecognized and undervalued female vernacular art form
whose visibility is overt and ubiquitous upon the doorsteps of thousands of households everyday
while simultaneously rendered hyperobtrusively invisible because they are naught but another
mundane female household chore.
Gell (1992, 1998), while also interested in the anthropology of artistic creation and
symbology, provides a more detailed analysis of the magical purpose informing kolam designs
and construction. He identifies an entire category of artistic work as ‘apotropaic art,’ which
includes among other expressions kolams, needlework, woodcarving, tattooing, knotwork, coin
designs, and labyrinths. Like these other designs, threshold kolams “are demon-traps, in effect,
demonic fly-paper, in which demons become hopelessly stuck, and are thus rendered harmless”
(Gell 1998:84). The kolams have a twofold protective power: they are representative of naga,
the cobra deity of protection and fertility, and they contain their own apotropaic power to capture
or divert evil through their complex patterns (Gell 1992). Like Dohmen, Gell emphasizes that
these highly artistic and intricate creations are constructed by women on their household
thresholds twice a day. Although he delves deeper into the magical mechanisms of apotropaic
patterns as demon traps, he offers no analysis of the obvious gendered nature of this widespread
and ubiquitous domestic threshold magic and the agentic power women wield through their
creation.
For thirty years art historian, Stephen Huyler (1995), has documented kolams and other
house threshold ritual paintings created by Indian women. Sixty of the images from his book,
Painted Prayers: Women’s Art in Village India, formed a special year-long exhibition at the
Smithsonian’s Arthur M. Sackler Gallery in 1995-1996. Like Dohmen and Gell, Huyler
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acknowledges the artistic and the ritualistic components of these apotropaic expressions with a
nod to their female creators, but goes no further than Dohmen or Gell in connecting the gendered
and magical aspects into a meaningful relationship.
Needlework designs
In Paine’s (2004, 2008) extensive look at the variety of amulets found worldwide, she
depicts numerous examples of apotropaic embroidery and woven designs incorporated into
clothing and other textiles from cultures across Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas but does
not mention who was responsible for their production and how or if gender played an
appreciable role in the process. It is easy to assume that needlework, especially the type
associated with children’s clothing or household linens, represents women’s work, but such
assumptions must be verified. After all, other textile production, such as carpet, cloth, and
blanket weaving is undertaken by both men and women in many cultures. These textiles, just like
embroidered clothing and household items, also incorporate magical designs and symbols. This
being the case, is the production of particular types of needlework magic gender specific? The
answer is ‘yes’ for some cases. In Bali, for instance, the weaving of the geringsing (a special
magically protective cloth) is solely the province of women; however, the cloth is worn by
everyone and is used to adorn offerings and inanimate objects as well. It protects both the
thresholds of the built environment as well as the human somatic thresholds and is considered
indispensable as a material agent in the complex relationship between the Balinese people and
their numinous world (Hauser-Schäublin et al. 1991).
While textile design and creation may or may not be gender specific in all cultures,
similarly to the female created Balinese geringsing, in European cultures embroidery and other
needlework forms have traditionally been female tasks. Parker’s (1989:11) study of embroidery
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shows that “during the seventeenth century the art [of embroidery] was used to inculcate
femininity from such an early age that the girl’s ensuing behavior appeared innate.” Through
practice works, like cross-stitch samplers, girls perfected not only their sewing skills, but also
learned rudimentary reading and writing skills (Holme 1921; Pesel 1931; Monaghan 1988;
Parker 1989; Ring 1993; Rosen 1995; Sarti 2002). These were not palettes for creative license,
but rather were canvases to reiterate customary designs, symbols, and messages. “The enormous
popularity of certain images at different moments indicates that they had specific importance and
powerful resonances [power?] for the woman who chose to stitch them” (Parker 1989:12). The
skills honed on these practice pieces would later be applied to a range of clothing items for the
entire family and to household linens and curtains (Earle 1898; Holme 1921; Holliday 1922;
Pesel 1931; Hawke 1988; Parker 1989; Ring 1993; Welters 1999; Crawford and Gowing 2000;
Paine 2008). As apotropaia the embroidered designs were concentrated around openings (e.g.,
thresholds of body and house). For clothing this meant needlework encircled caps, hems,
sleeves, necklines, pant legs, belts, and waistlines; for houses apotropaic embroidery edged
window, doorway, hearth, and bed curtains (Welters 1999; Paine 2004, 2008; The Textile Blog
2010). Welters (1999:7), speaking of the intricate needlework designs on traditional garments
from across Europe and Anatolia concurs that, “The ability of folk dress to guard the body
against evil is evident in embroidered symbols placed at strategic locations on clothing. Such
locations include hems, necklines, sleeves, and other areas thought to be vulnerable to entry by
harmful spirits.” These items served as metaphoric threads knitting the family and home together
in a protective skein provided by the women of the house as extensions of their wifely and
motherly obligations to the well-being and prosperity of their households. One might assume that
the time, effort, and expense incurred to produce some of these elaborate works, would indicate
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the importance placed upon their protective power and upon the skills and duties of their
creators. While these assumptions may seem reasonable, they are not necessarily true.
Consideration of the Indian kolams would also prompt such assumptions, yet according to the
few anthropological studies addressing them, no such value is apparent. This, of course, may
simply be due to the researchers’ approaches and research agendas, rather than an accurate
reflection of the importance and meaning of kolams.
Studies like those of Hauser-Schäublin et al. (1991), Welters (1999), and Paine (2004,
2008) provide ample illustration and documentation of the importance and ubiquitous use of
apotropaic needlework from across the world to shield body and home from evil forces, mostly
utilizing the notion of complexity or distraction to avert or trap those forces. Bright and or
magical colors, intricate patterns, flashy or reflective materials, magical symbols, and sound
producing objects are all incorporated into textiles for personal and household threshold
protection. For all the description and documentation of these apotropaic materials and
practices, researchers neglect to ask what such behaviors say about the people who enact them.
When the responsibility for production of something deemed so necessary for everyone’s wellbeing falls to one group, class, or gender, it should lend itself to questions about value, authority,
empowerment, and identity of that special group as well as about the inter-relationships between
and among people and their worlds.
Considering needlework creations from a material culture perspective, one major
omission stands out in the representation of needlework apotropaia, especially the more elaborate
works. Nowhere does anyone discuss the procurement of raw materials. Unless one assumes that
the same women who crafted the needlework pieces produced the wool, spun and dyed the
threads, and wove the cloth upon which they stitched, there would have to be a system of
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exchange (trade or monetary) to acquire the needed materials. For more elaborate works that
incorporated beads, mirrors, and bells, the needle workers need access to an even broader
exchange system. The extent of their participation in acquiring and control over raw material
choices for apotropaic purposes in comparison to similar market or other exchange system
participation for non-apotropaic purposes would contribute to a better understanding of the
relationship between apotropaia and gender or other social group distinction.
African American Charms
The study of African American belief in and utilization of magical material culture
dominates the archaeology of ritual and magic in the United States, and so far represents the only
published consideration of gender as a critical factor in the structure and enactment of such
beliefs, and this consideration is undertaken by only one researcher. Wilkie’s statement
(1997:92), “If we are to successfully study gender within African-American households, we must
consider the magical dimension of gender relationships, and likewise, if we are to consider
magical practices, then we must consider gender,” emphatically asserts that gender and magic for
African Americans in colonial and slave contexts constitute an integrated system. Although
most studies of African American beliefs (usually dealing with hoodoo, conjure, and voodoo)
make no distinctions between male and female beliefs and practices, Wilkie first situates magic
predominantly within the domestic sphere, then examines the gendered dimensions of magic
within that household context. With the exception of magic associated with mortuary ritual,
virtually all African American magical artifacts have been found within the domestic boundaries
of house and yard. In these settings, the intimate proximity occasioned by cohabiting amplified
the inherent tension between males and females. African American worldviews espoused the
belief in innate male and female magical powers. These powers resided within one’s bodily
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fluids and waste. Therefore, to magically harm another, one only had to acquire the sperm,
urine, menstrual blood, or excrement of that other to use in a charm against him or her. Living
together gave men and women greater access to such personal substances (Wilkie 1997).
According to Wilkie (1997:92), women’s charms were often to keep the family bound
together. To accomplish this, they would urinate in their husband’s or children’s bathwater.
Similarly, by adding their menstrual blood to their husbands’ meals, the men would be bound to
the women forever. Men, aware of these charms, could implement counter-charms to protect
themselves or take other preventative measures to foil female charm use. As Wilkie notes, the
gendered use of magic impacted the daily activities and tasks of a household. If women
generally were responsible for cooking, but the men feared being ‘charmed,’ then they might
take over the cooking as a way to ensure their own protection. This type of understanding of
how gender-based magical beliefs impact behavioral decisions and ultimately the archaeological
record exemplifies the importance of belief systems in constituting behavior and, by extension,
material culture (Wilkie 1997, 2003).
In the examples of kolams and needlework, the household assumes a homogeneous unity
that must be protected from external disruption. In contrast, the African American belief in
potentially antagonist forces residing in males and females appears to focus on internal
disruptions. This is not to suggest that apotropaia to protect the African American households
were not used or were not gendered, but only that the integral male-female magical opposition
has a decidedly more explicit expression in African American belief than in the other traditions
considered here.
From the brief examples presented above of kolams, needlework, and African American
charms, it can be stated unequivocally that gendered apotropaia exists in various cultural
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traditions—both in production and practice. I do not question whether or not seventeenthcentury Anglo-Europeans also had gendered expressions of magical belief and practice. Rather I
ask what such gendered magic looks like and whether or not it is recoverable in the
archaeological record, either alone or in conjunction with historical documentation. Associating
magical marks, designs, and depositions with fears, tasks and structures known to be the
province of a particular gender provides a starting point from which to test such hypotheses.
Correlating artifact use with gender provides the foundation upon which more significant
observations and insights about the historical past can be built.
While much anthropological, historical, archaeological, and folkloric evidence exists to
support the premise that humans from all cultures have used or currently still employ apotropaic
devices to protect their domestic boundaries from misfortune, this is an area that has received
limited attention from archaeological researchers. Compilations like Paine’s (2004) Amulets:
Sacred Charms of Power and Protection document the staggering variety and scope of the
material culture of magic and its distribution across cultures. Yet little is really understood about
the underlying connections between people, their magical beliefs, their material culture, and the
implications of those connections. Material culture, particularly in archaeological contexts, can
appear divorced from the human agency which both generated and used it. This sterile
perception strips material culture of its social, political, and/or symbolic meanings. This point is
especially salient for magical material culture if one considers the fearfully charged
circumstances in which they were used as well as their powerful supernatural associations. They
were more than mere utilitarian objects; their power and efficacy existed both within their
material forms and was integrated within the ritualistic performance of their making and use.
Their use constituted deliberate engagement with the powers of good and evil, which implies
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some degree of danger or risk. Studying such psychologically charged circumstances through a
focus on gendered threshold apotropaic beliefs and behaviors may provide insights into the
human processes of negotiating a sense of existential security and personal empowerment. The
following section presents a discussion of the multidimensional theoretical approach used in this
dissertation to interpret the gendered use of apotropaic materials in historic contexts.
2.3 The Archaeological Study of Magic
This section on the archaeological study of magic is divided into two major parts. The
first part reviews the historical anthropological theories of magic followed by the presentment of
the three combined theories used as the interpretive framework in this dissertation. The second
part of this section provides a review of the current state of historical archaeological research on
magic.
2.3.1 Theory and the Archaeology of Magic
2.3.1.1 History of Anthropological Theory of Magic
Historical archaeological researchers of magic and ritual have not formulated their own
theories to explain magical material culture. Instead, the field has applied those theories
developed by cultural anthropology whose earliest studies focused on attempts to account for
spiritual belief systems (i.e., religion) of non-Western tribal peoples and to understand the
formation and manifestation of religious practices. Although the people under study integrated
magical belief and practice into their ritual behaviors, the anthropologists—through an
ethnocentric bias—made a clear distinction between religion and magic (Tylor 1871; EvansPritchard 1929; Malinowski 1955[1925]; Turner 1969; Mauss 1972 [1902]; Frazer 1996[1890];
Stein and Stein 2005). For the anthropologists, religion equated to belief in and supplication to
deity figures for a community’s well-being, while magic was a pragmatic mechanism for
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individuals attempting to bring about specific consequences for their own benefit.
Distinguishing between magic and religion allowed for the development of different theoretical
explanations for the purpose and existence of such practices.
The two most prominent theories of magic espoused either functionalist or evolutionary
interpretations. The functionalist theory of magic is most directly attributed to Malinowski
(1955[1925]) and his work with the Trobriand Islanders and is reiterated by Evans-Pritchard’s
(1929) consideration of the Azande of Africa with the caveat that functionality is culture
specific. Malinowski believed that in order to understand the adherence to magical belief, it was
necessary to determine how such beliefs actually benefited the adherents; in other words, to ask,
‘What does magic do? How does it satisfy human needs?’ His answer (Malinowski
1955[1925]:90) was:
Magic…enables man to carry out with confidence his important tasks, to maintain
his poise and his mental integrity in fits of...despair and anxiety. The function of magic is
to ritualize man’s optimism, to enhance his faith in the victory of hope over fear. Magic
expresses the greater value for man of confidence over doubt, of steadfastness over
vacillation, of optimism over pessimism.
This core explanation of magic’s functions remains a valid one when applied to the
manifestations of magical belief and use in seventeenth-century New England. As Thomas
(1970:54) notes, “After several generations of anthropological writing it is hardly necessary to
stress that English witch beliefs [and by extension the uses of magic], like those elsewhere,
helped to account for the misfortunes of daily life.” However, this functionalist explanation
merely provides the foundation upon which more nuanced explanations must be erected;
explanations that seek out an understanding of the underlying fearful motivators and the patterns
of subsequent agentic behaviors employed by magic users to alleviate those fears.
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The second most common magical theory—evolutionism—espoused the idea iterated by
Tylor (1871), Frazer (1996 [1890]), Mauss (1972 [1902]), and partially adhered to by
Malinowski (1955[1925]) that magical belief represented the most primitive degree of
humankind’s understanding of nature—a kind of pseudo-science, but also a precursor to true
religious belief. Frazer (1996 [1890]) went so far as to place the three concepts on a primitiveto-civilized scale: magic gives way to religion, which in turn ultimately gives way to positivistic,
objective science. This scheme shared much in common with some of the ideas championed in
the seventeenth-century Enlightenment movement (Thomas 1970). Both seventeenth and
twentieth century evolutionary magical theories have since been proven erroneous (Kerr and
Crow 1986; Tambiah 1990; Guthrie 1993; Davies 1999, 2012; Boyer 2001; Burton and Grandy
2004; Whitehouse and Laidlaw 2004; Bailey 2007). Not only is magical belief still a vital aspect
of cultures around the world, but its popularity and visibility in Western cultures has expanded
exponentially in the past two decades as evidenced by the rise of modern paganism (e.g., Wicca)
(Greenwood 2003; Jones 2004; Magliocco 2004), the billion-dollar New Age Movement
industry comprising everything from Eastern religious traditions to every form of occult belief
and practice (Kerr and Crow 1986; Lau 2000; Beardsley Ministry 2001), and the strong
adherence to supernatural and superstitious beliefs as reported in recent Gallup polls (Moore
2005) and psychological studies (Albas and Albas 1989; Zusne and Jones 1989; Vyse 1997;
Ridolfo et al. 2009; Subbotsky 2010). What is more, cognitive anthropologists and
neurobiologists are now finding evidence that magical thinking is a natural brain process in
which the brain connects similar, simultaneous, or concurrent patterns into cause-effect
relationships without substantive evidence, or alternatively, looks for a cause for every event
when immediate causes are not evident (Guthrie 1993; Cunningham 1999; Boyer 2001;
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Whitehouse and Laidlaw 2004; Czachesz 2007; Sørensen 2007; Subbotsky 2010).
Anthropologist Stewart Guthrie (1993) explores this propensity in his book Faces in the Clouds
and demonstrates that “there is now overwhelming evidence that humans are naturally
predisposed to pay attention to the presence of potential agents in their environments, even to the
extent of investing inanimate objects with human qualities on the flimsiest of pretexts”
(Whitehouse and Laidlaw 2004:190). In other words, the brain needs to see connections between
events and will create those relationships out of whatever patterns are most available in the
moment.
These new cognitive theories allow scholars of magical practices to situate their research
in a primarily functional framework, but with a broader understanding of the importance of such
practices in the maintenance of both physical and mental well-being as natural processes of the
human mind, especially in negative or dangerous settings. This understanding should lead to the
formation of new research questions about the consequences and responses of individuals in high
stress situations with varying degrees of access to power or control. For example, Whitson and
Galinsky’s (2008) preliminary work explores ‘illusory pattern perception’ in such instances.
2.3.1.2 Psychological Theory of Fear
Fear, considered one of the instinctual survival mechanisms that motivates animals,
including the human animal, to behaviors designed to alert and defend against potential threats
(real or imagined), has received a great deal of attention by behavioral psychologists,
neurobiologists, sociologists, and anthropologists (Parkin 1985; Gray 1987; Lerner and Keltner
2001; Bourke 2005; Mawson 2005; Callanan and Teasdale 2009; Carro et al. 2010; Tucker
2010). Dennett (1971), Guthrie (1993), Barrett (1996), and Czachesz (2007) in their analyses of
cognition and magical belief each espouse the idea that humans “developed an oversensitive
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reaction to the presence of [non-human] agency in the environment, which contributed to the
emergence of belief in gods and spirits” (Czachesz 2007:15). This notion of ‘intentional agency’
(Dennett 1971; Barrett 1996) in the environment explains both the need for people to protect
themselves from these forces and the rationality of magical recourse to effectively neutralize the
threats. Understanding the primal fear motivator coupled with the belief in an agentic
environment holds the key to interpreting gendered magical use in seventeenth-century New
England, as artifacts exhibit minimal gendered distinction. Magical material culture seems to
reflect a connection between context, fear, and gender that can only be understood in light of an
understanding and identification of the fears harbored by women and men both independently
and jointly. Examination of the historical sources discussed later in Chapter 4 indicates that
women and men in New England, ca. 1620-1725 did indeed experience gender-specific fears in
addition to non-gendered fears (Table 2.1). This is not to say that men did not fear their wives
dying in childbirth or that women were not concerned by the consequential hardships due to crop
failure, rather these gendered fears indicate those that were most personally and directly
experienced by men or women. Therefore, the agency to most effectively address these fears
must be wielded directly by the men and women experiencing the fearful situations. To reach
this understanding requires some basic background on the psychological theories of how people
perceive and cope with fear.
TABLE 2.1. Gendered fears of seventeenth-century Anglo New England women and men
(Glanvill 1682; Hale 1697; Barber 1836; Bartlett 1856; Bouton 1867; Drake 1869; Noble 1904;
Clark 1920; Rhode Island Court Records 1922; Woodfin 1942; Morgan 1966; Demos 1970,
1972, 1976, 1986, 2004a, 2004b; Boyer and Nissenbaum 1972, 1977; Kittredge 1972; Emerson
1976; Garrett 1977; Koehler 1980; Hemphill 1982; Norton 1987, 1996; Gura 1982; Hawke 1988;
Hall 1989, 1991; Ulrich 1991; Dailey 1992; Godbeer 1992, 2005; Kamensky 1996, 1997; Foster
1999; Holliday 1999[1922]; Crawford and Gowing 2000; Deetz and Deetz 2000; Burr
2002[1914]; Ekirch 2005; Urban 2006; Baker 2007; Craun 2007).
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Women’s Fears
Death in childbirth
Infant mortality
Inability to provide food,
clothing, comfort
Inability to teach and raise
socially successful offspring
Shared Fears
God’s wrath
Witchcraft
Other supernatural attack
Men’s Fears
Occupational injury/death
Crop failure, loss of livestock
Financial failure
Inability to assure family’s
health/well-being
Inability to provide for family
(shelter, security, stability,
inheritance)
Inability to protect house,
stables, barns, fields
Sociopolitical failure, lack of
public authority and respect
Incompetency in male tasks
Inability to protect house,
yard, foodstuffs
Sexual assault
Property boundary violation
Incompetency in female tasks
Inability to successfully
conform to gender
expectations
Theft
Environmental dangers
(storms, fire, forest, night,
etc.)
Indian attack
Witchcraft accusation/slander
Old age/widowhood perils
Indian abduction
Physical abuse
Theft by servants
Attack by live-in servants
Identity boundary violation
Slander
Studies of fear have produced observations of behavioral responses to and analytical
breakdowns of the dimensions and characteristics of the emotion. Basic responses to fear-states
include the freeze-fight-flight triad. This response formulation provides three options for the
frightened person in a threatening situation: to remain motionless and hope the danger passes; to
attack the threat in some manner in an attempt to eliminate it; or to run away to a place of safety
hoping the threat will be unable to follow. Gray (1987:139) describes a more ubiquitously
observable behavior pattern, however. The approach-avoidance conflict behavior pattern
illustrates the often conflicting instinctual directives that say, on the one hand, to approach the
danger to assess it more closely, versus an immediate avoidance of the perceived threat by
retreating from it without a thorough appraisal of the situation.
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The use of apotropaic magic seems to combine the ‘approach conflict’ and the ‘fight’
responses by the user first considering (or perceptually creating) the source and characteristics of
the threat and determining what type of magical remedy would be most efficacious, followed by
the implementation of that remedy to disarm or eliminate the threat. In some instances magic was
used once the danger was clearly identified, and in other cases it was employed proactively.
Halliday (1910:153) also noted these two options for magically responding to threats:
There are indeed two ways of dealing with hostile magic powers: (1) to
avoid the possibility of contact, to conceal your name, to keep silent, to keep
still, to conceal carefully the fragments of your clothing, hair, nails, etc.; (2) if
contact is unavoidable, to get the upper hand by taking the initiative, by
anticipating the contact, by asserting your own [power].
Both scenarios suggest magic users recognized their fears and actively engaged in taking control
of the frightening situations, substantiating that the use of magic as a risk management stratagem
was premised on fear as the motivator and agentic power as the catalyst to risk resolution.
The field of psychology generally distinguishes between anxiety and fear. Bourke
(2005:189) notes, “according to most commentators, the word ‘fear’ is used to refer to an
immediate, objective threat, while anxiety refers to an anticipated, subjective threat.” In other
words, threats that can be named (e.g., witches, the evil eye, demons) generate fear, while vague
feelings of vulnerability or uncertainty (e.g., Will God grant me salvation?) induce anxiety.
These divisions are generalizations at best, since, “what is an ‘immediate and objective’ threat
for one group [or individual] may simply be an ‘anticipated and subjective threat for [others]”
(Bourke 2005:190). However, studies of these two states (better conceptualized as points along a
continuum) have demonstrated that there is a tendency for anxious people to withdraw and fend
for themselves against the perceived danger, while fearful people are more apt to congregate for
mutual support and defense (Bourke 2005:191). The use of magical material culture in
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seventeenth-century New England appears not to exhibit this tendency. In this particular
context, individuals turned to apotropaic devices to manage specific fears rather than vague
anxieties, while simultaneously people gathered together in prayer as a strategy to mitigate both
fear and anxiety inducing vexations.
The investigation of fear has recently expanded to include consideration of gender and
space as important variables in the perception of and response to threat that may offer insight into
understanding the gendered use of magical material culture in seventeenth-century New England.
Callanan and Teasdale’s (2009) examination of modern examples of gender differences in the fear
of crime establishes not only that such differences do exist, but that these distinctions are primarily
culturally constituted. According to their research, gender role expectations strongly affect what
people fear, what they admit to fearing, and how they respond to those fears. According to their
study, women admitted to having more fears than did men. Gendered fear also seems to be
implicated with spatial conceptualizations. Blunt and Varley (2004) and Tucker (2010) examine
how domestic space is both invested with emotions and actively constructed to alleviate distress,
while Carro et al. (2010) look to public spaces to understand perceptions of safety or danger in
areas outside the domestic sphere and, thus, personal control. Carro et al.’s (2010:312) study
additionally associates gender with differential circumstantial degrees of fear, in which women
demonstrated a greater perception of danger in certain public environments than men did in the
same contexts.
Lerner and Keltner (2001:147) divide perceptions of fear into two types: ‘unknown risk’
and ‘dread risk.’ Unknown risk refers to those uncertain hazards that, if known, may not
necessarily be out of one’s scope to address. Dread risk, on the other hand, denotes those
dangers that are perceived to be beyond an individual’s ability to control. Whitson and Galinsky
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(2008:116), in their research on the relationship between fear, control, and perception, verify
that:
The desire to combat uncertainty and maintain control has long been considered
a primary and fundamental motivating force in human life and one of the most
important variables governing psychological well-being and physical health.
In contrast, lacking control is an unsettling and aversive state, activating the
amygdala, which indicates a fear response. It is not surprising, then, that
individuals actively try to reestablish control when it disappears or is taken away.
Both women and men experience these two fearful states (and many gradations in between), but
they may not necessarily perceive the same situations or threats as ‘unknowable’ or
‘uncontrollable.’ This gendered distinction is evident in the fears expressed by New England
colonists in historical documents. Since the implementation of apotropaia was believed and
intended to physically impede the forces of evil, these forces must not have posed dread risks to
those using magical material culture. Taking into consideration these notions of fear, control, and
perception and correlating them with the behaviors of seventeenth-century women and men
provides a clearer window through which to interpret magical material culture as well as to think
about the complex, often intangible, magical and religious underpinnings of the both the recent
past and the present day.
Humans have, of course, always lived in a world fraught with uncertainty and destructive
forces that dramatically impact their daily lives. Certainly these concerns have varied in their
specificity across time and space; however, the underlying fears associated with a dangerous
world remain the same. Survival in a danger-filled world requires recognition of and protective
action against those elements capable of inflicting harm upon those not prepared or in control.
This can be a relatively straightforward matter if the threats are direct and uncomplicated; but
when those destructive powers are invisible, unpredictable, incomprehensible, or as Clifford
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Geertz asserts, “…life threatens to dissolve into a chaos of thingless names and nameless
things…” (1973:91), then people construct various supernatural beings to give a tangible or
explanatory form to their fears. These beings provide a target at which the society can apportion
blame, use to explain misfortunes, validate cultural identity, justify actions against others, and
thus establish a sense that humans have the upper hand. They are cultural metaphors that,
according to Gilmore (2003:12):
Embod[y] the existential threat to social life, the chaos, atavism, and negativism that
symbolize destructiveness and all other obstacles to order and progress, all that which
defeats, destroys, draws back, undermines, subverts the human project…”
This need for order, control, and sense of security has inspired people to invent fantastic
creatures, sometimes as grotesque chimeric animals; but, other times as creatures imbued with
supernatural powers whose malevolent intent targets humankind (see Appendix B). They assume
a variety of shapes, but as grotesque as they are, French philosopher Gilbert Lascoult (cited in
Gilmore 2003:21) asserts that they are only the result of the “bricolage that creates the monster out
of scraps of reality.” They are ‘reshuffled familiarity.’ In other words, they are stitched together
aspects that represent what frightens a particular society or culture; people do not create wholly
new beings because they could not relate to absolutely alteric forms (Guthrie 1993; Gilmore 2003).
These malevolent creatures are the physical manifestations of the particular socio-political or
spiritual fears present in a society. Beliefs in such creatures naturally necessitated the development
of effective magical preventative and curative counteragents to use against them.
The question of magical usefulness is, of course, not one of empirical testing of iron, dead
cats, urine, red thread, or any number of other administrations, to determine their expediency in
defusing malicious intent. Anthropologist George Ewart Evans (1966:55) explains that the
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efficacy of apotropaic devices is measured in their ability to make the house or farmstead “…at
least feel a more secure place…” He goes on to say (1966:55):
Magic, whatever its pretensions, is ultimately addressed to the mind of the person
or persons concerned, its exterior object being no more than an extrapolation of his
own desires or fears; and although—like prayer or ritual—its direct effect on external
reality is almost certainly nil, its influence on the mind of the participant might be
considerable.
Therefore, protecting oneself and one’s home from Geertz’s “thingless names” and “nameless
things” through rituals and objects that established defensive boundaries allowed people to believe
they had some measure of control over the evils that co-habited their worlds. It is this sense of
safety—not the actuality of safety—that permitted people to live productively.
Not surprisingly there exists a connection between the construction of these defensive
boundaries and the English word ‘fear,’ which are integral concepts of this dissertation. The
etymology of the term and its cognates reveals a connection between the term and the precise
circumstances in which many people found themselves and recognized as life threatening.
Developed from Old English faer meaning danger or peril, it is a cognate with Old Saxon far
meaning ambush; Old Icelandic far meaning misfortune and plague; and the Gothic derivative
from ferja—referring to “one who lies in wait, an observer or a spy” (Barnhart 1988:372-373).
This idea of ambush seems to underlie the use of threshold apotropaia the world over (e.g.,
Burdick 1901; Essabal 1961; Oliver 1976; Hakansson 1980; Gell 1992; Bohak 1995; Akyűz 2002;
Levene 2002; Peterson 2005) and is certainly applicable to seventeenth-century New England.
Whether the perpetrators of evil upon a household are specifically identified as witches, fairies,
demons, or the evil eye or are envisioned as nebulous malignant forces, they are all imagined to
“lie in wait” for their opportunity to insinuate their way into homes and barns, crossing thresholds
at gates, doors, windows, hearths, roofs, and wall intersections. Due to their supernatural nature, it
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would be impossible for human agency alone to stand guard against them; human agency in
consort with powerful countermagical agents was required to erect impassable barriers between the
people and the sources of their fears.
2.3.1.3 Agency Theory
In addition to theories of functionality and fear, the research components for this study
are also predicated upon agency theory, which, as Dobres and Robb (2000:3) succinctly
characterize, provides a framework for researchers to consider “how acting, feeling, and relating
subjects constituted themselves under circumstances beyond their full comprehension and direct
control.” As previously noted, early anthropological studies of magic primarily approached the
individual or community enactment of magical rituals through functionalist (Malinowski
1955[1925]; Turner 1969) and evolutionary theories (Tylor 1871; Mauss 1972 [1902]; Tambiah
1990; Frazer 1996[1890]), but historical archaeological interpretation of African American,
Scottish, English, and German magical material culture emphasizes either a Marxist dialectic
(Samford 1996; Leone and Fry 1999; Davidson 2004) or practice theory, which espouses the role
of traditional schema in an individual’s behavioral choice options (Brown and Cooper 1990;
Wilkie 1997; Brumfiel 2000; Fennell 2000, 2007; Brown 2001; Gazin-Schwartz 2001). Both the
Marxist dialectic and practice theory represent variations of agency theory that seek to connect
artifacts with “peoples’ intentions to change something from what it was to what they thought it
should be, or to prevent change that would take place in the absence of those artifacts” (Wobst
2000:42).
Agency has been defined as both the power to make choices and employ action (Barrett
2000, 2001; Pauketat 2000; Boucher 2001; Shapiro 2005; Frank 2006), and the power over
others or circumstances through an authority not shared by subordinates (Leone and Fry 1999;
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Cowgill 2000; McGuire 2002; Dobres and Robb 2006). Together these concepts allow a
consideration of how individuals in seventeenth-century Anglo-European contexts employed
agency through magical devices to actively engage in constructing their own realities and in
wielding influence over people and situations. Barrett (2000, 2001) and Pauketat (2000) concur
that agents acquire, to varying degrees, knowledge, resources, and abilities requisite to
participation within their relative temporal, spatial, and cultural contexts. Barrett (2000:66)
asserts that:
The agents are enabled according to the abilities of their bodies, the resources they
command, their knowledgeability, and the extent to which this knowledgeability
penetrates the world around them. They therefore participate in a particular way of
recognizing the world and of expressing their own security within it. They read the
world according to certain traditional prejudices which they share with others, and
become social beings by being recognized, through discourse and relationships of
power.
Barrett’s summation implicitly addresses one of the major points of debate amongst
agency theorists, that of ‘rationality.’ There exists a pervasive assumption that most people
generally behave in a rational way based on a sense of reasoning that dictates a normal or correct
way of being. Attempting to extrapolate agentic motivation, intention, and processes without
due consideration of what constitutes rationality within the particular context under study can
lead to erroneous interpretations. Cowgill (2000:55) notes that “we must be extremely careful
about what aspects of rationality are universally applicable, and which aspects are more contextspecific.” Other scholars (Nielsen 1974; Buchowski 1988; Lukes 2000), likewise, assert that
rationality, and especially the rationality of magical use (see Buchowski 1988), require
thoughtful analysis of what signifies culturally logical behaviors and decision-making
frameworks. Thus, application of agency theory, to be revealing of any significant insights on
gender, magical belief and practice, and mitigation of risk, must explicitly include consideration
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of not only what constituted rational options for seventeenth-century women and men, but also
what variables triggered deviation from what was deemed reasonable. The parameters of
rationality and deviance exist within worldviews and must be measured against the actions of
individuals in this context.
As magical use entailed a degree of risk on the part of the user, it must be assumed that
the perceived threat against which the magical elements were used must have outweighed the
danger incurred by using the magic. In other words, people would have consciously applied
risk-benefit assessments to their situations (Douglas 1985:30). People of the seventeenth century
had several available options to address such threats—some more socio-politically or religiously
sanctioned than others—yet many actively chose to seek out and employ magic as the most
direct remedy to their situations. As Clark (1997:457) expounds:
Study after study has shown how, all over Europe, ordinary people regularly
appealed not…to the collective conscience of the Church, but to local practitioners
skilled in healing, divination, and astrology for help with their everyday problems.
Colonists in seventeenth-century New England also utilized the services of these local
practitioners as can be deduced from the numerous sermons and treatises (Figure 2.5)
admonishing parishioners who sought such services and employed magic rather than committing
all their troubles to God through prayer (Mather 1689, 1692b; Butler 1990:68-76; Godbeer
1992:21) even though magical practice was illegal in most colonies (Butler 1990:68).
The historical and archaeological evidence from Britain and New England clearly support
the assertion that women and men, through their understanding of cosmic and supernatural
forces, utilized their own abilities to navigate the anxious and fearful uncertainties of life by
choosing from an array of potential solutions to their frightening situations and then personally
implementing those solutions. Viewing the historical, folkloristic, and archaeological datasets on
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FIGURE 2.6. Frontice piece from John Hammond’s 1643 treatise on how to identify a witch.
magical material culture through this agentic perspective, combined with the acknowledgement
that fear was the prime motivator behind magical use, and the acceptance that magic does
operate functionally to create a sense of ease and control, I have established as solid as possible a
theoretical framework for examining, interpreting, and explaining gendered magic use in
seventeenth-century New England.
2.3.2 Recent Archaeological Research on Magic
A perforated coin buried in the cellar; a jumble of ceramics, quartz crystals, and beads
under the kitchen floor; an old shoe and a dead cat in the chimney; a stoneware jug containing
pins, hair, and traces of urine under the threshold; odd markings scratched, burned, or painted on
hearth lintels, floor boards, and roof rafters: Only within the last fifteen years have American
historical archaeologists begun to credit such enigmatic depositions as worthy of deliberate and
purposeful investigation. Today these researchers still comprise a very small coterie, although
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their numbers are increasing. Cultural anthropologists, folklorists, and historians, on the other
hand, have collected and studied examples of magical folk beliefs from around the world,
including the United States, since at least the eighteenth-century (e.g., Bacon 1896; Steiner 1901;
Hazlit 1905; Burne 1913; Carpenter 1920; Villiers 1923; Read 1925; Thompson 1932;
Malinowski 1955[1925]; Kittredge 1972; Mauss 1972 [1902]; Bourne 1977 [1725]; Frazer
1996[1890]), but it was not until British archaeologist Ralph Merrifield published The
Archaeology of Ritual and Magic in 1987, that archaeologists began to seriously regard
ritualistically deposited magical artifacts. However, Merrifield’s influence has been slow to
permeate American historical archaeology as can be deduced by the relatively few scholars who
reference magical artifacts in site reports, articles, or research specifically querying the
manifestation of traditional beliefs in American archaeological contexts (Fremmer 1973; Becker
1978, 1980, 2005; Klingelhofer 1987; Brown and Cooper 1990; King 1996; Samford 1996;
Stine et al. 1996; Wilkie 1997; Leone and Fry 1999; Deetz and Deetz 2000; Fennell 2000, 2007;
Baker 2001, 2007; Brown 2001; Davidson 2004; Dixon 2005; McKitrick 2009; Manning 2012a,
2012b). Baker, Becker, Davidson, Deetz and Deetz, Fremmer, King, McKitrick, and Fennell in
their respective works on horseshoes, witch bottles, grave goods, and German hexeri comprise
the entirety of historical archaeologists who have published on the material culture of AngloEuropean popular magic in America, whereas the majority of scholarly work on magic within the
United States centers on African American traditions. Of these only Fennell (2007) has published
a book that critically focuses on the significance of magical artifacts and what they potentially
can reveal about the lives of past individuals and cultures. His work has most directly challenged
the prevailing correlation of magical material culture with non-European “others” (Fennell
2007:96), although Deetz and Deetz (2000:86-100) do stress the prevalence of Anglo magical
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belief and practice at Plymouth Plantation in their work on Plymouth Colony. Other researchers
(Davidson 2004; Manning 2012b) have addressed the possibility for cultural admixture obtaining
between Anglo-European, African, and Native American magical material culture to reveal the
potential pitfalls in directly or uncritically attributing particular materials or practices to specific
cultural groups. Other than noting that women were accused of witchcraft in greater numbers
than men, researchers within historical archaeology, whether concerned with Anglo-European or
African American studies—with the exception of Wilkie (1997) and to a lesser extent Brown
(2001)—have generally ignored the interplay of gender, age, or class with magical belief and
practice. As a result, the archaeology of ritual and magic within American historical archaeology
has yet to broaden its parameters to both recognize and understand the material manifestation of
magical belief across all cultural and social domains.
The archaeology of ritual and magic gained credence during the late 1980s and early
1990s when a theoretical paradigm shift occurred within archaeology. The advent of postprocessual interpretative theory and the processualist correlate, cognitive theory, raised important
questions about the symbolic and ritualistic factors constituting and influencing human behavior.
The British archaeologists Hodder (1990) and Merrifield (1987) challenged the processualists’
emphasis on form and function classification and quantification of artifactual data epitomized in
South (1977), and which, in effect, ignored the contextuality of ritualistic and/or magically
conceived assemblages and associated meanings. Merrifield (1987:194) lamented the inattention
to artifact association in mixed depositions as spatial, material, and symbolic relationships were
precisely the factors, rather than the artifacts’ basic morphologies or utilitarian functions, that
constituted the deposit’s ritualized meanings (see also Osborne 2004). In this lamentation he
stressed that magical contexts and assemblages “ought to be recognized in the first instance as
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evidence of an event, possibly complex, that is part of the history of the site, and may indicate a
crisis in the lives of its occupants” (emphasis in the original).
Although working in prehistoric sites, Walker (1998:246) echoes the same frustration
that:
too often in archaeological inferences, the forms of objects are used to identify
their functions and by extension the functions of the places or contexts where they
are found….The study of ritual prehistory has been retarded by a too narrow focus
on the formal designs of artifacts.
The same assessment can be applied to the identification and analysis of magical material culture
in historical archaeology. Walker suggests an alternative approach to analyzing all artifacts, not
just magical or ritualistic material culture, but undoubtedly especially suited to distinguishing
ritual artifacts. He proposes a system that “assigns artifact function on the basis of the behaviors
an artifact actually participates in during the course of its life history” (1998:246). Walker’s
focus on an artifact’s life history was not a novel concept as it is based on Schiffer’s (1972, 1976,
1987) work on behavioral archaeology. Griffiths (1978) asserted similar ideas in analyzing the
actual utilization of ceramics through use-marks, rather than through functions originally
intended by manufacturers. Within an analytical system that values artifact use over form and
assumed function, archaeologists anticipate the multifunctional and multivalent nature of objects
and have a much greater chance of accounting for archaeological remains. The question then
becomes, how can artifacts identical in formal attributes be distinguished behaviorally? By
considering four aspects of artifact variability, Walker asserts that disparate behaviors of
otherwise similar objects can be determined. These four aspects, “numerical frequency,
placement in space, association with other objects, and formal attributes” (Walker 1998:247),
correspond to Merrifield’s concept of contextuality (1987). I have constructed a simple example
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using a horseshoe (Table 2.2) to illustrate the applicability of Walker’s artifact variability
approach to identifying mundane objects as magical material culture.
TABLE 2.2. Sample application of Walker’s Artifact Use Identifier
Object: Horseshoe
Numerical Frequency
Intended Function
Multiples
Placement in space
In/near livestock, agricultural,
or blacksmithing areas
Associated objects
Other livestock, agricultural,
or farrier equipment
Formal attributes
Crescent shaped to fit horses’
hooves
Apotropaic Ward
1 (or possibly magical number
multiples)
In/on/near or embedded in
doors and walls of residential
or livestock structures at
threshold points; in dairying
activity areas; associated with
cosmic directions or
measurements
Domestic thresholds
components; butter making
equipment
Crescent/vessel shaped to trap
evil; usually too worn for
proper use for horses
Although the importance of contextuality over individual formal attributes has gained general
acceptance since the 1990s (Wheeler 1995; De Cunzo 1996; King 1996; Walker 1998; Beaudry
1999; Osborne 2004; Herva 2009; Chadwick 2012; Manning 2012b), Lu Ann De Cunzo’s
(1996:12) battle-cry, “Context is everything,” has yet to permeate American historical
archaeology’s mainstream to the extent necessary to recognize and understand the complexity of
magical and/or ritualistic behaviors.
Due largely to Hodder and Merrifield’s early influence, the archaeology of ritual and
magic has flourished in Britain with major projects like the Deliberately Concealed Garments
Project at the Textile Conservation Centre, University of Southampton; The Concealed Shoes
Index at Northampton Museum; and websites and archives managed by researcher Brian
Hoggard. Each of these projects serves as a research clearinghouse and archive for thousands of
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magically deposited apotropaic objects found in historic buildings dating from the Middle Ages
to the twentieth century. Their archives predominantly house British materials; however, they
also contain several artifacts or records of concealed finds from around the world. Other related
research is exemplified by the British interdisciplinary team of Virginia Lloyd, John Dean, and
Jennifer Westwood who pooled their respective expertise in 1997 to use experimental
archaeology, art history, ethnography, and folklore to document and interpret apotropaic burn
marks in post-medieval vernacular and religious architecture in East Anglia (Lloyd et al. 2001).
Timothy Easton’s (1988, 1999a, 1999b, 2011) work on spiritual middens and apotropaic marks
comprise the most comprehensive studies on these two aspects of British magical material
culture. Currently, Owen Davies, history professor at University of Hertfordshire, England, and
author of several books and articles on popular magic, continues to pursue funding for an
international research project on the material culture of post-medieval magic and its diachronic
adaptation through British colonialism around the world. As an adjunct to this British colonial
study, Ian Evans (2011) recently completed his doctoral dissertation on traditional British
practices of concealed apotropaia in Australia. According to Davies (personal communication
2009), although Continental Europe also claims a treasure trove of traditional folk beliefs and
associated material culture documented in historical and folkloristic studies, it produces scant
archaeological research on historical ritual and magic. Consequently, Britain continues to lead
the vanguard in magical material culture studies.
Historical archaeologists in the United States, on the other hand, are just beginning to
question enigmatic artifacts as potentially meaningful before summarily dismissing them as
rubbish, lost toys, broken jewelry, or graffiti (Leone and Fry 1999; Manning 2012b).
Conversely, the artifacts may strike the archaeologist as extraordinarily odd, thus garnering
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enough interest to be labeled as unknown or ritualistic (Deetz 1963; King 1996; Luckenbach
2004). In other cases, archaeologists lack the knowledge or perspective to penetrate the
utilitarian or quotidian mask concealing particular folk belief applications, resulting in artifactual
misclassification and misinterpretation (Gazin-Schwartz 2001; Peterson 2005).
Beyond the recognition of magically associated material culture, and ultimately the
rationale for pursuing their explication, lies the quest for understanding the multivalent nature of
traditional belief systems and their roles in constituting, challenging, maintaining, or altering
bounded personal and social conceptualizations (Chadwick 2012). This quest is hampered by the
limited scope and approach to the archaeology of ritual and magic in the United States.
Two significant shortfalls characterize the current state of the historical archaeology of
magic: 1) the majority of academic historical archaeological work on magical material culture in
the United States published to date concerns non-European traditions, and (2) the investigations
of magical material culture overlooks other important factors like gender, age, and class and their
associations with magical belief and practice. The greatest emphasis of this work focuses on the
African and African American beliefs and practices of conjuring and hoodoo, particularly in
slave contexts (Klingelhofer 1987; Brown and Cooper 1990; Samford 1996; Stine et al. 1996;
Wilkie 1997; Leone and Fry 1999; Fennell 2000, 2007; Bankoff et al. 2001; Brown 2001;
DeCorse 2001; Davidson 2004; Dixon 2005). The only four notable exceptions include research
conducted by scholars Becker (1978, 1980, 2005), Gramly (1981), King (1996); Deetz and Deetz
(2000), Fennell (2000, 2007), and McKitrick (2009) whose works focus on European colonists in
Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Virginia, and the mid-Atlantic respectively; although Fennell, too,
specializes in African American diaspora studies. Regardless of the cultural group credited with
specific magical material culture, be it non-European or Anglo-European, historical
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archaeologists persist in attributing beliefs and practices to a generalized, non-personalized
population without questioning how the age, class, or gender of practitioners can affect or be
interpreted in the archaeological record.
A review of the available literature on the archaeology of ritual and magic reveals two
recurrent and erroneous assumptions embedded in the approach and interpretation of magical
depositions in the United States. The first assumption leads archaeologists to immediately
associate such finds with African Americans—enslaved and freedmen (Fennell 2000; Leone and
Fry 1999; Lewis 2005). The second assumption associates magical finds with African
Americans, but attributes the practice to an adoption of anachronistic Anglo-European beliefs
(Whitten 1962; Davidson 2004). Davidson (2004:26) in particular fails to account for African
provenance when he stresses a non-African origin of perforated coin charm by noting they were
“in use in western Europe and especially the British Isles as early as the pre-Christian era.” In
his apparent attempt to avoid the first ethnocentric assumption by showing that Anglo-Europeans
also historically held magical beliefs, he overstates the connection of perforated coins to British
origins. Actually, perforated coin and metal disc charms existed throughout the ancient world
pre-dating British use; many African tribes would likely have been aware of them or were using
such charms prior to European contact (González-Wippler 2003; Paine 2004). Only Fennell
(2007) moves beyond these two assumptions by explicitly confronting such ethnocentric
interpretations to consider a third possibility for a magical object—a small clay skull—he
uncovered from a late eighteenth-century house in Virginia. In a pluralistically colonized
setting, Fennell explores the possibility that the skull may be associated with persons other than
African American slaves, and, in fact, concludes rather convincingly that it was probably a
German hexerei charm. Too readily associating magical objects with one group reinforces a
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perception of the group’s inferiority, backwardness and/or ignorance; attributing them with the
objects but crediting the source of the belief to Anglo-Europeans effectively accomplishes the
same end. In this case, on the one hand, Anglo-Europeans seemingly have evolved beyond such
irrational practices, and on the other hand, African Americans have to adopt Anglo-European
beliefs because they presumably lack a rich and complex heritage of belief of their own. In both
instances, a Eurocentric bias is subconsciously lurking just below the surface.
Due partly to the increased interest and excavation of African American sites, including
slave quarters, cemeteries, residences, and businesses, the preponderance of magical objects
addressed by American historical archaeologists derive from these contexts (Klingelhofer 1987;
Brown and Cooper 1990; Samford 1996; Stine et al. 1996; Wilkie 1997; Leone and Fry 1999;
Fennell 2000, 2007; Bankoff et al. 2001; Brown 2001; DeCorse 2001; Davidson 2004; Dixon
2005). African and African American magical depositions thus far identified usually consist of
perforated coins, hoodoo conjure kits, flora and fauna elements, and beads found in threshold
and burial contexts. Interpreting African magical material culture has led researchers like Wilkie
(1997), Cochran (1999), and Leone and Fry (1999) to view such traditional practices in
dialectical terms as empowering, identity-affirming statements as well as agentic behaviors to
negotiate personal and class tensions. Wilkie’s work goes furthest in advocating a diachronic
understanding of African American traditional and creolized belief systems and their broader
social meanings. She alone briefly addresses gender as a revealing factor in interpreting magical
assemblages. She notes that for many African groups, women and men represented opposing
and dangerous forces that could be mediated through magical administrations (Wilkie 1997:9091). She particularly cites examples of magic employed by women against men with the
acknowledgement that men would retaliate by avoidance or reciprocal magic. Her emphasis on
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female magical practice and her observance that virtually all African American magical
depositions emerge from household sites (Wilkie 1997:90), implies a stronger association with
female empowerment than with male agency, although she is not able to greatly expound upon
this suggestion within her brief article. However, Wilkie provides strong encouragement for
continued and expanded research of African American magico-religious material culture that
should serve as a model for historical archaeologists studying other groups.
American historical archaeologists frequently address culture contact situations and the
role material culture plays in cultural identity maintenance, adaptation, or assimilation.
Although scholars stress traditional beliefs were integral to identity negotiations in African
American, Native American, and Chinese cultures, these publications generally overlook the
importance of traditional beliefs in Anglo-European identity constructs. In the seventeenthcentury, issues of identity--cultural, spiritual, social, and gender—were explicitly discussed in
sermons, broadsides, and legal proceedings (Bercovtich 1975; Bauman 1983; Kamensky 1996,
1997; St. George 1998; Craun 2007). While recognition of Euro-, African-, and Native magical
material culture depends upon an understanding of their respective traditional forms, numerous
historical archaeological studies on culture contact (Lightfoot and Martinez 1995; Praetzellis and
Praetzellis 2001; Hardesty 2003; Nassaney 2004; Lightfoot 2006; Fennell 2007) stress the
dynamic, reciprocal, and creative exchange and adaption of cultural forms that occur in contact
situations. Each also stresses the power of cultures, especially non-dominant ones, to employ
resistance strategies that effectively maintain cultural identity. As Loren (2008), Nassaney
(2004), Praetzellis and Praetzellis (2001) and Wilkie (1997) illustrate, these strategies might
include using elements of the dominant group’s material culture to express entirely different
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meanings and beliefs. Thus, the presence of artifacts associated with one culture appropriated
for use in magical contexts by another group must be interpreted through the appropriator’s lens.
Once again a closer analysis of social variants, including gender, age, and class in
addition to ethnicity, in culture contact interfaces extend our ability to recognize such variables
archaeologically and generate more nuanced interpretations of specific human agency at both
relative and generalized scales. Although European, African, and Native American magical
material culture conform to their relative cultural traditions, within colonizing and cultural
contact contexts syncretic or hybrid forms, functions, and meanings should be expected to
emerge and converge. As one aspect of protective house magic demarcates the space between
the known Self and the alteric Other, understanding how culture contact affected these forms,
functions, and meanings provides historical archaeologists with another critical interpretive layer
from which to reconstruct the coping and inter-relational strategies of culturally disparate
peoples inextricably bound together through irreversible events.
A third interpretative pitfall, and one that is seemingly inherent in the analysis of
magically associated artifacts because of their relative or apparent scarcity on any given site and
the dearth of direct ethnographic or written documentation concerning such beliefs, results in
problems of sample size. Davidson’s (2004) article clearly reveals the difficulty in accurately
interpreting magical behaviors, especially when handicapped by a combination of erroneous
assumptions and minimal data. Actually, many magical artifacts go unrecognized in the
archaeological record, especially the Euro-American record, due largely to erroneous
assumptions about the nature of ritual and ritualistic material culture (Walker 1998; GazinSchwartz 2001; Aure 2004; Insoll 2004; Peterson 2005). Colin Renfrew (1994) and Renfrew and
Bahn (2000) created a criterion model for identifying ritual in archaeological contexts. While
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the model explicates sixteen markers, it can be summarized as designating ritual and associated
ritual objects as anomalous morphologically, spatially, and temporally and agrees with Turner’s
classic observations of formalized ritual behaviors (1969). Renfrew admits that these
observations, which were developed as a key for recognizing religious ritual in prehistoric
contexts, are not conclusive (Renfrew 1994:51) and have yet to be tested in historic
environments or specifically with magical ritual. While these criteria may hold true in some
situations both in prehistoric and historic settings, they do not account for cultures that make no
distinction between sacred and secular or do not divide magic or ritual from mundane contexts.
Likewise, archaeologists must explicitly question their assumptions about what is and is not
anomalous as well as their assumptions about the very nature of ritual behavior (Bell 1997;
Walker 1998; Insoll 2004).
This question of anomaly sits at the crux of archaeological recognition of magical
material culture and often constitutes the major criterion by which magico-ritualistic artifacts are
distinguished. However, what appears anomalous in the archaeological record may be the result
of various site formation processes (Schiffer 1972, 1987), cultural beliefs, unique individual
expression, or merely researcher expectation of what should or should not be found in particular
contexts. It is often assumed, as Gazin-Schwartz (2001:267) claims, “that ritual behavior is
mysterious, unusual, and inaccessible” and is somehow unknowable to the archaeologist—an
attitude reminiscent of processual archaeology prior to the development of cognitive and
interpretive archaeology, but one that, unfortunately, still plagues research agendas as is evident
from the lacunae of published works that include consideration of folk belief and ritual in their
interpretations.
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Part of the difficulty in ascertaining the magical or ritualistic nature of artifacts lies in the
fact that the objects utilized in such contexts were frequently quotidian utilitarian items as GazinSchwatz (2001), Peterson (2005), Walker (1998), Chadwick (2012), and even Renfrew (1994)
acknowledge. Their depositions, unless markedly unusual, or as Hodder (1990:222) notes are
“odd and…not understood,” are frequently interpreted as the result of standard formation
processes (i.e., loss or intentional discard). While some magical depositions are, in fact, enacted
through discard behavior such as offerings or supplications tossed into ditches, wells, or rivers
(Merrifield 1987; Osborne 2004, Chadwick 2012), many are deliberately placed under
floorboards or within walls not as a discard, but as a long term active agent (Merrifield 1987;
David and Kramer 2001). Gazin-Schwartz illustrates through her study of everyday ritual in
northern Scotland that comparing folklore sources (e.g., proverbs, superstitions, customs, etc.)
often reveals a ritualistic explanation for the deposition of mundane objects like scissors, knives,
shoes, and bent pins that could otherwise be misinterpreted. To enhance archaeologists’ ability
to distinguish between the ordinary and the extraordinary, it is critical that they view their
archaeological sites through the eyes of the sites’ builders and inhabitants. This will require a
broader knowledge of the import of traditional beliefs and folklore and a keener awareness of the
connectivity, what Robert Blair St. George (1998) calls “the poetics of implication,” between the
innumerable threads of cultural belief and practice. St. George (1998) challenges historians and
archaeologists to extend their research parameters to understand that every behavior, every
material manifestation of colonial New England connects or is ‘implicated,’ entangled, and
bound together with traditions and beliefs stretching across time and cultures. Alexander et al.
(1977: xiii) similarly stress that:
…no pattern is an isolated entity. Each pattern can exist in the world only
to the extent that it is supported by other patterns: the larger patterns in
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which it is embedded, the patterns of the same size that surround it, and the
smaller patterns which are embedded in it.
The same can be said of any historic time and place as no historic context exists in temporal or
spatial isolation (Beaudry and George 1987; Yentsch 1991b; King 1996).
Through my work as an editorial advisor for The Society for Historical Archaeology
(SHA), I have analyzed every article published in the Society’s journal, Historical Archaeology¸
from its beginning in 1967 to the present (almost 1,200 articles). This analysis indicates that
American historical archaeologists primarily pose pragmatic research questions concerned with
world systems theories of colonization, economics, and industry. This focus generally precludes
or marginalizes consideration of ritualistic and magico-religious behaviors as important
indicators of cultural worldviews, identity, personal and social relationships, and risk or crisis
management strategies, except in the case of non-European sites. As a result, historical
archaeology’s treatment of magical material culture has historically created a skewed
representation of who historically used magic and why. At the 2011 SHA annual conference a
pre-conference workshop was held to discuss the on-going challenge of identification and
interpretation of magical material culture. This workshop attracted a veritable who’s-who of
historical archaeologists specializing in African American slavery and diaspora studies. Without
the interjections by Christopher Fennell and myself, consideration of Anglo-European magical
belief and practice would probably not have been discussed at this workshop. The workshop,
however, did pave the way for a dedicated symposium on magical material culture presented at
the SHA annual conference in 2012. The “Manifestations of Magic: The Archaeology and
Material Culture of Magic and Folk Belief” symposium boasted thirteen presenters discussing a
range of beliefs and practices. Of the thirteen, nine addressed Anglo-European examples from
Britain, Australia, and the United States. The dominate theme of these papers was typological
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with the emphasis on intentionally concealed objects, particularly footwear and dried cats, and
spanning the seventeenth to twentieth centuries, although my paper on the embeddedness of
worldviews in magical practice and Brian Hoggard’s and Timothy Easton’s papers, both on
magical practice, did provide theoretical considerations. At the very least, the symposium
established magical belief and practice as spatially, temporally, and culturally wide-ranging
phenomena potentially relevant to all archaeological contexts. The force of the symposium
presenters’ work has subsequently prompted a proposal to dedicate a thematic issue of Historical
Archaeology to these papers. In addition, the web-editor of the SHA website has, at my request,
created a blog forum specifically for discussion and data sharing of information pertinent to the
archaeology of magic and ritual. These limited events indicate that a small undercurrent of
continual interest in and research of magic as an important aspect of human expression and
experience is beginning to make, if not waves, at least ripples in the pond of historical
archaeology.
Gender and Magic in the Archaeological Record
While the artifactual evidence for Anglo-European magical practice seems elusive,
artifacts representing the presence of men and women are assumed plentiful; however, historical
archaeologists have a comparatively difficult time in both instances constructing an interpretive
model that unambiguously allows them to extrapolate gender from the archaeological record.
Relying on the occurrence of male or female related personal items like clothing fasteners or
smoking products, or correlating ceramic quality, design, and abundance with gender to
determine the presence of men and women at a given site, archaeologists attempt to draw larger
conclusions about spatial, temporal, and occupational gendered divisions (Seifert 1991; Yentsch
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1991; Hardesty 1994, 1998; Scott 1994; Lawrence 2000; Wurst 2003). As Spude (2005: 93)
cautions, however:
It does little good in trying to ascertain gender by using pre-established
categories devised to solve other types of problems or simply to serve as
consistent terminology in the naming of categories. Neither of these widely
used taxonomies distinguishes items used by women from those used by men,
and neither separates other artifact categories into types that would enable the
archaeologist to discern gender in the archaeological record.
In contexts where these domains overlap, are culturally constructed differently than
expected, or represent single-sex situations, typical markers prove insufficient for interpreting
gender (Johnson 1993; Wurst 2003; Spude 2005). Archaeologist Donna Seifert (1991:1) states,
“Women and men do different things; even when they do the same things, they do them
differently because of different experiences and values.” Additionally, as Sarah Milledge Nelson
(1997:2) discerns, “the meaning and consequences of gender vary, depending on the intersection
of gender with other social identities, such as race, class, ethnicity, and age.” Thus, the difficulty
of abstracting gender from artifactual evidence is complicated by numerous context specific
factors, which must be accounted for prior to interpreting artifacts, features, or behaviors as
indicative of gender.
Prevailing archaeological thought assumes women and men have occupied
distinguishable activity spaces with women primarily confined to the domestic sphere while
men’s activities principally occur outdoors or in public arenas (Wurst 2003:226). Archaeologists
assume artifacts representing cooking, cleaning, sewing, childcare, and domestic decoration
signal female presence and identity. Male presence, on the other hand, speaks through heavy
tools, equipment, and weapons; alcohol and tobacco; and business related articles. These
distinctions are valid to a point, but as Milledge Nelson (1997:12-13) states, “linking artifacts
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with gender…is a tricky business” and “must be argued separately for each historical case.” In
the case of historical archaeology, a preponderance of artifactual data emerges from middens and
privies. Since these data generally comprise mixed contexts with no other diagnostic
associations with spaces or activities, their gendered attribution remains speculative.
In domestic vernacular architecture, like that of seventeenth-century New England, one
or two rooms sufficed for a range of simultaneous, contiguous, and consecutive activities
undertaken by men, women, and children (Demos 1970; Ulrich 1982; Karlsen 1987; St. George
1998). To ascertain to what degree and in what particulars these tasks were shared or divided
requires more knowledge about social and gender organization than artifacts alone can provide.
To extrapolate gender from the multilayered Puritan domestic spaces requires archaeologists to
understand spatial organization and control rather than discreet gender-defined activity zones.
As Ulrich (1982:38) notes for colonial New England, “Almost any task was suitable for a woman
as long as it furthered the good of her family and was acceptable to her husband.” Thus, the
scope and association of artifacts equated to gender, even in explicitly patriarchal societies that
overtly defined gender roles like seventeenth-century New England, defies simple attribution.
For archaeological gender studies of the eighteenth- and nineteenth-centuries, researchers
rely heavily upon ceramic and decorative artifactual data as indicative of female presence and
influence (Yentsch 1991; Milledge Nelson 1997; Hays-Gilpin and Whitley 1998; Delle et al.
2000), but these objects and their connection to ideologies of affluence, gentility, and
consumerism lack relevance for seventeenth-century Puritan households where simplicity and
temperance were generally the norm, at least until the latter part of the century.
If confidently attributing gender to mundane material culture remains problematic, it is
hardly surprising that archaeologists already shy of magico-religious interpretations should be
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wary of gendered magic practice. Virtually all discussion of Anglo-European magic derives from
historical works on witchcraft that meticulously verify the roles of women and men in witchcraft
trials—both as victims and accusers. However, there has been no attempt to determine or
understand the connection between magic use and gender historically or archaeologically in a
broader framework than witchcraft allows (e.g., MacFarlane 1970; Thomas 1971; Boyer and
Nissenbaum 1974; Karlsen 1987; Godbeer 1992; Willis 1995; Demos 2004; Davies 2007). The
resulting publications consequently present magical belief and practice as homogenous and nongendered. Rather than a comment upon magical belief per se, this monolithic grouping
represents the continuing androcentric paradigm characteristic of historical archaeology
(Spencer-Wood 2007:31). Since practically all historical archaeological explorations of magic
deal with non-European practitioners, this lumping indicates at best a lack of researcher insight,
and at worst embedded biases toward the research group (Klingelhofer 1987; Samford 1996;
Stine et al. 1996; Leone and Fry 1999; Fennel 2000, 2007; Brown 2001; Davidson 2004; Dixon
2005). Wilkie (1997:92) challenged archaeologists to move beyond this monolithic mindset by
asserting, “If we are to successfully study gender within African-American households, we must
consider the magical dimension of gender relationships, and likewise, if we are to consider
magical practices, then we must consider gender.” Her rally remains unheeded for AfricanAmerican sites and unacknowledged for Anglo-European contexts. In both instances, insight
into the social realities and underlying worldviews informing those social constructs is necessary
to the understanding of how, why, and by whom magic was used in the past. To locate gendered
popular magic in the archaeological record requires innovative perspectives from which to
understand those expressions that are gender distinct and those that appear ambiguous but may
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reveal gendered values. One such perspective aligns the common placement of magical objects
at physical thresholds with metaphorical sociocultural boundaries.
Most apotropaia was associated with passage points or literal boundaries: doors, gates,
windows, hearths, chimneys, roofs, and property lines (Essabal 1961; Evans 1971; Mauss
(1972[1902]); Fairbanks 1982; Renfrew 1994; Renfrew and Bahn 2000; Davies and Blecourt
2004; Hoggard 2004; Paine 2004; Davies 2007). St. George (1998) discusses these physical
boundaries as symbolic body metaphors asserting that magically protecting house and property
thresholds sympathetically and metaphorically implied protecting the physical, spiritual, and
political body. Gell (1998) provides additional evidence of gendered threshold apotropaia
extending from architecture to clothing through artistic creations in India, Vanuatu, and Ireland
that concur with St. George’s body/architecture implication while elucidating yet another source
of magical material culture—art—that has received little archaeological attention. The study of
apotropaia can contribute a cogent dimension to relational dynamics that has been lacking in
archaeological studies focused solely on economics and socio-political themes. The social
dialectical dynamics occurring at the metaphorical boundaries of public/private; good/evil;
appropriate/inappropriate; and male/female, which are symbolically represented by architectural
passage points, provide researchers an alternative perspective from which to interpret gender
roles and agency.
Of course these binary constructs imply a simplistic delineation of opposites—an
outdated and insupportable dualistic viewpoint characteristic of early structuralist theories.
However, some basic tenets of structuralism remain valid. Structuralists, in contrast to
Binfordian New Archaeologists, espoused the belief that the human mind was recoverable in
artifactual evidence since the mind was responsible for ordering all human activity and creation.
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As Leone (1982:742) explains, “the human mind categorizes and divides; creates contrasts and
opposition, … it reverses, displaces, and distinguishes between inside and outside, culture and
nature, male and female; furthermore, … the mind uses a limited repertoire of contrastive
categories like these to think about virtually all reality.” While not denying the human mind as
the architect behind all human action guided by processes of structuration, current structuralists
understand that these contrastive categories are to a degree socioculturally constituted and
exhibit more fluidity and multidimensionality than previously considered.
A conference held in September 2009 at the University of Northampton, UK, on the
permeability of household thresholds debated the futility of binary concepts like public and
private, arguing that the same space can have fluctuating degrees of private or public access and
use dependent upon a number of context specific factors. But situating the binary constructs as
scalar terminals allows consideration of the fluidity and permeability of these boundaries and the
points of intersection and negotiation they occasion. The multiplicity of intermediary states
between the binary terminals offer archaeologists of ritual and magic tantalizing opportunities to
understand how women and men magically manipulated their world. Ultimately, attention to the
ways in which gender affects these strategic constructs can offer new perspectives on the role of
belief in how and why women and men use material culture, organize space, interact with
natural and build landscapes, and negotiate social and familial relationships (Tringham 1973;
Kent 1990; Lawrence 2000; Barile and Brandon 2004). In general, the archaeology of ritual and
magic has made some headway into mainstream historical archaeological discussions and
practices in the United States as is evidenced by the work on African American sites and by the
recent presentations at the SHA conferences. Archaeological consideration of magical beliefs
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and practices, and particularly those of Anglo-Europeans, as an important aspect of the historical
past remains, however, principally peripheral to other research agendas.
2.3.3 Archaeological Research on Magic in New England
If the archaeology of ritual and magic has been slow to permeate the field of American
historical archaeology, it has been an almost non-existent approach to the time and region most
associated with supernatural belief in American history—seventeenth-century New England.
Although a plethora of historical documentation (e.g., sermons, court depositions, spell and
recipe books, and monographs) survives that describes the use of magical objects by European
colonists in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century New England, no archaeological study of magic
from this time and place has been undertaken to date. A mere handful of historical
archaeologists have published even short discussions of the widespread belief in and practice of
magic in colonial New England (Gramly 1981; Deetz and Deetz 2000:81-100; Baker 2001, 2007;
Becker 2005). Other individual archaeologists working in the New England region may be
aware of some aspects of magical material culture through their association with these published
archaeologists, through reading publications, or by attending the SHA sessions, but they have not
contributed in any tangible sense to an archaeology of ritual and magic.
The area of the eastern United States that has garnered the greatest degree of
archaeological attention on magic is the Chesapeake region of Maryland and Virginia. Lying just
south of the New England area and colonized roughly contemporaneously with the New England
colonies, Maryland and Virginia have provided several archaeological sites containing magical
material culture—mostly African American (e.g., for Maryland see Painter 1980; Klingelhofer
1987; King 1996; Cochran 1999; Leone and Fry 1999; Luckenbach 2004; Moorehouse 2009; for
Virginia see Maillos 1999, 2000; Fennell 2000, 2007; Edwards 2001, 2004; McKitrick 2009).
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Additionally, to the west of New England, Pennsylvania has also been the focus of
archaeological inquiry into magical practice (Becker 1978, 1980; Alexandrowicz 1986;
McCarthy 2001). Most of the evidence of magical belief and practice in New England, including
poppets, concealed footwear, and concealed cats has come not from archaeological work or sites,
but from historic preservation projects, property demolitions, or private renovation, remodeling,
or maintenance jobs (Geisler 2003; Northhampton Shoe Museum files 2010; Hoggard personal
communication 2010; Evans personal communication 2011; Manning 2012a, 2012b). These
finds are chance occurrences that seldom come to academic attention or find inclusion in
archaeological studies. Manning (2012a, 2012b), with a background in both historic
preservation and archaeology, is attempting to document and synthesize as many of these finds
as possible, regardless of their geographic location or historic era. This endeavor is an important
one for the field of the archaeology of ritual and magic, as it establishes that Anglo-European
popular magic was indeed practiced in virtually all areas of the United States spanning the
seventeenth through the twentieth centuries and provides some examples of the magical material
culture used. Regardless of the wealth of evidentiary materials that Manning has accumulated
for the northern United States, archaeologists in the New England region have neither reported
nor published on popular magic at their sites, with the exception of Gramly (1981), Deetz and
Deetz (2000), Baker (2001, 2007) and Becker (2005). With so little attention given to the
archaeology of ritual and magic at New England sites, it is hardly surprising that no
archaeological project in this region has been undertaken with magic at the core of the research
design.
When turning to historical documentation concerning popular belief in colonial New
England as a starting point for archaeological investigation, one finds any reference to Anglo-
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European (and particularly Puritan) magical beliefs is bound up with explications of the
witchcraft trials and becomes subsumed within that framework or focuses on the elite fascination
with astrology and occult texts (Thomas 1971; Kittredge 1972; Boyer and Nissenbaum 1974;
Butler 1979; Karlsen 1987; Godbeer 1992; Demos 2004). In order to generate meaningful
questions that address the holistic high stress circumstances of seventeenth-century life in
colonial New England with particular attention to the implicated role of gender constructs in the
practice of magic requires archaeologists to get beyond the historian’s narrow focus on
witchcraft. This dissertation seeks to not only fill a current gap in archaeological scholarship
through its analysis of gender-related magical use, but to also serve as a seed for the burgeoning
field of the archaeology of ritual and magic by stimulating the generation of more divergent
research questions and interpretations of Anglo-European material culture associated with high
stress environments.
The following chapter will establish the magical worldview and the highly stressful
context that constituted daily experience for seventeenth-century Anglo-European New England
colonists and inclined them toward belief in and recourse to magical resolutions.
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CHAPTER 3: Cultural Context: Seventeenth-Century New England
3.1 Chapter Overview
The trek through the history of colonial New England has been a well and oft-trodden
one. Historians of Early America like Daniel Boorstin (1958), Darrett Rutman (1965), Edmund
Morgan (1966), John Demos (1970, 1972, 1986, 2004a, 2004b), Kenneth Lockridge (1970,
1981), Jon Butler (1979, 1990), Jonathan Fairbanks (1982), Jack Greene (1984, 1991), David
Hall (1989, 1991), Mary Beth Norton (1996), Robert Blair St. George (1998), and Nathaniel
Philbrick (2006) in company with innumerable others provide thorough examinations of the
English conditions and events that precipitated the immigration of tens of thousands of men,
women, and children to the northeastern shores of North America in the seventeenth century.
Their scholarship explores the transformative processes that converted the “English” into New
Englanders. Numerous other historians of Early America have focused on religion and
witchcraft, particularly the most infamous of colonial New England events, the Salem witch
trials, to attempt an understanding of the sociopolitical power dynamics enacted through
identification and punishment of those perceived to be threats to the communities’ religious,
social, and political interests (Starkey 1963; Thomas 1971; Kittredge 1972; Boyer and
Nissenbaum 1972, 1974, 1977; Weisman 1984; Karlsen 1987; Hall 1989, 1991; Godbeer 1992,
2005; Briggs 1996; Reis 1997; Demos 2004a; Baker 2007). My intent here is not to reiterate
what these authors have so comprehensively discussed, but rather to establish the high stress
context in which New England immigrants found themselves by considering factors such as
environment, culture contact, community construction, and gender role expectation and
fulfillment. I propose that the challenges associated with these factors, in conjunction with the
prevailing supernatural worldview of the seventeenth-century, motivated New Englanders to
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employ traditional magical practices as mediating strategies to lessen their fears toward an
unfamiliar geographical and sociopolitical landscape.
The northern colonies comprising New England, predominantly settled in the
seventeenth-century by immigrant Puritan communities seeking relief from religious persecution
in England, offer a unique context for the inceptive archaeological study of Anglo-American
magical belief. Beginning as early as 1620, but concentrated in the great migration of 1630 to
1641, Puritan settlers came to the northern Atlantic American coast to establish their biblical
“City Upon a Hill,” their own spiritual and civic kingdom on earth. Unlike their more
economically motivated neighbors to the south in the Middle and Chesapeake colonies, New
England colonists initially sought opportunities to distance themselves as much as possible from
participation in the broader secular world (Philbrick 2006). Puritan immigrants with their insular
and exclusive community policies, emphasis upon self-sufficiency, and explicit spiritual
worldview attempted to create a circumscribed world based on their literal translation of the
Bible while escaping what they saw as the evils and corruption of the world they left behind in
England (Lockridge 1981).
What particularly situates Puritan New England as a good subject for an archaeological
study of popular magic is not that Puritans were unique in their belief in witches, demons,
ghosts, and fairies or their acceptance that magic was both wielded by these creatures and was
available to be used against them. On the contrary, Kittredge (1972), in the most comprehensive
explication of English magic and witchcraft belief published to date, goes to great lengths to
document the magical mindset of all seventeenth-century Anglo and European peoples (not just
Puritans), including the educated and the everyday masses. Speaking specifically of New
England Puritans, Hall (1991:8) notes, “for the colonists as for their European contemporaries,
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the natural forces at work in the everyday world were overlain by and interwoven with moral,
spiritual, and supernatural forces.” This observation holds true for colonists throughout the
Middle, Chesapeake, and Southern colonies as well (Drake 1869; Thomas 1971; Demos 1972,
2004a; Kittredge 1972; Bourne 1977[1725]; Butler 1979; Hall 1991; Willis 1995; Ekirch 2005;
Davies 2007). Rather, New England’s primacy for a nascent study of Anglo-American magical
material culture is propelled by the fact that only in the Puritan colonies does history record an
acute concentration and intensity of legal action against and severe punishment for maleficent
magical practice (Taylor 1908; Boyer and Nissenbaum 1972, 1974, 1977; Koehler 1980; Karlsen
1987; Hall 1991; Demos 2004a). Karlsen’s (1987:14) study located 344 witchcraft accusations
and 35 executions in New England between 1620 and 1725. No executions for witchcraft
occurred in the Middle and Chesapeake colonies, although there were formal accusations in
Virginia, Maryland, New York, and North Carolina (Fischer 1989; Norton 1987). Certainly, not
all magical practice directly relates to witchcraft, but occasions of witchcraft prosecution provide
the most abundant source of historical documentation describing such practices.
The intent of this chapter is to provide an historical background of early seventeenthcentury New England and its English colonial immigrants as a backdrop to an archaeological
study of gendered, popular magic in this context. The most salient goal of this chapter is to
establish the inherently metaphysical nature of the Puritan worldview. Puritans sought to
understand every cause and effect, every misfortune and reward, and every decision and
behavior through a supernatural lens. This framework included absolute belief in God’s
providence, or attribution to God for everything from illness to storms (Demos 1972, 2004a; Hall
1991; Kittredge 1972; Thomas 1971). Additionally, it comprised the idea of wonder. Wonder,
as Hall (1991:8) explains entailed any “unexpected event….[and] drew on pre-Christian notions
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of nature as animate, or as charged with spirits.” In other words, the Puritan worldview
maintained pre-Christian and medieval conceptualizations of the universe as a multidimensional
construct inhabited and powered by a host of supernatural forces from the natural magic of plants
and minerals to the divine power of God to the demonic maleficium of the Devil and his minions.
The implication of wonder and providence provided the schematic structure through which
Puritans could conceive of an influential interrelationship between spiritual and physical forms
(Hall 1991).
The second focus of this chapter is to situate the Puritans’ supernatural worldview in New
England and begin to understand how popular magical practice fits in this context. To do so
requires consideration of the particular hardships that challenged the Puritan immigrants as they
struggled to create their New Jerusalem. Some of these challenges were environmental and
included coping with and adapting to: the dangers of wild frontiers; new climatic and
topographical unknowns; and unfamiliar subsistence practices. Contact and interaction with the
indigenous peoples of Northeastern America posed another critical challenge for the newly
arrived Puritan.
A further trial facing the new colonists entailed the actual establishment of their new
order. Certainly they brought with them from England traditional ideas and knowledge about the
structure of society, towns, government, and religious community; yet, as Zuckerman (1977:194)
observes:
… in their endeavors to defend…traditional insularity, they shattered the continuity
with the past that was a hallmark of the English localism they sought to conserve.
For the communities which could be constructed on a wilderness coast were
wholly new communities, without indigenous customs, without elders who had
lived there all their lives, without ancient burying grounds or even any old
buildings. Traditional ends had therefore to be achieved under novel circumstances
by novel means.
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In addition to attempting to reconstruct English ways upon a primal and foreign land,
they explicitly endeavored to recast those English ways into their own idealized vision of a pure
and proper civilization. This vision necessitated overt explication of social and spiritual roles,
identities, and relationships in a startlingly new context. The tensions occasioned by the
construction and negotiation of these roles, identities, and relationships often found expression
through supernatural channels. These expressions included recourse to cunning folk for magical
justice or protection, witchcraft prosecutions to resolve sociopolitical conflicts, and vilification
of popular magic to reinforce official religious authority (Mather 1692a, 1692b; Hale 1697; Hall
1984, 1989, 1991; Godbeer 1992). Together they demonstrate the pervasiveness of
supernaturally-based difficulties impeding the successful realization of the Puritans’ New World
Order.
The reason for focusing upon the challenges Puritan colonists confronted stems from
historically documented accounts of English popular magic practice and witchcraft accusations
arising from high stress and social conflict situations (Halliday 1910; Starkey 1963[1949];
Thomas 1971; Kittredge 1972; Boyer and Nissenbaum 1972, 1974, 1977; Weisman 1984;
Karlsen 1987; Hall 1989, 1991; Godbeer 1992, 2005; Willis 1995; Briggs 1996; Kamensky
1997; Reis 1997; Demos 2004a; Ekirch 2005; Bailey 2007; Baker 2007; Davies 2007; Bever
2008). While not advocating that all magical belief and use directly functioned as risk
management or conflict resolution strategies, primary evidence supports these as two important
functions of magical practice and belief for colonial Puritans. Therefore, an examination of the
manifestation of popular magic and its variations in a transplanted context under the extreme
conditions encountered by Puritan colonists in New England should provide at least one
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comparative dataset from which to understand the use and transformation of traditional ideology
in colonial environments.
The third, and ultimately the distinguishing perspective of this study over any other
historical or archaeological work, concerns the relationship between gender and magic. Many
historical studies on witchcraft in Old and New England note the significant gender differences
in numbers of accusations and severity of punishments. Approximately four times more women
than men were formally accused of witchcraft; women were more likely to be convicted than
men; women more often received the harshest punishment; and most men accused of witchcraft
were in some way intimately related to an accused female “witch” (Karlsen 1987; Hall 1991;
Willis 1995; Briggs 1996; Reis 1997; Demos 2004a; Davies 2007; Bever 2008). To warn against
too simplistic a correlation between women and witchcraft, Hall (1991:7) asserts that
witch-hunting in New England was gender-related, not gender specific. Whatever
the relevant factors, the response of the colonists in seventeenth-century New England,
like the response of Europeans in general, was to assume that women were
particularly drawn to witchcraft and the devil.
What goes unexamined is repeated evidence of the gender-relatedness (or gender specificity?) of
magical or countermagical practice itself among those accused of witchcraft and those official
practitioners known as cunning folk. Davies’ (2007) look at cunning folk in England revealed
that these professional practitioners were as likely to be men as women. However, he did not
consider the possibility that there might be a gendered dimension to the clientele, their concerns,
or the types of magical advice or instruction they were given. It is also probable that women and
men by-passed these cunning folk altogether. Rather they sought out, constructed, and employed
gendered magical material culture for themselves, for as Clark (1997:472) stresses, “while
experts in healing, divination, counter-witchcraft, and so on, existed in most communities, the
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techniques they employed, as well as the assumptions they relied on, were, in principle,
accessible to all.” Would a comparison of these actual practices to witchcraft accusations show a
similarly disproportionate number of women actively utilizing magic/countermagic; or would
such a comparison reveal a more equitable distribution of magic/countermagic practice across
genders like Davies’ study of cunning folk suggests? In either case, the question of what
signifies gender-related or gender specific magical/countermagical practices and what these
differences relate about gender roles, identity, and social relationships has, until now, not been
asked.
The seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Age of Enlightenment supposedly represented a
dawning of rational thought that vanquished belief in magic and superstition from the Anglo and
European worlds (Thomas 1971; Tambiah 1990; Glucklich 1997; Davies 1999, 2007; Bailey
2007). However, Bailey notes the idea of a ‘disenchanted’ world was more a construct of
scientifically-minded seventeenth- and eighteenth-century elites than a paradigm shift in popular
worldview (Bailey 2007:215). Nevertheless, this Enlightenment construct has produced the
modern Western general perception that belief in magic comprised an historical episode out of
which reason, science, and technology have arisen to ‘correct’ and replace naïve cosmologies
espousing intersecting spheres of visible and invisible forces or agents. To undertake an
archaeological study of the seventeenth century requires researchers to recognize this
Enlightenment fallacy and accept the pervasive magical mindset of the Anglo-European
populace of this time period.
This chapter will first provide insight into the worldview and magical mindset of
seventeenth-century New England Anglo colonists with examples of how those beliefs were
embedded within magical practices that can be seen expressed materially in the archaeological
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record. After establishing the palpability and immediacy of the supernatural for AngloEuropeans of this period, the succeeding section surveys the particular circumstances of the
Puritan colonial immigrants by considering their origins, motivations, and expectations, and the
tribulations they encountered that could occasion the recourse to magical practice for mitigation.
The final section of this chapter turns to an examination of the rigid gender constructs that
established and dictated the acceptable parameters of behavior and activities for women and
men, emphasizing the highly stressful circumstances occasioned by these paradigms.
3.2 Worldview and Magical Mindset
Labaree (1972:125) succinctly paints a picture of the sparse material but rich ideological
baggage carried by seventeenth-century colonists on long, cramped, and dangerous journeys to a
New World:
The early immigrants to America brought with them few of their cherished
possessions from the Old World, aside from a trunk or two of clothes and
perhaps some household utensils. But these first colonists, and all who followed
in their footsteps, brought intangible possessions as well—their ideas and customs
—in short, their culture.
These ideas and customs included a deeply embedded metaphysical worldview in which the
spiritual worlds of God, the Devil, and nature interfaced with the daily workings of mortal
humans. As Goodwin et al. (1995:43) assert, “Knowing the logic by which a past culture
operated provides a basis for projections about what their members were likely to do in a given
situation.” Chadwick (2012:302) adds that it is “through material metaphors and processes of
ritualization, [that] everyday objects were incorporated into acts of cosmological and spiritual
meaning.” A critical first step, then, in recognizing magical material culture involves
understanding the embeddedness of worldviews, particularly aspects of cosmology, in the use
and pattern of magical material culture as the cultural logic behind and informing magical belief.
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To reach this understanding requires a consideration of what worldview and cosmology actually
entail. A comprehensive and concise definition for worldview comes from Stein and Stein’s
(2005:31) The Anthropology of Religion, Magic, and Witchcraft. They define worldview as:
…the way in which societies perceive and interpret their reality…Their
worldview provides them with an understanding of how their world works; it
forms the template for thought and behavior; and it provides them with a basic
understanding of the origin and nature of humankind and their relationship to
the world about them.
In other words, one’s worldview not only establishes the “facts” of the construct of this empirical
world, but also ideas and attitudes about the unseen aspects of life—such as time, direction,
spirits and spiritual realms. One’s worldview establishes values and determines what is right,
appropriate, and normal providing a shared language of concepts and symbols. (See Redfield
(1952) for a further discussion of worldview.) Biblical scholar, Sigmund Mowinckel
(2012[1953]) coined the term ‘magical worldview,’ noting that magic is not a religion in itself,
but is rather a conceptual framework (i.e., a worldview) that provides “a particular way to
understand things and their mutual connectedness.” Although worldview is not synonymous
with religion, in societies with highly structured religious institutions, like seventeenth-century
Anglo-European Christianity, these ideas are embedded within their religious doctrines and
permeate their behavioral and material expressions.
Implicated within worldview is a group’s cosmology, or beliefs about the structure and
principles of the universe and the place of humans, animals, plants, and supernatural beings
within that cosmic order. One’s worldview stipulates what kind of relationships and interactions
can exist amongst the elements of the cosmos (Redfield 1952; Glazier 1997; Demos 2004; Stein
and Stein 2005; Mowinckel 2012[1953]). Worldview informs cultural ideas about the right way
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to be in the world, and by extension how people physically, materially, and ideologically enact
their cosmology through their daily lives.
One aspect of cosmology concerns the structure, sometimes referred to as the cosmic
architecture, of the universe (Willis 1993). This structure entails the mathematical or numeric
divisions that define physical and metaphysical aspects of reality and conceptualizations of
space, time, and directionality. The consistency of these divisions across all domains of
perception, thought, and belief provide a sense of cosmic interrelatedness and completeness.
Thomas (1971:265) further explicates this interrelationship by stating that, “The cosmos was an
organic unity in which every part bore a sympathetic relationship to the rest.” This organic unity
found expression in complex interplay of religion and astrology. For the early English
immigrants to New England, cosmological beliefs were explicitly expressed through the doctrine
of Calvinist and other Reformationist theologies that espoused a divine grand design in which
absolutely every component of the world and every occurrence of nature or mankind were
created and directed by God (Thomas 1971; Cohen 1986; Rumsey 1986). Rumsey (1986:7)
states that, “Luck, chance, fortune or fate did not exist is such a world;” therefore, since “the will
of God was inherent in all things” (Rumsey 1986:8), life contained no random or meaningless
events or correspondences (Demos 1972; 2004a; Kittredge 1972; Hall 1989). Most eminent
British physicians and herbalists of the seventeenth century (e.g., Nicholas Culpeper, Simon
Forman, and William Lilly) supported this grand design idea by advocating a direct relationship
between all earthly life and the celestial bodies, which, of course, were both created by God and
were conceived to be the heavenly realm, thus validating the use of horoscopes and other
astrological computations and divinations as reliable procedures in everything from medical
treatment to finding lost goods to divining the future (Butler 1990:22). From this understanding
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of the implication of heaven and astrology, it makes sense that “as Essex Puritan, Thomas
Pickering said, men and women sought out occult practitioners to “resolve, direct, and helpe”
them to regain “a harmonious relationship with the universe and heal their afflictions” (Butler
1990:22). Correlating the symbolic elements of numerological associations and directional
connotations found in the Bible to those events of divine providence experienced or witnessed in
everyday life, reinforced both the veracity of a cosmos omnipotently ruled and directed by divine
authority as well as the validity and efficacy of those structural symbolic elements (Thomas
1971).
It is beyond the scope of this chapter or dissertation to discuss every possible symbolic
element embedded within Christian doctrine (Wile 1934; Farbridge 1970; Metzger and Coogan
1993; Schimmel 1993; Ryken et al. 1998), so as a primer to this complex subject and for the
purposes of illustration this section focuses on numerology. To reiterate the point of implication,
however, it will conclude with a brief connection between numerology and directionality and the
importance each may play in the understanding of magical material culture in archaeological
contexts.
Numerology and Number Symbolism
Islamic cultural historian Annamarie Schimmel’s (1993) research into the symbolic and
magical associations of numbers and number systems throughout Eastern and Western traditions
provides an illuminating introduction to the various ways numbers and number systems operate
in different cultures. Throughout the millennia, Classical, Islamic, Hebraic, and Christian
philosophers, theologians, mystics, alchemists, mathematicians, and scientists have contemplated
the mystery, meaning, and influence of numbers (Farbridge 1970; Schimmel 1993). Included
among the countless tracts written upon the subject are the many European Christian treatises
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appearing in the 16th and 17th centuries (Schimmel 1993; Davies 2009). Many of these scholarly
works include consideration of magical number figures like the quinary sator-rotas palindrome
square, which was usually inscribed as (Fennell 2007:107; Davies 2009:13):
S
A
T
O
R
A
R
E
P
O
T
E
N
E
T
O
P
E
R
A
R
O
T
A
S
Although the exact meaning of this palindrome, which dates to at least ancient Pompeii, is still
debated, one translation reveals “that [since] the letters were also reformulated to spell PATER
NOSTER twice, [and] arranged in the form of a cross, might suggest it was of Christian origin”
(Davies 2009:13). Another translation gives the charm more affective power and implies a more
direct and agentic relationship between individuals and the cosmos. Fennell (2007:107) notes
that the palindrome “translates roughly as ‘the sower Arepo holds steady the wheels,’ thus
invoking a creative force that controls the wheels of the cosmos and the vicissitudes of fortune.”
Similarly, the magical word spell ‘abracadabra’ is not only required to be written
triangularly (Aubrey 1670:87), but the total number of letters it contains equals 66, illustrating
the multilayered embeddedness of magically potent numbers; in this case the number three. The
abracadabra spell cited by Aubrey was effective against ague, if as he recommends, one “write[s]
this following spell in parchment, and wear it about your neck. It must be writ triangularly:”
ABRACADABRA
ABRACADABR
ABRACADAB
ABRACADA
ABRACAD
ABRACA
ABRAC
ABRA
ABR
AB
A
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Both the sator-rotas and abracadabra figures appear frequently in written and inscribed magical
charms (Milne 2007).
Other numerological ideas discussed in these magical treatises concerned the seemingly
mystical nature of particular numbers like the number nine, whose multiples always have nine as
the sum of their digits (e.g., 4 x 9 = 36 ( 3 + 6 = 9); 147 x 9 = 1323 (1 + 3 + 2 + 3 = 9). One
common aspect across cultures, Schimmel notes, concerns a metaphysical power associated with
or believed to be inherent within particular numbers. According to Schimmel (1993:10):
numbers have been attributed with special, secret powers that make them
fitting for magical conjurations and, of course, for astrological prognostications.
Even the “high” religions recognize the religious importance of certain numbers
and their mystical character. …In magic...the correct use of numbers plays an
immense role, for each number is seen in its power-field and in its cosmic
connections.
In the Western tradition, the power of numbers derives from ideas traceable at least to the
Pythagoreans and Plato and further developed by the Neoplatonists and Gnostics (Farbridge
1970; Schimmel 1993; Ryken et al 1998). These ideas espouse three basic concepts that can be
seen underlying numerological constructs in seventeenth-century Christian thought (Schimmel
1993:16):
1. Numbers influence the character of things that are ordered by them.
2. Thus, the number becomes the mediator between the Divine and the created world.
3. If one performs operations with numbers, these operations also work upon the things
connected with the numbers used.
The first and third of the above ideas clearly reiterate the sympathetic association between
numbers and objects, a basic and universal element in magical thought and operation (Thomas
1971; Frazer 1996 [1890]).
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Every number has its particular symbolic meaning and/or power, which may be enhanced
or expressed through sums or multiples (Farbridge 1970; Metzger and Coogan 1993). This can
be demonstrated by analyzing the number seven, which represents perfection, but as a sum of
three (the divine) and four (earthly directions and seasonality), that sense of perfection takes on a
deeper nuance of totality, unity, and divine design. Of course, seven could also be construed as
the sum of two (duality, division, polarity) and five (interrelationship between human and divine
expressed in the pentagram and discussed below), which suggests a re-membering of the
sundering of divine unity that occurred at the time of creation and that set humans apart from the
godhead (Cohen 1986). Multiples of a number increase its influence exponentially, which is seen
especially in the number nine being three times three and considered one of the most powerful of
all numbers in cultural and religious systems worldwide (Farbridge 1970; Metzger and Coogan
1993; Schimmel 1993). Regardless of the multiple permutations and meaningful combinations
abstractable from numbers, within the Christian tradition of seventeenth-century English
colonists three numbers seem to have wielded the greatest symbolic meaning and magical power:
three (ternary/triad), five (quinary/quintet), and seven (septenary/heptad) (Woodfin 1942;
Farbridge 1970; Metzger and Coogan 1993; Schimmel 1993; Ryken et al 1998).
The following sections will examine the Christian meanings of the numbers three, five,
and seven and their uses in magical charms, remedies, and counter-witchcraft magic using a
variety of seventeenth-century source documents and artifactual evidence from Britain and
Colonial America to demonstrate the correlation between cosmological worldviews, numbers,
and magic.
Ternary
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Christian cosmology espouses a tripartite cosmos divided into two supernatural realms
(heaven and hell) and one mortal world sandwiched between. The vertical hierarchical
arrangement of these three realms also has implications for understanding the significance and
meaning of vertical and horizontal placement and association, which will be discussed in
relationship to numerology at the conclusion of this section. The tripartite structure of the
cosmos repeats in the triune godhead of Father-Son-Holy Ghost (Figure 3.1)—a construct that
serves as the numerical model as well as the source of supernatural power underlying magical
charms (Thomas 1971).
FIGURE 3.1. Christian Trinity. Woodcut from a Book of Hours, Paris, 1524.
Numerous magical written and spoken charms dating from antiquity to the nineteenth
century require the repetition of phrases or actions three times (or multiples of 3—usually 6, 9,
12, 15, and 21) and often include an invocation of the Trinity or other biblical figures.
Testimonies of suspected bewitchment or demonic temptation frequently claim three visitations,
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seductive attempts, or days elapsing during which the events transpired (Boyer and Nissenbaum
1977; Burr 2002). An example of this correlation of time with a ternary construct comes from
Cotton Mather’s (1692a:261,265) “A Brand Pluckt out of the Burning,” which is an account of
the sufferings of the apparently bewitched Mercy Short of New Hampshire that states, “after
what was little short of an Entire and a Total Fast for about Nine Dayes together, in those
miseries, at length she gained about Three Dayes Remission” and then again later “Shee having
obtained a liberty of eating for three dyaes after a fast of nine days, was immediately compelled
unto another fast, which lasted for about fifteen days together.”
Cotton Mather (1692b:142-159) in his treatise On Witchcraft, reminds readers of the
Devil’s three temptations of Jesus, which would certainly have been the model for the
seventeenth-century faithful describing their struggles against Satan’s minions. Likewise, it must
be remembered that Jesus’ resurrection occurs on the third day, after which he appeared three
times to his disciples. This idea of restoration through Christ from the grip of bewitchment would
have been an internalized belief for Puritans; thus, incorporating the numerical correlate of three
days to recovery or demise is culturally logical in Christian thought. The Bible, of course,
literally overflows with triads (Metzger and Coogan 1993; Schimmel 1993; Ryken et al. 1998), a
motif not lost on those who endeavored to live their lives as literally by the Holy Book as
possible.
The use of the number three is well documented in written charms, magical medicinal
cures, and magical material culture. The following few examples abstracted from scores of
similar charms and cures illustrate the widespread and apparently essential inclusion of ternary
elements as the efficacious catalyst in magical work:
Ady Candles in the Dark (1655) cited in Brand (1888:749-750)
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“An old woman in Essex, who was living in my time…every night she lay down to sleep
she charmed her bed, saying:
‘Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John,
Bless the bed that I lie on’
“This would she repeat three times.”
“Another old woman came into an house at a time when as the maid was churning of
butter, and having labored long and could not make her butter come, the old woman told
the maid what was to be done…they used a charm to be said over it, whilst yet it was in
beating, and it would come straightways, and that was this:
“Come butter come,
Peter stands at the Gate
Waiting for a butter’d cake,
Come butter come.”
Come butter come,
“This, said the old woman, being said three times, will make your butter come.”
John Aubrey (1670:87):
To cure the Tooth-Ach:
“Mars, hur, abursa, aburse”
Jesu Christ for Mary’s sake,
Take away this Tooth-Ach.”
Write the words three times; and as you say the words, let the party burn on paper, then
another, and then the last. He says, he saw it experimented, and the party “immediately
cured.”
John Aubrey’s (1686:12):
When I was a boy a charme was used for (I think) keeping away evill spirits: which was
to say thrice in a breath,
Three blew Beanes in a blew bladder,
Rattle, bladder, rattle.
For magical material culture, one of the most common occurrences of ternary elements
appears in or associated with witch bottles, devices used to identify and retaliate against a
suspected witch. Although witch bottle forms and contents vary (see the witch bottle chart,
Table 5.8), (Blagrave 1682; Merrifield 1955, 1987; Hoggard 2004; Becker 2005; Manning
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2012a, 2012b) they virtually always incorporate a ternary component as is illustrated in
Blagrave’s (1682:154) instructions from Introduction to Astrology on two ways to identify a
witch:
…stop the urine of the Patient close up in a bottle, and put into it three nails, pins or
needles, with a little white salt, keeping the urine always warm: if you let it remain long
in the bottle it will endanger the witch’s life.
In the same source, Blagrave provides an alternative method for countering bewitchment using
horseshoes that incorporates the ternary component as the magical catalyst:
…get two new horseshoes, heat one of them red hot, and quench him in the patients
urine, then immediately nail him on the inside of the threshold of the door with three
nails, the heel upwards: then having the patients urine set it over the fire, and set a trivet
over it, put into it three horsenails, and a little white salt: Then heat the other horseshoe
red hot, and quench him several times in the urine, and so let it boil and waste until all be
consumed; do this three times.
FIGURE 3.2. Gravestone of Sara Safford 1712, Merrimac Valley, MA.
Archaeologically, triads and multiples of threes manifest not only in witch bottle contents
or horseshoe nails, but are also frequently represented through symbolic figures or images such
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as in the number of petals on apotropaic (magically protective) daisy wheels (also called
hexafoils), triplicate intersecting circles, and triangles found inscribed near structural thresholds
like doors and windows, on mile or boundary markers, and on gravestones (Figure 3.2) (Ludwig
1966; Wasserman 1972; Jacobs 1973; Kull 1975; Duval and Rigby 1978; Bouchard 1991; Easton
1999a, 1999b, 2011; Gage and Gage 2003).
Other apotropaic markings, like the circles noted by researcher Timothy Easton (1999a,
1999b), occur in triplicate on hearthstones, doorstones, and gravestones and burned on rafters.
Lloyd et al.’s (2001) examination of tear-drop shaped burn marks on doors, rafters, and hearths
mentions “multiple groupings” but does not specify the actual number, an oversight not
uncommon even for those researchers specifically studying evidence of magical belief and
practice. Paying closer attention to the number of marks will potentially yield more examples of
magically associated numbers and objects. Additionally, triangles, the geometric triad, can be
found repeatedly on hearth lintel supports called witch posts (Figure 3.3), gravestones,
doorstones, and mile markers (Gage and Gage 2003).
FIGURE 3.3. Witch post. Ryedale Folk Museum, Hutton le Hole, England. Photo courtesy of
Ryedale Folk Museum.
.
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That the number three was, in fact, used magically is reinforced by Robert Calef’s
(1700:317) admonition in using it with such intent when he warns, “…I must earnestly Intreat all
my readers to beware of any superstitious conceits upon the Number Three....;” however, he
continues by admitting he has witnessed healing from bewitchment associated with three fasts
and three days of recovery. The plethora of charms, invocations, and material examples utilizing
the number three or its multiples could easily fill an entire volume. It would be misleading to
imply, however, that this particular number held a monopoly on magico-spiritual importance.
Quinary
As noted, each number has its own meaning, yet many are implicated with others in ways
other than as sums or multiples. The number five is one such case. Although the number five has
its own biblical associations, the most common quinary-based symbol in seventeenth-century
Anglo-American society was the pentagram or pentangle—a figure comprised of three
triangles—an observation certainly not lost on the devout Christian. When the human form and
the pentangle were overlain, a natural relationship was perceived, which is reiterated in humans
having five fingers per hand, five toes per foot, and five senses (Figure 3.4).
FIGURE 3.4. Pentagram and Pentangle of Solomon.
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These ideas find explicit expression in John Aubrey’s Remains of Gentilism and Judaism
(1687:51):
This figure of three triangles intersected and made of five lines, is called the
pentangle of Solomon, and when it is delineated on the body of a man, it is
pretended to touch and point out the five places wherein our Saviour was wounded.
And therefore there was an old superstitious conceit that this figure was a fuga
Daemonum, the Devils were afraid of it.
According to Shuffelton’s (2008:36) research on biblical numbers, there was understood to be a
correspondence:
…between the five wounds of Christ (in the hands, feet, and side), the five senses in
which he was afflicted, and the five senses (or “wits”) through which mankind can be
tempted. The series of fives applied to the five-pointed star on Gawain’s shield in Sir
Gawain in the Green Knight suggests how such correspondences could be used as a kind
of talismanic protection, providing both a key to understanding the hidden connections of
universal order and to overcoming the world’s dangers.
Numerous charms use the association of Christ, suffering, and the number five with
healing magic. An example from Reginald Scot (1584:141) illustrates such a charm:
There must be commended to some poore begger the saieng of five Pater nesters, and five
Aves, the first to be said in the name of the partie possessed, or bewitched; for that Christ
was led into the garden; secondlie, for that Christ did sweat both water and bloud;
thirdlie, for that Christ was condemned; fourthlie, for that he was crucified guiltless; and
fifthlie, for that he suffered to take awaie our sinnes.
As noted at the beginning of this section, cosmological understanding required a
consistency of ideas and associations across all domains of perception, thought, and belief to
provide a sense of cosmic interrelatedness and completeness. An instance of this
interconnectedness finds expression in the Doctrine of Signatures (Coles 1656:85; Culpeper
1814[1692]: v-vi) that proposes that all God’s plants have some physical attribute identifying
them with their uses or the diseases they are meant to treat. Leighton (1970:87) provides some
examples of this sympathetic association as it relates to disease:
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God was thought to have left little clues in the leaves of the plant, or its flowers
or roots or juice as to the disease or the organ for which it was intended, as see
liverwort’s leaf-shape and the spots on the leaves of lungwort, poppies for
hemorrhages and agrimony for jaundice, the root of mandrake for sterility,
birthwort for diseases of the uterus, and so on.
This same Doctrine of Signatures found application in identifying magically powerful
plants. One in particular was directly related to the number five and the pentangle. The rowan
tree or mountain ash (Sorbus aucuparia) was believed to be a powerfully protective agent against
witchcraft (Jones 1995; Paterson 1996; Gifford 2000) and was frequently planted at the four
corners of domestic structures or in the yard, an indicator useful for archaeologists locating a site
as well as evidence of magical practice and belief (Gazin-Schwartz 2001:273). The signature that
marks this tree as inherently protective is the pentagram on the base of each fiery red berry it
bears (Figure 3.5).
FIGURE 3.5. Rowan berry pentagrams. Photo by author.
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Like the ternary elements found in witch bottles and incised symbols, tangible quinary
magical forms can be seen in the archaeological record. In addition to the rowan berry
pentagrams, other quinary forms may manifest as carved five-petalled rosettes on gravestones, as
quintet grouping of objects or words, or as pentangle or pentagon designs in or on architectural
or other feature components and artifacts. The latter are exemplified in a pentagonal pit
containing five (or possibly more) headless chickens discovered in historic London Town,
Maryland by Al Luckenbach (2004) and a concealed bottle inscribed on one side with a
pentagram and located in the soffit of the Raitt Homestead Farm Museum in Eliot, Maine
(Manning 2012a, 2012b).
While apparently not as common (or at least not as recognized by researchers) as ternary
elements in magical usage, quinary symbolism still possessed compelling associations with
divine power that found expression in magical practice.
Septenary
The most common biblical number, seven, occurs over 500 times throughout the Bible,
and according to Ryken et al. (1998:774), “Of the numbers that carry symbolic meaning in
biblical usage, seven is the most important.” Perceived as the perfect number of God, it combines
the divine trinity with the earthly quatrain, and it represents the six days of creation and one day
of holy rest (Farbridge 1970; Metzger and Coogan 1993; Ryken et al. 1998). As the framework
for creation, it underlies all notions of cosmic structure and is, therefore, implicated in all other
aspects of order. Most directly related to this divine order and creative construct is the seven-day
week, one day of which is sacred. This seventh day, or Sabbath, signals a crucial differentiation
from the other six (Ryken et al. 1998:775). Associating this connotation of exceptionality and
divine power with a seventh occurrence could potentially manifest in magical practices.
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The most common use of the sevens found in magical belief seems to be the power
inherent in seventh sons of seventh sons or seventh daughters of seventh daughters to affect
cures, conjure spirits, or foretell the future (Leach 1950:999; Opie and Tatem 1989:346-347). It
appears to signify an ultimate ‘completeness’ pregnant with creative or generative potential.
From this perspective, frequency of the number seven in alchemical pursuits can be understood
as representing the creative, transformative source of the philosopher’s stone that was believed to
convert base metals into gold, cure all diseases, and indefinitely prolong human life (Pettigrew
1844).
The number seven does appear occasionally in folklore sources; for example, Kittredge
(1972:167) notes a countercharm for unbewitching butter churns by boiling butter, milk, seven
needles and nine pins and pouring the mixture into a churn. Ironically, although seven occurs
more frequently in Holy Scripture than any other number and has an especially powerful spiritual
association, there has been no reported observance of its use in archaeological contexts. This
omission may be more indicative of the lack of researcher knowledge and attention concerning
the importance and meaning of numbers than of an actual absence of septenary components in
magical material culture. Heptad and quintet numerical symbols may be so hyperobtrusive, so
blatantly obvious, that archaeologists have simply not registered such patterns as indicative of
purposeful and meaningful behavior. Reanalyzing both the contexts and attributes of previously
interpreted magically associated finds may reveal overlooked quinary and septenary aspects.
While this section has focused on numerology as an illustrative example of the magical
mindset of seventeenth-century Anglo-European Christians, as mentioned at the beginning, other
cosmological constructs dealing with orientation and implicated with numerological
representations would also likely be integrated into magical practice and potentially useful for
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archaeologically identifying such practice. One of these constructs is the vertical hierarchy of the
cosmos with the divine realm at the zenith, the human world occupying the middle zone, and the
demonic spirit world situated in the lowest depths. This hierarchy found explicit expression in
not only spatial order, but also in the triune inter-relational order of God, Human, and Nature
(which included the demonic spirit world). This order in turn established and reiterated
analogous political, social, and familial hierarchies (Norton 1996; St. George 1998). Uprightness
and its correlate ‘highness,’ corresponded to the godly, whereas ‘lowness’ both symbolized and
was literally the antithesis of the divine and rightness (Calvert 1992; St. George 1998). In
Calvert’s (1992:32-33) examination of childrearing, she explains how the importance of
verticality was of paramount concern:
American colonists regarded crawling as a demeaning, animalistic form of
locomotion beneath the dignity of any human being. Moving about on all
fours was fit only for beasts, savages, wild men, the insane, and the subjugated
as a token of their subjection….Western culture inculcated a very powerful
symbolic language of the hierarchy of things, from Hell below to Heaven above,
from the crawling of beasts to the marching of kings.
This vertical association had a lateral correspondence as well: up (or high/correctness)
correlated to the direction right and a forward orientation, while down (or low/incorrectness)
correlated to left and a rearward orientation. It should be no surprise that the Latin term for left is
sinister, which underscores the negative connotation attributed to left-ness and its other
associations of down and behind (Russell 1984:71). Additionally, the positive alignments were
equated with men and the negative ones with women (Needham 1973; Wile 1934). Again, these
associations of right with men and godliness find reiteration throughout the Bible. Wile’s
(1934:339-340) in-depth analysis of right and left in cultural and religious usage states
concerning the Bible, “In no instance is the left hand given a position of honor, superiority or
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righteousness.” Further, he breaks down every reference to right and left and notes that the right
hand has eighty mentions (all positive and ‘righteous’) compared to the twenty-one negative left
citations. The biblical establishment of left with iniquity can be summarily demonstrated by St.
Matthew 25:41, “Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, depart from me, ye cursed,
into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels.”
During a symposium on the material culture of magic at the 2012 Society for Historical
Archaeology conference, discussion with fellow presenters on the manifestation of right and left
within magical contexts prompted researchers to comment that they have never given thought to
the potential significance of these orientations. One scholar noted her research indicates that
concealed apotropaic footwear is predominately comprised of left shoes (77%). She was also
aware of one concealed cat that had had its left paw severed and intentionally positioned
(Manning 2012a). At the Rev. Richard Buck Site (44JC568) ca. 1630-1650, Jamestown,
Virginia, Maillos (1999: 35, 2000:42-43) reported the burial of a young woman between 18 and
24 years-old who had “at her left elbow…an Elizabethan sixpence, minted between 1582-1584.
This coin, a crossed variety, had been bent and broken in half with each coin half further folded
(likely around a ribbon or similar organic cordage) forming a bracelet.” These few instances
suggest that right and left orientations were deliberately incorporated into magical material
culture. It is certain that right/left concepts played a role in magical ritual as corroborated by
various authors discussing the required hand used to harvest magical plants or the proper
direction in which people or objects must move for rituals to be effective (e.g., Aubrey 1670,
1687; Whitlock 1992; Roud 2003). Moving toward the right, or sunwise/clockwise, appears to be
the norm for positive actions, while moving leftward, or widdershins/counterclockwise, was
often attributed to the rituals of witches, demons, or fairies. Understanding the associated
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meanings of high/low and right/left, their gendered implications, and their relationship to
numerical correspondences of magico-religious worldviews may assist archaeologists in both
recognizing artifacts as magical material culture and understanding them via the cultural logic of
the people who used and believed in them.
Locating and recognizing evidence for magical belief in seventeenth-century New
England necessitates not only a meticulous analysis of witchcraft court depositions, sermons,
diaries, and ‘physick’ and grimoire (recipe and spell) books for descriptions of charms and other
practices, but extends to a broader examination of all material culture upon which symbolic
designs were wrought (Mellinkoff 2004), and to all contexts in which the colonists sought to
effect a protective barrier between good and evil. For lay users of magic, the general intent was
protection from the maleficent powers of witches and other evils and was predicated on the
establishment of a system of boundaries that protected property and households:
It was as if the witch and her victim were battling back and forth across
a vital territory where boundaries had assumed the greatest possible significance….
Countermagic strategies were designed to establish clear and impermeable
boundaries… (Demos 2004:199).
In a wild new land, establishing clear boundaries between themselves and the fearful unknowns
would have been paramount. Applying magical symbols or devices to objects representing real
or metaphorical boundaries would have provided some sense of protection at these vulnerable
thresholds.
Puritans, because of their abhorrence of idolatry and their general preference for modesty
and simplicity in dress and furnishings, have been incorrectly assumed to be totally opposed to
ornamentation. In actuality, they produced a wide range of decorated objects from gravestones to
furniture to property markers ornately carved with recurring symbols as noted above in
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delineating ternary and quinary patterns (Ludwig 1966; Gramly 1981; Gorman and DiBlasi
1982; Hijiya 1983; Ulrich 1997; Easton 1999a, 1999b; Gage and Gage 2003; Mellinkoff 2004).
While it is reasonable to assume some designs were purely aesthetic and some religious, it is also
reasonable to expect that a people whose worldview was framed by supernatural parameters
would incorporate magically significant symbols into both the mundane and spiritual objects
they produced. Many of these symbols could have operated as both religious and magical
simultaneously. English examples of designs burned or carved into rafters, above doors, and on
hearth lintel supports (witchposts) for magical protection establish just such a traditional
precedent (Easton 1999a, 1999b, Lloyd et al. 2001; Hoggard 2004; Mellinkoff 2004; Ryedale
Folk Museum, personal communication 2010). Seventeenth-century New England boundary
stones, doorstones, gravestones, coffins, and hearths share similar iconography with these
English examples and with each other (Ludwig 1966; Benes 1978, 1992; Geddes 1981; Gramly
1981; Gorman and DiBlasi 1982; Fischer 1989; Gage and Gage 2003; Seeman 2010), but apart
from strictly religious interpretations, only Fischer and Gramly attribute magical meaning to the
symbols. Of course, as symbols, their meanings are neither univocal nor fixed. They are
collections of “qualities such as color, shape, and size…that are temporarily assembled and
experienced as meaningful by people” (Robb 1998:338) within a society and rooted in
correspondences with cultural worldviews. The connection between the similar circles, whorls,
rosettes, hexafoils, spirals, hearts, and floral and geometric motifs found on these stones and
those decorating furniture, chests (e.g., Figures 3.6 and 3.7), hearth supports, coffins, and
possibly needlework have yet to be thoroughly analyzed. Likewise, a comparative study
between New England symbols and English correlates remains to be done. Robb (1998:338)
reiterates the importance of understanding the connections between such symbols and their use
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as a means to better interpret the past when he states, “Because how symbols were used was as
important to their meaning as any pre-fixed referent, archaeologists have to carry out close
contextual analysis.” Even a cursory analysis of the repetitive motifs found on such a wide
spectrum of objects, indicates that the New England Puritan colonists embarked upon journeys
fraught with dangerous unknowns with an arsenal of traditional magical expressive modes based
upon and justified through a complex cosmological framework.
FIGURE 3.6. Writing Box with hexafoil carving, 1659. © Victoria and Albert Museum,
London.
FIGURE 3.7. (below) American chest with whorl carving, 1663-1680. The Metropolitan
Museum of Art, 2010.
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Although historical knowledge gleaned from court depositions, legal statutes, spell
books, almanacs, and diaries provides much information about what seventeenth-century New
England Puritans believed in and how they employed magic in various forms to mitigate the
dangers inherent in their world, there remains much we as twenty-first century scholars do not
know or understand about the Puritans’ supernatural mindset. Historical documentation and
limited archaeological evidence indicates that New England colonists transplanted at least some
of their traditional understanding concerning the spiritual nature of the cosmos. Excavated witch
bottles along with written descriptions of the making and using of this form of apotropaia to
identify and destroy a suspected bewitcher show a direct line of continuity to English precedents
(Merrifield 1955, 1988; Becker 1978, 1980, 2005; Baker 2007). Yet, insight into a few magical
forms and practices remains inadequate for scholarly understanding of ambiguous
generalizations and documentation not analyzed for gendered differences, contextual
relationships, or spatial/temporal correlates. Some of these patterns have begun to materialize out
of the extant written records of seventeenth-century New England presented here, but a looming
query still remains: How are these beliefs and practices manifested in the archaeological record?
Simply discovering a witch bottle under the threshold or a concealed shoe in a wall provides
nothing more than a substantiation of historical facts. To move beyond such a tautology, the
presentation above shows how to extend the current knowledge of magical objects and practices
to include understanding of the nuances, circumstances, and practitioners of magical practice and
to determine if particular forms of magic can be used as determinates for gendered presence and
behavior. Having a greater conception of the underlying logic of the Anglo-European Christian
magical mindset provides the appropriate cultural lens through which the New England Puritan
experience can be comprehended. The following section considers the social and natural settings
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of the high stress circumstances that epitomized the daily experiences for these immigrants,
which in turn affected the expression of the magical worldview discussed above.
3.3 Origins, Motivations, Expectations, and Tribulations
3.3.1 Origins and Motivations
The beliefs held by seventeenth-century Puritans, although explicitly espoused to be
divorced from Catholic superstition and Popery, were a complex legacy of pre-Christian,
Classical, Catholic, and Protestant concepts concerning the nature and empirical agency of good
and evil (Thomas 1971; Kittredge 1972; Kieckhefer 1989; Bailey 2007; Russell and Alexander
2007). According to Karlsen (1987:2-3):
The colonists shared with their counterparts in England many assumptions
about what kinds of people witches were, what kinds of practices they engaged
in, and where and how they attained their supernatural power. They also knew
how to detect witches and how to rid their communities of the threat witches
posed. Indeed, belief in the existence and danger of witches was so widespread,
at all levels of society, that disbelief was itself suspect.
While there were some commonly held ideas, like the power of sympathetic magic with its
various permutations of like images, contiguous parts, and contagious imprinting, specific
variations manifested in localized geographic areas (Davies 2007; Kieckhefer 2000; Kittredge
1972; Mauss 1972[1950]; Thomas 1971). In attempting to uncover the traditional beliefs carried
to the New England colonies of Connecticut (and New Haven), Maine, Massachusetts, New
Hampshire, and Rhode Island, a reconstruction of those colonists’ places of origin becomes
essential (e.g., Map 3.l). Although often glossed in historical and archaeological colonial studies
as a homogenous and ubiquitous ‘British’ cultural mass, Lawrence (2003:4) stresses that:
British is an ethnic identity….No ethnic group can be conceived of as a
bounded, static or homogenous entity, and this is certainly true of the
British….Individuals are socialized within particular cultural systems that
shape and are shaped by individual practice, and these practices and beliefs,
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or habitus (Bourdieu 1972), are shared with others within the same cultural system….
As ethnicity is relationally defined against the otherness of someone else, how that
‘other’ is constituted will help to determine which of the available elements of
habitus will be incorporated in an ethnic identity within a particular context.
Not only can it not be assumed that all New England groups shared exactly the same
ideas and practices, but the fact that culture and custom are fluid and dynamic and adapt to new
contexts must also be taken under consideration. Allen (1981) uses five communities in
Massachusetts to illustrate the simultaneously conservative and dynamic nature of colonial
experience. His study revealed that each of these towns perpetuated the agricultural, social,
religious, and political structures of the particular English locale from which the town’s
inhabitants originated. At the same time, their new environment necessitated improvisation and
substitution of behaviors and methods when traditional modes proved untenable. Most
importantly, Allen’s (1981:8) research confirms that “subcultural patterns of behavior, often
manifested in regional and local differences, were a persistent phenomenon through the greater
part of the seventeenth century in Massachusetts.” In addition to intra-colony differences,
Koehler (1980) points out how different the colonies could be from one another in terms of
religious tolerance, gender equality, ideas of criminality and punishment, acceptable grounds for
divorce, and willingness to prosecute accused witches. He dedicates an entire chapter to what he
calls “The Rhode Island Alternative” to illustrate that within the Puritan stronghold of New
England, Rhode Island had a “singularly un-Puritan cast of mind” (Koehler 1980:301). Rhode
Island became the sanctuary for those lapsed or outcast Puritans from other colonies who sought
a different spiritual or personal path from that allowed or tolerated in more orthodox Puritan
areas like Massachusetts and Connecticut. Stemming originally from the same English homecounties as the colonists of the stricter Puritan communities, the Rhode Islanders demonstrate
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how culture and custom can acquire alternative forms in response to a range of variables in a
new context. Even though all Anglo-European colonists shared the same general cosmological
worldview, there existed a range of variability in the behaviors of those colonists as evidenced by
the disagreements between colonies in matters of religious and legal tolerance. Because Rhode
Island stands out so distinctly from its New England neighbors, it provides an ideal area for
comparative analysis with Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Hampshire, and Maine.
MAP 3.1. Origins of British New England Colonists. America: A Concise History, Third
Edition. © 2006 Bedford/St. Martin’s.
Fischer (1989) attempts to narrowly define the settlement of Massachusetts as initially
predominantly from East Anglia (60%); however, as Anderson (1991) and Greene (1991) note,
Fischer includes a much larger demographic area within his ‘East Anglia’ than is usually denoted
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in regional studies and fails to demonstrate a distinctive East Anglian culture transplanted unto
New England soil. The other 40% of immigrants Fischer cites as originating from thirty-four
other English counties, with a slight concentration from the area where the western counties of
Dorset, Somerset, and Wiltshire intersect (Fischer 1989:34). He notes that most of these western
immigrants diverged from Massachusetts Bay Colony to establish their own distinctive
communities in Connecticut, Nantucket, and Maine, leaving Massachusetts primarily a seat for
East Anglian and, specifically, Essex County, England colonists. This correlation with Essex
leads Fischer (1989:128) to compare witchcraft cases in East Anglia and Massachusetts, noting
that, “In England, every quantitative study has found that recorded cases of witchcraft were most
frequent in the eastern counties from which New England was settled.” Demos’s (2004a:12)
research indicates, “…interestingly, the figures look most nearly equivalent when New England
is matched with the county of Essex alone. Essex was beyond a doubt a center of witch-hunting
within the mother country; and Essex supplied a disproportionately large complement of settlers
for the new colonies across the seas.” Both Fischer and Demos vacillate between identifying
specific areas (e.g., Massachusetts, Essex County) and ambiguous regions (e.g., New England,
East Anglia) and attempting comparisons without clearly defining the geographic parameters for
those comparisons. As a result, identifying the origin of and ascribing particular traditional
beliefs and practices to any given colonial setting becomes problematic. Robert Anderson (1995)
attempted to correlate New England colonists arriving between 1620 and 1633 with their English
home counties, a task he could only accomplish for two-fifths of those whose names were extant.
Table 3.1 shows the origins of those he was able to positively trace.
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TABLE 3.1. Regional origins of immigrants to New England, 1620-1633 (N=409)___________
Region
Percent
_____________________________________________________________________________
North, Northwest
West, Southwest
Midlands, Central
Southeast
London
Netherlands
2.4
21.8
17.4
40.3
10.5
7.6
Note: North, Northwest = Lancaster (3), York (6), Cheshire (1); West, Southwest = Shropshire (3), Gloucester (2),
Devon (18), Somerset (24), Dorset (27), Wiltshire (3), Berkshire (1), Hampshire (7), Warwick (4); Midlands,
Central = Worcester (7), Nottingham (4), Leicester (5), Lincoln (26), Northampton (4), Oxford (1), Buckingham
(1), Hertford (11), Bedford (8), Derby (2); Southeast = Norfolk (14), Suffolk (54), Essex (55), Kent (15), Surrey
(16), Sussex (1), Cambridge (6), Middlesex (2), Huntingdon (2); London = 43; Netherlands = 31
Source: Robert Charles Anderson (1995).
A more localized microscale examination of both English and colonial customs is required in
order to trace and understand the conservative, dynamic, and adaptive aspects of specific magical
beliefs and practices in New England (Little and Shackel 1989).
The figures presented by Fischer (1989), Anderson (1991), Greene (1991), and Demos
(2004a) all neglect inclusion of those immigrants and sailors (while not great in numbers) hailing
from Ireland, Scotland, and Wales that contributed their localized beliefs to the English
admixture (Heyrman 1984). It is important to include these other localities when assessing what
supernatural beliefs may have found expression in colonial New England in response to the
environmental, sociopolitical, and cultural challenges inherent in settling a new world that were
shared by all (as an example of the range of belief in supernatural beings in addition to witches
held by the English, Irish, Scottish, and Welsh, see Appendix B).
3.3.2 Environmental Challenges
The first Puritan immigrants made an enormously optimistic leap of faith to undertake the
creation of their New World Order, naïvely and confidently expecting to arrive at a land of
abundance and prosperity. William Cronon (1983), in his ecological history of New England
[132]
through culture contact and colonization, explains how accounts of virtually infinite numbers of
animals, fish, birds, trees, and wild fruits and berries mislead new immigrants into believing
subsistence in the new land would require little effort. Neither were they sufficiently informed of
the extreme variation of topography, soil types, and plant and animal life. The descriptions they
received encompassed only limited coastal or riverine areas and were confined to spring and
summer observations. In short, they arrived at a world that did not coincide with their
preconceived expectations (Cronon 1983; Philbrick 2006). Mayflower passenger and governor
of Plymouth Colony from 1621 to 1651, William Bradford, upon landing at what was to become
Plymouth Plantation, substantiates their disappointment:
…sharp and violent, and subject to cruel and fierce storms, dangerous to travel
[even] to known places,….full of wild beasts and wild men…Neither could they
as it were, go to the top of Pisgah to view from this wilderness a more goodly
country to feed their hopes; for which way soever they turned their eyes (save
toward the heavens) they could find little solace or content in respect of any
outward objects (cited in Bercovitch 1975:45).
This was a world that required an extensive process of landscape learning on their part before
successful settlement could be achieved.
Rockman (2003:4) posits that three basic forms of environmental data combined in
varying degrees and acquired over differing temporal spans comprise a workable knowledge of a
given landscape. Of course, this process is a dynamic one in which the landscape learners in turn
alter the given landscape throughout each step. She labels these forms as: locational, limitational,
and social:
Locational knowledge includes information relating to spatial and physical
characteristics of particular resources….Limitational knowledge refers to
familiarity with the usefulness and reliability of various resources, including
the combination of multiple resources into a working environment….Social
knowledge is the collection of social experiences that serves as a means of
transforming the environment or a collection of natural resources into a
[133]
human landscape (Rockman 2003:4-6).
Of the three, Rockman cites locational as the easiest and quickest to acquire with the most
pronounced elements like water sources, topographical features, and some obvious food
resources locatable within days, weeks, or months. Limitational knowledge, however, can take
up to a generation or two before the cycles of weather, seasonal foodstuffs, and uses of particular
resources are observed and learned. Of the three, social knowledge requires the longest to
acquire, as it incorporates socio-politically imprinted and associated connections with the land
that accrue over several generations (Rockman 2003:4-6).
The first immigrants, and those who subsequently arrived and pushed further into the
unsettled reaches, lacked all three forms. Additionally, they encountered all three types of
obstacles, as delineated by Rockman, that bar access to the environmental information they
needed. Population, social, and knowledge barriers may affect the acquisition of the three forms
of environmental knowledge to varying degrees. According to Rockman (2003:15), population
barriers relate to the “compatibility with resident population[s]; considerations include
both…population density and relations/compatibility with respect to economic system[s].”
Related to population barriers, social barriers include the “resident population’s defense of
territories [and] information storage and transfer systems” (Rockman 2003:15), or in other words
their willingness and ability to share their knowledge with outsiders. Finally, knowledge barriers
refer to the “existence of usable, previously collected information” (Rockman 2003:15). Puritan
colonists arrived in New England with virtually no usable a priori knowledge of the new
landscape, which represented their first obstacle (knowledge barrier). Second, they intruded
upon an already inhabited land without consideration or knowledge of the carrying capacity of
that environment or of the cultural compatibility with the indigenous population (population
[134]
barrier). In fact, they arrived with firmly entrenched notions that this new world was theirs for
the taking. As Robert Cushman (1622) states in Mourt’s relation, a relation or journal of the
English plantation settled at Plymouth in New England, by certain English adventurers both
merchants and others (cited in Main 2001:19):
But some will say, what right have I to go live in the heathens’ country? This
then is a sufficient reason to prove our going thither to live lawful: their land
is spacious and void, and there are few and do but run over the grass, as do also
the foxes and wild beasts. They are not industrious, neither have they art,
science, skill, or faculty to use either the land or the commodities of it, but all
spoils, rots, and is marred for want of manuring, gathering, ordering, etc.
Third, the combined native defensive stance and the colonial reluctance to learn from and
emulate sustainable native environmental practices precluded effective knowledge transfer
across cultures (social barrier) (Cronon 1983; Blanton 2003:196; Philbrick 2006).
Compounding the initial difficulties inherent in learning and adjusting to a new
landscape, especially one whose realities proved significantly more difficult than expected, was
the fact that many of the first immigrants were not farmers or husbandmen. Although they
brought livestock and provisions, the majority of the colonists hailed from the urban artisan class
and was unskilled in the type of agricultural labor required for transforming New England into
an ‘English’ agricultural area (Fischer 1989). Virginia Anderson’s (1991:4-5) analysis of 590
immigrants whose originating locale could be verified found that 364 were from urban market
centers, and of those, 200 came from towns exceeding 3,000. Using data abstracted from
Virginia Anderson (1991) and Robert Anderson (1995), Main (2001:33) constructed the
information exhibited in Table 3.2 to explicate the demographic composition of New England
immigrants:
[135]
TABLE 3.2. Occupations of male immigrants, age 15+, to New England, 1620-1638 (%)____
Occupation
Gentry
Professions
Commerce
Marine
Cloth Manufacturing
Other Manufacturing
Agriculture
Servant
1620-1629
1630-1633
1635-1638
% (N=94)
% (N=300)
% (N=219)
13
12
26
11
5
19
4
10
16
8
20
10
7
27
5
8
0
2
1
1
16
21
22
37
As this table indicates, the typical male immigrant to New England for the first decade of
colonization originated from urban settings and occupations. Those with some farming skill were
still disadvantaged, however, as the climate of New England proved to be both considerably
wetter and colder with shorter growing seasons than their home counties. The seventeenthcentury experienced the Little Ice Age that kept average temperatures low, occasioned frequent
and violent storms, and caused extremely cold winters making traditional English agricultural
practices untenable (Cronon 1983; Fischer 1989). In addition to climatic incompatibility, many
of the crops familiar to English farmers were also unsuited to New England’s topography and
soil composition.
These unexpected climatic extremes and the colonists’ own unpreparedness resulted in
high mortality rates. “At Plymouth alone, half the Pilgrims were dead before the first winter was
over” (Cronon: 1983:36). Those arriving in the summer of 1630 with John Winthrop’s fleet,
having brought insufficient supplies with them, expected both houses and ample provisions
would be awaiting them in Salem or Charlestown. Neither was the case and hundreds died before
[136]
a ship bearing food and supplies arrived the following February (Main 2001:41). For colonists
that did survive their initial landings, Kupperman (1979), although speaking specifically of
Jamestown, Virginia colonists, notes that it took approximately a year for immigrants to recover
from the transatlantic voyage and acclimate to their new situation. This adjustment period,
known as ‘seasoning,’ entailed recuperation from a complex combination of physical and
psychological ailments like “apathy, inactivity, …anorexia” and malnutrition (Blanton
2003:195). Kupperman (1979:39) says malnutrition “interacted with the psychological effects of
isolation and despair and each intensified the other.” New England colonists presumably would
have suffered similar adjustment issues.
A passenger on one of the Winthrop ships, Thomas Dudley, later wrote, “Salem, where
we landed, pleased us not” (cited in Fischer 1989:55). Not only did the rocky and wild terrain
fall short of their paradisiacal expectations, but their weakened conditions further hampered their
ability to cope with the hardships before them. Among those arriving in Massachusetts Bay in
June 1630 were many weak from the long voyage and suffering from scurvy. In addition to those
who perished during the transatlantic voyage, once on land virtually every family lost members
to feverish death requiring the burial of several bodies every day. Fearing for their own survival
in these desperate circumstances, nearly one hundred colonists decided to return to England
almost immediately (Fischer 1989).
Colonists soon discovered their new land was literally filled with life threatening dangers.
The forests teemed with large predatory animals like bears, wolves, and mountain lions that did
not exist in England; the indigenous peoples appeared to colonists to be the embodiment of
demons; and the land and climate fatally took their toll as colonists struggled to adapt (Cronon
[137]
1983). An additional aspect that would have intensified the fear associated with these dangers
concerns the beliefs and attitudes about darkness in general and nighttime in particular. Folklore
FIGURE 3.8. Dancing in forest under the full moon was associated with communing with the
devil. Woodcut from Cotton Mather’s On Witchcraft, 1692.
sources reveal the connection between darkness and forests. Forests and nighttime provided
cover for supernatural denizens like fairies and their ilk (see Appendix B), which could prove
dangerous to humans and domestic livestock (Demos 1970; Bourne 1977[1725]; Porteous
2002[1928]; Briggs 2003[1967], 1978, 1976; Ekirch 2005; Koslofsky 2011). So, too, did the
darkness and forest provide camouflage for criminals, and in the case of New England, Indians.
According to Koslofsky (2011), Ekirch (2005) and Demos (2004b), however, the darkness of
nighttime had even deeper meanings for seventeenth-century Anglo-Europeans. Darkness itself
was the domain of the Devil and, thus, the time when evil spirits and beings roamed free. The
[138]
darkness of night and forest combined provided the setting most associated with interactions
between the Devil and his human converts (Figures 3.8 and 3.9) (Demos 2004b:6).
FIGURE 3.9. Night as a time for heightened supernatural power: transformation, flying, and
mischief. Seventeenth-century English woodcut.
Night air was believed to be a pestilent vapor that could cause illness and death just by breathing
it. Even the language used to describe the coming of night reveals the belief that night was a
palpable, negative entity that threatened human well-being: “Evening does not arrive, it
“thickens.” Wayfarers are “overtaken” [by night].” Night ‘falls.’ (Ekirch 2005:xxxi). These
impressions were probably even more pronounced in colonial landscapes characterized by small
isolated communities. During this period, Ekirch (2005:xxxii) observes:
For most persons, the customary name for nightfall was “shutting-in,” a time
to bar doors and bolt shutters once watchdogs had been loosed abroad. For night—
its foul and fetid air, its preternatural darkness—spawned uncertain perils, both
real and imaginary.
If night stimulated such fears in a familiar and comparatively less dangerous setting, its
power to generate similar fears in the wilderness of New England must have been amplified and
[139]
compounded by the deep darkness of the forests, the geographical and cultural isolation of the
colonists, and the unfamiliarity with the landscape. Night’s fearful connotation, however,
transcended its tangible reality. Demos extends the correlation of night with evil even further
suggesting that night served New England Puritans as the ultimate metaphor for everything
mysterious, unknown, dangerous, and deadly, including their own sinful darker sides (Demos
2004b:6). The association of darkness with the demonic found expression in a variety of
instances; for example, the devil was referred to as the prince or lord of darkness and mishaps
occurring in daylight were more likely to be attributed to natural or accidental causes while those
happening at night were generally considered produced by supernatural forces (Demos 2004b;
Koslofsky 2011). Demos (2004b:4) notes that darkness, requiring the boundaries of house and
door to stand between it and the people it endangered, simultaneously acted as a barrier itself
between the family units inhabiting each household:
The neighbors—all the folk with whom, in the daytime one had worked or bartered
or gossiped—were now, and throughout the period of darkness to come, set apart.
In a sense, experience at night was privatized: each man, woman, or child enclosed
within his or her own family. Then, next morning when the sun came up, the
boundaries expanded again, and one’s ties to the wider community were restored.
This observation has significant implications that will be made clearer in Chapter 5 when data
from the witch trial records are presented demonstrating the interrelationship between boundaries
and perceptions of vulnerability and conflict.
The environmental conditions, including the ecology, climate, and natural rhythms of day
and night, challenged Puritan colonists by confronting them with extremes to which they had
little or no experience. They did, however, have experience in England with lesser degrees of
some of these environmental factors (storms and other inclement weather, infertility of land or
livestock, fears of the ‘night-season’) that they attempted to mitigate through the use of magical
[140]
protection (Evans 1971; Thomas 1971; Kittredge 1972; Davies and Blécourt 2004; Ekirch 2005;
Davies 2007, 2009; Koslofsky 2011). One of these climatic elements that caused excessive
anxiety was thunder. As noted New England during the seventeenth century experienced more
frequent and more violent storms than were known in England (Cronon 1983). While these
tempests alone were cause for concern, the widespread belief that storms—particularly thunder
and lightning—were providential (sent by God as punishment) or conversely were engendered
by witches and the Devil contributed greatly to New England colonists’ anxiety (Figure 3.10).
Thunder, more so than lightning, was thought to cause death and destruction, as sounds
(including the spoken word) “had intelligent sources with intent and power…Sounds did things
in the world. They moved people about, struck them, and in the case of thunder, actually killed”
(Rath 2003:11). Thunder’s destructive power, like all other aspects of the cosmos for
seventeenth-century New Englanders, was directly related to biblical conceptions, in this case,
the “seven thunders” that presage the apocalypse and last judgment (Rath 2003:20). Numerous
accounts survive from both Britain and New England of deaths and property damage attributed
to the sonic force of thunder. Faced with the magnitude of New England’s environmental
ordeals, Puritans’ recourse to magical charms against these difficulties seems highly probable.
FIGURE 3.10. The Devil and host of demons creating thunder and storms on house roof. From
frontice piece of Saducismus Triumphatus, 1682.
[141]
In his 1629 treatise on gardening, John Parkinson (1976[1629]:1) makes an astute
observation that transcends mere commentary on the luxury of selecting the perfect gardening
spot and equally describes the general situation experienced by most colonists in their new
habitation:
The several situations of mens dwellings, are for the most part unavoideable and
unremoveable; for most men cannot appoint forth such a manner of situation for
their dwelling, as is most fit to avoide all the inconveniences of winde and weather,
but must bee content with such as the place will afforde them…
The best situations for their towns, houses, fields, and gardens proved difficult, if not impossible
to acquire in the rocky, forested, swampy, and harshly alien landscapes of New England. But as
Parkinson sagely notes, people must strive to make their situations workable and be contented
with the result. In the rugged, unforgiving wilds of New England, establishing homes in
situations “unavoideable and unremoveable” surely offered opportunities to employ magical
assistance as well as religious faith and physical labor to transform their dangerous
circumstances into ones more pacified.
3.3.3 Native Contact and Interaction
Prior to their arrival in New England, English Puritans’ conceptualization of the
indigenous peoples they would encounter had been shaped by what Simmons (1981:56)
described as “a mythical model that originated in their Christian past.” The Native Americans
depicted in European woodcuts and paintings since the fifteenth century seemed to paradoxically
embody both the idealism of Classical form and the naked savagery of barbarism (Barber and
Berdan 1998; Loren 2008). These images and the Puritan cosmology comprised of forces of
good and evil embroiled in a continuous struggle combined to create a framework from which
colonists could “comprehend evil both within and outside themselves” and thus “interpret
cultural differences between themselves and the native people whom they encountered”
[142]
(Simmons 1981:56). For the most part, the English colonists viewed native people as an inverse
to everything they construed as Godly and, thus, exemplified violation of Puritan codes of
‘normalcy’ and righteousness.
When considering cultural conceptions of normalcy, it is helpful to contemplate three
categories through which normalcy is determined and weighed: physical, behavioral, and
customary. The physical category includes expectations for ordinary variations and responses in
regards to both human and natural states of health, disease, and death. Thus, human or animal
birth defects; mental illness; and inexplicable physical failings or abilities may be construed as
signs of monstrosity. The behavioral category comprises issues of extreme gender role violation;
savage or bizarre violence, and deviant sexual behavior like bestiality and necrophilia
(Kamensky 1997; Karlsen 1998). The final type, customary, refers to the vilification of other
cultural groups by targeting their alteric foodway, sartorial, religious, and warcraft customs as
barbaric, demonic, or monstrous (Fishbein and Ajzen 1975; Briggs 1996; Barth 1998; Loren
2008).
To create and maintain a righteous, legitimate, and recognizable identity for themselves
against which they could compare and measure their opposite, New England colonists
manifested images and ideologies of demonism. Anyone or anything conveying physical,
behavioral, or customary attributes that threatened their established worldview was interpreted as
dangerous to the world order; thus, New Englanders projected their ideas of monstrosity
(witchcraft or demonism) onto their native neighbors, as well as onto those in their own
communities who violated their socio-religious expectations like Quakers, Antinomians, and
Anabaptists. Such vilification created justification for their own violence against outsiders.
Simmons (1981:65) states, “…Puritan war against Indians was war against devils or the agents
[143]
of devils. Captivity by Indians was interpreted as a journey into Hell.” In fact, redeemed
captives’ descriptions of their Indian captors were virtually indistinguishable from their
descriptions of the Devil (Starkey 1963[1949]). Identifying Indians with the forces of evil
allowed Puritans to fit these alteric people into their framework of good and evil and cast the
native peoples as yet another of those malign forces sent by God to test them.
MAP 3.2. Native settlements and Trails. Used by permission of Nipmuc NIAC.
Initially, of course, the arrival of Anglo immigrants at Plymouth in November of 1620
without sufficient provisions, shelter, or knowledge of the landscape created a crisis situation in
which their very survival depended upon the resources and assistance of the native inhabitants.
Vastly outnumbered, disadvantaged in virtually all practical respects in a foreign world, and
[144]
essentially cut off from their own cultural group, resources, and land, these colonists had little
choice but to civilly engage with the local people, even though the natives represented the
antithesis of Christian humanity (Map 3.2). Although treaties and alliances were struck between
the colonists and particular chiefs (or sachems), like that between the Pilgrims and Massasoit of
the Pokanokets in 1621, neither colonists nor Indians did so out of mutual friendship and trust.
Rather these agreements acted as tenuous constraints meant to alleviate potential threats by other
native groups or between the signees (Philbrick 2006:97-99). The peace such treaties were
intended to secure proved fragile at best. Through a complex of power plays by various native
tribes aggravated by the ever-increasing and subsuming presence of Anglo-European colonists,
the region erupted into a series of Indian wars, the most destructive of which, known as King
Philip’s War, occurring in 1675. Although many Indians attempted to remain neutral and
peacefully outside the conflict, “by July 1675, the hysteria of war had taken hold of New
England…[and] most English inhabitants had begun to view all Indians with racist contempt and
fear” (Philbrick 2006:251). Even the Christianized ‘Praying Indians’ became suspect and found
themselves incarcerated, enslaved, or worse. During the middle and late decades of the
seventeenth century, numerous colonial residences and towns were destroyed and inhabitants
slain in raids by local Indian war parties. In some instances, they abducted captives to either keep
or sell to the Catholic French—either fate considered by the Anglo Protestant colonists as
synonymous with being sold to the Devil (Demos 1994; Philbrick 2006). The ever-present
anxiety and tension between the native peoples of New England and the Anglo-Europeans
colonists would not subside until the native peoples were virtually displaced from the highly
populated and cosmopolitan Eastern Shore by the beginning of the eighteenth century. At this
point in time only in the more remote interior regions inhabited by native tribes, were Anglo
[145]
colonists still fearful of Indian attack and abduction—a theme that would continue to accompany
the relentless pushing back of the American frontier.
3.3.4 Colonial Society
Colonists had more to contend with than just the threat of Indian attack. Attack from
within represented an equally dangerous peril to their mission. Far from realizing a utopian ideal,
Puritan communities experienced internal strife from the beginning. For example, the
Mayflower Compact was, in fact, a document drawn up and signed while the Mayflower was still
in route to the New World to alleviate the social quarrels and “mutinous speeches” that broke out
aboard ship (Demos 1970:5). It was not a matter of conflict over inequitable distribution of
authority or resources, as Puritan social structure mirrored and endorsed their larger hierarchical
English culture that espoused God’s natural division of humankind into those of greater and
lesser virtue and rank (Rutman 1965; Morgan 1966; Lockridge 1981; Norton 1996; Main 2001).
Of particular account was the fact that not all the passengers shared the same religious vision or
were even part of the original Pilgrim group that had commissioned the Mayflower voyage.
Several ‘strangers’ had taken the places vacated by original group members due to various
unfortunate circumstances (Philbrick 2006:26). Rather, as with any population of diverse people,
personality clashes, disagreements, and other sundry tensions, conflicts would naturally find
expression in these newly formed polities. In fact, their exceptional circumstances, which
included having to establish an entire society with legal, governing, civic, economic, and
religious institutions in relative isolation while contending with environmental hardships and
fighting or otherwise negotiating with Native presence, no doubt heightened tensions normally
associated with close community living.
[146]
MAP 3.3. Village settlement types. America: A Concise History, Third Edition. © 2006
Bedford/St. Martin’s.
Beyond the usual community conflicts can be added those particular to insular groups
that strove to restrict membership to like-minded members while erecting barriers against
outsiders—a difficult task when ‘strangers’ have been a part of the social matrix since the
beginning. To both protect themselves from Indian attack and the supernatural dangers
associated with forests and wilderness, and to establish tightly knit and exclusive communities,
most towns followed the nucleated village model (Map 3.3 and Figure 3.11). These village plans
provided roughly concentric zones of ever increasing danger radiating out from the village
center, which was metaphorically and literally embodied in the meeting house that housed and
represented both spiritual and sociopolitical authority; thus, the village center offered the greatest
sense of security (both physical and spiritual) and the forest lying on the furthest periphery
[147]
lodged the most dire dangers to body and soul. Lockridge provides an exemplar of such an
insular nucleated community when he cites the Dedham Covenant, a document set forth by the
founders of Dedham, Massachusetts in 1636 to explicitly pledge, “That we shall by all means
labor to keep off from us all such as are contrary minded, and receive only such unto us as may
be probably of one heart with us...” (1970:5). Such exclusionary policies were more the norm
than the exception for the original Puritan communities (Rutman 1965; Demos 1970, 2004a;
Labaree 1972; St. George 1998). However, as populations grew, subsequent generations moved
from town centered residences to isolated farmsteads, and participation in broader economic
systems gained precedence, sustaining insular communities became increasingly difficult if not
impossible (Rutman 1965; Demos 1970; Lockridge 1970, 1981; Wood 1988). The gradual
dissolution of these bounded communities generated even more tension between and among the
citizenry (Demos 1970, 2004a, 2004b; Koehler 1980; St. George 1998). Historians have often
associated a breakdown of traditional beliefs and values with this dissolution of nucleated
villages and expansion of commercial ventures, but Heyrman’s (1984:18) study of seventeenthcentury Marblehead and Gloucester, Massachusetts challenges this assessment:
…the conversion to a trading economy did not precipitate a sweeping, uniform
set of changes in provincial seaports. Instead of confirming the conventional view
that the Puritan communal order collapsed under the pressure of economic
expansion, the evolution of Gloucester and Marblehead illustrates the strength and
resilience of traditional patterns of association and inherited beliefs and values.
Included in these “inherited beliefs and values” were the shared worldviews concerning the
existence of witches and the power of supernatural forces. She notes that a review of the Essex
Court Records demonstrates that (Heyrman 1984:41):
the incidence of slander and allegations of witchcraft, its most extreme form,
was generally higher in colonial communities that were, like early Gloucester,
isolated and lacking in established social leadership and strong religious authority.
[148]
FIGURE 3.11. Concentric zones of security for nucleated village.
FOREST
AGRICULTURAL
VILLAGE
GREEN
MEETING
HOUSE
HOUSE
LOTS
Though witchcraft allegations appear to peak during highly stressful times, as one would expect,
the belief in such danger does not disappear until a major worldview paradigm shift occurs—a
[149]
shift much more profound than the acquisition of economic and political stability, as the late
seventeenth-century Salem witchcraft crisis illustrates.
To sustain the Puritan quest for a Godly covenant and keep their towns unified, town
leaders like those from Dedham, Massachusetts, were “empowered to inquire into private lives,
ordering amendment where amendment was due…” (Lockridge 1970:15). This empowerment
was predicated upon the belief that individual sin represented both group sin and potential for
God’s punishment upon the whole community. Thus, it was the Puritan’s moral duty to watch
and listen for and report breaches of covenant. Sin, far from being a private personal affair by
Puritan understanding, required public acknowledgment and consequence for the good of all. To
police and correct these breaches of covenant, a stringent legal system ensured a close managing
of virtually every aspect of an individual’s life. Known as ‘Blue Laws,’ (Table 3.3) (Randal nd)
these directives existed in every colony to maintain control and order in a world perceived as
vast and chaotic.
William Bradford reflected in 1642 on the ‘wickedness’ that seemed to flourish in
Plymouth Plantation by noting that the criminals “are here more discovered and seen and made
public by due search, inquisition and due punishment; for the churches look narrowly to their
members, and the magistrates over all, more strictly than in other places” (cited in Norton
1996:321). The diligent uncovering of ‘wickedness’ Bradford refers to seems to have more to do
with criminalizing and punishing minor behavioral infractions than an unusually high occurrence
of serious crimes. Nonetheless, under such vigilant systems, the transgression or violation of
what may seem to twenty-first century reasoning as trivial behaviors, often carried serious,
sometimes extreme punishments, including imprisonment, enslavement, whipping, mutilation,
branding, torture, and various modes of execution. An individual found guilty of a range of
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indiscretions from not attending church on Sunday to foul speech to fornication, theft, adultery,
or witchcraft could be subjected to the swimming test (Figure 3.12); ducking stool (Figure 3.13);
stocks or pillory; scold-caps; riding-the-wooden-horse with 50-pound weights tied to one’s feet;
whipping; branding; cutting off, slitting or boring of ears, tongue or nose; having one’s tongue
put in a cleft stick; or for capital offenses, hanging (Randal nd).
FIGURE 3.12. ‘Swimming test’ to determine guilt. In this illustration from 1612, Mary Sutton
of Bedford, UK is being tested for witchery.
FIGURE 3.13. (below) Ducking stool to determine guilt and as a punishment for scoulds.
Seventeenth-century English woodcut.
The Blue Laws (Table 3.3) constitute just a small percentage of the numerous regulations
imposed upon New England colonists; other more serious legal infractions found explication
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under separate statutes (Norton 1996). In addition to treason, murder, arson, and rape, several
violations of social and religious order fell under the rubric of capital crimes, including
witchcraft, adultery, sodomy, bestiality, denying God’s existence and authority, and defying
one’s parents (Norton 1996:128). Under such scrutiny, people of seventeenth-century New
England likely consciously tread on proverbial eggshells or at the very least experienced a
general sense of anxiety in their daily behaviors and dealings.
TABLE 3.3. Seventeenth-Century New England Blue Laws and other Legal Statutes (Randal
nd).
Massachusetts (1630-1760)
Plymouth
New Haven (1640-1660)
Connecticut
No wearing of silver, gold, silk
lace or thread
Church attendance mandatory
No single young men to live
alone
No wearing of silver, gold, silk
lace or thread
No multiple slashed clothing,
cutwork, embroidery, short
sleeves, or wide sleeves for
women
NOT on Sundays:
Conducting business
Sleeping or playing in
meeting house during
worship
No Quakers, Ranters, priests, or
other religious persons contrary
to Puritan beliefs allowed to live
in New Haven
No multiple slashed clothing,
cutwork, embroidery, short
sleeves, or wide sleeves for
women
No bad language
No reading of Common Prayers,
keeping Christmas or Saints’
Days (or anything Catholic)
No bad language
No possessing dice or cards
No making minced pies, dancing,
cards, or playing instruments
other than drum, trumpet, or
Jew’s harp
No possessing dice or cards; no
shuffleboard
No selling of cakes or buns
Married persons must live
together
No selling of cakes or buns
No smoking in public
No crossing the river but with an
authorized ferryman
No smoking in public, barn
yards, or on militia training days
in open places
No public drunkenness
No lying
No public drunkenness
No verbal confrontation of
authority
No long hair for men
No verbal confrontation of
authority
NOT on Sundays:
Shooting
Smoking tobacco
Swimming
Unnecessary and
unreasonable walking
in streets or fields
Opening shops
(included the evening
prior as well)
Business or labor
Games, sport, play or
recreation
Music, dancing, or
public diversion
(including evening
before)
traveling
NOT on Sundays:
running
walking in gardens or
otherwise except to
church
traveling
cooking
making beds or
sweeping
haircutting or shaving
kissing (spouses or
parents/children)
NOT on Sundays:
Shooting
Smoking tobacco
Swimming
Unnecessary and
unreasonable walking
in streets or fields
Opening shops
(including evening
before)
Business or labor
Games, sport, play or
recreation
Music, dancing, or
public diversion
(including evening
before)
traveling
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Massachusetts (1630-1760)
Church attendance mandatory
Plymouth
New Haven (1640-1660)
No food or lodging given to
Quakers, Adamites, or other
heretics
Connecticut
Church attendance mandatory
No wearing of gold, silver, or
bone lace
No denying God’s power and
jurisdiction
No possessing dice or cards
Not surprisingly, under such circumstances tensions and outright conflicts between and
among community members flared. Evidence for the prevalence of these social strains fills court
records, pamphlets, sermons, and diaries; often these strains seeded or eventually fueled
witchcraft and other diabolical accusations like lithobolia attacks (a supernatural bombardment
of stones) or the casting of the evil eye (Starkey 1963[1949]; Demos 1970, 1976, 2004a, 2004b;
Boyer and Nissenbaum 1974; Koehler 1980; Karlsen 1987; Godbeer 1992, 2005; Briggs 1996;
Kamensky 1997; Reis 1997; Baker 2007). Scholars of English, European, and New England
witchcraft concur that witchcraft accusations, while based upon undeniable belief in witches and
their powers, can be interpreted as mediation strategies to address sociopolitical conflicts
(Mather 1692; Drake 1869; Starkey 1963[1949]; Thomas 1971; Kittredge 1972; Boyer and
Nissenbaum 1974; Demos 1976, 2004a; Koehler 1980; Weisman 1984; Karlsen 1987; Norton
1987; Hall 1989, 1991; Godbeer 1992, 2005; Willis 1995; Briggs 1996; Kamensky 1997; Reis
1997; Burr 2002[1914]; Davies and Blécourt 2004; Baker 2007; Davies 2007; Bever 2008). In
virtually every case, the accused demonstrated unseemly behavior spanning several years, being
quarrelsome and uncivil; in effect, she or he failed to conform to the communal and gender
expectations espoused by Puritan ideology. These individuals provided targets that communities
could use to explain any of the various misfortunes they suffered from crop failure to accidents
to sudden illness. As scapegoats, these individuals could atone for the providential wrath of God
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visited upon the community and serve as reminders to others the cost of deviation from the
dictates of the Puritan social and spiritual path.
Although witchcraft accusations and executions represent the most extreme and most
well-known manifestations of social stress, other supernatural events also served as outlets for
personal and social quarrels. Three known cases of one such phenomenon, called lithobolia,
occured in New England in 1679, 1682, and 1692. “Lithobolia, or the stone-throwing devil,”
was reported in a pamphlet by Richard Chamberlain, printed in London in 1698, and describes
the poltergeist-type entity that engaged in prolonged barrages of stones against New England
residents and tavern owners. In Great Island, New Hampshire in 1682 “hundreds of flying stones
plagued the [Walton] tavern and its proprietors and guests for months on end, causing
considerable damage. Amazingly, no one ever saw anyone throwing the rocks” (Baker 2007:1).
In conjunction with the lithobolia attacks, people reported demonic noises, inexplicable moving
objects, and monstrous births.
Probably the most serious cause of internal strife for seventeenth-century AngloEuropean colonists concerned religion. Since Martin Luther nailed his ‘Ninety-five Theses’ of
reformation to the church door in Wittenberg, Germany in 1517, European Christianity became a
highly contested battlefield. Butler (1990:7) asserts that, “In the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries state-supported Christianity found itself beset by reformers from within and by
dissenters from without.” While virtually all the English immigrants were Protestants and shared
the same basic Christian worldviews, several distinctive sects (e.g., Anabaptists, Baptists,
Quakers, Antinomians, Presbyterians, Ranters) existed within Protestantism. Butler (1990:55)
observes that these “religious choices…though constrained by Calvinism, stimulated diversity
and heresy as often as they generated homogeneity and orthodoxy.” Each sect had its own
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particular take on biblical interpretation, and as each group fervently believed its interpretations
constituted the right and true message of God, conceding the rightness of another sect’s
interpretation could be conceived of as blasphemous. In such cases as the Antinomian
Controversy in which Anne Hutchinson dared overstep her gender boundaries by interpreting
biblical doctrine and publicly preaching and then debating her right and ability to do so with the
male religious authorities, more than just religious orthodoxy was being threatened. The
hierarchical levels of authority and place were tersely captured in Hugh Peter’s admonishing
words toward Anne Hutchinson in 1638: “You have stept out of your place, you have rather bine
a Husband than a Wife and a preacher than a Hearer; and a Magistrate than a Subject” (cited in
Norton 1996:357). The Hutchinson case provides the perfect scenario to illustrate that in each
confrontation of dissenting sects with the hegemonic Puritan institution, the very foundation of
hierarchical authority upon which all aspects of religious, political, and social constructs were
based seemed liable to collapse if stern measures were not taken against the agitators (Figure
3.14).
FIGURE 3.14. Storm sent to destroy those not adhering to socio-religious rules. English
woodcut of Widecombe Storm, 1638.
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3.4 Gender Constructs
Ample legal, civic, and private documentary sources provide evidence of magical belief
and practice in seventeenth-century New England. What is not clear is the relationship between
magic use and gender. Although seventeenth-century belief accepted, based upon woman’s
connection with Eve’s original sin, the exceptional weakness and corruptibility of women’s
natures, this explanation accounts more for the disproportionate number of women accused of
witchcraft than it does for indicating a gendered recourse to countermagical practices.
Based upon the frequency of gender reference in court records and sermons, Puritan
society placed significant emphasis upon gender distinctions and expressed great concern over
gender violations as a threat to social order (Demos 1970, 2004a; Kittredge 1972; Koehler 1980;
Karlsen 1987; Kamensky 1997; Norton 1996; Foster 1999; Crawford 2000). Effectively fulfilling
one’s expected gender role required concerted effort that could constitute circumstances for both
social friction and resorting to countermagical utilization. The rigidity of Puritan gender roles
occasioned those who strained against such narrow restrictions to overstep the boundaries of
socio-religious appropriateness, thereby publically displaying attitudes and behaviors deemed
sinful and potentially evil (Koehler 1980; Karlsen 1987; Norton 1987, 1996; Kamensky 1997) .
To protect oneself, one’s family, and one’s property from such potentially evil transgressors
could prompt the use of countermagical charms against them, as is seen in 1680 when Rachel
Fuller of Hampton, Massachusetts was prevented from entering the Godfrey family house due to
the ‘sweet bays’ (bay laurel) that had been laid “under the threshold of the back door all the way,
and half way of the breadth of the fore door” (deposition of Mary Godfrey, 1680, cited in Demos
2004a:331). However, the same recourse to countermagical charm use could be an indicator not
of a direct response to a particular person, but as a general attempt to fulfill the prescribed
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Puritan gender roles that emphasized the protection, well-being, and orderly management of
one’s family and household. Thus, protective magic could be used against those who seriously
violated gender roles and as an aide in bolstering one’s effectiveness in upholding those roles.
FIGURE 3.15. Title page from Gervaise Markem’s The English Housewife, 1675.
Idealized gender roles found explicit delineation in seventeenth-century sermons and
publications. Gervase Markham’s popular book, The English Housewife, which painstakingly
described all the skills and duties of a “Good Wife,” went through nine printings from 1615 to
1683 (Figure 3.15). In it Markham establishes the connection between a good wife and her
domestic realm including activities that encompass childrearing, cooking, gardening, sewing,
dairying, brewing, herb-lore, and healing. Her measure as a woman equated to her skilled
execution of a good wife’s duties, delineated by Markham:
As her skill in physick, chirugery, cookery, extraction of oils, banqueting stuff,
ordering of great feasts, preserving of all sorts of wides (sic), conceited secrets,
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distillations, perfumes, ordering of wool, hemp, flax: making cloth and dying; The
knowledge of dairies, office of malting, of oats; their excellent uses in families, of
brewing, baking, and all other things belonging to an household.
A work generally approved, and now the eight time augmented, purged, and made
most profitable and necessary for all men, and the general good of this nation
(First printing 1615; last edition (9th)1683).
While a woman’s ideal identity was thus explicitly outlined, it remained highly unstable and
contradictory as both success and failure in conforming to these expectations was cause for
witchcraft suspicion. Such skills as “physick, “chirugery,” and other herbal and medicinal
knowledge and practice could be inverted and cited as proof of diabolical skills and knowledge
and used as evidence to charge a woman with witchcraft.
He further explicated these required skills in another publication, The Well-Kept Kitchen,
which unequivocally identifies women with the domestic sphere and men with the broader public
realm (2011 [1615]:1):
Having already in a summary briefness passed through those outward parts
of husbandry which belong unto the perfect husbandman, who is the father and
master of the family, and whose office and employments are ever for the most
part abroad, or removed from the house, as in the field or yard; it is now meet that
we descend…to the office of our English housewife, who is the mother and mistress
of the family, and hath her most general employments within the house…
Beyond skills and occupations, however, gendered behavior and demeanor were also
explicitly defined by Puritan ideology. Morgan (1966[1949]:17) explains the Puritan adherence
to the doctrine of subordination which posits that, “Subordination was indeed the very soul of
order, and the Almighty as a God of order formed his earthly kingdom in a pattern of
subordination.” Markem’s use of the word descend in the above quotation illustrates the
accepted seventeenth-century relational scheme situating women as subordinate to men. In this
system, the hierarchy of people and their relationships found clear definition. As Morgan
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(1966[1949]:19) states, “The essence of the social order lay in the superiority of husband over
wife, parents over children, and master over servants in the family, ministers and elders over
congregation in the church, rulers over subjects in the state.” So while Ulrich (1991)
demonstrates that women could and did assume the authority to act in public business matters as
‘deputy husbands,’ they were doing so with the acknowledgement that they occupied a
subordinate place within the family structure.
Puritan codes defined appropriate women’s and men’s behavior and demeanor, including
every aspect from their speech patterns to their sexual performance abilities (Earle 1898; Carr
and Walsh 1977; Koehler 1980; Demos 1986; Hawke 1988; Kamensky 1996, 1997; Norton
1996; Foster 1999; Holliday 1999 [1922]; Crawford and Gowing 2000; Chapman 2004; Craun
2007). Deviation from these expectations often resulted in legal proceedings. A man’s inability
to satisfactorily perform the sexual duties of a husband could result in the court granting a
woman an annulment or divorce and the man a legal injunction against remarriage (Foster 1999).
In the case of speech violations, sometimes they were a simply a matter of public apology and
contrition with the promise to conform in the future. This was especially the case when men
‘misspoke’ or uttered insults against another, disrupting communal harmony and friendly
cooperation. The procedure was to ‘unspeak’ the disparaging words as a humbling, public
penance. Women, whose speech patterns required a more docile and submissive character,
usually ‘unspoke’ their angry words in a private confession rather than a public forum. The
difference in venues and vocalization expectations further distinguish the type of speech deemed
appropriate for men and women: men’s voices were public and authoritative; women’s voices
were private and subordinate. These codes attempted to define to whom one may speak, when,
and in what manner. As Kamensky (1997:7) notes, “…women in New England possessed a lot
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less verbal license than did their husbands, fathers, brothers, or sons.” While all ‘neighbors’,
men and women, risked social or legal penalty for deviant speech, the injunction to “govern their
tongues” was most frequently directed at women. “Evil speaking was a primordial feminine
transgression” (Kamensky 1997:19) originating with the serpent’s tongue that seduced Eve, and
in turn Eve’s tongue that seduced Adam into original sin. Women with ungoverned tongues who
cursed, threatened, or railed against their neighbors found themselves not only embroiled in legal
proceedings for slander, but potentially marked out for future witchcraft accusations. Men,
whose unmanly use of speech, which could either be scolding like an improper woman’s or too
submissive like a proper woman’s, also deviated from acceptable behavior and brought suspicion
upon themselves (Kamensky 1996).
The import of speech in relationship to supernatural belief lies in the Puritan emphasis on
divine scripture. Their correlation between word and deed stems from a literal acceptance of
God’s Word. Thus, as “Anglican prelate George Webb supposed…,“Halfe the sinnes of our
life…are committed by the tongue” (cited in Kamensky 1997:18). To utter a curse or threat that
illness would befall someone or that livestock would die equated to the actual deed being done.
When women, often old, poor, and socially marginalized, would approach neighbors asking for
charitable assistance, those community members took a serious risk in antagonizing her, as her
curses carried the force of destruction. Men’s misspeaking also had the potential to destroy the
workings of the social order, undermining the carefully constructed scaffolding upon which the
Puritan world relied.
If the rules for communication limited the opportunities, modes, and venues for
expression, especially for women, what consequence did this have on their ability to vocalize
their fears and concerns? If disempowered through speech, did magical practice offer women
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(and men) an alternative expressive avenue through which to wield some degree of authority
over their circumstances? This implies, of course, that at least to some degree these people
existed on the periphery of the social, political, and religious authority that ruled their
communities. Restricted in their opportunities and latitude for verbal intercourse, women would
likely have found alternative ways to express their fears and concerns and assert their identities
as good wives who governed their tongues (Kamensky 1996, 1997). Through the use of hidden
or hyperobstrusive protective countermagic, women may have conceived a way to manifest
silent, but powerful boundaries defining and protecting their domestic spheres including house
and family for which they were ultimately responsible and, consequently, themselves as
impermeable to the vagaries of human and supernatural forces.
As both men and women’s successful conformation to Puritan social expectations
determined their reputations and identities within their communities, fulfilling their duties as
productive, providing, and protective husbands, wives, parents, and neighbors must in some
cases have required the utilization of whatever means were available to them. Certainly, magic
provided one powerful strategy.
Far from the paradisiacal land of plenty where a Puritan utopia would take root and
flourish, the realities of colonial New England challenged, frightened, battered, and oftentimes
defeated the immigrants to this new world. Cotton Mather (1692:62-63) delineates the
tribulations colonists encountered in New England and captures the anxiety and disappointment
they suffered:
I believe, there never was a poor Plantation, more pursued by the Wrath of the
Devil, than our poor New-England;….First, The Indian Powawes, used all their
Sorceries to molest the first Planters here;…Then, Seducing Spirits come to root
in this Vineyard…After this, we have had a continual blast upon some of our
principal Grain, annually diminishing a vast part of our ordinary Food. Herewithal,
wasting Sicknesses, especially Burning and Mortal Agues, have Shot the Arrows
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of Death in at our Windows. Next, we have had many Adversaries of our own
Language, who have been perpetually assaying to deprive us of those English
Liberties,…As if this had not been enough; The Tawnies among whom we came,
have watered our Soil with the Blood of many Hundreds of our Inhabitants.
Desolating Fires also have many times laid the chief Treasure of the whole
Province in Ashes. As for Losses by Sea, they have been multiply’d upon us;…
Besides all which, now at last the Devils are in Person come down upon us
with such a Wrath, as is justly much, and will quickly be more, the
Astonishment of the World.
Unquestionably, New England’s colonists existed in a time and place that enveloped them in
dangerous hardships both physical and supernatural. They were challenged by environmental
conditions beyond their expectation or experience; confronted with an alteric culture they
envisioned as the antithesis of divine good; defied by their own citizenry in matters of religious,
social, and political authority; and tested by the ubiquitous evil of witchcraft and demonism. In
response they supplemented prayer and pragmatic safety measures with magical administrations
to alleviate the anxieties commensurate with all the misfortune, illness, and sudden death that
characterized daily life in the seventeenth century.
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CHAPTER 4: Research Methods
4.1 Chapter Overview
Having established in the previous chapters a background for an understanding of the
nature of magical belief, the current state of archaeological research concerning such beliefs, and
the high stress circumstances of seventeenth-century New England colonialists and their magical
mindset, this chapter now turns to the specifics of the research upon which this dissertation is
based. As noted on several occasions above, the consideration of gendered magical use as risk
management strategies has, until now, not been a topic for either historical or archaeological
study. To undertake such an exploration with any hope of accruing sufficient and meaningful
data from which viable conclusions can be extrapolated required a creative and multidisciplinary
approach. Called ‘documentary archaeology’ (Beaudry 1988; Little 1992; Wilkie 2006), this
approach “offer[s] perspectives and understandings of the past not possible through single lines
of evidentiary analysis” that have the potential to “provide overlapping, conflicting, or entirely
different insights into the past” (Wilkie 2006:13-14). In the current study no one disciplinary
source provided adequate data to address the issue of gendered magic use; thus, references from
a diverse spectrum of materials were synthesized to obtain an image of the stressing situations
and magical responses of New England colonists, ca. 1620-1725. The range of data types and
sources were in no way systematically inventoried or accessible, and the colossal task of
reviewing and combing through every potentially relevant archaeological report in the region for
evidence of household magic was not a viable option for this study; therefore, the accumulated
historical, folkloristic, and archaeological data presented below were acquired through online
digitized documents, hardcopy reports and published works, and phone and email
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correspondence with both agencies and individuals. Each of these disciplinary fields and the data
sources accessed particular to each field are specifically delineated in the following sections,
along with evaluative commentary.
4.2 Historical Research Methods Overview
The preponderance of knowledge about the magical beliefs and practices of seventeenthcentury Anglo-Europeans emerges from a variety of historical texts, each written by individuals
with personal, professional, political, or religious viewpoints and agendas. Some of these works
attempt to convey information the authors credit in an honest intention of sharing knowledge;
others record magical practices as an illustration of general ignorance to challenge the veracity of
these beliefs. The works specifically written to discuss magical applications, whether to praise or
condemn such behaviors, usually take the form of scientific volumes on herbal medicine or
monographs and sermons on metaphysical reality. Other sources, like court depositions, while
not primarily concerned with the recordation of magical belief, do provide some first-hand
accounts of actual beliefs and fears—some of which are not to be found in magical treatises.
Most of the archaeological evidence attributed to magical practice, like concealed shoes and cats,
entirely lacks written reference.
In this section, the historical sources consulted for this dissertation are divided into three
categories: court records, letters and other firsthand accounts, and finally, other primary and
secondary resources. Court records, letters, and other firsthand accounts are discussed prior to
other primary and secondary sources, not because they represent the greatest number of magical
references, but rather because they illustrate real individuals expressing their fears, beliefs, and
practices, whereas the other historical documentation contains magical referents as more remote
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from individual behaviors or implied. Confirmed practice naturally has primacy over
instructional or implied data; this primacy is reflected in the order of consideration chosen here.
4.2.1 Court Records
The people of colonial seventeenth-century New England were a highly litigious group.
Due to their exacting secular and religious approaches to social control, which resulted in
numerous possibilities for legal action (see Table 3.3), and the directives for community
members to report any infraction of these statutes (Lockridge 1970; Heyrman 1984:49-50;
Norton 1996; Deetz and Deetz 2000:153), both secular and religious courts teemed with activity.
Religious courts were primarily concerned with those issues that directly impacted or affronted
religious authority, like blasphemy or heresy. The secular court system dealt with all other
crimes and was based on a roughly three level system (two levels in Rhode Island) (Hall 1991).
The lowest court was headed by the local town magistrate, who conducted examinations and
handled minor disturbances; the second level comprised county or ‘particular’ courts conducted
by a group of magistrates, who presided over trials, determined verdicts, and meted out
punishments; the highest level court was the Court of Assistants, again composed of a group of
magistrates, but with the addition of a grand jury. This high court was the only one that included
a trial by jury; but, even in these cases, the magistrates had the power to accept or reject the
jury’s verdict (Hall 1991:11). The employment of so many different courts spread across
seventeenth-century New England resulted in abundant and widely dispersed court records.
For all their insights and usefulness, court records from this period necessarily lack
comprehensiveness as a source for magical research. First, as often as people accused each other
of some infraction, especially of witchcraft or related demonic behaviors, Thomas (1970:53)
reminds researchers that:
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Judicial cases of all kinds, however, represent only the tip of the iceberg….
the casebooks of the contemporary doctors and astrologers who were
consulted by persons who believed themselves to have been bewitched…
contain [sufficient evidence] to confirm that formal accusations of witchcraft
represented only a small proportion of the suspicions and allegations made in
everyday life.
Secondly, because magic use, whether wielded by witches to inflict harm or by victims as
countermagical protection, was often considered by religious authorities to be one and the same
(Mather 1692:80; Clark 2007:459) and, thus, prevented litigants from mentioning any magical
use lest they, too, be suspected and accused of witchery.
Thirdly, such fragile documents have not survived in appreciable numbers or in any
comprehensive way, nor are those surviving remnants systematically organized and readily
accessible from archives or historical societies. John Barlett (1856: vii), editor of some Rhode
Island records, makes an observation that surely holds a similar truth for documents from other
colonies as well:
The records of the city of Providence and previous to the organization of the
government in 1647 are very meager. It is supposed they were kept in greater
detail and were destroyed in the year 1676, when the town was burned by the
Indians, as those that remain bear the traces of fire and water.
Some collections of court documents have been compiled and published as books (e.g., see
Taylor 1908 for Connecticut; Boyer and Nissenbaum 1972, 1977 for Salem; Barlett 1856, and
Fiske1998 for Rhode Island; Drake 1869, Hall 1991, and Burr 2002[1914] for examples across
New England). Other collections have been digitized and are available as individual documents
or loosely connected collections through Cornell University Library’s Witchcraft Collection, the
University of Connecticut’s Online Archive, and individual holdings accessible through a
website research page entitled 17th Century Colonial New England,
(http://www.17thc.us/index.php), which contains links to some primary documents including the
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Records and Files of the Quarterly Courts of Essex County (MA), the Salem Quarterly Court
Records and Files, and the Book of the General Lawes and Libertyes [sic] Concerning the
Inhabitants of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, 1648. Most court documentation concerning
witchcraft from New Hampshire and Maine exist as individual manuscripts subsumed within the
published materials noted above. Rhode Island’s seventeenth-century court documents were
compiled into two volumes by the Rhode Island Historical Society in 1920/1922 for the years
1647-1670, but only Volume Two survives today.
As a consequence of the random and piecemeal survival of these court documents, no
quantification of data across colonies is possible. However, comparison of the extant
examinations, depositions, and court actions does reveal a consistency of complaints, concerns,
and expectations across all colonies. This consistency is exemplified in the most extensive court
proceeding to occur in New England—the Salem witch trials—and for which the most complete
set of records survives. Although the Salem situation was unusual in colonial America for its
prolonged intensity and number of people accused, because the numerous accusations and
deponents came from several villages and represented all social divisions it actually comprises
an ideal sample population. Consideration of their consistency with other court records, the
completeness of the depositions, and the broadly representative sample set they comprise,
justified using the Salem documents as the primary analytical case study for this dissertation.
The perusal of the court examinations and depositions had three main objectives: 1) to
abstract any explicit mentions of magical use; 2) to correlate gender with magical use; and 3) to
extrapolate associated patterns of stress with boundary construction. The first two objectives
were combined and relevant data from all available court records from the five New England
colonies recorded in a Microsoft Access database divided into twenty-one categories that
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included date, location, artifact classification (see Tables 5.9 and 5.10), artifact association and
deposition, gender association, and purpose. In reviewing the entire range of court records, it
became apparent that all the colony court records provide, as Heyrman (1984:37) describes, “an
endless succession of disputes over land, debt, religion, militia elections, and seating in the
meetinghouse,” to which can be added property loss, slander, and sexual misbehavior; each of
these disputes can be understood as a breach or violation of a boundary. As an exemplar of
boundary disputes, the Salem witchcraft trial records were analyzed for both physical and
metaphoric boundary conflicts to determine any connections between these boundary constructs
and gender, space, and magic (Table 5.5).
4.2.2 Letters and Other Firsthand Accounts
To supplement the data sought for in court records that directly related gender, magical
practice, and boundary construction, I examined personal letters and accounts from the period.
These modes of individual expression have their own particular limitations as data sources. First
of all, very few letters ca. 1620-1725 survive from New England. Secondly, due to the fact that
more men were literate than women, the preponderance of correspondence was authored by men.
This accounts for the majority of such surviving communication focusing on political, military,
or commercial events and ventures. However, some letters explicitly address the preternatural
and fearful situations occasioned by providences, wonders, and witchcraft. Thirdly, the difficulty
inherent in conveying letters in a time and place with limited and irregular transportation
opportunities discouraged the writing of such documents. If court documents, for all their
original abundance, exist in drastically reduced numbers and piecemeal collections, it is not
surprising that the far less numerous letters and personal accounts of the period are even more
elusive today. The few that do survive, for the most part, exist as individual monographs in
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larger collections like the Samuel Wyllys papers, which are held at the Connecticut State
Library, but available digitally online through the 17th Century New England website. Other
individual letters have been digitally provided through specialized educational websites
(http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/salem/salem.htm) focusing specifically upon
historical events like the Salem witch trials. For example, two letters available through this
website are Gov. William Phips’ description to his superiors of the demonic state in which Salem
was engulfed in 1692/1693. Only one collection of letters has been systematically compiled into
a book (Emerson 1976), but this collection’s limited range encompasses only Massachusetts Bay
Colony from 1629 to 1638.
Personal accounts like diaries, memoires, and instructions to children are even scarcer
than letters. Similar to letters, they, too, were primarily penned by elite men (e.g., Salem
magistrate Samuel Sewell). As only the most privileged of women would generally have
acquired writing skills (although a broader section of female society could read) (Hall 1989:33;
Urban 2006:36), the works authored by women also reflected this elite status. Two issues in
particular affected the open referencing of magical practices in personal accounts: 1) the
mundane nature of such information, and 2) the potential for such practices to be decried by
religious authorities as witchcraft (Deetz and Deetz 2000:88-89). Some of these works are
found, like letters, as components of the larger archival collections noted above. Unlike letters,
often these works were destined for publication as instructional treatises on religious, moral, or
social obligations (Mather 1692a, 1692b; Hall 1989; Urban 2006).
As with the court records, these randomly surviving letters and other personal accounts
could not provide quantifiable datasets, but did present (although primarily through a male
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perspective) a generalized substantiation of the palpable fear of preternatural power permeating
the colonies.
4.2.3 Other Primary and Secondary Historical Resources
As the seventeenth century heralded the Age of Enlightenment, the demand for books on
all manner of topics—especially cosmology, religion, and science—burgeoned. Many of these
works went through several printings and enjoyed wide distribution on both sides of the Atlantic.
Unlike handwritten, singular documents (e.g., court records, letters, and diaries), the sheer
number of available copies for any given title predisposed that title to survive the ages. While
the originals of these works belong to libraries, archives, or private collectors, virtually all the
titles have either been digitally reproduced or rebound and republished by companies like
Kessinger Publishing, Dover Publications, Early English Books Online (EEBO), Google Books,
and Applewood Books, and made readily available to the general public. Through these and
similar publishers, I was able to acquire copies of several works widely known in seventeenthcentury New England addressing magical belief and practice (e.g., Scot 1584; Markham 1615,
1683; Culpeper 1652; Aubrey 1670, 1686; Blagrave 1671; Mather 1692b; Hale 1697).
In addition to these primary publications, secondary historical sources concerning magic
include compilations of references from other publications similar to those noted above in
addition to legal, personal, medicinal, and alchemical, and astrological primary documents.
These sources draw together both data that are extremely difficult to find/access and data that
may no longer be extant elsewhere. Some of these secondary sources date to a period less
removed from the seventeenth century, which may suggest the compilers had access to material
now unavailable. These works both corroborate and expand on the examples of magical belief
and practice addressed in the seventeenth-century publications delineated above (e.g., Beard n.d.;
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Randal n.d.; Pettigrew 1844; Brand 1888; Thomas 1971; Kittredge 1972; Godbeer 1992; Davies
2003; Davies and Blécourt 2004).
Using the court records, personal writings, and published treatises and compilations on
magic, I identified and abstracted the historically recorded materials, forms, circumstances, uses,
gender associations, and stressors concomitant to magical practice in New England. These data
were analyzed according to twenty-one attributes as previously mentioned and coded to isolate
three patterns of apotropaic use (crisis, gender, and physical). Data concerning crisis patterns
allowed testing of the hypothesis that apotropaic use fluctuates and is most prevalent in times of
increased social, political, or environmental instability. The gender pattern data provided insight
into apotropaic use differentiation amongst women and men as well as across age, status, and
familial standing. Finally, data related to physical patterns revealed concepts and issues of
spatial control and boundary permeability. Of the three branches of data—historical, folkloristic,
and archaeological—the historical data provided the clearest picture of the three patterns of
apotropaic use. These patterns were then compared to the datasets provided by folklore and
archaeological sources.
The final type of primary historical source spoke not through words, but through
symbolic imagery. As discussed in Chapter 3, when establishing the implication of beliefs,
ideas, and symbols across all domains of lived experience, particular symbolic images found
reiteration on a range of material objects. To follow this thread of evidence and add these
expressions to the practices described in written sources, I consulted every published study of
New England gravestones and boundary stone imagery (Ludwig 1966; Deetz and Dethlefsen
1967; Forbes 1967[1927]; Wasserman 1972; Jacobs 1973; Kull 1975; Benes 1976, 1978; Duval
and Rigby 1978; George and Nelson 1983; Bouchard 1991; Deetz 1996; Gage and Gage 2003)
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and accessed the seventeenth-century furniture collections at the Victoria and Albert Museum,
The Pitt-Rivers Museum, The Ryedale Folk Museum, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and The
DeWitt Wallace Decorative Arts Museum at Colonial Williamsburg. Access to some of these
collections is available online, others through personal communication, and others through
formal application to the museum’s collections manager. Each of these museums holds a
collection of seventeenth-century English and American made furniture or other carved wooden
architectural features that, like the grave and boundary stones, include examples of symbols used
as apotropaia.
4.3 Folklore Research Methods Overview
Any attempt at understanding the motivations and material expressions of past peoples
necessitates a grounding in every aspect of their cultural milieu. One of the most fundamental
components of cultural expression involves the range of beliefs, stories, customs, architectural
forms, and material creations known collectively as a group’s folklore. Many practices based on
these traditional modes of being go unremarked in historical sources; however, in some cases
aspects usually relegated to folklore (by researchers, at least) do surface in historical accounts.
The reality, power, and danger of fairies provide one such example. Belief in fairies fills volumes
of folklore collections, but they also receive numerous mentions in witchcraft trials as the
supernatural progenitors of the accused witches’ power (MacCulloch 1921; Wilby 2000). Many
of the same devices noted in historical sources to bar a witch’s or demon’s entrance into a house
find corresponding references in folklore for deterring fairies and their ilk (see Appendix B)
(Hand 1981:142). But not all folkloric ideas translate neatly to archaeological materials; as
Gazin-Schwartz and Holtorf (1999:4) assert, “when folklore is analysed,..it sometimes does
provide plausible interpretations for those [archaeological] materials, whether or not they can
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prove unbroken continuity of transmission.” In other words, it is difficult to prove that particular
folklore beliefs and practices from an earlier time continued forward or that those from a more
recent past were in operation in a more distant past. This difficulty does not rule out the
possibility of such continuities or the development of practices similar to those of an earlier time.
So while the exact connections may not be traceable, folkloristic data can offer alternative
archaeological interpretations. For this study, folklore provided another viable strand of inquiry
to continue filling in the evidential gaps for beliefs that comprised the traditional life-ways of
these Anglo-European colonists.
4.3.1 Folklore Collections
Folklore by nature expresses and comprises the localized beliefs and customs of a given
community or society. My selection of folklore collections, guided by this localized aspect,
centered on areas of the British Isles from which the New England colonists originated, for as
nineteenth-century folklorist Samuel Adams Drake commented, “New England was the child of
a superstitious mother” (cited in Botkin 1989:315). Although most colonists came from the
eastern counties of England, some also hailed from Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. To account for
traditions pertinent to these areas, I included the relative regional folklore collections. In addition
to works focused on traditional Anglo folklore, I also perused compilations of folklore collected
in New England, of which Botkin’s (1989) A Treasury of New England Folklore remains a
standard for the region because it is a synthesis of all the earlier collections and publications.
Folklorists, or antiquarians (which also included early anthropologists and archaeologists)
as they were known in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, vigorously sought and recorded
the entire spectrum of folk traditions across the breadth of the British Isles. The antiquarian study
of these beliefs contributed to the anthropological understanding of cultural evolution by
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theorizing that folk beliefs constituted an evolutionary stage of primitive conceptualizations
through which the lower classes passed on their way toward becoming civilized. To substantiate
the universality of this evolutionary theory dictated that the collection of folklore be as
comprehensive as possible (Dorson 1969). Some collectors focused on songs or tales, while
others recorded proverbs, games, foodways, and beliefs (usually denigrated to ‘superstitions’).
The collections from the early antiquarians have been compiled into every format from regional
booklets to encyclopedic dictionaries including the most authoritative folklore reference in the
field for many years, Funk & Wagnalls Standard Dictionary of Folklore, Mythology and Legend,
in 2 volumes (1949), which was later complemented by Larousse’s Dictionary of World Folklore
(Jones 1995). Virtually all the early collections of British and American antiquarians have been
digitized and made available through organizations like The American Folklore Society and
Google Books. While the plethora of folklore collections offer relatively organized presentation
of information according to place and subject, some references prove more obscure and can only
be found interspersed in texts on topics like gardening, weather, or cooking.
In company with historical sources, folklore also has its limitations. The greatest of these
limitations concerns the virtually impossible correlation of a particular belief or tradition with an
originating date or place. Folklore passes from generation to generation, transmitted orally and
informally, slightly altered over the years and through the innumerable tellings by various
individuals. It travels with people to wherever they move and can be solidly transplanted or
dynamically intermixed with the lore of new neighbors. Some ideas obtain great import at
particular times or under particular circumstances only to wane while other ideas take
precedence. These ideas may lay dormant for many years only to reemerge at some later date;
likewise the practices, symbols, or meanings of the lore may be lost altogether with only
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shadowy vestiges remaining to hint at some bygone tradition. Lore always has a sense of deep,
traditional time—a timelessness—that validates or naturalizes beliefs and behaviors. Antiquarian
Edward Augustus Kendall, Esq., who collected folklore from New England between 1807 and
1808 found the people he interviewed always justified their traditional behaviors (cited in Botkin
1989:315):
…they do so because they have been taught that it is right to do it, or because
their fathers did so before them; if they add anything to this, it is that they
expect blessings from the observance of the practice, and evils from the neglect.
Folklore’s embeddedness along with its mercurial character makes it challenging to substantiate
that any given belief, behavior, or manifestation recorded for a particular social group was or
was not in observance by socioculturally related communities during any particular time.
Nevertheless, extrapolating details of supernatural beliefs and their correlated material
expressions and gendered associations from folklore sources adds an important and distinctive
informational piece that can be compared to extend or substantiate historical and archaeological
evidence. The data extracted from the regional folklore sources received the same analytical
coding and classification scheme as all the historical data sources, but were recorded in a
separate Microsoft Access database to prevent any confusion of source attribution.
4.4 Archaeology Research Methods Overview
The archaeological component of this research’s data triad proved to be the most elusive,
both in terms of accessibly and scope. As discussed in Chapter 2, little attention has been
directed at the archaeology of ritual and magic in general, and even less specifically concentrated
on colonial New England. Although I harbored no expectation of discovering large numbers of
archaeological projects focused on New England domestic sites ca. 1620-1725 that had identified
or even discussed concealed or otherwise enigmatic depositions potential pointing to magical
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practice, I was astonished by their virtual non-existence. I was equally astounded by the
unsystematic and non-standardized State Historic Preservation Office (SHPO) recordation
requirements and accessibility policies for attaining archaeological site reports that I encountered
through my correspondence with the five SHPOs relevant to this research (Table 4.1).
TABLE 4.1. State Archaeological Archives and Records.
State
Contact Person
Agency
Associations
Connecticut
Nicholas Bellantoni,
State Archaeologist
Office of State
Archaeologist
CT State Museum of
Natural History & CT
Archaeology Center, Univ.
of CT
Maine
Arthur E. Spiess,
Archaeologist
Maine Historic
Preservation Commission
Massachusetts
Brona Simon
State Archaeologist,
Deputy SHPO
Massachusetts Historical
Commission
New Hampshire
Richard Boisvert, State
Archaeologist
New Hampshire
Division of Historical
Resources
Rhode Island
Paul Robinson, Principal
State Archaeologist
Historic Preservation
Commission
State of New Hampshire
Department of Cultural
Resources
Accessing and analyzing seventeenth-century archaeological projects addressed two
goals. The first was to compare the historically documented range of magical material culture
and traditional folkloristic beliefs with the archaeological record to determine what is potentially
being overlooked or misunderstood in these contexts. The second goal technically represents an
inverse of the first goal, looking to the archaeological record for evidence of behavior not
documented in the written sources that would extend our knowledge and understanding of
magical belief and practice.
To keep this research focused and manageable, the parameters set for the inclusion of a
particular archaeological site were necessarily narrow. The site had to be an Anglo-European
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residential/domestic one as opposed to a Native American, African American, or military or
commercial site (that may have included living quarters). Its construction and habitation had to
fall with the 1620-1725 year range, and it must have yielded an adequate artifactual assemblage
verifying this temporal occupation. The five state SHPOs were contacted via phone and email
requesting lists of all the archaeological projects undertaken in each state that dealt with
domestic sites for the 1620-1725 era. The intent was then to access the site reports and artifact
inventories for each relevant site to determine if they also met the third criterion. Unfortunately,
even getting a response from the SHPOs proved difficult: Maine’s office never responded
despite numerous phone calls, emails, and letters; New Hampshire’s archaeological records
coordinator initially responded by saying such a request would be too much work for her and
only complied with my request after I contacted her supervisor; the Massachusetts office
responded with helpful enthusiasm, but it still took numerous follow-up calls and six months
before the requested lists were actually sent; both the Connecticut and Rhode Island offices
provided their information more readily and timely than the other states. Despite their close
geographic proximity and historic commonality, there exists no similarity in the formatting,
organization, storage, and accessibility of archaeological site reports across these New England
states. These various discrepancies rendered acquisition of archaeological site reports
challenging at best.
Rather than relying solely upon the SHPOs to provide me with the relevant reports, I also
contacted individual archaeologists, historical societies, state archaeology societies, archaeology
museums, and cultural resource management (CRM) firms for archaeological site reports and
artifact inventories. The resulting sites are presented in section 4.4.1. As this section will make
clear, other archaeology sources also needed to be consulted to compensate for the dearth of data
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available through these site reports. Section 4.4.2 describes these sources and their usefulness in
analyzing and interpreting the archaeological record.
4.4.1 Archaeological Site Reports
After compiling and synthesizing the disparate reports and information pertaining to
seventeenth-century domestic sites in New England, some interesting patterns became apparent.
The first pattern relates to the paucity of this particular site type. While archaeological work
continues to be prolific throughout the region, seventeenth-century Anglo-European domestic
sites comprise but a small fraction of the total projects (Starbuck 1980:379-381). This scarcity
may be the result of any number of factors. The relatively ephemeral nature of early wooden
structures probably accounts for the absence of much extant evidence. Fires (accidental or
intentional) destroyed many homes, as did the destructive tactics employed in Indian wars
occurring throughout the seventeenth century. Some were simply dismantled and their materials
used in other constructions or entire houses were subsumed in expansive renovations that
transformed small, simple structures into larger, more sophisticated ones as financial means
allowed. Still others succumbed to the forces of nature and were obliterated through processes of
decay, destroyed by storms, or washed out to sea as a result of erosion. Finally, as the population
of the eastern seaboard expanded and urban centers and transportation routes covered the
landscape, many of these sites disappeared under concrete and pavement.
The second pattern that emerged from the search for eligible sites for this dissertation was
the emphasis on either indigenous sites (both pre- and post-European contact) or nineteenthcentury sites. The preponderance of attention given to these later sites is understandable as they
form the most recent and accessible layer of the palimpsest of Anglo-European occupation. It is
possible that some seventeenth-century materials may be recovered in excavations of later
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constructions built upon the early sites, but locating recordation of such artifacts would require
the scrutiny of thousands of site reports and artifact inventories and likely produce little
contextually relevant data. In the case of the former site types, it is also possible to find AngloEuropean artifacts within seventeenth-century indigenous sites, but in these contexts they could
not be assumed to reflect Anglo-European meanings and uses.
The twenty- nine listed in Table 4.2 and plotted on Map 4.1 (indicated by blue stars)
constituted all the ca. 1620-1725 domestic sites for which sufficient information was available
through both SHPOs and alternative correspondence. Given that this multistate area has a
Euroamerican population numbering in the tens of thousands over the 105 year period of interest,
the historical archaeology of Pilgrim experience must be considered a very limited sample of this
population. Only five of the twenty-nine either had magical material culture identified by the
excavators or had objects and their contexts described in such a way that suggests a potential
magical interpretation (indicated by red stars on Map 4.1). One additional site, the Josiah
Winslow Site (ca.1632) had a whistle speculated by Beaudry and George (2003:166) to be part
of child’s coral and bells (a magically empowered teething toy), but nothing directly related to
domestic boundaries, so it is not included in the current analysis. The location of the five
confirmed or potential sites provides cause for contemplation: three of these sites occur in the
two colonial regions with the least number of witchcraft prosecutions (i.e. Maine and Rhode
Island). Massachusetts and Connecticut, where the concentration of witchcraft was most acute,
only yielded similar material culture from two Massachusetts’ sites. This seeming discrepancy
may be due to several site formation factors as noted earlier. Other types of magical material
culture may also have existed at any or all of these sites within the physical fabric of the
buildings and have subsequently disappeared along with the structures. Likewise, such materials
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may not have been recorded in a way that can support a magical interpretation or they may have
simply been missed due to less extensive excavation and sampling.
MAP 4.1. Distribution of ca.1620-1725 New England domestic archaeological sites. Map by
author.
The archaeological site reports for these twenty-nine sites vary greatly in detail. Some,
like the reports provided by the New Hampshire SHPO, are short checklists with a maximum of
three paragraphs of narrative describing the sites or their significance. Others, like that prepared
by Craig Chartier on the Knoll House Site in Massachusetts, span multiple pages and include
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minute detail about the artifacts recovered and their contexts. Unfortunately, this inconsistency
of site reporting hampers comprehensive comparative studies on magic or any other subject.
Each of the site investigations that do or potentially include magical material culture will be
discussed in detail in Chapter 5 under the section on archaeological data.
TABLE 4.2. Details for excavated ca. 1620-1725 New England domestic archaeological sites.
State
CT
Town
Site Name and Date
Excavated or
Surveyed
Years
PI(S)
Confirmed
MMC
No
MMC
Noted
Scotland
Huntington Farm Site/c1720
1995-96
Harold Juli
x
Wilton
Lambert House Site/c1722
1972-73
B.W. Powell
x
Meriden
Solomon Goffe House/c1711
2003-2006
Albert
Morgan
x
Farmington
Stanley-Whitman House/c1720
1987
Rebecca
Vaughn
x
South
Berwick
Humphrey
Chadbourne/homestead/
c1643
1995-2007
Emerson
Baker
Kittery
John Shepard/homestead/c1670
1985, 2002
Emerson
Baker
x
Woolwich
William Phips/homestead/c1640
1986-2001
Robert
Bradley
x
York
Lewis Bean/homestead/c1670
1997-1998
Archaeologi
cal Research
Consultants
x
Garrett-Beadle/merchant
captain’s urban house/
c1650
Harvard U
Peabody
Museum
x
Bourne
Buttermilk Bay Site/house/c
Craig
Chartier
x
Kingston
Isaac Allerton Site/house/c1628
1972
James Deetz
x
Marshfield
Josiah Winslow Site/house/c1632
1940-43,
1949;
1971;1981
Henry
Hornblower;
James
Deetz; Mary
C. Beaudry,
Donald D.
Jones,
Douglas C.
George
Threshold
horseshoe
Horseshoe
in cellar;
cock’s head
hinges, lock
with
symbols,
heart key;
M or W on
window
ME
Charlestown
MA
Kingston
John Howland Site/house
lot/c1638
1937; 1960,
1970, 19989; 1981
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Sidney
Strickland;
James
Deetz; Mary
C. Beaudry,
Potential
MMC
x
Whistle
speculated
by M.
Beaudry
and George
(2003:166)
to be part of
child’s
coral an d
bells
x
Horseshoe,
hoe, hinges,
scythe by
threshold;
iron wedges
State
Town
Site Name and Date
Excavated or
Surveyed
Years
PI(S)
Confirmed
MMC
No
MMC
Noted
Donald D.
Jones,
Douglas C.
George
Kingston
Plymouth
Salem
NH
in wall;
knives in
hearth;
spoons in
hearth and
threshold
Joseph Howland
Site/house/c1676
1937; 1960,
1970,199899
Sidney
Strickland;
James Deetz
x
RM site (Clark Garrison
House)/farmstead/
c1620
1940-41,
1959; 1981
Henry
Hornblower;
Mary C.
Beaudry,
Donald D.
Jones,
Douglas C.
George
x
Geoffrey
Moran,
Edward F.
Zimmer,
Anne E.
Yentsch
x
Gray
Graffam
x
x
Narbonne House Site/c1670
Cambridge
Olmstead-Goffe House site/
urban house/c1650
Sandwich
Knoll House Site/c1675
2010-11
Craig
Chartier
Danvers
Rebecca Nurse Homestead/c1680
2006-2012
Malinda
Blustain;
Nathan
Hamilton
Duxbury
John Alden Site/house/c1650
1960; 1995,
2001
Roland
Wells
Robbins;
Craig
Chartier
x
Duxbury
Myles Standish Site/byre
house/c1637
1963-64
James Hall
Yarmouth
Taylor-Bray
Farm/farmstead/c1640
2010
Craig
Chartier
x
Durham
Willey House/c1640
2009
Craig
Brown
x
Stratham
Wiggin Site/homestead/c1680
1992,1994;
2000, 2002
Gary Hume
& Deborah
Duranceau;
Neill
DePaoli
x
Odiorne Farm/farmstead/c1650
1999
Ellen
Marlatt
x
Webster
Cook’s Cabin/house/c1730
1978
W. Dennis
Chesley
x
South
Kingston
Jireh Bull Garrison House/c1657
1918; 1981;
2011
Norman M.
Isham;
Stephen
Mrozowski;
Colin Porter
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Scissors,
horseshoe,
cock’s head
hinges,
knife blades
in cellar;
pins under
floor
x
Rye
RI
Potential
MMC
x
Lock and
key,
scissors,
cock’s head
hinges near
State
Town
Site Name and Date
Excavated or
Surveyed
Years
PI(S)
Confirmed
MMC
No
MMC
Noted
Potential
MMC
thresholds;
buckthorn
shrubs at
house
corner
Wickford
Smith’s Castle (Richard Smith
Jr.) Site/c1678
1973-1992;
2007
Patricia
Rubertone
Warwick
Greene Farm Archaeology
Project (John Greene)
/house/c1640
2004-2009
Patricia
Rubertone;
Krysta
Ryzewski
x
x
Scissors
along house
wall; heart
padlocks
and key
4.4.2 Additional Archaeological Artifact Data Sources
The greatest amount of magical material culture is recovered not through archaeological
excavation or survey, but through historic preservation, house renovation, or structural
demolition projects. As these projects deal with extant buildings, they naturally have the
advantage in locating in situ the various types of intentionally concealed objects and markings
utilized as apotropaic devices (Easton 1999a, 1999b, 2011; Geisler 2003; Northhampton Shoe
Museum files 2010; Hoggard personal communication 2010; Evans 2011, personal
communication 2011; Manning 2012a, 2012b). Theoretically, there should be such evidence
from seventeenth-century structures in New England; however, virtually all the existing
buildings from this period have had relatively continuous occupation or have been converted to
museums. In order to continue to be functional buildings, they will all have undergone
modernization changes through the centuries, which may have destroyed or further concealed
any evidence of magical material culture or created a palimpsest of magical practices that have
obfuscated earlier evidence. Archaeological excavation can, and does take place at some of these
properties (e.g., the Rebecca Nurse Homestead in Danvers, MA or the extant John Alden house
in Duxbury, MA), but on a limited scale and generally not within the house itself. As Manning’s
(2012a, 2012b) and Hoggard’s (personal communication 2010) research has shown, most of the
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apotropaia recovered in the United States, including that emerging from these seventeenth and
eighteenth-century structures, dates to the nineteenth-century. Such data reveals a continuation
of traditional popular beliefs that have been documented in great numbers in medieval and postmedieval Great Britain (Merrifield 1955, 1988; Easton 1988, 1999a, 1999b, 2011; Davies and
Blecourt 2004; Hoggard 2004; Davies 2007, Manning 2012b), and provide examples of the
behaviors that should also be visible in seventeenth-century American contexts. While these
nineteenth-century data documenting such artifacts as witch bottles, concealed shoes, and dried
cats cannot substitute directly for missing evidence from the seventeenth century, their
connection to practices from earlier historic periods makes them valuable comparative cases
from which important questions about absent evidence should arise.
The data collected on Anglo-European magical belief and use pertinent to the 1620-1725
timeframe from the three distinct disciplinary fields (history, folklore, and archaeology) were
stored and organized in a Microsoft Access database program to facilitate classification, crossreferencing, and analysis of all amassed information. Additionally, data analyzed specifically for
threshold correspondence were coded and tabulated in a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet. The
following chapter will present these dataset analyses.
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CHAPTER 5: Analysis and Interpretation
5.1 Chapter Overview
The multidisciplinary sources from which the data presented in this chapter derive proved
enlightening and yet fragmentary, each offering up glimpses into past behaviors and beliefs. It
became clear relatively early in the data collection process that a one-dimensional interpretive
framework propounding gendered associations of activity areas or artifacts to the accumulated
data would fail to completely illuminate the reality of seventeenth-century Anglo-Europeans in
New England or thoroughly explain gendered aspects of magical belief and use. Only the multitheoretical approach combining functionalism, fear theory, and agency discussed in Chapter 2
could adequately account for the general functionality of magic as well as any differentiation of
motivational forces behind its practice by women and men and provide a bridging framework
that ties ideas of functionality, risk (fear) management, and empowerment together as a cohesive
system through which the data presented in this chapter are analyzed and interpreted.
This chapter is divided into three major sections prefaced with a Data Overview section
that briefly defines the sampling procedures used for each of the datasets followed in turn by
each of the historical, folkloristic, and archaeological datasets and their analysis.
5.2 Data Overview
Unlike the quantification of the ubiquitous aggregations of ceramic, glass, metal,
architectural, and faunal materials that usually provide the basis for archaeological studies of
historic sites, the data for this present study defy similar quantification. As Thomas (1970:54)
states, “The quantification of beliefs, suspicions, and informal [witchcraft] allegations is an
impossibility;” the same can be said of the quantification of countermagical use. The number of
magical materials in use does not equate, as accumulations of other artifactual types may, to
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socioeconomic status, class, or wealth. Nor can quantification of their stylistic elements or
material compositions be used to construct interpretations related to market accessibility or
prestige in the way ceramic patterns or types often are. Materials and objects utilized for magical
purposes appear to be consistent across socioeconomic classifications (McKitrick 2009:68).
Additionally, a tallying of the number of instances a particular object, material, or motif was noted
in historical and folklore sources could never provide accurate counts and could quite feasibly
produce skewed representations of actual usage; however, the data used here do allow
consideration of relative frequencies although they are subject to a variety of biases. A tallying of
objects, materials, and motifs reported to date from archaeological sites would likewise
misrepresent the actual levels and varieties of magical material culture in use in historical contexts
as many instances of magic have been overlooked (e.g., plants, symbols, and numerological
associations), while others have received disproportionately concentrated attention (e.g., concealed
shoes, cats, and witch bottles). Various site formation processes also influence the types of magical
material culture that survive archaeologically (Schiffer 1972, 1987). Due to the unreliability of
quantifying magical belief and practice, the data presented here emphasize the range rather than
the number of magical manifestations documented in the three data sources; this was the most
parsimonious way of establishing the links between magic, gender, and the archaeological record.
The statistical notations used herein serve as relative comparative illustrations of particular
datasets and do not claim to imply universal patterns. Rather, they offer a preliminary image of
gendered behavior that has never before been considered as a launching point for further
exploration.
The following three sections lay out the evidence from particular data sources for the
variety of beliefs concerning magical material culture that were current and available to women
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and men in seventeenth-century New England. The data are then collated into typologies and
discussed in terms of gendered motivations and usage in the final chapater.
5.2.1 Historical Data
The compilation of magical materials, their functions, orientations, and uses from
historical written sources resulted in a total of 117 codeable instances of seventeenth-century
Anglo-European magical belief and practice; 67 instances derive from general historical sources,
and 50 come from the Salem witchcraft trial depositions. These counts do not include magic
symbols, as the exploration of magical symbolism defied any systematic or quantifiable analysis
and would require extensive individualized research projects focused on either each material type
(e.g., gravestones or furniture) or each symbol to measure their full extent. By using these 117
instances of magical material culture and a general contextual range of magical symbolism, and
taking into account the explicit characterization of men’s and women’s roles in Puritan society, I
analyzed the data to determine under what circumstances, for what motivations, and in what
forms men and women respectively employed magical material culture to mitigate the
environmental, culture contact, social, and gender dangers and tensions that threatened their
lives.
From a close analysis of all the various historical sources, seven material categories of
magical material cultured emerged (see Table 6.1 for complete description of categories). The
magical materials referenced fell into seven major divisions: agriculture, architecture, domestic,
flora/fauna, lithic, mortuary, and personal. Of particular importance here are the domestic and
personal categories. The domestic division includes all food related objects as well as
furnishings, sewing/needlework, and textiles. The personal category contains clothing,
adornments, smoking, games, weaponry, grooming/health, and image magic (objects intended to
[187]
represent an individual) items. Analysis of New England witchcraft trial depositions reveals that
women’s use of magical material culture appears to focus primarily on the harm or threat to
domestic issues like childbirth and children, the home, cooking, illness, and personal safety,
whereas men’s magical practice deals principally with livestock, crops, and business (Boyer and
Nissenbaum 1977; Willis 1995). Such a distinction suggests that one gendered dimension of
magical practice divides along activity lines that are integrated with gender roles. Figures 5.2 and
5.3 illustrate the material types used by women and men, while Figures 6.5 and 6.6 provide a
correlation between material types and gendered areas of concern. This division finds further
substantiation when particular magical forms or material expressions are considered. In addition
to the self-professed arenas of concern for which men and women employed magical protection,
certain activities—such as building construction, furniture making, metal working, and
gravestone carving—fell solely to men, leaving no doubt that magical objects and symbols
wrought or structurally integrated into these forms were done so by men. Some of these magical
applications came from the professional craftsmen (e.g., carpenters, stone masons, furniture
carvers) hired to undertake construction of buildings or other objects as Easton (1999a:534) and
Evans (2011:82-84) have demonstrated. Some of these practices reveal male concerns, while
others may have been undertaken at the request of women to address their own fears, and still
other manifestations may represent mutual worries. Similarly, apotropaic embroidered household
linens and clothing items were certainly crafted by women, but their use may not have
exclusively reflected female fears.
FIGURE 5.1. Gendered magical material culture use represented in general historical sources
(Scot 1584; Aubrey 1670, 1686; Blagrave 1671; Mather 1689, 1692a, 1692b; Calef 1693;
Culpeper 1814[1652]; Bartlett 1856; Bouton 1867; Drake 1869; Brand 1888; Earle 1893;
Burdick 1901; Anonymous 1909; Gardner 1942; Kittredge 1972; Bourne 1977[1725]; Becker
1978, 1980, 2005; McLaren 1984; Calvert 1992; St. George 1998; Deetz and Deetz 2000; Burr
[188]
2002[1914]; Spencer 2003; Davies and Blécourt 2004; Bailey 2007; Baker 2007; Cheape 2008;
Crawford-Mowday 2008; Beard nd).
16
14
12
10
8
Female
6
Male
4
2
0
Image
magic
Flora
Fauna
Hardware
Food
related
Personal
Writing
FIGURE 5.2. Gendered magical material culture use as represented in Salem witchcraft trial
papers (Boyer and Nissenbaum 1977).
16
14
12
10
8
Female
6
Male
4
2
0
Image
magic
Flora
Fauna
Hardware
[189]
Food
related
Personal
Writing
Comparing the general historical source data (Table 5.1) to the specific Salem witch trial
data (Table 5.2) revealed similar patterns. Both datasets show that food related, flora/fauna, and
personal materials far exceeded the other material types as preferred magical objects. Tables 5.1
and 5.2 illustrate these preferences and the specific forms within each category. It is interesting
to note that while the domestic category showed similar numbers for both the general and Salem
datasets, the numbers for the flora/fauna and personal categories in these two datasets are
reversed. The most obvious difference between general historical sources and the Salem records
was represented by discussion of image magic, or the use of poppets, (general sources n=1;
Salem n=21). Although called poppets, dolls, or rag dolls, these objects ranged from actual
anthropomorphic dolls of wax, straw, cloth, lead, or sticks to simply knotted cords and twisted
handkerchiefs or rags. Both women and men used image magic as harmful and apotropaic magic
to sympathetically inflict harm on a victim or suspected witch; and, as the dolls represented
individuals, they served as powerful and immediate magical tools to deal directly with a
perceived personal threat (Figure 5.3).
FIGURE 5.3. Devil distributing poppets for image magic. Seventeenth-century English
woodcut.
[190]
TABLE 5.1. Magical material culture use represented in general historical sources.
Totals
Number
% of Overall
Count (N=67)
Totals
Domestic
Number
% of
Overall
Count
(N=67)
Agricultural
N=4
Architecture
N=4
Domestic
N=11
Flora/Fauna
N=32
Lithic
N=5
Mortuary
N=0
Personal
N=11
Unknown
N=0
6%
6%
16.4%
47.8%
7.5%
0%
16.4%
0%
Food,
preparation
N=3
Food,
consumption
N=2
Food, storage
4.4%
3%
Totals
Flora/Fauna
Number
% of Overall
Count (N=67)
Heating &
Lighting
N=0
Sewing &
Needlecraft
N=2
Textiles
N=2
Furnishing &
Decorative
N=1
3%
1.5%
0%
3%
0%
Flora, wild
Flora, cultivated
Fauna, wild
Fauna, domestic
N=0
N=13
N=6
N=13
0%
19.4%
9%
19.4%
N=0
Totals
Personal
Accoutrements
Clothing/Textiles
Grooming/Health
Image
Reading/Writing
Smoking
Weapons
Toys
Religious
Number
% of
Overall
Count
(N=67)
N=1
N=3
N=4
N=1
N=1
N=0
N=1
N=0
N=0
1.5%
4.4%
6%
1.5%
1.5%
0%
1.5%
0%
0%
TABLE 5.2. Magical material culture use as represented in Salem witchcraft trial records.
.
Totals
Number
% of Overall
Count (N=50)
Totals
Domestic
Number
% of
Overall
Count
(N=50)
Agricultural
N=3
Architecture
N=1
Domestic
N=11
Flora/Fauna
N=8
Lithic
N=0
Mortuary
N=0
Personal
N=26
Unknown
N=1
6%
2%
22%
16%
0%
0%
52%
2%
Food,
preparation
N=8
Food,
consumption
N=0
Food, storage
16%
0%
Totals
Flora/Fauna
Number
% of Overall
Count (N=50)
Heating &
Lighting
N=0
Sewing &
Needlecraft
N=3
Textiles
N=1
Furnishing &
Decorative
N=0
2%
0%
0%
6%
0%
Flora, wild
Flora, cultivated
Fauna, wild
Fauna, domestic
N=0
N=4
N=0
N=4
0%
8%
0%
8%
[191]
N=0
Totals
Personal
Accoutrements
Clothing/Textiles
Grooming/Health
Image
Reading/Writing
Smoking
Weapons
Toys
Religious
Number
% of
Overall
Count
(N=50)
N=0
N=0
N=2
N=21
N=2
N=1
N=1
N=0
N=0
0%
0%
4%
42%
4%
2%
2%
0%
0%
The lack of wild flora in both datasets (Tables 5.1 and 5.2) and absence of wild fauna in
the Salem depositions (Table 5.2) are also notable. The connotative difference between wild and
cultivated plants will be addressed under the section on magical plants in the folklore section
5.2.2. As for the absence of wild fauna apotropaia in the Salem records, it may be connected
with the virtually exclusive association of the ‘wild’ areas of forest and uncultivated land with
devilish encounters and behaviors as cited in the depositions. Possibly to distance themselves
from connection to such demonic interactions or because they were primarily concerned with
their allegedly bewitched livestock, men did not reference the use of any animals except their
own domestic stock in thwarting witches. Other historical accounts, on the other hand, noted the
use of wolf heads, owl skins and talons, toads, and snakes and snakeskins to protect houses,
stables, and livestock (Scot 1584:145, 150; Aubrey 1686:115; Kittredge 1972:95).
As noted previously, each of the datasets was coded for crisis, gender, and physical
patterns. Of the 67 items abstracted from general historic records 40 (60%) indicated a direct
response to an immediate concern (crisis) like illness, storms, or witchcraft; 60 (female n= 25
(37%); male n= 35 (52%)) had a gender association; and 53 (79%) concerned the protection of a
physical domestic boundary (Table 5.3). The same coding for the Salem court records showed a
significant difference in the crisis pattern as all 50 (100%) citations concerned magical use as a
response to the Salem witchcraft crisis. The gendered pattern also reflected the heightened fear
experienced by women in this situation as they were the most likely to be accused and punished
as witches. The depositions included explicit instances of magical use by 30 (60%) women and
[192]
12 (24%) men. Reference to protecting physical boundaries was noted in only 23 or 40% of the
testimonies (Table 5.3), but a more detailed analysis of thresholds (Table 5.5 and Figures 5.4,
5.5, 5.6, and 5.7) illustrates the range and distribution of thresholds associated with fear and
magic and shows that body, gender, and religious boundaries were significantly implicated with
physical boundaries. This threshold analysis will be discussed in greater detail below.
Combining the counts from the general historical sources and the Salem witch trial
records (Table 5.3) produced figures that suggest specific crisis related stresses generally account
for about three-fourths (77%) of the use of magical material culture and two-thirds (65%) of
magical devices guard the physical boundaries of house, outbuildings, yard, and property.
Gendered attribution to magical practice based on these datasets shows only a slightly higher
association with women; however, these numbers do not reflect those instances of magical
material culture noted above related to gendered occupations.
TABLE 5.3. Pattern coding from court and other historical sources.
Pattern
General Historic
Records
N=67
Salem Trial Records
N=50
Combined
N=117
Crisis
Gender
Physical
40 (60%)
F 25 (33%) / M 35 (52%)
53 (79%)
50 (100%)
F 30 (60%) / M 12 (24%)
23 (40%)
90 (77%)
F 55 (47%) / M 47 (40%)
76 (65%)
Historical records offered only a few explicit first-hand accounts of using magical
material to protect the physical boundaries of domestic space. The following examples illustrate
two common admissions. The first comes from the 1680 deposition of Esther Willson at the trial
of Elizabeth Morse of Newbury, Massachusetts (Drake 1869:275). In her deposition, Willson
[193]
recounts an episode between her mother, Goodwife Chandler, and Morse that occurred 14 years
previously:
…mother…when she was ill…would often cry out and complain that Goodwife
Morse was a witch, and had bewitched her…One [person], coming to the house,
asked why we did not nail a horseshoe on the threshold (for that was an experiment
to try witches). My mother, the next morning, with her staff made a shift to get to
the door, and nailed on a horseshoe as well as she could. G. Morse, while the horseshoe
was on, would never be persuaded to come into the house….
The second example is a first-hand account of Mary Hortado living near Barwick, Maine in 1683
and recorded by Increase Mather in his essay “Remarkable Providences” (cited in Burr 2002
[1914]:38). After suffering lithobolic and other demonic attacks, Goodwife Hortado was:
…advised to stick the House round with Bayes, as an effectual preservative
against the power of Evil Spirits. This Counsel was followed. And as long as
the Bayes continued green, she had quiet; but when they began to whither, they
were all by an unseen hand carried away, and [she was] again tormented.
While these examples provide direct evidence of the belief in and use of particular materials and
forms as apotropaia, their limited occurrence in historical records precludes a full comprehension
of just how vulnerable to supernatural forces domestic boundaries were perceived to be. To gain
a deeper understanding of the relationships between fear, boundaries, and magic required looking
beyond these few examples of threshold apotropaic use and analyzing the threshold language
used by those fearful of supernatural attack. Samuel Gray’s testimony against Bridget Bishop,
sworn in Salem on May 30, 1692, offers a representative example of how people emphasized the
permeability of particular threshold types in their descriptions of preternatural events by
repeatedly referencing the threshold type and its locked state (Boyer and Nissenbaum 1977:94):
…he awakened & looking up, saw the house light as if a candle or candles were
lighted in it and the dore locked…he did then see a woman standing…and seemed
to look upon him soe he did Rise up in his bed and it vanished or disappeared
then he went to the dore and found it locked and unlocking and Opening the
[194]
dore he went to the Entry dore and looked out, and then againe did see the
same Woman he had a little before seen in the Rome…then he said to her in
the name of God what doe you come for. Then she vanished away soe he
Locked the dore againe & went to bed…[but] looked up & againe did see the
same woman…
A careful reading of the Salem witch trial depositions for these threshold language cues
uncovered three broad physical boundary and three metaphoric boundary categories whose
violation caused people varying degrees of fear or anxiety (Figure 5.4). The physical boundary
categories include domestic structures, domestic yards, and public spaces, while the metaphoric
boundaries comprise notions of personal violation, sociopolitical contravention, and religious
defiance. These categories were further subdivided into thirteen specific physical thresholds and
eight metaphysical thresholds to gain a better understanding of how physical and metaphysical
boundaries were perceived as a system (as discussed in Chapter 3) of nested and implicated
concepts requiring threshold protection through supernatural means (Figure 5.4). For example,
the metaphysical personal category labeled gender captures those instances when a woman or
man was accused of witchery based on behaviors interpreted as violations of gender role
boundaries including improper speaking behaviors, failure to accept or conform to hierarchical
familial power structures, and overall failure to adequately perform tasks associated with one’s
gender (as discussed in Chapter 3). To maintain social order and protect individual households,
gender roles and expectations had to be enforced and guarded and were contributing elements in
the protection of the more concrete domestic boundaries through which these gender-violating
witches may pass.
[195]
FIGURE 5.4. Physical and metaphorical boundary violation fears by category from the Salem
witchcraft trial papers.
Salem Threshold Violation Groups
Religious
15%
Domestic Structure
24%
Sociopolitical
7%
Domestic Yard
12%
Personal
24%
Public Spaces
18%
[196]
FIGURE 5.5. (below) Physical and metaphorical boundary violation fears from the Salem
witchcraft trial papers.
Salem Threshold Violations
Political
0%
Drunkenness
0%
Door
18%
Consorting with Devil
15%
Window
3% Wall
Theft/Loss
6%
Yard/Garden
3%
Body
11%
Land
Boundary
3%
Sex
0%
Racial
1%
Class
1%
Cracks
1%
Roof
0%
Hearth
2%
Gender
11%
Other
land/space
5%
Roads
6%
Barns/Outbuildings
3%
Fences
2%
Gates
1%
Forests
7%
Similarly, the broader personal category contains a subcategory labeled body that notes
particular instances of concern for the violation of one’s body through illness, physical attack,
and possession. The layers of apotropaic protection applied to both external and internal
[197]
domestic thresholds to prevent the entry of supernatural forces were often intended to protect the
household inhabitants from such bodily invasions.
The sociopolitical boundary transgression most represented in the Salem data involved
theft or loss of property (e.g., crops, livestock, food goods, linens) attributed to the maleficium of
witches or demons (Dailey 1992). Trust, honesty, and integrity were expected virtues in
communal New England villages and their breach undermined important core values and
prompted feelings of fear and mistrust in community members. Apotropaia use to guard the
physical boundaries of barns, houses, and fields against preternaturally caused losses
simultaneously guarded the concepts of personal rights, honesty, and trust that ideally structured
colonial society.
It certainly could be argued that the divisions used here overlap or that particular
categories, like gender, could just as well fit under the sociopolitical grouping as the personal
grouping or that theft/loss could be seen as a personal violation as well as a sociopolitical
concern. The distinctions made here do not deny or exclude such implications. Rather they were
chosen as one analytical device to begin to deconstruct the types of threshold violation fears
underlying the use of magic by men and women in seventeenth-century New England.
To better visualize and spatially situate these contested thresholds into a seventeenthcentury New England landscape, photographs of Plymouth Plantation (Figure 5.6) and of the
Samuel Pickman House, ca1664, Salem, Massachusetts (Figure 5.7) are overlain with colored
orbs marking the thresholds as indicated in the witch trial depositions. The size of the orbs
corresponds to the relative degree of concern cited in the depositions. The orb colors in Figure
5.6 correspond to the category colors on the pie chart in Figure 5.4, while the red orbs in Figure
5.7 represent the various ‘hot spots’ of preternatural boundary permeability in the domestic
[198]
setting. Using such illustrations provides a more dynamic and phenomenological perspective of
seventeenth-century spaces as ranging from safe to perilous. Residents maneuvering through
landscapes understood to possess preternaturally vulnerable zones, would have to make decisions
about chosen travel corridors (e.g., avoiding fearful areas) or the use of strategies (like using
protective magic) to confidently negotiate these landscapes.
FIGURE 5.6. Hotspots of boundary violation fear in combined domestic and public spheres.
Salem witchcraft papers. Photo courtesy of Todd Atteberry (historyandhaunts.com), Plymouth
Plantation, MA.
[199]
FIGURE 5.7. (below) Hotspots of boundary violation fear in domestic spheres. Salem witchcraft
papers. Photo courtesy of Todd Atteberry (historyandhaunts.com), Samuel Pickman House,
ca1664, Salem, MA.
Further analysis of the fears associated with these thresholds substantiated that gender
was an implicated variable of threshold control or violation. Table 5.5 provides a correlation
between gender and threshold by noting the occurrence of a particular threshold type with the
four possible gender scenarios presented in the trial depositions: male accuser/male accused;
male accuser/female accused; female accuser/female accused; and female accuser/male accused.
This breakdown provided a more distinct image of the gender relations involved in the
perception of threshold permeability. The domestic realm accounted for 36% of the boundary
violation fears, with 24% specifically noting a structural element. Of the ninety citations of
domestic structural elements, both women and men cited doors (n= 68) with far greater
[200]
frequency than they did any other entrance point as potentially breachable by preternatural
means. The accounts of spiritual middens and concealed shoes, cats, and written charms, found
in and around hearths and roofs, in addition to magical symbols on ceilings and rafters (Swann
1996; Easton 1999a, 1999b, 2007; Geisler 2003; Hoggard 2004; Evans 2011; Manning 2012a,
2012b) all indicate that the other domestic structural thresholds also required protection. Why
these features, especially the roof, went virtually unremarked in the Salem testimonies is unclear.
Concern with the boundaries of domestic areas surrounding the house (n=45) were consistently
represented with the exception of gates. As concerned as they were for the safety of their homes,
people felt more vulnerable to attack when they ventured beyond the boundaries of their
domestic realms and into public spaces (n=68), suggesting they had a sense of control over their
domestic boundaries. Of all the public areas, forests were cited the most frequently (n=27) as a
place of supernatural danger and activity against which they required protection. All the
physical thresholds, both domestic and public, inside and outside, shared one common aspect:
both women and men expressed significantly more fear of female witches than male witches
crossing these boundaries.
A similar pattern of both women and men fearing the consequences of female violations
of metaphoric thresholds clustered around gender behavioral expectations, bodily boundaries,
theft, and adherence to Christian faith. A woman stepping outside rigid gender constructs
signaled a dangerous threat to social and religious authority and order. Her unnatural behavior
was credited to the Devil’s influence and power, which also gave her the ability to invade both
the physical bodies of others through possession (what Demos (2004:199) refers to as the
ultimate “failure of boundary-maintenance” for victims) or injury, and their physical space
through theft and spoiling of their property. A woman not ruled and contained by appropriate
[201]
TABLE 5.4. Physical and metaphorical boundary violation fears according to gender from the
Salem witchcraft trial papers. See Figures 5.5 and 5.6 for graphic illustration of the physical
boundary violation fears.
Boundary Violation
N=372
Number
Percentage
Male Accuser
Male Accused
Male Accuser
Female Accused
Female Accuser
Female Accused
Female Accuser
Male Accused
Domestic Structure
Door
Window
Wall Cracks
Roof
Hearth
Domestic Yard
Yard/Garden
Land Boundary
Barns/Outbuildings
Fences
Gates
Public Spaces
Roads
Forests
Other land/space
Personal
Gender
Class
Racial
Sex
Body
Sociopolitical
Theft/Loss
Drunkenness
Political
Religious
Consorting with
Devil
90
68
10
4
1
7
45
11
11
12
9
2
68
22
27
19
89
42
2
2
1
42
24
23
1
0
56
24%
18%
2.6%
1%
0.26%
1.8%
12%
2.9%
2.9%
3.2%
2.4%
0.53%
18%
5.9%
7.2%
5.1%
24%
11.2%
0.53%
0.53%
0.26%
11.2%
6.4%
6.1%
0.26%
0%
15%
7
5
0
0
0
2
1
0
1
0
0
0
7
4
3
0
3
0
0
1
0
2
0
0
0
0
4
44
33
5
1
0
5
30
8
6
10
6
0
27
12
12
3
43
23
1
0
0
19
18
18
0
0
17
36
26
5
3
1
1
12
3
2
3
2
2
28
4
10
14
37
14
2
1
1
19
10
9
1
0
25
5
4
1
0
0
0
3
0
2
0
1
0
8
2
3
3
3
0
0
0
0
3
0
0
0
0
10
56
15%
4
17
25
10
gender, social, and religious boundaries appeared to the deponents in the Salem trials as the most
likely person to acquire and wield destructive supernatural power. Of the instances citing gender
violation as a matter of concern in regards to preternatural power, 23 men and 14 women
accused women of such a transgression. No men were cited by men or women of violating
[202]
gender roles in this way. A total of 38 (m=19, f=19) accusations were made against women as
the supernatural force behind bodily attack, possession, illness, and death, whereas only five men
were so credited. Theft or property loss (e.g., spoilage of crops, milk or beer soured, death of
livestock) also were attributed solely to women by both male (n=18) and female (n=9)
deponents. Transgressing religious bounds was recognized as a danger for both sexes. Of the 56
citations concerning crossing over to the Devil, 14 were charged against men (4 by other men
and 10 by women); however, the majority of charges (n=42) were leveled at women (17 by men
and 25 by other women). Each of these metaphoric boundary violations contributed to the
implementation of domestic threshold apotropaia as protective strategies against the harmful
intentions of the boundary violators.
This analysis of threshold spaces indicates that both men and women especially feared
what they perceived to be the potential supernatural powers accessible to women and the
subsequent ability to transgress boundaries. The men’s description of these dangers extended
from the most intimate inner bedchambers to the furthest reaches of forest land, but emphasized
outdoor spaces associated with work and transportation. Women’s descriptions tended to focus
around the domestic sphere, primarily the house, but also included a significant concern for
public gathering spaces like the meeting house and communal work or interaction areas for
women where they were less in control of the space. As with the data cited in Tables 5.2 and
5.3, the Salem witch trial threshold analysis generally supports a gendered association of
supernatural fears with occupation and activity areas. The actual forms of magical material
culture employed in these contexts are not gender distinct but dictated by the fears they are
intended to alleviate due to their sympathetic or inherently magical properties and relevance to
the particular situation as is seen in women utilizing horseshoes or men employing poppets. This
[203]
connection of fears, magical material culture, and gender is presented at the end of this chapter
(Tables 5.11 and 5.12) using data synthesized from historical, folkloristic, and archaeological
sources.
The final historical dataset for this study concerns magical symbols. Renfrew and
Zubrow (1994:8) observe that “the use of symbols in relation to the supernatural is often
perfectly clear. It is the more complete analysis of their functioning which can be difficult.” This
observation certainly holds true for magical symbols in seventeenth-century New England where
mention of symbols as apotropaia is virtually absent from written magical treatises or first-hand
accounts, yet they appear with frequency and consistency across wide material, spatial, and
temporal ranges (Pettigrew 1844; Gramly 1981; Easton 1999a, 1999b, 2011; Lloyd et al. 2001;
Hoggard 2004; Evans 2011, personal communication 2012; Fontana personal communication
2012). A rare example noted in a personal journal comes from Samuel Sewell’s diary. Sewell, a
prominent Boston merchant and magistrate, built an addition to his house in 1692, but it was
beset by lightning and hail, events he interpreted as divine Providence. To protect his house and
property from further harm, he records in his diary that he had stone cherubim heads affixed to
his gates (Thomas 1973:287; Hall 1989:217; St. George 1998:190). Similar cherubim heads are
carved on a Connecticut chest, ca. 1680-1720, painted on a rafter above the hearth in a house
close to Little Compton, Rhode Island (St George 1998:190-191), and commonly carved on
gravestone tympanums across New England (Ludwig 1966; Deetz and Dethlefsen 1967; Forbes
1967[1927]; Wasserman 1972; Jacobs 1973; Kull 1975; Benes 1976, 1978; Duval and Rigby
1978; Bouchard 1991; Deetz 1996; Gage and Gage 2003), but unlike Sewell’s gate cherubim,
each of these cases lacks any explicit contemporary explanation of the symbol operating as
apotropaia, although they certainly could have been viewed as protective devices.
[204]
Regardless of the absence of written documentation addressing magical symbols and
marks, a variety of symbols have been recorded from seventeenth-century British domestic
contexts and interpreted as ritual marks or motifs (Pettigrew 1844; Easton 1988, 1999a, 1999b,
2011; Lloyd et al. 2001; Hoggard 2004, personal communication 2012). Unfortunately, they
have not been quantified or analyzed beyond a substantiation that they primarily occur at the
same threshold points around houses and outbuildings guarded by other forms of magical
material culture, nor have the motifs been compared to similar symbols used on other material
objects to ascertain possible implications. Despite their British frequency, there has been little
notation of these marks or symbols in North American contexts. The only discussions of
apotropaic symbolism in seventeenth-century New England come from St. George (1998) and
Gramly (1981). Gramly’s discovery in 1978 of ritual marks inscribed on a granite boulder at the
margin of a forest outside Salem, Massachusetts is the only published article discovered devoted
to the practice of magical symbols in New England, but it is exclusively focused on the symbols
found on the boulder (e.g., a pentagram in a double circle flanked by a heart-topped caduceus on
the left and an inverted astrological sign for Aries on the right). Easton (personal communication
2012) indicated he found some candle burn initials on attic beams in Williamsburg, Virginia, but
could not determine any ritual connection without further analysis. Nonetheless, particular
religious and magical symbolic motifs and their meanings have a long history in both Britain and
North America as is demonstrated by the recurring devices found on a variety of objects.
Regardless of their virtual absence in written sources and the lack of a systematic inventory of
symbols, their material manifestations must be considered as another strand of potentially
recoverable artifactual evidence of magical belief and practice.
[205]
The most common apotropaic symbols utilized by seventeenth-century Anglo-Europeans
included hexafoils and rosettes, circles, triangles, hearts, spirals, and whorls; also used, but
apparently with less frequency, were crosses, pentagrams, roosters, ‘V V’ overlapped, cherubim,
assorted astrological symbols, and tear-drop burn marks. Some of the symbols had direct
religious associations (e.g., overlapped double ‘V’ or inverted ‘M’ meaning Virgo Virginium for
Virgin Mary, crosses, and cherubim heads); others drew their power through less direct, but still
recognizable connections to the Christian worldview (e.g., hexafoils, triangles, circles,
pentagrams, and roosters); and some have pre-Christian origins as solar symbols (e.g., spirals,
whorls, hexafoils, rosettes, and circles) (Binder 1972; Matthews 1993; Gibson 2001; Paine 2004;
O’Connell and Airey 2005). Easton (1999a:533) notes that “those used to evoke the protection
of Christ and the Virgin Mary are…found scribed or painted on houses, agricultural buildings,
cupboards and boxes” and are found throughout England, especially in East Anglia. He
concedes that some of the marks found in buildings are simply carpentry marks, but others work
as apotropaic protection drawing from religious and astrological symbolism (Figure 5.9).
FIGURE 5.8. Common marks found in English houses and outbuildings (Easton 1988:7).
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Although numerous motifs existed in seventeenth-century New England, a detailed
description and analysis of all possible variations is beyond the scope of this study. To gain a
clearer sense of seventeenth-century magical symbols, their material manifestations, and possible
gender associations, I have focused on the five symbol types that appear to have the greatest
frequency of occurrence and the widest range of expression: hexafoils, circles, hearts, triangles,
and overlapping ‘V’s. Each of these motifs is discussed in turn below.
FIGURE 5.9. Encircled hexafoils from Spanish-American missions. Top: painted on walls of
early nineteenth-century Mission San Luis Rey, CA. Bottom: inscribed on east facing door of
eighteenth-century Mission San Xavier del Bac, Tuscon, AZ. Photos courtesy of Bernard
Fontana.
Hexafoils occur in both domestic and sacred spaces (See Figures 5.9 and 5.10) and have
been recorded in Britain (Easton 1999a, 1999b; Kemp 2010), Australia (Evans 2011), and
Spanish Colonial Arizona and California (Fontana personal communication 2012). Fontana’s and
Evan’s discovery of hexafoils in eighteenth and nineteenth-century structures in two disparate
Christian settings illustrates their long standing and widespread importance as a powerful
Christian symbol. In the seventeenth-century New England domestic realm, they appear on a
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wide variety of objects including furniture pieces such as boxes for holding valuables (see
Figures 3.6 and 5.11), chests, and chairs (Nutting 1971); architectural thresholds; and
gravestones. Ludwig (1966:225) refers to the hexafoil as a ‘six-pointed rosette,’ which he
includes in a category with all other multi-petalled and swirled images found on gravestones:
Rosettes can be divided into a number of classes including the eight-, six-,
and four-sided variants, their cousins the wedges and webs, and the more distinct
but still related coils and whirls…[but] most common of all are the six-pointed
rosettes…
Forbes (1967[1927], Ludwig (1966), and Slater and Tucker (1978) give more attention to a wider
range of seventeenth-century New England gravestone symbols than do other scholars, but
without connecting those symbols with their appearance on other types of material culture or to
apotropaic magic.
According to British scholar, Ric Kemp (2010), hexafoils started appearing in English
churches at the time of the Protestant Reformation (ca.1517-1648), while Easton’s (1999a:533)
research indicates that hexafoils used as domestic apotropaia began during the post-Reformation
period when the increased fear of “witches entering through the openings of the house must
account in part for their position around the hearth, windows, and doors.” Although documented
on Romano-British tombstones, hexafoils on Early Modern gravestone tympanums and finials
did not begin to appear with regularity in England and New England until the end of the
seventeenth century (See Figures 3.2 and 5.11) (Ludwig 1966; Forbes 1967[1927]; Duval and
Rigby 1978; Slater and Tucker 1978; Deetz 1996; Gage and Gage 2003). Most hexafoils,
whether on wood or stone, were precisely drawn with a carpenter’s or engraver’s compass,
which suggest they were male creations. This does not, however, preclude females from
scratching cruder examples upon hearth lintels or door and window sills or rendering them in
embroidery on household linens. An apparently important attribute of the hexafoil design
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regardless of its location or its precision—beyond the obvious fact that it is a triad multiple—is
its placement within a circle, which occurs in virtually every recordation of hexafoil apotropaia
(Easton 1999a:534; Evans 2011, personal communication 2012; Fontana personal
FIGURE 5.10. Hexafoils in England and New England. Top left: from kitchen ceiling of 1620
house, Bedfield Hall in Suffolk, England (Evans 2011:23); Top right: 1718 gravestone, (Ludwig
1966) ; Bottom: American box, ca. 1700, with alternating red and black painted hexafoils
(Nutting 1971:105).
communication 2012). Additionally, the apotropaic circles (Easton 1999a:534) or the hexafoils
(Evans personal communication 2012) are often left incomplete, similar to the intentionally
broken or ‘killed’ objects used in other magical contexts. This combination of attributes, each
apparently amplifying the magical force of the whole, reiterates the point presented in Chapter 3,
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that magical material culture operates as a system with integrated components, and may be more
easily recognized and understood once these systemic elements and their associations are
acknowledged.
Circles, like hexafoils, have been used as domestic threshold apotropaia in various ways.
While they were used in conjunction with hexafoils, they also appear as singular, concentric, or
overlapping circles on hearthstones, window sills, doors, and rafters (Easton 1999a, 1999b, 2011;
Hoggard 2012) and on doorstones and gravestones (St. George 1998; Gage and Gage 2003).
Their use on seventeenth-century gravestones predates that of hexafoils, as does their appearance
on doorstones (St. George 1998; Gage and Gage 2003). Figure 5.12 provides some seventeenthcentury examples of circles used as threshold apotropaia. According to symbologists, the circle
represents unity and perfection, and thus the divine (Matthews 1978:40; Gibson 2001:81;
O’Connell and Airey 2005:111). As a symbol of the ultimate divine power, it would naturally
serve as a motif of protection from evil forces. Like many hexafoils, the exactness of circles
engraved using a compass on stone or wood, indicates their production by men who would have
had access to these tools; but, also like imperfect hexafoils, imprecise circles within and around
the house could just have easily been rendered by women.
FIGURE 5.11. Examples of circle forms used as apotropaia (left to right): concentric circles on
Dummer 1690 doorstone, Newbury, MA (Gage and Gage 2003:116); overlapping inscribed
circles on sealed door in Harvington Hall, Worcestershire, England; circles imbedded in
hearthstone, Fleece Inn, Bretforton, England. English photos courtesy of Brian Hoggard.
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The heart motif appears on a similar range of material objects as hexafoils and circles as
well as appearing in two unmistakably apotropaic forms. Not only do hearts repeatedly occur on
furniture (frequently in triads) (Figure 5.13), gravestones, and key handles (Figure 5.19), but red
cloth hearts are also a common element in witch bottles (Merrifield 1955, 1988; Kittredge 1972;
Becker 1978, 1980, 2005; Hoggard 2004), just as real animal hearts were common apotropaia
placed in hearths and chimneys and worn as amulets (Kittredge 1972:97). In Christian
iconography, the heart is often symbolic of the soul or representative of the Virgin Mary (Paine
2004:172; O’Connell and Airey 2005:155). In addition, it represents the life force and is
particularly associated with the hearth (i.e., the heart of the home) and by extension the wellbeing and strength of house and household (Matthews 1978:97; St. George 1998:174). The
correlation of hearts with the Virgin Mary, hearths, and households imbues this motif with
strongly feminine attributes and associations.
FIGURE 5.12. Triple heart motifs on seventeenth-century American chest and chair (Nutting
1971:31, 224).
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The significance of triad forms for seventeenth-century Christians, explained in Chapter
3, cannot be disregarded. As symbolic motifs they occur both as geometric figures and as
triplicate repetitions of other shapes (e.g., three hearts or circles). The triangle itself appears
singularly, nested one inside another, in a zig-zag series, or overlapping to create a pentagram on
witchposts, furniture, doorstones, gravestones, and bottles (see Figures 3.3 and 5.12). Similar to
other incised markings, formal triangular carvings rendered on these objects were done by male
craftsmen. Not all magical triangles required a craftsman’s hand, however; triangular
arrangement of other apotropaic objects could be constructed by anyone to enhance or activate
magical forces (Kittredge 1972:95).
The final symbol to be considered is the double ‘V’ that appears throughout domestic
structures on hearth lintels, rafters, and door and window sills and jambs. Unlike the symbols
described above, this marking often occurs not as a formal rendering on crafted surfaces, but as
scratched or burned impressions done by unskilled individuals, male or female. Their more
impromptu appearance suggests they may represent instances of an individual’s perception of an
immediate threat to home and household. Like other motifs, the double ‘V’ frequently comprises
one component of an associated set of symbols that includes circles, P’s, and crosshatched lines
(Easton 1988, 1999a, 1999b; Hoggard 2004).
The evidence for apotropaic ritual markings in domestic structures and on furniture and
gravestones indicates they were constructed by three groups of practitioners: craftsmen (e.g.,
carpenters, stonecutters, furniture makers); professional cunning folk; and individual laypersons
(Easton 1988, 1999a, 1999b, 2011). Those created by craftsmen seem to operate as proactive
devices to ensure a general sense of protection. They guarded the integrity of built structures, the
contents of chests and boxes, and the occupants of houses, barns, and graves against
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preternatural forces. The craftsmen’s incorporation of apotropaia into their designs was also to
ensure the stability and quality of their constructs, which directly related to their own reputations
and socioeconomic standing (Burdick 1901).
Whether employing professional cunning folk for the application of magical symbolism
or applying such symbols oneself, both recourses appear to be responses to particular stressful
situations. Professional male and female cunning folk were called upon for serious cases of
illness, odd behavior, or misfortune that required greater expertise and supernatural knowledge
than that available to the laypersons involved (Davies 2007; Easton 2011). The particular
locations of ritual marks by professional cunning folk may indicate whether the practitioner was
a man or woman, but this does not reveal the sex of the person or persons responsible for
engaging the magic professional. Laypersons likely had a more limited repertoire of apotropaic
symbols at their immediate command than did cunning folk and used those symbols in tackling
the supernatural threats they believed they had power to thwart. Women’s access to the
particularly hard-to-reach areas of rafters and ceilings was hampered by their clothing and their
gender behavior expectations; thus, marks in these areas were likely manifested by men. On the
other hand, the marks found along hearths, doors, windows, floors, and house corners could
easily have been done by women. Understanding gender limitations that affected both spatial
and behavioral access of seventeenth-century New Englanders provides another clue as to who
would create particular apotropaic symbols as well as where, under what circumstance, and for
what purpose.
5.3.2 Folklore Data
The information contained in folklore collections of tales, customs, proverbial wisdom,
and traditional beliefs, naturally overlaps and reiterates much of the material cited in historical
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works concerning witchcraft, medicine, and herbalism. If it were otherwise, the cultural
elements characterized as a group’s folklore would be meaningless fictions with no actual
relevance to the group’s everyday operation. Due to the ethnographical methodologies of
observation and interview used in the documentation of folkloristic beliefs and practices, the
folklore collections contain a wider range of magical materials than are spoken of or written
about in historical documents. However, even these sources cannot be considered all-inclusive
since not all magical behaviors are readily observable or are explicitly discussed. For these
reasons, the coverage of traditional beliefs usually constitutes only a small percentage of the
information contained in folklore collections and are often characterized and collated as
superstitions.
For this study I used twenty-four British and New England folklore collections focusing
on supernatural beliefs, superstitions, magic, and plants from which I abstracted 106 magical
materials and/or applications germane to this study of domestic boundary control and protection.
Coding these 106 objects to discern crisis, gender, and physical patterns indicated that 45
(42.4%) of the practices were associated with particular stressful circumstances like illness,
livestock epidemic, perceived bewitchment, or destructive natural forces; 54 (50.9%) were
directly linked to gender (28 female; 26 male); and 89 (83.9%) of the devices operated decidedly
to guard permeable boundaries (Table 5.6). A further comparison of the overtly genderassociated materials with the crisis and physical patterns revealed that of the 28 female practices,
13 (46.4%) correlated with high stress situations and 21 (75%) dealt with boundary protection.
This same comparison for the 26 male practices showed that 11 (42.3%) of the occurrences
coincided with stressful events and 20 (76.9%) employed protective boundary elements. These
numbers alone suggest little general difference between female and male apotropaic use. As was
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the case with the historical data, the distinctions most clearly arise when the particular contexts
of magical application are considered.
TABLE 5.5. Pattern coding for apotropaic magical use in folklore sources.
Combined
N=106
Female
N=28
Male
N=26
45(42.4%)
F 28(26.4%) / M 26
(25.2%)
89(83.9%)
13 (46.4%)
11 (42.3%)
--
--
21 (75%)
20 (76.9%)
Pattern
Crisis
Gender
Physical
Two particular threads of magical belief and protection, although substantiated in
historical sources, were discussed in more detail in folklore sources. The first provides a clearer
understanding of the fearful supernatural beings addressed earlier under the section on fear
theory, their orientation on the landscape, and their interaction with humans; the second
expounds the range, virtues, and uses of magical flora. Both threads contribute significantly to
an analysis of gendered fear and magic use that is suggested by, but not explored in historical or
archaeological studies. These threads and their connection to gendered boundary controls are
presented in the following two sections.
Supernatural beings
The greatest application of magical practice is as an intermediating agent between people and
supernatural forces. Of the 106 folklore instances cited here, 100 were specifically intended to
intercede with supernatural beings to either bring success through luck, prosperity, health, or
productivity; or to ensure these positive states by blocking the destructive malice of supernatural
beings. Both women and men feared the negative consequences occasioned by maleficent
spirits, but the particulars of these consequences tend toward those areas or responsibilities
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falling within each gender’s greatest purview (Figure 5.13). In agreement with the historical
data, folklore sources suggest that women’s apotropaic use focused on protecting the house and
household, including issues of food preparation and family health and well-being. Men’s
magical use concentrated around livestock and crops, protecting the house, building construction,
and protection against ghosts. As the data indicates, most magical practice lacked a gender
attribution in the records. This does not necessarily mean that these practices can be attributed to
both women and men, although that may be the case in some situations. Alternatively, some of
these indeterminate instances may, in fact, be gendered.
Since almost 95% of folklore references to magical material culture involve supernatural
beings, it is necessary to provide a brief background into such beings to understand how they
relate to the gendered practice of magic. Generally, spirits are held to be of two types (Stein and
Stein 2005:194):
1. Non-individualized, anonymous groups of beings (e.g., leprechauns, water spirits, forest
spirits, angels, demons)
2. Individualized, guardian spirits (e.g., witches and witches’ familiars)
While some of these beings take a purely animal form, most are perceived as anthropomorphic or
theriomorphic with shape-changing abilities. Spirits inhabit and permeate the human world, but
in parallel and intersecting ways—their reality is not human reality (Beaumont 1707; Hazlett
1905; Carpenter 1920; Briggs 1957, 1976, 1978; Evans-Wentz 1994[1911]; Porteus 2002[1928];
Kirk 2008[1691]; Herva 2009). They interact with humans in a variety of manners—
beneficently, maliciously, and mischievously. They can provide protection, success, and luck or
they can mete out harm and destruction through loss of crops, infertility, illness, death, and
mishap (Clark 1997; Walker 1995; Wilby 2000). They can be propitiated, but they are usually
capricious and morally ambiguous (Russell 1984:78). Sometimes they are intermediaries or
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messengers between humans and gods—angels are a prime example of this type of spirit being
(Stein and Stein 2005).
FIGURE 5.13. Gender associated magical use against supernatural beings from folklore data.
16
14
12
10
8
6
4
2
0
Female
Male
Undetermined
Because they reside in the human world, they are believed to inhabit natural objects or
places (e.g., trees, water, stones, mounds, etc.); places of particular beauty (e.g., mountain tops,
waterfalls); unusual natural objects (e.g., holed stones or uniquely shaped plants); or can be
induced to dwell within a shrine, household, or fetish object (Ellis 2002; Gilmore 2003; Purkiss
2003). While the spirits may be approached and venerated in these places, the spirits’ abodes are
simultaneously understood to be dangerous territories for humans. Men’s work in agricultural
fields and pastures brought both themselves and, more frequently, their crops and livestock into
closer proximity to the uncultivated areas associated with supernatural beings. Combining the
data in Figure 5.13 that illustrate the virtually exclusive correlation between men and magic use
intended to protect livestock and crops with the historical data from Figures 5.2 and 5.3 that
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indicate a parallel correlation, suggests that men’s primary interaction with supernatural beings
occurred in the agricultural zones of the domestic holding.
In the Anglo-European tradition, a loosely related collection of supernatural beings,
referred to en masse as fairies, inhabit the landscape and variously interact with humans (see
Appendix B) (Beaumont 1707; Hazlett 1905; Carpenter 1920; Briggs 1957, 1976, 1978; Walker
1990; Evans-Wentz 1994[1911]; Ellis 2002; Porteus 2002[1928]; Gilmore 2003; Purkiss 2003;
Kirk 2008[1691]; Herva 2009). Many of these fairies were bound to particular places like hills,
caves, forests, or bodies of water; others attached themselves to human domestic realms and
were known by numerous names including brownie, Robin Goodfellow, hob, hobgoblin,
fenoderee, pixie, and bwca (Briggs 1957, 1978; Kirk 2008[1691]). Briggs (1957:271) described
these household spirits as “tutelary fairies” who served humans as either “omen-bearers or as
helpers.” Despite their apparent congeniality, these fairies, like all their kind, were understood to
be volatile, unpredictable, and potentially dangerous if offended (Cahill 1990:32-33; Walker
1990:36-42; Kirk 2008[1691:47; see Herva 2009 and Manning 2012b for extended discussions
of household spirits).
At the extreme negative pole of spirits are demons that, through possession or other
malevolent interaction, are often cited as the cause of illness, strange behavior, or deviance in
their victims. These demons may be any of the numerous beings inhabiting the landscape,
minions of the Devil, or witches’ familiars. The creatures known as witches’ familiars seemed to
pose a particularly immediate threat due to their often common forms and their integration within
everyday life. They could take a number of animal forms (e.g., cats, dogs, birds, pigs, lizards,
toads, mice, bumblebees, hares), or on occasion be more grotesque monstrosities. Regardless of
essential character, they were often credited with shape-shifting abilities as well as the power of
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invisibility (Glanvill 1682; Mather 1692:69,110-11; Cahill 1990:17). They were thought to be
either little demons in their own right provided by the Devil to the witch, or the witch him or
herself in a transmogrified form (Briggs and Tongue 1965:62-63; Walker 1990:58-59; Pipe
1991:111-115). The existence of familiars played a critical role in identifying witchcraft in
seventeenth-century New England as the first (1641) witchcraft legal codes indicate (Randal nd):
“If any man or woman be a witch, that is, hath consulted with a familiar spirit, he or she shall be
put to death.” This legal description and injunction came directly from the Bible: Deuteronomy
18:10-12 states, “There shall not be found among you an Inchanter, or a Witch, or a Charmer, or
a Consulter with Familiar Spirits, or a Wizzard, or a Necromancer; For all that do these things
are an Abomination to the Lord.” Mather (1692) reiterated this essential connection in his review
of seventeenth-century conditions for the identification of witchcraft that variously described an
accused witch’s interaction with familiar spirits as proof of witchcraft. The witch and/or Devil
used these demon creatures to work their mischief without being present or recognized in their
own form. Mather’s (1692:110-111; see also Boyer and Nissenbaum 1977) following account of
the accusation by John Louder against Bridget Bishop illustrates several of the then-current
beliefs concerning familiars as noted above:
John Louder testify’d, That upon some little Controversy with Bishop about
her Fowls, going well to Bed, he did awake in the Night by Moonlight, and
did see clearly the likeness of this Woman grievously oppressing him; in which
miserable condition she held him, unable to help himself, till near Day. He told
Bishop of this; but she deny’d it, and threatened him very much. Quickly after
this, being at home on a Lords day, with the doors shut about him, he saw a
black Pig approach him; at which, he going to kick, it vanished away.
Immediately after, sitting down, he saw a black Thing jump in a the Window,
and come and stand before him. The Body was like that of a Monkey, the Feet
like a Cocks, but the Face much like a Mans. He being so extremely affrighted,
that he could not speak; this Monster spoke to him, and said, I am a Messenger
sent unto you, for I understand that you are in some Trouble of Mind, and if
you will be ruled by me, you shall want for nothing in this World. Whereupon
he endeavoured to clap his Hand upon it; but he could feel no substance, and
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it jumped out of the Window again, but immediately came in by the Porch, tho’
the Doors were shut, and said, You had better take my Counsel!
This accusation ambiguously implies that Bishop transmogrified into the pig and Thing, while it
explicitly notes the familiars’ powers of invisibility and their insubstantial, supernatural
essences; the belief that familiars can take both common and monstrous forms; and the belief
that witches and familiars can permeate locked barriers.
In Christian dogma of the fifteenth through seventeenth centuries, all supernatural
beings came to be associated with Satan and were treated by the church as demonic incarnations
(Glanvill 1682; Scott 1895; MacCulloch 1921; Thomas 1970; Russell 1984; Butler 1990; Clark
1997; Wilby 2000). Bartel (2000:27-28) provides an example of this official church
appropriation of folkloristic creatures, including fairies, into its doctrine of demonology by
observing that:
…accused witches often testified that they had been taught their magical arts
by fairies, perhaps hoping to be judged less harshly than if they admitted to being
students of the Devil. Nevertheless, the Church considered these spirit entities to be
minor demons, providing further evidence that the witch and her familiars were in
league with the Devil.
Although the Church made no distinction between fairies and witches, women appear to have
been more concerned than men with the mischiefs usually attributed to fairies (and later equally
equated with witches) that directly interfered with the well-being of children and the successful
completion of daily chores (MacCulloch 1921; Briggs and Tongue 1965; Briggs 1976, 1978,
2003[1965]; Botkin 1989; Evans-Wentz 1994; Wilby 2000; Purkiss 2003). Fairies were credited
with inhibiting butter churning, stealing infants and replacing them with fairy changelings,
causing infant sickness and death, bringing bad luck and mishaps, and leading people astray into
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dangerous places and situations. In all instances of magic use cited in the folklore data targeting
fairies, only one (the avoidance of the color green) was not directly associated with women.
Magical material culture guarded the house, yard, and field against not only fairies,
witches, and witches’ familiars, but of all manner of demonic beings. Of particular interest for
this study is the association of demons with nighttime attacks on sleeping victims. Known as
incubi, succubae, mares or nightmares, these malevolent nocturnal visitors prompted the use of a
variety of magical devices. Stein and Stein (2005:201) note:
Beliefs about demons were elaborated (in various texts and sermons) and had
much social influence [in the seventeenth century]…during which time there was a
particular interest in incubi and succubae. Incubi and succubae are, respectively, male
and female demons that have sex with humans while they sleep. Sex with an incubus
was said to be responsible for the birth of demons, witches, and deformed children.
Of the fifty devices for protection against evil forces entering the house identified in the folklore
database, eight wield specific power against incubi and succubae (Bergen 1896; Reader’s Digest
1973; Waring 1978; Whitlock 1992; Jones 1995). Three of these devices were attributed
specifically to women: peony, diamond, and corpse money; the other five lacked gender
association. Folklore sources note the placement of shears and knives under a sleeper’s pillow
(Bergen 1896:96); a knife at the end of the bed (Waring 1978:165), peonies hung on beds or
worn around the sleeper’s neck (Whitlock 1992:113); stockings stuck with pins and hung on the
bedstead (Waring 1978:165 ); a diamond worn by the sleeper (Jones 1995:141); the herbs St.
John’s wort, vervain, or dill dried and hung in houses or planted under windows and near house
doors (Reader’s Digest 1973:41; Jones 1995:237); and ‘corpse money’ (a coin held by a corpse)
placed under the sleeper’s pillow to prevent conception by an incubus (Whitlock 1992:125).
Although the historical records did not reveal any magical devices used specifically by men to
guard against succubae, they did yield testimonies from witch trials of men describing such
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nightmare attacks (Boyer and Nissenbaum 1997); they also recorded the use of holed-stones,
called hag-stones, “suspended at the bed’s head” to prevent nightmares (Pettigrew 1844:118), but
without gender attribution for the practice. Since women perceived greater consequences from
nightmares as the result of impregnation by an incubus, they may have been more motivated than
men to employ magically protective elements to safeguard themselves against such demons.
Plants
Of the numerous devices and materials used as apotropaia, plants played an important
role rarely recognized by archaeologists. A few of these plants are mentioned in court
depositions (e.g., bay laurel, angelica) (Boyer and Nissenbaum 1997), and others appear in
various herbals and magical books (e.g., holly, houseleek, rowan, rosemary) (Coles 1656;
Aubrey 1670, 1686; Blagrave 1671; Pettigrew 1884; Brand 1888; Culpeper 1814 [1652]; Rohde
1922), including this proverb cited by Aubrey (1670:90), “Vervain and dill, hinders witches from
their will.” The most extensive description of magical plants is found, however, in folklore
sources (Burne 1913; Reader’s Digest 1973; Boland 1976; Waring 1978; McLaren 1984;
Whitlock 1992; Jones 1995; Lipp 1996, 2006; Picton 2000). The plants believed to have inherent
magical power may have been the easiest, safest, and surest way to protect one’s yard,
outbuildings, and house without an overt effort, since they were, for the most part, the same
herbs and flowers used for cooking and medicines, and included the trees that provided shade for
the yard and wood for constructing buildings, furniture, and tools (Blagrave 1671; Josselyn
1672; Markham 1683, 2011[1615]; Culpeper 1814[1652]; Leighton 1970; Boland 1976;
Parkinson 1976[1629]; Nagy 1988; Bown 1995; Patterson 1996; Gifford 2000; Picton 2000;
Bishop 2007; McDowell nd). Each was believed to have particular qualities or associations that
lent it to specific uses. Angelica, for example, whose name means ‘angelic,’ comes from the
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Christian association of the herb with the Festival of the Annunciation and its blooming on the
day dedicated to Michael the Archangel. These biblical connections are what give the herb its
angelic powers of protection against evil (Bown 1995:84; Picton 2000:25)
As indicated in Tables 5.2 and 5.3, cultivated, as opposed to wild, flora seems to have
been favored as apotropaia, excepting only trees and plants that grow in close proximity to or
connection with cultivated areas. The association of uncultivated areas—like forests or
swamplands—with maleficent powers, would by extension implicate the wild plants growing in
such areas with those same negative forces; thus, their use as domestic apotropaia would be
counterproductive. As natural, living elements, plants were integrally bound to seasonal growing
cycles and were associated with grander cosmic schemes, which contributed to the rules and
beliefs about the right (effective) and wrong (dangerous) times particular plants could be
harvested, brought into houses, or used as apotropaia. Most plants were not to be cut with iron
(Wilde 1991[1885]:100) lest their power be destroyed by the iron’s own inherent powers; other
plants (e.g., hawthorn) were considered dangerous to harvest at all, but their naturally fallen
branches could be safely used as apotropaia on only the outside of houses and stables (Williams
1982:52; Jones 1995:221). Some had to be pulled by hand or by an animal (e.g. peony)
(Pettigrew 1844; Wilde 1991[1885]; Whitlock 1992). The efficacy of many magical plants
depended upon the faithful observance of their ritualistic harvesting. Pettigrew’s (1844:39)
observation that, “The virtues of herbs were considered to be according to the influence of the
planet under which they were sown or gathered,” summarizes centuries of Classical, medieval,
and early modern European belief concerning the implication of astrology, plants, and human
life. Blagrave (1671:12) delineates the correlation of plant potency with astrological governance:
All Herbs and Plants, which are under the dominion of the Sun are gathered on
Sundaye: and all those herbs and plants which are under the dominion of the Moon
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are gathered on Mondayes: and all those under Mars on Tuesdyaes: and all those
under Mercury on wednesdayes: and all those unde Jupiter on Thursdayes: and all
those under Venus on Fridayes: and all those under Saturn on Saturdayes.
Not all herbalist astrologers, however, agreed on the actual plant/planet attributions; for example,
Blagrave (1671:4) ascribed vervain to the sun, while Culpeper (1814[1652]:xiii) ascribed it to
Venus. Both, however, stressed the importance of gathering plants at the most auspicious times
to maximize their inherent properties. The following examples cited in Pettigrew (1844:39) and
Wilde (1991[1885]:100) demonstrate that a complex ritualistic interplay of astrological bodies,
time, right/left orientation, colors, numbers, and plant species could underlie the magical powers
attributed to some plants:
Black hellebore was to be plucked, not cut, and this with the right hand, which was
then to be covered with a portion of the robe, and secretly conveyed to the left hand.
The person gathering it was also to be clad in white, to be barefooted, and to offer
a sacrifice of bread and wine.
Verbena or vervain was to be gathered at the rising of the dog-star, when neither
sun nor moon shone, an expiatory sacrifice of fruit and honey having been
previously offered to the earth.
Additionally, each planet, and thus plant, was associated with particular numbers (Blagrave
1671:18-19): Sun—1, 3, 4, 10, 12; Moon—2, 6, 9; Mars—2, 4, 7, 8; Mercury—2, 5; Jupiter—1,
3, 8; Venus—2, 3, 6; Saturn—2, 7, 9. As already shown in Chapter 3 and above in the
discussion of symbolism, cosmic numerical associations played an integral role in magical
charms and apotropaia. This same numerical system was implicated in the magical properties of
plants. Wilde (1991[1885]:100) notes:
There are seven herbs that nothing natural or supernatural can injure: they are
vervain, John’s-wort, speedwell, eyebright, mallow, yarrow, and self-help. But they
must be pulled at noon on a bright day, near the full moon, to have full power. (emphasis
in the original)
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In this example, seven herbs are profoundly powerful (relating to the ultimate, perfection of
‘seven’), and the zenith of their perfection is only realized at the zenith of the day (noon), which
is 12 o’clock (the product of the divine three and the cardinal four, which when added once again
give the number seven). Plants, numbers, celestial timing, and verticality combine in this
example to reiterate the systemic relationships at work through magical flora.
As explained in Chapter 3, the Doctrine of Signatures also played a critical role in
ascribing magical properties to particular plants. Coles (1656:85), while somewhat skeptical
about astrological connections between plants and their properties, firmly espouses the Doctrine
of Signatures:
…the mercy of God, which is over all his Workes Maketh Grasse to grow upon
the Mountains and Herbs for the Use of Men and hath not onely stemped upon
them, as upon every man a distinct form, but also given them particular
signatures, whereby a Man may read even in legible Characters the use of them.
Many of these signatures indicated the medicinal use to which the plant may be put, while others
like the rowan noted in Chapter 3 and others, like the mandrake, exhibited characteristics that
were understood as sympathetic indicators of their magical powers.
Various plants’ apotropaic qualities may have gone relatively unremarked as they
circumscribed domestic spheres and stood silent sentinel against supernatural forces. Figure 5.15
illustrates a typical early seventeenth-century New England house and yard planted with several
of the most commonly cited magical plant species. A more detailed listing of apotropaic magical
plants noted in folklore and historical sources is provided in Appendix C. Quantification of
specific magical plants is not feasible; however, comparing the gendered references of plant
usage in folklore and historical data sources suggest that women, more so than men, were
connected to magical flora for domestic protection. Table 5.7 illustrates the breakdown of
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gendered attributions to flora noted in the folklore and historical sources used for this
dissertation. Historic sources mention 26 specific uses of apotropaic plants with 19.2% (n=5)
explicitly attributed to female use, 11.5% (n=3) to male use, and 69.2% (n=18) with no gender
association. The folklore sources present similar divisions with 27.9% (n=12) indicating female
plant use, 13.9% (n=6) male use, and 58.1% (n=25) gender indeterminate. Considering that the
house yard and garden constituted integrated components of a woman’s sphere of responsibility
and authority (Markham 1683, 2011[1615]; Demos 1970; Ulrich 1991; Norton 1996), it would
follow that she would both be concerned about the security of the space and would more readily
utilize the plants under her cultivation to their fullest potential as magical boundary guardians.
TABLE 5.6. Gendered attribution of apotropaic plant usage.
Source
Historic
(n=26)
Female
n=5
19.2%
Male
n=3
11.5%
Undetermined
n=18
69.2%
Folklore
(n=43)
n=12
27.9%
n=6
13.9%
n=25
58.1%
Totals
(n=69)
n=17
24.6%
n=9
13%
n=43
62.3%
Besides being grown around house, yard, and fence perimeters, apotropaic plants were
grown or tossed on roofs; hung on inside and outside doors, over windows, and in rafters of
houses and stables; and they were placed over and under beds as well as on manure piles.
Additionally they were placed on and burnt in hearths, strewn in house corners, carried on one’s
person, and attached to livestock, plows, and dairy vessels. Some types of trees and shrubs were
used specifically for their apotropaic qualities to construct objects like thresholds (holly), butter
churns (rowan), brooms (vervain), and coffins (elder). This ubiquitousness of magical flora in
seventeenth-century Anglo-European domestic practices requires archaeologists to broaden their
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FIGURE 5.14. Seventeenth-century New England house with apotropaic plants. Original
artwork by Caitlin Sterchi ©2012, commissioned for author’s dissertation.
KEY
A—Bay Laurel (Laurus nobilis)
B—Houseleek (Sempervivum tectorum)
C—Peony (Paeonia officinalis)
D—Rosemary (Rosmarinus officinalis)
E—Rowan/Mountain Ash (Sorbus aucuparia)
F—Yarrow (Achillia millefolium)
G—Angelica (Angelica archangelica)
H—Elder (Sambucus nigra)
I—St. John’s Wort (Hypericum perforatum)
E
B
E
I
I
E
B
A
B
A
A
E
D
H
G
F
C
G
H
G
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interpretations of macrobotanical and palynological materials to include magical practices;
likewise, it necessitates the inclusion of botanical materials in any archaeological study of magic
and ritual.
5.3.4 Archaeological Data
Table 4.2 enumerated the ca. 1620 – 1725 domestic archaeological sites excavated to date
in Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island that fit the analytical
unit criteria relevant for this study. Only five of these sites produced site reports that offered
likely or potential magical artifacts: the Chadbourne Site, South Berwick, Maine; the John Alden
Site, Duxbury, Massachusetts; the Jirah Bull House, South Kingston, Rhode Island; the Greene
Farm Archaeology Project, Warwick, Rhode Island; and the John Howland House in Kingston,
Massachusetts. Each of these sites is discussed below. Two additional types of apotropaia (witch
bottles and concealed shoes) warrant inclusion in this discussion even though they are not
represented in the archaeological samples of the sites discussed here. As they comprise the two
most frequently documented forms of magical material culture found in Britain and elsewhere,
including the United States, their obvious absence from seventeenth-century New England
archaeological sites requires comment. Following the five site discussions, I will briefly present
witch bottle and concealed shoe data to question their absence in seventeenth-century New
England domestic contexts and consider their potential to reveal gendered protective boundaries.
Chadbourne Site, South Berwick, Maine
Emerson Baker has been directing archaeology summer field schools at the Chadbourne
Site since 1995. As author of The Devil of Great Island: Witchcraft & Conflict in Early New
England, which recounts the lithobolia attacks that occurred on Great Island, New Hampshire in
1682, Baker’s interest in and knowledge of seventeenth-century magical belief and practice
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ensure that attention is given in his excavations to potential magical material culture. Two
factors mark the Chadbourne site as an important one for magical material culture research: 1) its
emphasis on constructed boundaries; and 2) the discovery of several potentially magical artifacts
associated with those boundaries.
Discovered in August 1995 during an archaeology outreach program for public school
teachers, the Humphrey and Lucy Chadbourne site has subsequently proven to be an important
example of a seventeenth-century enclosed farmstead (Figure 5.16) (Baker 2001, 2009). Baker
(2009:12) notes that, “Traditionally, early New England homesteads were believed to consist of
a dwelling with a detached barn and outbuildings. Instead, the Chadbourne property was an
enclosed compound, with a central courtyard.” Robert St. George (1998:20) described a few
similar enclosed sites in Connecticut dating to the mid-seventeenth century. The precedent for
this type of fenced farmstead may be the Irish bawn or the English West Country enclosed manor
built for the gentry of that region. Baker suggests that since Lucy Chadbourne’s family
originated in the West Country, this was the model used for the Chadbourne’s New England
homestead. As Baker (2009:12) says, “Certainly the Chadbournes had enough wealth, power,
and land to emulate the gentry, a fact that is clearly reflected in the artifacts from the site.”
The site, consisting of at least four structures, was built by Humphrey Chadbourne, Sr.
after he purchased a tract of land at the confluence of two waterways in southern Maine from the
local Native American tribe in 1643. The Chadbournes enjoyed a prestigious socioeconomic
status through their kinship to the leading families in Maine and as one of the region’s founding
families. Although their power and wealth afforded them a degree of security, the Chadbournes
FIGURE 5.15. Chadbourne site plan. Courtesy of Emerson Baker.
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were still subject to the vagaries and misfortunes inherent in a seventeenth-century colonial
situation. The fact that they had close social and familial interactions with Quakers and
Antinomians (Baker 2009:2) implies their strict Puritanism may have been under question, which
could have jeopardized their socio-political standing as well as their safety. The rural location of
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their farmstead compound and the volatile relationship between colonials and Native Americans
made the safety of property and household an immediate and constant concern for the
Chadbournes. This concern became a reality when the farmstead was apparently destroyed
during a combined Native and French raid in the course of King William’s War in 1690 in which
friends and neighbors of the Chadbourne’s were either killed or taken captive (Baker 2009:3).
Additionally, they were equally vulnerable to the ever-present reality of early death from
accident, childbirth, or illness that threatened all and could drastically change a family’s fortunes
or circumstances at any moment. In fact, Humphrey Chadbourne (1615-1667) died relatively
young leaving his eldest son, 14-year old Humphrey Chadbourne, Jr., to inherit the entailed
property, and a widow, Lucy, with seven minor children to provide for. Each of these events
illustrate that the Chadbourne family experienced many of the uncertainties that precipitated the
use of magical material culture to alleviate fear, and Baker’s (2001, 2009) excavations of the
Chadbourne farmstead suggests that they did use such strategies to address those fears.
The Chadbourne site was abandoned and burned in 1690 with many of its contents in
place. As a result, over 40,000 artifacts exemplifying seventeenth-century New England daily
life have been recovered from its excavation. Among them were horseshoes (Figure 5.17),
identified by Baker (2009:15) as magical material culture based on their association with
thresholds (Figure 5.21), and door hardware:
Like spurs, horseshoes could be symbolic as well as utilitarian. One horseshoe
was found near to the exterior door in the lean-to, not far from the hasp for the door.
Another shoe was found in the cellar, near door hardware, and not far from the
believed location of the front door. Horseshoes were often over or next to doorways,
to ward off evil or witches. While some horse and ox shoes found on the site were
purely utilitarian, these two shoes appear to have been used to ward off witchcraft.
Horseshoes constitute the most readily recognizable form of magical material culture as they are
still commonly seen and understood today as a good luck charm. Their original power, however,
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lay in the evil-averting quality of the iron from which they were constructed. Numerous sources
cite the use of apotropaic horseshoes (Scot 1584; Aubrey 1670, 1686; Mather 1692b; Drake
1869; Anonymous 1909; Kittredge 1972; Chappell 1973); Scot (1584:151) provides a typical
example of the belief that horseshoes prevent the passage of witches:
One principall waie is to nail a horse shoo at the inside of the outmost threshold
of your house, and so you shall be sure no witch shall have power to enter thereinto.
FIGURE 5.16. Chadbourne Site horseshoe and stirrup. Photo courtesy of Emerson Baker.
In some cases, a horseshoe may be the only apotropaic device used, but that may not
always be so as indicated by the Chadbourne site artifacts. Although he readily identified the
horseshoes found as magical material culture, what Baker did not consider was the potential
apotropaic symbolism applied to or included in the casting of the door hardware itself. The
hardware discovered near the horseshoes included a door lock with inscribed circles and
triangles on its latching mechanism (Figure 5.18), a door key with a heart-shaped bow end
(Figure 5.19), and cock’s head door hinges (Figure 5.20). Each of these elements alone could
have operated as apotropaia drawing upon the symbolic power associated with circles, triangles,
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hearts, and chickens to avert or protect against preternatural forces; however, used in conjunction
with horseshoes placed above or by the doorway, it appears the elements may have worked as a
multilayered protective system.
FIGURE 5.17. (below) Door lock mechanism with inscribed circles and triangles. Chadbourne
Site. Photos courtesy of Emerson Baker.
FIGURE 5.18. (below) Door key with heart-shaped bow end. Chadbourne Site. Photo courtesy
of Emerson Baker.
Keys (usually house keys) featured in a variety of magical practices, most commonly
associated with the Bible in a ritual to identify witches or thieves; as a good luck charm for the
safety and success of sailors’ voyages; placed in groups of three in cradles for infant protection;
and through stylistic symbolism in conjunction with their iron attributes to inhibit evil from
entering through keyholes (Gerish 1893:391-392; Kittredge 1972:199-200; Jones 1995: 257-258;
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Roud 2003:269). The symbolic association of those who possess keys with power and control
over space and access extends to the keys themselves as powerful agents mediating threshold
access (Jones 1995:258).
FIGURE 5.19. (below) Cock’s head hinge from Chadbourne Site. Photo courtesy of Emerson
Baker.
The cock’s head hinge discovered at the Chadbourne site is similar to the hinges
uncovered at the John Alden site (Figure 5.23) and the Jireh Bull site that will be discussed later.
Nutting (1971:541) describes this hinge type as usually made of cast brass, ranging in size from
three to eight inches in length, and “never found except on good woodwork.” While he asserts
they are normally found on cupboard doors, he also cites a seventeenth-century house that used
cock’s head hinges on every house door. Hume (1969:236-237) concurs with Nutting’s
observations and adds that this hinge design became popular between 1650 and 1700 (Hume
1969:232). The cock motif had apotropaic associations whether used on weather vanes or on
door hinges for both buildings and furniture. The hinge, with its characteristic outward facing,
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beaked rooster head on each of the four finials, draws upon the belief that a rooster’s crowing at
daybreak scares away the Devil and other evil forces abroad in the night (Hazlitt 1905:133; Hole
1961:108-111; Pickering 1995:68-69). In a similar vein, they were believed to crow in the
presence or at the touch of a thief (Hole 1961:109) or in the presence of a fairy or witch in
FIGURE 5.20. Chadbourne house excavation, Structure 1, with triangles indicating location of
horseshoe, door lock, key, and hinge finds. Photo courtesy of Emerson Baker.
disguise (Whitlock 1992:123). Walker (1992:97) records the use of black cocks as foundation
sacrifices in the construction of houses in Wiltshire, England and the ritualistic burial of a living
cock at the confluence of three streams on Candlemas Day (February 2nd). Used as protective
motifs or sacrifices to frighten away malevolent forces or protect property by alerting against
perpetrators, the rooster design was a powerful deterrent to mischief. The use of rooster motifs
as magical symbols provides yet another example of the widespread attribution of beliefs to
particular forms as chickens, and particularly white or black roosters, are one of the most
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common domestic animals used in magic in both Christian and non-Christian belief systems
(Hole 1961; Campbell 1988; Jones 1995; Frazer 1996[1890]).
The final evidence from the Chadbourne site that may indicate magical practice comes
from a shard of window glass. Unlike most northern New England homes of the mid-seventeenth
century, the Chadbourne house contained numerous windows evinced by the amount of window
lead and glass excavated from the site. Two different shards of window glass showed inscribed
initials: “Tho” and “W” or “M.” As Baker (2009:13), observes, “such graffiti was not
uncommon in colonial times. People would use diamonds and other sharp objects to scratch their
names or names of loved ones into glass.” While "Tho" was a common seventeenth-century
abbreviation for the name Thomas, the “W” or “M” resemble the variations of the double “V”
symbol documented by Easton (1988:7) that are scratched around windows, doors, and hearths.
Baker speculates that the “Tho” could refer to Lucy Chadbourne’s second husband or her son-inlaw, but there does not seem to be a similar family correlate for the letters “W” or “M,” which
further suggests a symbolic possibility for these initials.
Construction of metal hardware like the door latch, cock’s head hinge, and heart-bow key
can undoubtedly be credited to male craftsmen and likely reflect male concerns for the
protection, both supernatural and natural, of their homes, families, and property. The placement
of horseshoes at threshold points and the scratching of protective symbols on and around
windows, however, could represent either male or female attempts to magically protect the home
and household from preternatural invasion.
John Alden Site, Duxbury, Massachusetts
Originally excavated between 1960 and 1969 by Roland Wells Robbins, the John Alden
site represents an early seventeenth-century (ca. 1627) expedient residential structure that may
have later been dismantled, moved, and incorporated into a larger, more comfortable home (ca.
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post-1672) on the same property or razed when the larger residence was built. The artifacts from
this site were re-examined by Craig Chartier (2001), particularly the ceramics and pipe stems, to
ascertain the accuracy of Robbins’ dating of the site (Beaudry et al. 2003). Robbins (1969:57)
was primarily concerned with locating the original Alden house site, but noted at the conclusion
of his report that, “It took outbuildings to sustain the homes of the pioneers and their selfsufficient living from the earth….Yet the sites of the Alden barns and outbuildings are unknown
today.” His directive for future archaeological work on the Alden site encouraged the search for
these outbuildings, a survey subsequently undertaken by Claire C. Carlson (1998) but with no
significant results.
The John Alden site, located in Duxbury, Massachusetts on Cape Cod Bay represents the
inevitable breaking of original nucleated villages as populations grew and settlers occupied lands
further afield from the main village. Eventually, its occupants sought dismissal from Plymouth
due to the difficulties inherent in the roadless ten-mile trek by land or across the bay by shallop
weather permitting, especially for women and children, that precluded them from attending
Sunday worship in Plymouth. Permission was granted, and the settlement of Duxbury
(originally Duxborough) became an independent community in 1632 and incorporated in 1637.
Unlike Plymouth, Duxbury was a relatively dispersed community, with farmsteads isolated from
one another and spread across a coastal and watery landscape that included dunes, salt marshes,
rivers, streams, lakes, ponds, swamps, and cranberry bogs, as well as forests and fields.
Colonist John Alden (ca. 1599 – 1687), a twenty-two year-old cooper and ship carpenter,
arrived in Plymouth aboard the Mayflower in 1620. Alden and his family differed in several
respects from some of his fellow colonists. Firstly, he was not a religious separatist, but decided
to join the Mayflower pilgrims for their voyage to the new colony possibly in search of more
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lucrative opportunities. Secondly, unlike the more affluent Pilgrims in the company, the Aldens
initially occupied a middling socioeconomic position. As a master craftsman, John Alden plied
his trade building “cabinets, chests, and cupboards” for other colonists in addition to working his
farm (Robbins 1969:9). Finally, he and his family were particularly fortunate not to lose
innumerable children to early death, as he and his wife, Priscilla Mullins, another Mayflower
passenger, ultimately produced ten children, all of whom survived to adulthood. Only two of the
ten did not marry; the other eight married and had between six and fourteen children each.
Although the Aldens were spared the sorrows of infant mortality, they still had to contend
throughout the years with all the other dangers and vicissitudes concomitant with life in
seventeenth-century New England, including John Alden, Jr.’s incarceration for witchcraft
during the Salem witchcraft trials (see Appendix A). Their lives were certainly impacted by
supernatural beliefs, but whether or not the Alden women or men asserted personal control
through magical material culture has not been a research question in the archaeological studies
conducted on the Alden house sites. However, five objects and artifact assemblages from
Robbins’ excavation of the earlier site are suggestive: two horseshoes, a cock’s head hinge,
seven knife blades, a pair of scissors, and three pins (Figures 5.22-5.25) (Robbins 1969).
Additionally, the site includes an unexplained feature (Figure 5.26) that puzzled Robbins, and
has still not been accounted for by subsequent researchers. Even though the later house structure
is still extant, has undergone numerous investigations and restorations, and now houses a
museum owned and operated by the Alden Kindred of America, no reference has been made by
researchers of the property to any magical marks, symbols, or concealed caches in the house,
which means none exist, they have not been found, or they have been overlooked or
misunderstood.
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The Alden site map of the earlier structure (Figure 5.27) indicates the locations of the
potentially magical artifacts considered here. As horseshoes associated with thresholds offer one
of the least ambiguous forms of apotropaia, they will be discussed first. One horseshoe was
found in the top layer of the cellar fill and one was located in grid F-24 between the possible
hearth and the cellar (Figure 5.22). Robbins’ descriptions do not indicate whether either of these
locations is in direct association or line with a threshold; however, two factors make their
presence suggestive of a function alternative to protective horse-footwear. First of all, horses
were rare in this area of New England; even at John Alden Sr.’s death in 1687, according to his
probate, he only owned one horse (Deetz et al. 2011). The rarity of horses by extension results
in a rarity of horseshoes, which indicates they were not items to be casually discarded.
Secondly, that two of these rare objects should be found in a house context rather than associated
with stables, barns, or farrier activity areas implies a non-agrarian use; although, even in stables
and barns horseshoes were hung as apotropaic devices. Horseshoes did not have to be associated
with doorways to function apotropaically (see Table 5.10); they were also embedded in walls,
placed inside hearths, used in butter churns and kettles, and attached to stakes to impale witches’
hearts (Blagrave 1682; Cahill 1990:24; St. George 1998:191-193), so their appearance in areas
associated with the house (around a hearth, cellar, or dairy) is suggestive of magical usage. As a
ship carpenter, Alden would certainly have been aware of—and possibly a believer in—the many
practices adhering to seafaring, including the use of horseshoes attached to masts as deterrents to
witch or demon produced tempests (Lawrence 1898; Waring 1978; Rappoport 2007[1928]). His
familiarity with seafaring beliefs in the protective power of magical devices, especially metal and
sharp objects, and the common practice of builders to mark their constructions with protective
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symbols, at least suggest that Alden was predisposed to incorporate such strategies into his own
house.
FIGURE 5.21. John Alden site horseshoe (Robbins 1969:34).
The second artifact with potential magical meaning found at the original Alden site is a
large cock’s head hinge (Figure 5.23), approximately twice the length of a horseshoe, and
located in the middle of three excavated layers in the cellar. Although larger, it is similar in
design to the those from the Chadbourne site discussed earlier. As a cabinet maker, Alden would
have been particularly acquainted with hinge forms, materials, and quality as well as with the
symbology of the cock’s head. Assuming Nutting’s (1971:541), Hume’s (1969:236-237), and
Robbins’ (1969:34) assessment is accurate of the high quality and rarity of this hinge type, its
deposition in a cabinet maker’s cellar raises numerous questions: Was it attached to the cellar
door or a large cabinet in the cellar? Was it a broken hinge from elsewhere in the house and
added to the other metal objects (horseshoe, scissors, knives, pike head, and tweezers) as an
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element of a protective system in the cellar? As cellars are filled, do they still require apotropaic
guardians? Do objects that serve apotropaic functions in other contexts cease to operate as such
in fill depositions? These questions and many more have yet to be answered.
FIGURE 5.22. John Alden site cock’s head hinge (Robbins 1969:34).
Sharp, bladed artifacts were strongly represented at the Alden site. In total, seven knife
blades and one knife handle, and a pair of open-bladed scissors were excavated at the Alden site
(Figures 5.24 and 5.25). Four of the blades, the knife handle, and the scissors emerged from the
bottom cellar level, while one knife blade was found in grid F-2, one blade in grid F-18, and one
blade in location ‘69’ outside the perimeter of the house that Robbins’ doesn’t include on his site
map. The 2 ½ foot square grids run the length and width of the interior of the house foundation
walls, exclusive of the cellar at the western end of the house. Grid F-2 lies immediately adjacent
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to the cellar area and grid F-18 is situated more centrally in the house in the general living space
on the opposite side of the possible hearth from the cellar. Robbins’ descriptions of the blades’
proveniences and orientations lacked enough specificity to determine if the four blades from the
cellar were grouped together or were situated in any particular pattern. His general explanation
for the deposition of all the artifacts assumed they were remains of construction debris or were
strewn about the area surrounding the house and “were used to bury the remains of the house
foundation and grade the site after the house had been removed” (Robbins 1969:25) sometime in
the mid to late seventeenth century. To assume several knife blades and scissors, among other
large metal objects like the cock’s head hinge, would have been randomly lying around on the
ground surrounding the house seems problematic. According to historical, folklore, and
archaeological documentation, knives and scissors—especially open shears (Briggs 1957:275)—
were placed or buried under or near thresholds, embedded in walls and around window and door
jams and sills, and placed under cradles, beds, and chairs as apotropaic devices (Table 5.10).
Merrifield (1969:103; 1987:162) cites an example of two iron knives covered in mortar and
concealed in the fabric of a wall of the circa sixteenth/seventeenth-century Cade House in Kent,
England, and Evans-Wentz (1911:144) describes the Welsh practice of placing scythe-blades
sharp edge up in the chimney to prevent the traffic of fairies. If the knives found at the John
Alden site had been lodged in the building’s structure, they certainly could have turned up in the
building detritus that ultimately ended up as the house and cellar fill. As fill components, their
proveniences within the excavated cellar and grid units may not indicate apotropaic practice, but
that step in their depositional formation process does not exclude the possibility of them
operating previously as magical material culture when the house was extant.
FIGURE 5.23. John Alden site knife blades (Robbins 1969:32).
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The only artifacts within the house excavation that Robbins credits as coterminous with
the Aldens’ residence in the house are three pins (Figure 5.25). He (Robbins 1969:25) states:
The only items found within the house site that could have fallen through the
flooring when the house stood and was being lived in were 3 silver pins. They
were found by Joan McAlear on the sand and at the bottom of the fill soils in
grid box F-4. Possibly the Alden clothing was made or was patched above this site.
This interpretation is problematic for several reasons. First of all, it is not clear whether he
believed the pins to be actual silver or was simply noting their color as silvery. During the
seventeenth century, silver was a scarce metal; in fact, not even silver coins were actually silver,
rather they were made of copper. Pins were virtually always of brass, sometimes of iron, and
occasionally coated with tin, but were never made of silver. Needles, needing to be sharper than
pins, were iron or steel (Hume 1969:254; Beaudry 2006). To appear silver in color, the pins
recovered from the Alden excavation would have had to be tin-coated and in remarkable
condition as the tinning usually does not survive in archaeological contexts (Beaudry 2006:26).
Secondly, pins do not necessarily or even primarily indicate sewing activities since they also
functioned as clothing fasteners, veil and headdress holders, wig and hair fasteners, blanket
closures, and as securers for shrouds and other wrappings (Beaudry 2006:22-26). They are also
a common component in magical practice used with poppets, in witch bottles, and with cloth and
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animal hearts, in which capacities they are frequently associated with hearth areas (see Table
5.10). Finally, for the only pins to have percolated through the floor to be a group of three and in
close proximity to a potential hearth area, while possibly random or coincidental, is suggestive in
light of the correspondence of the number three with apotropaic power and the preponderance of
protective magic associated with the hearth.
FIGURE 5.24. John Alden site pins and scissors (Robbins 1969:32).
In addition to the artifacts discussed above, the Alden site also includes a feature that
neither Robbins nor any subsequent researcher has been able to account for. Buried at a depth of
about 10 ½,” the 17 1/2” by 12” stone slab, approximately 2 ½” thick, was partially surrounded
by bricks (Figures 5.26 and 5.27). This buried feature was located three feet northwest of the
house’s northwest corner. Robbins searched for similar features at corresponding locations at the
other three corners, but did not locate any evidence for such features at these locations. As
Robbins (1969:22) states, “The pier, or footing, or whatever it was intended for, was not in line
with either the north or the west stonework of the foundation.” It does not appear to have been a
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structural support component for the house. The bricks encircling the stone’s perimeter (some of
which were piled two high) lacked any mortar or binding material and, thus, would not have
been sufficiently stable to function as a support framework if the base stone was a pier or
footing. Robbins speculated that the brick tiers could have originally been higher and totally
encircled the base stone. He (Robbins 1969:22) also conjectured that the brickwork appears to
have been constructed “to function below the ground level.” If this feature was not an
architectural support element, its container-like attributes suggest it could have been a cache
receptacle. The combination of its position three feet from the house corner, together with its
situation on the left-hand side by Christian reckoning facing north or east, the Christian
association of the Devil with the north and left (Wile 1934:339-340; Russell 1984:69, 71), and its
dimensions approximating other multiples of three (Maxwell-Stuart 2005:90; Milne 2007:106),
support the possibility of an apotropaic interpretation for this feature.
FIGURE 5.25. John Alden site unidentified stone and brick feature (Robbins 1969:58).
FIGURE 5.26. (below) John Alden site excavation plan with highlighted area indicating artifact
locations: F-2-knife blade; F-4-pins; F-18-knife blade; F-24-horseshoe; Root cellar-scissors,
knife blades, hinge, and horseshoe; NW corner-possible pier/unknown (Robbins 1969:46-47).
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Interpreting some of the metal artifacts excavated at the John Alden site as magical
material culture is more tentative than the threshold horseshoe and symbol incised lock latch
recovered at the Chadbourne site. Nonetheless, these objects do provide the opportunity to
question formation processes of magical material culture that become part of backfill matrices.
They also offer, in the case of the three pins and the unidentified stone feature, occasion for reevaluating and clarifying inaccuracies of artifact composition and use, and thereby allowing for
alternative interpretations.
Jireh Bull Garrison House
The late seventeenth-century site known as the Jireh Bull Garrison House site, caught the
attention of Norman Isham, who undertook a project in 1917 to locate the site based on the brief
portrayal of the house by Captain Waite Winthrop written on July 9, 1675 during King Phillip’s
War. Winthrop described it as a “larg stone house with a good ston wall yard before it which is a
kind of small fortification to it” (Isham 1918:3). Foundations for the site showed as visible
rectangles under the ground surface marked by old-growth buckthorns (a plant used around
doors and windows to repel witchcraft and demonic forces (Cunningham 1985:67); see
Appendix C). Ultimately, the site excavations revealed three house structures and remnants of
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the curtain wall alluded to in Winthrop’s description (Figure 5.28). Isham determined the
smallest structure (C) to be the earliest (pre-1663), followed by the largest (B) (ca.1663), which
was burned down December 15, 1675. The third house (A) was built ca.1684 by either Jireh or
his son upon returning to their property after King Phillip’s War.
Winthrop’s description of the property was occasioned by his troops moving into the area
during the hostilities between colonists and Native Americans to quarter at the Bull house. He
found “about 16 of the neibours” (Isham 1918:3) sheltering there due to its robust structure and
location. Unfortunately, only two of those neighbors escaped when the house was attacked and
burned to the ground.
Isham’s excavation, while producing nicely executed drawings of the site (Figure 5.28)
and a good collection of artifacts, lacked the detailed records of artifact provenience expected of
archaeological excavation projects of today. As a result, some of the artifacts (like a clipped pine
tree six pence) have never been accounted for. According to Colin Porter (personal
communication 2011), a doctoral candidate at Brown University currently re-evaluating the Jireh
Bull Garrison House site, the clipped coin was not among the rest of the artifact collection given
to the Rhode Island Historical Society for curation nor is its current location known. The other
artifacts have no provenience data other than their general placement that Isham mentions in his
preliminary report (Isham 1918).
When initially searching for potential magical material culture from seventeenth-century
New England domestic sites, I contacted Colin Porter concerning his work on the Jireh Bull site.
He felt the only potentially magical artifact associated with the site was the clipped coin. Porter,
no doubt, is aware of perforated coins and disks and those with a cut extending from the outer
perimeter to the center, as well as those bent and folded to be used as magical charms (Davidson
[247]
2004), and assumed that a clipped coin as described by Isham was such an altered piece. It is
more likely, however, that Isham was noting a coin that had been cut around the perimeter as a
way of fraudulently attempting to retain some of the silver from the currency while leaving
enough of the original coin intact so as not to lose its spending value. This process entailed the
clipping or shaving off of a thin margin of the coin’s outer perimeter. Isham’s (1918:5)
description of the coin excavated as “a pine tree six pence in splendid preservation—except that,
alas, it has been clipped!” seems to indicate this fraudulent activity rather than the defacing,
piercing, and folding that characterize coins used as magical amulets and charms.
Although the coin appears not to be a magical artifact, several other artifacts excavated at
the Jireh Bull site deserve consideration for potential magical interpretation. The artifacts as
labeled and described by the Rhode Island Historical Society, where they are curated, include a
pair of cock’s head hinges, a shovel blade, a crescent-shaped hoe blade, a house key with a
“scrolled finger grip,” a horseshoe with six nail holes, a “small pair of scissors rusted in the open
position,” a spear-shaped iron door strap hinge, and a large door lock and a key with a broken
bow end.
The door lock and key garnered the most detailed attention in Isham’s report, probably
because the key was still lodged in the locking mechanism; however, even this artifact’s
provenience and attributes were vaguely stated in one sentence. When describing each of the
buildings on the site, he begins with structure A and notes that “on the south there was
apparently a large door, near which a lock and large key were found” (Isham 1918:5). This lock
and key are the only artifacts Isham indicated on the site map (highlighted on Figure 5.8 with a
red circle). Unfortunately, he did not sketch or photograph the lock and key to record any
symbolic markings or characteristics like those of the Chadbourne lock and key. The Rhode
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Island Historical Society has these items cataloged but not photographed and held in storage.
Access to them is restricted to in-person research, so images of them were not available for this
dissertation to determine if the lock was inscribed with any apotropaic symbols or if the key’s
‘scrolled finger grip’ was actually a heart bow end.
He (Isham 1918:7) remarks with some enthusiasm that “some very interesting and
important fragments were found” along the southwestern wall of structure B (highlighted on
Figure 5.28 with a blue circle). These ‘interesting and important fragments’ included the cock’s
head hinges and a pair of ‘H’ hinges. His interpretation was that these hinges came from a
window sash or shutter that had either fallen from the house or had been thrown onto this spot
and burned. The shovel and hoe blades, other ironware, gun parts, knife handles, and a dripping
pan were also recovered from this general area. Regardless of how interesting or important these
artifacts seemed to Isham, he neglected to record the stratigraphic or plotted coordinates of the
artifacts to provide a clearer picture of their associative contexts. Other artifacts that he
apparently did not find as significant (e.g., the horseshoe, the scissors, or the bowless key) were
not mentioned specifically in his report. They could possibly have been grouped with the “other
hardware” noted above.
It is virtually impossible to interpret any of the artifacts from the Jireh Bull site as
magical due to the absence of more detailed provenience data and access to the artifacts for
visual inspection. The site does, however, provide other details that recommend it as a model for
expanding awareness of the potentiality of encountering magical material culture in
archaeological contexts. First, of course, is the critical issue of careful and thorough recordation
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FIGURE 5.27. Jireh Bull Garrison House site plan, Rhode Island (Isham 1918:8).
W
S
N
E
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of artifact provenience, association, and attributes. Although archaeological recordation
standards have vastly improved since Isham’s time, they still lack the specificity of details
necessary for recognizing magical associations. Secondly, the Jireh Bull site contains numerous
boundary features (walled courtyards, curtain walls, doors, and gates) and fireplaces that offer
more thresholds than the average site for the application of apotropaic devices. Thirdly, the
presence of a known apotropaic plant, buckthorn (Rhamnus frangula) growing at the corners of
structure A, provides a basis from which to consider the use of magical plants as protective
boundary agents. Lastly, the fact that the site was situated in an isolated area during an extremely
volatile crisis period that engendered high levels of fear increases the possibility that some form
of magical recourse was used in protecting the house and household. It is recognizing these
various characteristics in a site that would allow archaeologists to be more comprehensive in
their collection and interpretation of site data.
Greene Farm Archaeology Project
The Greene Farm Archaeology Project, Warwick, Rhode Island, a joint venture of Brown
University’s Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World and the Department of
American Civilization and Wayne State University’s Department of Anthropology, spanned five
years (2004-2009) under the direction of Krysta Ryzewski. The project’s goal was to locate,
document, and interpret five centuries of “cultural and natural landscape transformation on one
of the few remaining Providence Plantations” (Ryzewski 2007). Greene Farm, a 700+ acre tract,
was purchased by surgeon John Greene from the local Narragansetts in 1642, and constituted the
largest holding in the area. Evidence suggests there were two building phases: the original ‘Old
House,’ destroyed during King Phillip’s War in 1676, and the rebuilt house ca. 1690. The
property remained in the Greene family for five generations until it was sold out of the family in
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1782. The focus of the 2006-2009 excavations has been on the ‘Old House’ and its adjacent
midden.
The preceding brief description of Greene Farm’s extensive size and prominence in its
local community gives the impression that the Greene family enjoyed a wealthy and influential
lifestyle. Like many colonial settlers, however, they suffered the hardships and consequences
integral to seventeenth-century colonial ventures regardless of their advantages. John Greene
(ca. 1594-1658), his wife, Joane Tattersall Greene (ca. 1598-1636), and their six children (one
child had died in infancy in England) set sail to Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1635. Some
reports claim Joane died at sea, while others indicate she may have died shortly after arriving in
New England. The family first settled in Salem, but within a short time John was at loggerheads
with the Puritan authorities and faced fines and threat of imprisonment in 1637 and 1638 for
speaking disdainfully against court magistrates. Greene’s response was to send the court a letter
accusing them of appropriating Christ’s power over man and church. Being banished from
Massachusetts Bay Colony, Greene moved his family to Rhode Island, a known haven for
dissenters of the strict Puritanism of Salem. Greene and eleven others comprised the original
proprietors of Providence, and co-founded the town of Warwick, Rhode Island. It was at
Warwick in 1642 that he acquired the plantation that would become his family legacy. That
same year he married his second wife, Alice Daniels. Unfortunately, in 1643 further legal
conflicts arising from questionable land dealings with the local Native rulers and continued
disputes with Massachusetts authorities, resulted in an armed force from Massachusetts Bay
Colony deploying to Warwick to apprehend Greene and his associates. Greene and his older son
escaped, and his wife along with other women evaded the soldiers by running off into the woods
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and taking refuge. Alice is reported to have died from shock due to fear and exposure during her
brief exile (GENI My Heritage Project 2013).
After this incident, Greene returned to England where he married his third wife, the
widow Phillipa (last name unknown) (ca. 1601-1687), in 1645. Not long afterwards, they made
the voyage back to New England and settled at Greene Farm. During Greene’s tenure in Rhode
Island he continued his profession as a surgeon, became prominent in the local government, and
served as a magistrate of the General Court of Trials. He died in 1658, leaving the property to
his eldest son, John, Jr. with provisions in his will for his wife (Rootsweb 2013):
to his 'beloved wife PHILLIPPA GREENE yet part of buildings, being all new
erected, and containg a large hall and chimni with a little chamber joing yet with
a large garden wit ha little dary room which butts against ye olde house to enjoy
during her life.
Following Greene’s death, life continued to be precarious for his descendants and the other
Rhode Island colonists as hostilities continued to build between Anglo-American settlers, the
Wampanoags, Narragansetts, and the French, which ultimately erupted into King Phillip’s War.
Like the Jireh Bull site, the original Greene farmstead fell victim to the aggressions of King
Phillip (Metacomet) and was destroyed in 1676. John Greene, Jr. returned to the property and
rebuilt the homestead around 1690.
The Greene’s elevated sociopolitical status in no way offered them immunity from the
imminent dangers of seventeenth-century New England; but, did they use magical material
culture to address those fears and dangers? The archaeological site reports for the excavations at
Greene Farm make no mention of any artifacts among the 80,000 collected that suggested such
beliefs and practices to the archaeologists working on this project. Out of these thousands of
nails, ceramic sherds, pipe fragments, building material oddments, assorted clothing fasteners,
metal fragments, and faunal refuse common on historic sites, the excavators specifically noted
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about a dozen artifacts as ‘special finds’ and described them in greater detail. Among these were
four that warrant more consideration as potentially magical: a small pair of scissors, two heartshaped padlocks, and a key with a distinctive heart bow end.
Ryzewsky describes the location of two copper thimbles (one in Feature II (S68/E84) and
one in Feature DD (S63/E81)) and a single, bent brass pin near the second and less-damaged of
the thimbles (Feature BB S59.5/90.5). The deposition of these three items situates them within a
single room. Ryzewsky then explains that the handle of a small pair of rusted open scissors was
recovered from along a wall section of the Old House. She states (Ryzewsky 2007:30)
If this wall turns out to be the northeastern wall of the structure, as we suspect,
then the scissors are situated across the room or in another room of the structure
than the other sewing utensils (pin and thimbles).
The fact that these sewing scissors were distinctly separate from all the other sewing related
artifacts found across the site increases the possibility that they had been used with another
function in mind. Their deposition along a wall also opens the possibility of them having been
associated with a window or other threshold point. As previously discussed, open shears
embedded in the framework around windows and doors offered magical protection.
The key (Feature CC (S68/E84) was found a few feet from two heart-shaped padlocks
(Feature II (S68/E84 and outside the feature (S66/E94) respectively) (Ryezewsky 2007:37-38).
The padlocks’ corroded state precludes any matching of their locking mechanisms with the key,
but their relative sizes indicate a possible association. The bow end of the key is a stylized heart
created by the intertwining of three circular loops. Earlier discussion of heart, circle, and triune
symbolism concerning the Chadbourne site’s lock and key artifacts illustrated how these
apotropaic elements could be crafted into the structural design of the locking devices. Neither the
scissors’ provenience nor the padlocks and key’s heart designs unequivocally substantiate their
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operating as magical material culture; however, these characteristics do contribute to such a
possible interpretation and must at least be considered as an equifinial alternative.
John Howland House Site
The only reference available to evaluate the potential presence of magical material
culture at the John Howland farmstead, Kingston, Massachusetts was the field notebooks of
Sidney Strickland’s month-long excavation in the fall of 1937. Even though the entire
excavation only lasted from September 20 to October 16, 1937, the wealth of data gathered and
inscribed in these notebooks resulted in the highest number of potential apotropaic materials out
of all the sites discussed in this dissertation. Strickland did not interpret any of the artifacts as
apotropaic, yet some of them leave little doubt.
There is nothing exceptional in John Howland’s life story or that of his family that would
explain a greater use of magical material culture, with one concession—he seemed to have been
exceedingly lucky. Howland came to Plymouth Colony as one of the original Mayflower
passengers in 1620 as a fourteen-year-old indentured servant. Enroute to the New World, he was
thrown overboard during a tempest, but was providentially saved and hauled back onboard. His
indenture to John Carver, first governor of Plymouth Colony, ended soon after arrival in
Plymouth upon Carver’s death in 1621. Even at such a young age, Howland was quickly making
a name and position for himself. By 1626 he was one of the eight colonists who assumed the
debt obligation to the pilgrims’ investors in exchange for the fur trade monopoly. Throughout his
long life (1591-1673), Howland built a respectable reputation in the fur trade business, served in
several political positions (selectman, surveyor of highways, and deputy to the General Court),
and enjoyed a long and fruitful marriage with his wife and their ten children. Like the John
Alden family, all the Howland children grew to adulthood, married, and each produced between
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three and twelve children. Both John and his wife, Elizabeth Tilley Howland (1607-1687) were
octogenarians at their deaths. The only major crisis for the Howland family occurred after
John’s death when Elizabeth was living with their son, Jabez. Like many farmsteads, the
Howland farm was burned during King Phillip’s War in 1675, but the property had been vacated
prior to the attack and no one was injured.
Although John and Elizabeth remained staunch religious separatists, John’s two brothers
and their families had become Quakers and had suffered the consequences for their perceived
blasphemy. John and Elizabeth’s reputation apparently withstood any suggestion of guilt-byassociation with these rebellious relations. The only real social conflict that directly embroiled
the John Howland family concerned charges of improper behavior against their youngest
daughter, Ruth and her fiancé, Thomas Cushman, in 1664. The couple was officially convicted
of “carnal behavior before marriage, but after contract” for which they were merely fined and
then allowed to marry (Heinsohn 2013). The punishment for such immoral conduct traditionally
included public whipping, so Ruth and Thomas were leniently treated. Overall, the Howlands’
seem to have led fortunate lives.
The artifact depositions recorded by Strickland and his team at the Howland farmstead
suggest, however, that at least some fear or anxiety needed assuaging by the implementation of
apotropaic mechanisms. Noted among the finds are several objects directly associated with the
main entrance and threshold of the structure on the south wall and iron objects embedded in the
walls in close proximity to the hearth and chimney. Many references to the positioning of the
artifacts locate them at points corresponding to multiples of three (e.g., 3, 6, or 12 feet; the
intersection of 3 feet and 4 feet). These measurements may be purely coincidental and a result of
various site formation processes through the centuries, but they must also be taken into
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consideration as possibly intentional, at least in some instances (Maxwell-Stuart 2005; Milne
2007). To clarify the positioning of the numerous artifacts of interest, I created the site drawing
and key below (Figure 5.29).
FIGURE 5.28. John Howland farmstead plan with artifact locations. Drawing by author.
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Several ‘pap’ spoons—common fig-shaped table spoons of the seventeenth-century—
were recovered from the site. The first was located “just inside the threshold… lying at the side
of or just below the sill between the entrance step and the inside stones” (Strickland 1937:1), two
were in the hearth, and two were located to the south of the structure’s southwest corner. The
spoon in the threshold sill presents the likeliest magical positioning, but those associated with the
hearth could also have been used magically. Evidence that such spoons were used apotropaically
comes from the John Farrington House in Dedham, Massachusetts (ca. 1640) where one was
discovered embedded in the chimney base in the cellar at the direction of Farrington “believing
that the presence of a metal object in his foundation would give added strength to his house”
(Figure 5.30) (St. George 1998:192).
FIGURE 5.29. Apotropaic spoon from Farrington House (St. George 1998:194).
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Other depositions that strongly suggest apotropaic functions are two iron wedges “found
inside the east wall of the house four feet north of the south wall” and “an iron hoe in front of the
threshold” (Strickland 1937:3, 5). Strickland’s crew also recovered the ubiquitous horseshoe
“inside the house 12″ from the south wall and three feet from the inside of the threshold stones”
(Strickland 1937:4). Each of these items is located in a threshold or boundary area and is situated
in a context not conducive to its formal function as an agricultural or building tool. These and
other similar iron objects have several precedents as magical protection for house and household
(Merrifield 1987:162; St George 1998:191-192). St. George (1998:192) provides a comparative
example from the Zerubabbel Endicott House (ca. 1681) in Danvers, Massachusetts where an eel
spear trident was found “over a door on top of a first-floor girt near the front chimney post.”
Also found in the Endicott House was a horseshoe attached to the structure underneath the
original weatherboarding. The Endicott and Farrington discoveries are not credited to formal
archaeological excavations, so they are included here as historical, but not archaeological support
for the practice of embedding metal objections within structural frames as apotropaic material.
Additionally, several bladed artifacts were found, including three knife blades and a
scythe. One knife was by the outer chimney wall, one in front of the hearth, and one at the
threshold entrance—all common areas for the placement of apotropaic blades. The scythe’s
coordinates make its deposition especially interesting: Strickland (Strickland 1937:6) recorded
that it was located “9′ south and 6’6″ west of the southeast corner between 4 and 6″ below the
ground surface,” which generally places it in front of the main entrance threshold. Whether or
not the tertiary measurements reflect intentional and original placement coordinates cannot be
determined from Strickland’s report, but like the horseshoe’s location “inside the house 12″ from
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the south wall and three feet from the inside of the threshold,” the repetition of tertiary
measurements does require reflection.
The site also yielded two wrought iron hooks, a mouth harp, three hinges, two copper
pins, and base sherds of a pottery vessel. Like the above artifacts, these are plotted on Figure
5.30 and tend to cluster around the main entrance threshold and the area immediately in front of
the house. One of the hooks is associated with the hearth and likely represents hearth hardware
as a large chain link, probably from a fireplace crane, was also recovered in that area. The
hinges were not described in any detail to indicate whether or not they were cock’s head hinges
or included any other symbolic characteristics. Likewise, Strickland neglected to describe the
pottery vessel sherds found at the threshold, so speculation about them belonging to a single
vessel and that vessel being a Bellarmine and/or possible witch bottle is impossible.
Comprehensively, the John Howland site offers numerous potential and three almost
certain instances of apotropaic practice associated with the residential structure. The embedded
iron wedges and buried hoe indicate male agency, while the horseshoe, spoons, and knives may
involve female choices, although any of them could have been implemented by men.
Strickland’s short excavation also tentatively identified a storage shed and a barn, but he and his
crew did not have enough time to thoroughly document them, so it is not known whether or not
similar patterns of potential magical material use extended to these outbuildings.
Archaeological Evidence
Virtually all the magical material culture evidence from the five sites discussed above
comprises metal objects. These, along with the few non-metal artifacts, are delineated in Table
5.7 and are coded as possible evidence, likely evidence, or strong evidence for apotropaia. As
the table illustrates, most of the evidence from these sites cannot be conclusively interpreted as
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apotropaic magical material culture. However, their characteristics, symbolic associations, and
depositions do at least offer the possibility of a magical interpretation as one among viable
others.
TABLE 5.7. Analysis of potential apotropaic artifacts from New England archaeological sites.
Site
Artifact
Chadbourne
Horseshoe
Door latch with
inscribed lines and
circles
Heart bow key
Cock’s head hinge
“W” or “M” on
window
John Alden
Jireh Bull Garrison House
Greene Farm
John Howland House
Horseshoe
Cock’s head hinge
knives
scissors
pins
Stone and brick
feature
Cock’s head hinges
Door lock and key
Key with scrolled
bow
Horseshoe
Scissors
Shovel and Hoe
blades
Buckthorn plant
Scissors
Heart-shaped
padlocks
Key with heart bow
end fashioned from
three circles
Pap spoons
Iron wedges
Iron hoe
Horseshoe
Scythe
Knife blades
Pottery sherds
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Possible
Likely
Strong
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
Witch Bottles
Witch bottles reckon among the most frequently found apotropaic objects in England,
with approximately 200 recovered to date (Costello 2011b; Merrifield 1955, 1987; Becker 1978,
1980, 2005; Hoggard 2004); however, only nine have come to light in the United States (Map
5.2 and Table 5.8). These bottles usually contained a bewitched victim’s urine, hair and
fingernail clippings, iron pins and/or needles, and sometimes a red cloth heart and were buried
under thresholds, hearth stones, floors, and along house and field walls. Various vessel forms
have been used as witch bottles, but the most commonly utilized vessel type in seventeenthcentury Britian for this purpose was the bulbous, Rhenish stoneware jug known as a Bellarmine
or Bartmann produced mainly in and around Freshen, Germany, ca. 1550 to 1725 (Fig. 5.31)
(Hume 1969:55-57). Bellarmine sherds are relatively common on colonial American sites, yet
only one of the currently known American witch bottles was constructed from Rhenish
stoneware. Of the nine American bottles, three date to the 1620-1725 period, but these come
from Maryland, Virginia, and Delaware. The only one located in New England comes from
Providence, Rhode Island and has a late eighteenth/early nineteenth century date (Becker 2005).
FIGURE 5.30. Stoneware Bellarmine bottles; the bottle on the right was used as a witch bottle
containing a pin-pierced felt heart and iron nails. (Merrifield 1987).
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MAP 5.1. The only reported U.S. witch bottles to date. Map by author.
TABLE 5.8. Details of U.S. witch bottle finds.
Site
Location
Bottle Date/Type
Deposition
Contents
Bottle shards, 3 iron
nails, pig’s pelvic
bone, raccoon or
opossum mandible,
oyster shell, chert flake
Witch bottle status
debated because of
missing standard
contents
Notes
Source
King (1996)
Patuxent
Point Site
Calvert Co.,
Maryland
1658-1680
Glass case
bottles
Pit feature near
domestic
structure;
inverted
Great Neck
Witch Bottle
Virginia Beach,
Virginia
1690-1750
Light green
medicinal vial
Edge of cliff
near site of 17th
c structure;
buried inverted
Approx. 25 brass pins;
3 oxidized iron nails,
brownish film in
bottom
Brownish film
interpreted as urine
but not tested
Becker (2005);
Painter (1980)
Lewes Bottle
Delaware
1700-1750
Glass bottle
Assoc. with
farmhouse door
Pins
No other details
recorded in site report
Becker (2005)
Essington
Witch Bottle
Tinicum Island,
Delaware Co.,
Pennsylvania
1740-1750
Dark olive
green, longnecked, square
sided squat
wine bottle
Buried inverted
in small hole
near a chimney
foundation in a
17th c house
6 brass pins inside and
possibly residue of
urine and felt; also in
pit 1 sherd of blackglazed redware and 1
bird long bone,
possibly partridge
House inhabited by
English family all
through the 18th
century
Becker (1978,
2005)
City Point
Unit,
Petersburg
National
Battlefield
Hopewell,
Virginia
Bellarmine
bottle; no date
determined
Chimney
foundation in a
pre-1763 house
Bellarmine sherds and
2 corroded nail
fragments in same
context
Not officially noted at
time of excavation as
a witch bottle
Costello (2011b)
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Site
Location
Bottle Date/Type
Cove Lands
Charm
Providence,
Rhode Island
1780-1820
Small, handblown colorless
glass medicinal
vial
Horn Point
Witch Bottle
Dorchester,
Co., Maryland
Mid 18th c
Broken neck of
olive green
wine bottle
Fayette Co.,
Kentucky
1810-1850
Small, handblown glass
medicinal vial
Armstrong
Farmstead
Market Street
Witch Bottle
Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania
1st half 19th c
Free-blown
aquamarine
glass bottle
Deposition
Contents
On site of a 19th
building but
probably
associated with
an earlier
structure
6 straight pins
No details
Part of stopper still in
bottle with 17 nickelplated copper pins,
straight and bent stuck
in cork
Notes
No other details
recorded in site report
Source
Becker (2005)
Becker (2005);
Morehouse
(2009)
No details
Stoppered with cork;
contained 4 pins
Also found on site 10
pins at entrance to
another structure; a
pin bent into a circle,
a pierced coin, and a
Catholic medallion.
No other details.
At bottom of a
brick-lined
cistern
Cork stoppered;
‘Murky fluid’, 2 fabric
insole patterns
wrapped inside a
triangular or heartshaped scrap of felt
pierced with 9 brass
pins and 3 needles
‘Murky fluid’
interpreted as urine,
but not tested
Barber (2006)
Alexandrowicz
(1986); Becker
(2005).
Although no witch bottles have been reported for sites in New Hampshire or Massachusetts,
historical accounts verify that they were used in these colonies (Godbeer 1992:44-46). Richard
Chamberlain, Secretary of the Province of New Hampshire recorded the use of a witch bottle in
1682 by the Quaker household of George Walton in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, with whom
Chamberlain was residing at the time. A description of a “successful” witch bottle remedy in unwitching Michael Smith of Boston in 1681 is cited in the Suffolk County Court files, vol. 24; and
Cotton Mather records a similar account of witch bottle countermagic in Northampton,
Massachusetts in 1689.
As previously noted, certain types of magical material culture have received concentrated
attention from researchers, often overshadowing less obvious forms. Concealed apotropaia—
cats and shoes, in particular—have been the focus of several studies beginning with the work of
British folklorist Edward Lovett in the late nineteenth century; John Lea Nevinson of the Albert
and Victoria Museum in the 1930s; and in the mid-1950s, Devizes Museum curator Frederick K.
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Annable, and John Thornton along with June Swann of the Northampton Museum and Art
Gallery. In the late 1950s Swann created the Northampton Museum and Art Gallery’s card index
of concealed shoes, which recorded pertinent provenance and provenience data for each shoe
including any associated materials found with the footwear like cats, chickens, garments, or other
artifacts, as well as the gendered attribution of the footwear (Table 5.9). Unfortunately, this data
has yet to be digitized and has not been analyzed to ascertain patterns correlating time period,
gender, and depositional locations. Evans’ (2011) study of concealed apotropaia in nineteenth
and twentieth-century Australia also does not analyze male and female footwear for depositional
patterns. These studies have touched on the correlation of gender to concealed apotropaic
objects in two basic ways: 1) comparing the percentage of female to male shoes found, and 2)
connecting some deposits (especially of men’s work boots) with the building trades. These brief
allusions to gender were not enlarged into explicit discussions of possible gendered dimensions
to magical material culture. While not recognized as a possible gender aspect at the time,
Manning’s (2012a, 2012b) recordation of left and right shoe percentages, may also suggest a
gender correlation. Since concealed shoes and cats have been thoroughly discussed in other
regards elsewhere (Merrifield 1987; Swann 1996; Geisler 2003; Hoggard 2004; Evans 2011;
Manning 2012a, 2012b), for this current study, I will only be concerned here with possible
gendered attributes and their threshold associations.
As Evans (2011:136) notes, concealed shoes from the fourteenth to twentieth centuries
have surfaced across Britain, Norway, Germany, the Netherlands, and Australia. Likewise, shoe
concealment seems to have been a common apotropaic practice in the United States from the
seventeenth to twentieth centuries (Geisler 2003; Manning 2012a, 2012b). Only Geisler (2003)
and Manning (2012a, 2012b) have concentrated on concealed shoes in North America; Geisler’s
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work focuses on Massachusetts, while Manning considers finds across the United States. Their
studies refer to approximately 450 individual pieces of concealed footwear recovered in the U.S.
to date, the majority of which derive from northeastern sites.
TABLE 5.9. Patterns of concealed shoe apotropaia from Northampton Concealed Shoe Index,
Northampton Museum and Art Gallery, Northampton, England. Swann (1996).
Numbers
from ca.
1600-1730
Location
Gender
Association
Associated Finds
1600-1610
N=16
Chimney/hearth (n=233/26.2%)
ca. 1540-1910
Child (n=609)
Male (n=132)
Female (n=65)
Unspecified
(n=412)
(n=59)
Other garments-hats,
jackets, vests, dresses,
aprons, gloves, belts
1620s
N=1
Under floor/Above ceiling (n=210/22.86%)
ca. 1555-1940s
Adult Female
(n=405)
(n=22)
Faunal-cats, chickens,
1640s
N=2
Walls (n=169/18.8%)
ca. 1500-1920s
Adult Male
(n=330)
(n=13)
Flora-flower bouquet,
seeds, nuts
1650s
N=25
Roof (n=168/18.7%)
ca. 1400-1910
Adult
Unspecified
(n=175)
(n=21)
Fire associated-tobacco
pipes, candlesticks and
snuffers, coal
1660s
N=16
Under stairs (n=48/5.42%)
ca. 1550-1920s
(n=13)
Bottles
1690s
N=65
Door (n=13/1.5%)
ca. 1550-1890
(n=2)
Lithic—pebbles, holed
stone
1700-1710
N=46
Foundation (n=13/1.5%)
ca. 1670-1910
(Unspecified count)
Paper-Bible, prayer, and
hymn book pages, notes,
news clippings
Window (n=9/1.0%)
ca. 1690-1910
(Unspecified count)
Assorted
Miscellaneous—toys,
sharp items, horse tack,
personal items
1720s
N=26
Magical shoe concealment may have been a broadly European practice, but the
preferential choice of female or male shoes appears to have varied from place to place. These
differences may also be the result of formation processes, non-standardized recordation
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procedures, and representational sample bias. The only significant commonality across all
temporal and cultural ranges is the overwhelming preference for children’s shoes. However, the
usual division of shoes into adult female, adult male, and child can obscure actual counts of
female or male shoes. This count is further masked due to the fact that historically many
children’s shoes were unisex styles and so gender indeterminate. Swann separately counted
identifiably gendered children’s shoes; however, other concealed shoe studies have not made this
distinction.
Manning’s (2012a, 2012b) analysis of 190 concealed shoes divides them into adult
female, adult male, and child categories. Considering only the adult shoes, her research revealed
a slight preference for female shoes (19%) over male shoes (16%). Of the total adult shoes, 5%
were gender indeterminate. Similar to other studies, children’s shoes were overwhelmingly
represented (41%) but not gender identified in Manning’s analysis. A group of unidentifiable
shoe fragments (19%) was uncategorized. Of the shoes that were recognizable, over threequarters (77%) were left and (23%) were right. These observations may hold clues to a better
understanding of the logic and meaning behind shoe concealment and warrant further gender
analysis. The examples in Manning’s study span the seventeenth through twentieth centuries
with most examples dated to the nineteenth century. Of the total sample, the evidence for the
seventeenth century is the scarcest and most problematic. First, as archaeological lab specialist at
the Northeast Museum Services Center for the National Parks Service, Jessica Costello, (2011a)
states in her online article discussing historical shoe identification, “Early shoes were made
straight (with no differentiation between the right and left foot). Right/left differentiation is seen
in men’s shoes from the 1790s on, and in women’s shoes from the 1820s on.” So it appears the
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right/left-male/female correspondence cannot be applied to seventeenth-century apotropaic
shoes, although it may have relevance for later time periods.
Having analyzed the historical, folkloristic, and archaeological data on magical material
culture for types, applications, and gendered associations, it now requires discussion of what this
compilation of information can reveal about boundary construction, gender, agency, and riskmanagement, and ultimately what such revelations mean for the practice of the archaeology of
magic and ritual. In the following and final chapter, the issues of gendered boundary construction
and control through the use of magical material culture based on the data presented in this
chapter will be discussed, along with an assessment of how well this dissertation has
accomplished the research goals set forth at its beginning. Finally, I will offer suggestions for
the integration and implementation of this dissertation research into the broader field of
archaeology.
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CHAPTER 6: Conclusion and Future Directions
6.1 Chapter Overview
Numerous strands of data have been presented in the preceding chapters to substantiate
this dissertation’s general hypothesis that seventeenth-century New England Anglo colonists
employed magical beliefs as part of a greater belief system to empower themselves in averting or
mediating perceived personal, social, spiritual, and environmental dangers. Additionally, the
data have supported the premise that gender constructs play a role in the motivation and use of
apotropaic magic. These data illuminate the complex and entrenched nature of magical belief and
offer a foundation from which to approach a more nuanced study of gender, magical use, and the
control of space through protective boundary construction. The first part of this chapter will revisit the overarching goals and questions presented in the introduction to discuss how the above
mentioned data strands have supported and answered these goals and questions respectively.
As an incipient and germinal archaeological study of gendered Anglo-European
apotropaic magical material culture, this dissertation is by no means comprehensive or
conclusive. The research and work entailed here have revealed a multiplicity of issues
concerning the broader field of archaeology of magic and ritual that have yet to be explored or
synthesized. Recommendations for future research will be discussed at the end of this chapter.
6.2 Dissertation Goals
Five inter-related core concepts guided the research for this current study: boundaries,
gender, magic, risk-management, and archaeology. The idea was to determine how, why, and if
women and men differentially resorted to magical devices to construct and control the
boundaries of their worlds in various dangerous situations, what material manifestations those
devices took, and finally what kind of archaeological footprint such devices or practice would
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leave. This multi-faceted idea was broken down into three particular questions and presented in
the introduction. They will be reiterated here with the answers and tabulated products that
resulted from those answers.
Question 1: What constitutes apotropaic magical material culture in seventeenth-century
contexts and how is it recognizable in the archaeological record?
6.2.1. Magical Material Culture Typology Construction
One of the goals of this dissertation was to synthesize the historical, folkloristic, and
archaeological data pertaining to seventeenth-century Anglo-European magical material culture
into a usable typology for historical archaeologists. To construct a useful typology of any type
requires a great deal of consideration. Patricia Gibble (2005:34) succinctly captures the inherent
weakness in typology construction when she states:
Typological classification systems used in archaeological analysis are artificially
contrived organizational schemes that allow researchers to describe and place
material culture into manageable units for analysis.
These artificial categories may be narrowly chosen to answer specific research questions but lack
the scope to address future questions. The best typology would be both focused enough to
generate meaningful interpretations for the constructor’s immediate research agenda, and
comprehensive enough to prove useful for future applications.
To begin the classification process required a determination of categorical type. Robert
Friedel (1993:42) espouses the belief that the first step in the process of analyzing material
culture should be a consideration of the material used; however, the reasons he identifies for the
choice of materials and their values extend only to the generally pragmatic and extrinsic,
neglecting any mythological or magical associations ascribed to certain materials. Friedel
(1993:44) cites function, availability, economy, style, and tradition as the most important
considerations in choosing a particular material from which to construct specific objects. These
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factors, he continues, will be affected by a number of variables, namely: geography, technology,
science, fashion, and competition. To these factors Friedel stresses that values adhering to
particular material types often ultimately determine the choice of material. He notes scarcity,
aesthetics, functionality, and associative meanings (like richness with gold) as the crucial values
influencing material selection. Friedel’s approach to material culture falls within the ‘form and
function’ school of analysis that emphasizes raw material, morphological attributes, primary
functions, and socioeconomic values based upon utilitarian classification schemes irrespective of
symbolic or spiritual uses and meanings. While he is correct in asserting, along with other
scholars of material culture (South 1977; Lubar and Kingery 1993; Kingery 1996; Miller 1998;
Glassie 1999), that objects contain no inherent value or meaning only culturally ascribed ones, in
analyzing the material culture of magic, the culturally relative beliefs about the inherency of
power, meaning, and association of particular objects must guide interpretation.
When analyzing and interpreting artifacts, archaeologists generally scrutinize individual
objects to determine their attributes and classifications. This attention to detail, while necessary,
should not exclude or preclude consideration of associated artifacts and contextual information.
Part of this potential disassociation may arise as a result of excavation methodologies that use
arbitrary 10 centimeter levels instead of following the natural stratigraphic layers created by
cultural and natural events (Walker 2002). As Hodder (1993:9) explains:
The meaning of an object resides not merely in its contrast to others within a set.
Meaning also derives from the associations and use of an object, which itself
becomes, through the associations, the node of a network of references and
implications.
Taking into account the pitfalls of constructing too limited a classification scheme or of
privileging an individual object over its place within a system of associations, I constructed two
complementary typologies for identifying Anglo-European apotropaic magical material culture
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(Tables 6.1 and 6.2) to provide archaeologists a broad sense of the material domains from which
magical objects originate and more detailed information on the specific forms and depositional
contexts of these objects. The contents of these two typologies are derived from combining all
the magical materials noted in the historic, folkloristic, and archaeological data sources available
for Anglo-European popular magic. Some of these materials, while too ephemeral to directly
survive in the archaeological record (e.g., salt or chalk circle symbols) may appear in other
manifestations that do endure (e.g., salt-fired chimney bricks and incised or burned circles on
woodwork).
The first table (Table 6.1) divides magical material culture into seven broad functional
categories: agricultural, architecture, domestic, flora/fauna, lithic, mortuary, and personal. Each
category was then refined into more specific artifact class groups. Rather than forming the initial
framework into which the artifacts had to be manipulated, these functional groups and artifact
classes developed inductively from the actual objects and materials cited in data sources. The
final column of this typology provides numerous examples of the objects that have historically
been used in Anglo-European protective magical practice. The complementary typology, here
called ‘apotropaic magical material culture manifestations and locations’ (Table 6.2) begins with
fourteen artifact classes—similar to the artifact classes in Table 6.1—and subdivides each into
the very specific forms and materials documented in the range of data sources. Then to situate
these objects into the spatial context of their use, a description is provided of the locations in
which they operated as protective magical material culture. While these two typologies present
extensive lists that incorporate the range of objects reflected in the available data sources, it
would be presumptuous to claim they are exhaustive. People may have used variations or
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substitutions for particular objects or materials that have not been encountered or recorded in
written or archaeological sources, and thus are not accounted for here.
The resulting Magical Material Culture Typologies (Tables 6.1 and 6.2) and the plant
glossary (Appendix C) all provide descriptions of the specific objects and manifestations of
Anglo-European apotropaia uncovered in these three source groups. Beyond the specifics of
forms, materials, and locations, these typologies indicate that magic was theoretically available
to anyone since the objects and materials used and the places they were implemented all
comprised typical, everyday settings. The ubiquitousness and multifunctionality of all these
magical materials also suggest that their hyperobstrusiveness may have minimized the possible
repercussions from legal or religious authorities or fellow community members who connected
magical ‘tricks’ with practicing malevolent witchcraft and, thus, influenced their use as
apotropaia.
TABLE 6.1. Anglo-European apotropaic magical material culture typology.
Functional
Group
Agricultural
Artifact Class
Representative Artifacts
Animal hardware
Farming equipment
Horseshoes, Horseshoe nails, Horse-brasses
Hoes, Plows, Axes, Sickles/Scythes
General hardware
Residential hardware and features
Outbuilding features
Outbuilding features, agricultural
Outbuilding features, workshops
Boundary features
Religious/Sacred building features
Nails, Carpentry tools
Windows, Rafters, Doorknockers, Locks, Keys, Hinges, Hearths, Doors, Doorsteps, Cellars, Support posts,
Ceilings, Walls
Doors, Doorsteps, Cellars, Rafters, Beams, Support posts
Stables, Barns, Cowsheds, Animal pens
Doors, Doorsteps, Cellars, Rafters, Support posts, Hearths
Boundary stones, Stone walls, Fences, Gates
Doors, Doorsteps, Walls, Rafters, Support posts
Domestic
Food
Food, preparation
Food, consumption
Food, storage
Furnishings/Decorative
Heating/Lighting
Sewing/Needlecraft
Textiles
Salt
Cauldrons, Kettles, Knives, Sieves
Plates, Bowls, Utensils
Barrels, Stoneware jugs, Glass bottles
Chairs, Chests, Beds, Cradles, Mirrors, Patterns & Symbols, Artistic work
Candles, Lamps
Needles, Pins, Knitting needles, Scissors, Thread
Household linens, Rags, Felt hearts
Flora/Fauna
Flora, wild
Flora, cultivated
Fauna, wild
Fauna, domestic
Herbs, Shrubs, Trees (see Appendix C for specific botanicals)
Herbs, Shrubs, Trees (see Appendix C for specific botanicals), straw plaits
Rats, Shrews, Wolf heads, Owl skins and talons, Bird bones, Toads
Cats, Chickens, Horse and cow skulls, Goose quills, Pig tails and ears, Dogs, Mutton bones, Hearts
Lithic
Worked, tools
Natural, unaltered
Natural, decorated
Lithic points/hammers/scrapers
Holed stones, Shiny stones
Boulders incised with symbols
Mortuary
Grave markers
Grave goods
Burial hardware/equipment
Burial orientation/placement
Headstones, Stone markers, Wooden markers
Plates, Coins, Scythes, Beads, Crosses, Salt, Ashes, Stakes
Coffin studs
At crossroads, isolated areas; Skeleton prone or dismembered; Animal skeletons feet up, not butchered
Architecture
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Functional
Group
Personal
Artifact Class
Accoutrements
Clothing
Grooming/Health
Image Magic
Reading/Writing
Religious
Smoking/Tobacco
Toys/Games/Entertainment
Weapons/Hunting & Fishing
Representative Artifacts
Jewelry, Beads, Coins
Footwear, Shirts, Jackets, Hats, Aprons, Belts, Dresses
Hair, Fingernail clippings, Urine, Finger bones, Hearts, Cauls, Blood, Mirrors
Dolls, Drawn/carved figures, Knotted cords or cloth
Books, Writing quills, Written charms, Prayer cards, Bible
Saint’s Medals, Crosses, Double ‘V’s, Hearts, Circles, Hexafoils
Pipes, Tobacco
Coral teether with bells
Knives, Swords, Lead shot, Pikes, Fish spears, Fish hooks
TABLE 6.2. Anglo-European apotropaic magical material culture manifestations and locations.
Class
Form and/or Material
Location
Bottles
Glass phials, Bellarmine (Bartmann) stoneware
jugs, globular wine bottles, beer and soda bottles.
Usually, but not always, containing pins, needles,
iron nails, thorns, felt hearts, hair, fingernail
clippings, urine, ‘holy’ water, bones
In or under hearths; under door sills; buried along boundary lines and
walls; under floors; in cellar or foundation walls; usually buried
inverted
Clothing/Textile
Shoes, gloves, jackets, vests, hats, cloth scraps,
ribbons, swaddling clothes
In secret compartments in hearth and chimney, roof, walls, around
doors, under floors; swaddling clothes, cloth scraps and ribbons tied to
trees and shrubs usually near spring or well
Colors
Red, white, black, blue—paint, ribbons, cloth,
thread
In stables, around windows and doors, porch ceilings; woven into or
attached to livestock manes and tails; stitched into linens and clothing
Fauna
Cats, chickens, rats, horse and cow skulls, goose
quills, pig tails and ears, wolf heads, owl talons
and skins, mutton bones, dogs, shrews, coral
In secret compartments in hearth and chimney, roof, walls, around
doors, under floors; buried in ground near a threshold; also skulls
under lime kilns; wolf head nailed to house door; black dogs buried on
north side of churches; cock buried at confluence of three streams;
owls nailed to barn door; plug up shrew in ash tree; coral used as a
teething toy, usually with bells attached
Flora
Herbs, shrubs, trees (see Appendix C for specific
botanicals), straw plaits
Planted at house corners; hung over house doors and windows, and
over beds; hung over stable doors and inside stables; laid across
thresholds; grown or laid on roofs; in hearths; lining garden and field
boundaries; straw plaits woven into horse manes and tails, hung on
doors
Food Related
Sieves, spirit barrels, salt
Sieves used with shears/scissors –kitchen or domestic work areas;
spirit barrels in sealed off rooms; salt in corners, around house
perimeter, in hearth
Human Body
Elements
Hair, nail clippings, urine, bones (usually
hand/finger), hearts, cauls, blood
Hair, nail clippings, urine in witch bottles; bones under door sills;
hearts in chimney; hair hung in attics/roofs; caules in containers in
houses, on boats
Images
Dolls (cloth, straw, clay, wax, wood, lead);
drawn/carved figures; knotted cords or cloth
In cellar walls; hearths; under floors; secret compartments in roofs and
walls; on boundary and foundation stones
Lithics
Holed stones, carved stones
Holed stones were hung on the hearth and over stables, on interior and
exterior doors, on bedposts and gateposts, hung around horses’ necks,
concealed inside walls, placed in graves, and attached to boats;
boulders carved with magical symbols along property boundaries or to
protect specific locale
Metal
Iron horseshoes, keys, knives, scissors, pins,
needles, bells or pans, perforated coins, hoes,
silver bullets made of melted sixpence, horse
brass, fire irons, melted lead, lead images, axes,
hoes, sickles/scythes, hammers , fish spears,
spoons, pikes
Horseshoes over house and stable doors (interior and exterior); in
hearth, butter churns, walls, cellars; at crossroads; attached to impaling
stakes; knives and scissors under door sills/across threshold or
embedded around windows, also areas under beds and cradles; pins
and needles in witch bottles; coins under thresholds, in burials, in
butter churns; usually bent or broken and thrown into water; horse
brass attached to horse tack or hung in stables; fire irons placed in a
cross configuration across cradles; fish spears, spoons, pikes in walls,
cellars, rafters
Patterns &
Symbols
Daisy wheels (hexafoils), crosses, pentagrams,
triangles, hearts, circles, rosettes, astrological and
occult figures, numeric patterns-particularly 3, 5,
On house door and window jambs, on door hardware, in stables, on
hearth support posts, stairways, beams and rafters, ceilings, floors, and
walls; boundary and foundation stones; cave and mine walls; coffins,
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Class
Form and/or Material
Location
7
gravestones, furniture, artwork, household linens, clothing, jewelry
Reflective
Objects
Mirrors, polished metal, water, glass, shiny stones
Hung on exterior of house; interior and exterior of stables; broken
mirrors buried in running water or separately away from house and
middens; concealed in attics; water in containers by doors and
windows
Sharp Objects
Knives, scissors, pins, needles, thorns, broken
glass or ceramic, iron nails, claws and talons,
lithic points/hammers/scrapers
In witch bottles; areas under beds and cradles; stuck in poppets; in
chimneys; deposited in water sources; broken glass or ceramics along
footpaths; under thresholds, along door jambs and window sills; in
cellars, walls, and roofs
Written works
Written charms, books, prayer cards, bible
In secret compartments in hearth and chimney, roof, walls, around
doors and windows, in attics; Bible around cradle area
The quotidian nature of the apotropaic devices does not, however, denote that these
objects were simplistic in their meanings or their applications. Researching the cosmological
underpinnings of seventeenth-century Protestant worldviews revealed an intricate network of
concepts, symbols, and associations that imbue magical material culture with a greater
complexity than is first apparent. Many are implicated with Biblical numerology, symbols, and
personages, and work as a multifaceted system that includes consideration of material, form,
function, deposition, and attending ritual.
Further analysis of the items included in Tables 6.1 and 6.2 suggests that the range of
apotropaic devices, while broad in variation, is relatively limited in materials and applications.
The categories used in these tables represent a finer distinction to demonstrate particular
variations, but generally the objects used as apotropaia can be categorized into seven broad
compositional groups (flora, fauna, metals, household objects, colors, abstract symbols, and
words) and four functions (repelling, trapping, reversing, or neutralizing the supernatural threat).
Often multiple attributes are combined giving the magical object manifold layers of power. An
object’s composition and function are further enhanced (or possibly determined) by its
deposition, which may be an external application so as to be readily visible; buried underground;
or concealed above ground; and, influenced by cosmological ideas of numerology and
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directionality. Finally, the rituals or ritualistic behaviors that attend the deposition of the
protective devices may have provided the catalyst to engage their powers. Composition,
function, deposition, and ritual operate as a system with each aspect dependent upon the others
for meaning, potency, and agency.
There appear to be general rules for the use and deposition of the different apotropaic
categories. Flora was usually planted around and on houses, hung over doors and windows, strewn
across thresholds and into corners, burnt in hearths, or used in the construction of thresholds,
windowsills, doorjambs, doors, lintels, brooms, and butter churns. The seasonality of plants
determined when they could be gathered and used. This type of apotropaia is the most elusive to
document as historical archaeologists either do not widely employ macro- and microbotanical
analysis to identify flora species or they do not consider the significance of accounting for magical
flora use. This issue will be addressed in greater detail below.
Animals or animal parts seldom appear displayed except when their likenesses are wrought
in some other material like iron (e.g., cock’s head hinges and lion doorknockers). There are rare
references to nailing a wolf’s head or owl skin to a door to cure bewitchment, but most animals,
either whole or part, emerge from concealed spaces—either buried under thresholds, hearths,
gates, and house foundations or found in chimneys, walls, and roofs. Chickens, cats, rats, horse
and cow skulls, and livestock hearts comprise the most commonly used fauna as guardians or
sacrifices to ensure household safety. Other animal parts, including pig ears and tails, were also
burnt in the hearth. These animals represent common and easily accessible specimens as well as, in
the case of cats and rats, those most often associated with witches’ familiars. As such, they
illustrate the complexity inherent in apotropaic belief and the difficulty of accurately interpreting
the specific function of such beliefs. The inclusion of a cat in a spiritual midden could
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simultaneously indicate it was intended as a sympathetic magic element, a foundation sacrificial
object, or a distracting object to divert the witch’s attention. To further complicate the
understanding of particular apotropaia, it is possible the cat could be used in each of these ways
without any overt clues indicating the shift from one function to another. Then, too, there are the
accompanying objects found with the cat and the arrangement and orientation of the whole plus
any information about the attending rituals that must be considered before a more precise
conclusion can be drawn about the function or functions of the animal in particular and the
spiritual midden in general.
Metal objects were often hung around doors and windows, or placed under or in thresholds,
beds, walls, and cellars. Metal was not subject to seasonality as were plants and animals. The
most commonly used apotropaic metal, iron, was from its beginnings considered “numinous and
taboo” as it fell from the sky as meteorites. Ewart Evans (1966:56) suggests, “It’s superiority over
stone and bronze and the superstitious awe surrounding iron smiths likely added to the magical
associations of iron and iron objects.” This may account for iron being considered the most
powerful of all apotropaic materials. Metal’s apotropaic function varied depending upon its use
and context. Placed on or above doors (e.g., horseshoes), or concealed under thresholds, in walls,
and under beds (e.g., knives, hoes, scissors), these metal objects repelled evil. Used as sharp
objects (e.g., pins and nails) in witch bottles and stuck in hearts (cloth or real), the metal was
instrumental in sympathetically reversing the pain or injury back upon the bewitcher.
The category of household items used as apotropaia includes a wide variety of objects
ranging from brooms to bottles to thread to shoes. As noted in Chapter 5, worn out shoes, and
most especially children’s shoes, constitute the most frequently used object in spiritual middens
found in chimneys, walls, roofs, windowsills, and under thresholds. Close to a thousand such
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items have been found across the world and are theorized to act as witch traps. Other household
objects, like brooms, repel evil, whereas witch bottles reverse bewitchment, embroidered designs
trap the malicious force, and coins in the butter churn neutralize the bewitchment.
In conjunction with household items, plants, and symbols, the color red most often appears
as both a powerful amulet in itself and as a power-enhancing agent for other objects to avert
preternatural forces. Painting doors and windowsills red, tying red cloth or thread over doors or to
trees by gates, surrounding a dwelling with red berried trees and shrubs, or painting red symbols
on doorsteps all illustrate utilizing red’s ability to protect houses and their inhabitants from evil.
Apotropaic symbols appear as abstract designs like spirals, circles and other geometric
shapes, and hearts carved into, painted onto, or applied as mosaics on exterior walls, doorframes,
doorsteps, furniture, and hearth supports and as objects fashioned from wood or iron as
doorknockers. Complex symbols function as traps to confuse and ‘catch’ the attention of witches
and fairies, while others seem to either repel or neutralize the harmful forces through cosmic or
divine power associations.
The final apotropaic category, words, most often consist of nonsense words, coded
abbreviations, divine names, sigils, and repeated letters. Examples discovered in spiritual
middens, buried under thresholds and hearths, burned on ceilings, and carved onto hearth supports
and lintels seem to operate similarly to abstract symbols as wards and neutralizers. Like symbols,
these word-based apotropaic devices have cosmological implications expressed through
numerology or associations with divine personages.
Gleaning the magical material culture typological categories, their general depositional
attributes, associated functions, and specific formal examples from the three data sources allowed
the application of these observations to a consideration of their recognizability in the
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archaeological record. Although a perusal of the objects charted in Tables 6.1, 6.2, 6.3, and 6.4
gives the impression that many of these artifacts should be, and likely are, present in
archaeological sites, the evidence from the five sites discussed in this dissertation paint a different
picture. Metal objects like horseshoes, knives, and scissors accounted for virtually all the potential
apotropaia noted at the archaeological sites discussed in Chapter 5. The survivability of metal in
archaeological contexts partially explains this overrepresentation, but it cannot account for the
absence of other apotropaic evidence that can similarly survive (e.g., ceramic, flora, fauna, lithics,
and symbols).
The dearth of witch bottles in seventeenth-century New England provides one case in point
to question why more have not been noted from these contexts, especially since this apotropaic
device has been more publicized than any other form of magical material culture and is, therefore,
more generally known and recognized (Costello 2011b; Merrifield 1955, 1987; Becker 1978, 1980,
2005; Hoggard 2004). It is possible that many ceramic or glass vessels used as witch bottles did
not survive intact, and consequently were excavated and cataloged as fragments of utilitarian
vessel counts and been subsumed in socioeconomic or manufacturing interpretations (South 1977;
Beaudry 1986:39-40). Some are probably found intact and sent to archaeology laboratories where
technicians ultimately clean and catalogue them simply as bottles. It is also likely that areas where
witch bottles would have been buried (e.g., under hearth or chimney stones) are not excavated as
no artifacts would be expected under such features. Regardless of the relatively common
knowledge amongst historical archaeologists concerning witch bottles, it seems the knowledge still
has not sufficiently impacted the excavation plans and artifact analyses of historical sites.
Faunal remains represent another area of magical material culture that should provide a
wider spectrum of magical material than the concealed cats, rats, and chickens that have received
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the greatest attention (Merrifield 1987; Evans 2011; Manning 2012a, 2012b). The burial of
diseased or ‘bewitched’ animals, including oxen, horses, pigs, cattle, and sheep unbutchered and
feet up or burned at threshold and boundary points around barns and fields certainly require
differential categorization and interpretation than skeletal remains representing consumption
patterns. Animals not generally considered food animals, like dogs, reptiles, and owls, were also
buried, hung, or burnt as apotropaia. Their remains require greater interpretative consideration than
simple acknowledgement of their presence in non-food faunal counts, or speculation of their
possible addition to foodways of the people under study. Faunal analysis must be open to
interpretations beyond the animals’ consumption or production values that include possible
magical and ritual functions.
Without a doubt, flora comprises the most neglected magical material recoverable from
archaeological contexts. Whether an overt hold-over planting from the site’s habitation that
literally marks the boundaries of houses, outbuildings, or fields; or a less overt specimen surviving
macrobotanically or microbotanically, plant remains have high recoverability potential (Pearson
1988; McWeeney 1991; Miller and Gleason 1994; Dudek et al. 1998; Gazin-Schwartz 1999;
Gorham et al. 2001; Gremillion 2002; Mrozowski et al. 2008; Mecuri et al. 2010). Archaeobotany
has become an integral research component of many archaeological projects, but its application in
historical archaeology has mainly focused on two major topics: foodways (see Noël Hume 1974;
Dudek et al. 1998; Miller and Gleason 1998; Gremillion 2002; Mrozowski et al. 2008) and
landscape evolution (see Pearson 1988; Miller and Gleason 1994; Mecuri et al. 2010). A limited
number of studies have demonstrated that microbotanicals can actually be used to interpret a wider
range of information. Gorham et al.’s (2001:282) look at pollen, phyoliths, and other
microbotanicals in underwater archaeological contexts indicate:
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…organic remains…can contain microscopic plant remains that become
botanical fingerprints used to identity cargoes, ship’s food, onshore vegetation,
location of ship’s home port, and plants used to make rope, basketry, and
matting.
They espouse the belief that plants were used for more than just food products, so their recovery
from archaeological contexts should extend beyond such a narrow focus to include consideration
of the multiple ways plants contribute to a broader and deeper understanding of the past.
Mrozowski et al. (2008:649) also acknowledge that plants were used for more than dietary
elements and undertook their archaeobotanical analysis of an African American enslaved quarter at
the eighteenth-century Virginia Rich Neck Plantation to develop comprehensive knowledge of
African American plant use at the site. Their goal was a holistic approach to understanding how
plants are used for overall well-being that includes aspects of diet, medicine, recreation,
ornamentation, sensory stimulus, and symbolic and spiritual importance. Unfortunately, other than
citing brief examples of medicinal plant use, the article almost exclusively concerned foodways
and offered no discourse on magico-religious plant use.
Gorham et al. (2001) stress that underwater contexts—whether oceans or terrestrial
submerged areas—often provide environments conducive to organic preservation.
Archaeobotanical remains can survive in several environments, but their survivability and
interpretive value depend on various factors. Dudek et al.’s (1998:63) analysis of plant remains
from a seventeenth-century privy led them to conclude:
…differences in the way in which the remains initially enter the site, differences
in resistance to physical and chemical destruction, differences in recovery, and
inadvertent human bias during recovery and analysis, all have potential for
introducing error into the results.
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Realizing the potential for macro- and microbotantical survival in the archaeological record and
striving to minimize the occurrence of human collection and interpretation biases, should increase
the evidence of magical flora at historical archaeological sites.
Like all archaeobotanists, Pearson (1988:74) sees flora as a valuable category of ecofactual
evidence. Unlike those who focus on plants as merely landscape evolution or subsistence
indicators, she believes the recognition of plant growth presence and behavior can be used by
archaeologists methodologically as less-expensive and noninvasive archaeological site locators.
Although she does not specifically mention the practice of planting apotropaic flora at building
corners or along perimeters, she does believe structural footprints may be more easily recognized if
archaeologists paid attention to the plants and the plant patterns growing in particular areas. This
methodology (as already noted by Gazin-Schwartz 1999) is particularly relevant to the recognition
of magical plants demarcating architectural, yard, and property boundaries. People did not
cultivate random plants inadvertently, but rather chose and planted those species that served
particular needs in particularly chosen areas. Mecuri et al. (2010:861) understand that there exists
a complex, dynamic, and “interactive” relationship between people and plants that exceeds “the
sum of the various parts involved.” Part of this anthropogenic complexity includes the belief in and
use of particular plants to create an interactive landscape that protects its inhabitants from a range
of natural and supernatural threats.
The final category of apotropaia that must be considered as archaeological evidence is
not itself material, but rather manifests through the various types of magical material culture.
That cosmological and, hence, religiously associated numbers permeate written, performative,
and material magical practices lies beyond a doubt. Numerous studies (e.g., Lawlor 1982; Leone
and Shackel 1990; Leone and Hurry 1998; Morley and Renfrew 2010) demonstrate the
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intentional incorporation of sacred measurements into architecture, urban plans, and gardens.
Folklore and historical sources also provide examples of the use of measurements in magical
practice, including the nine foot diameter of a magical circle (Maxwell-Stuart 2005:90) and the
“twelve-inch hole pierced through [an oak tree] six feet off the ground” (Milne 2007:106)
through which sick infants were passed three times. The question archaeologists must consider
is: Can these numerical patterns be used as a guide for locating or recognizing magical material
culture? In some instances of magical practice, an attendant verbal or performative element
might have been the component in which the three, five, or seven manifested, and, therefore,
would not leave a visible marker. However, it seems plausible that given the ubiquitousness of
these numeric elements in all forms of magical work, they would also be materially expressed in
various ways; for example:
1. Items found in triad, quintet, or heptad groupings
2. Marks or symbols comprising three, five, or seven repetitions or elements
3. Depositions located at numerically corresponding architectural features or
measurements (at the third, fifth, or seventh floor board or rafter or at three, five, or
seven feet, yards, etc.)
4. Three, five, or seven occurrences of either similar objects or objects with similar roles
in magical practice.
Artifacts occurring in such patterns may at least suggest a magical purpose rather than random
loss or intentional discard. When combined with additional evidence, like deposition associated
with threshold spaces like doors, windows, walls, roofs, and other boundaries, the cumulative
data more readily supports a magical interpretation.
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To conclude, many types of apotropaic magical material culture should both leave a
footprint and be recognizable as such in the archaeological record—some, of course, more
unambiguously than others. Most will be directly associated with a physical threshold or boundary
area, both internal and external to a building/property or related to metaphorical boundaries (e.g.,
around bed/cradle areas as the symbolic representation of the boundary between wakefulness and
sleep or health and sickness). Artifacts associated with natural boundaries like water courses and
features may indicate these as supernaturally charged portals and barriers. Many magical artifacts
will either be a symbol or include one or more symbolic elements (e.g., shapes, number
associations, colors, designs, or directions). As delineated in Table 6.4. “Criteria for Identifying
Magic in Archaeological Contexts,” magical material culture, while not always unambiguous, does
generally exhibit recognizable patterns and attributes.
When reviewing the magical material typologies (Tables 6.1 and 6.2), the utilitarian and
ordinary nature of Anglo-European popular apotropaia becomes blatantly clear. If popular
magical form and use had to be characterized by one word, that word would be non-specialized.
This essential characteristic is virtually antithetic to the ritual identification criteria delineated by
Renfrew and Bahn (Table 6.3) in which almost every description stresses the specialness of
form, place, or function. It is the focus on the separation from the mundane of ritualized space
and objects that prevents this criterion model from more universally applying to quotidian
magical material culture. This criticism does not negate the validity of Renfrew and Bahn’s
model, as their observations do accurately describe the various elements of more formalized
rituals. Based on the data and sources researched in this dissertation, it was obvious a criterion
model specifically addressing magic—in contrast to ritual—was needed, not to replace Renfrew
and Bahn’s model, but to complement it. This model (Table 6.4), “Criteria for Identifying Magic
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in Archaeological Contexts,” stresses the utilization of mundane objects as magical devices and
their integration into, rather than separation from, commonplace contexts. Used in consort, the
this model and the Renfrew and Bahn model provide archaeologists a more comprehensive
toolset for identifying and interpreting artifacts and features expressing belief systems. As these
models and the preceding typologies indicate, the appropriate recovery and interpretation of
magical material culture from archaeological contexts, while not always simple, nevertheless are
both possible and necessary for more accurate constructions of the past.
TABLE 6.3. Renfrew and Bahn’s Criteria for Identifying Ritual in Archaeological Contexts__
Focusing of attention:
1. Ritual may take place in a spot with special, natural associations (cave, grove of trees, spring,
mountaintop)
2. Alternatively, ritual may take place in a special building set apart for sacred functions
3. The structure and equipment used for the ritual may employ attention-focusing devices,
reflected in the architecture, special fixtures (e.g. altars, benches, hearths), and movable
equipment (e.g. lamps, gongs and bells, ritual vessels, censers, altar cloths, and all the
paraphernalia of ritual).
4. The sacred area is likely to be rich in repeated symbols (this is known as “redundancy”).
Boundary zone between this world and the next:
5. Ritual may involve both conspicuous public display (and expenditure), and hidden exclusive
mysteries, whose practice will be reflected in the architecture
6. Concepts of cleanliness and pollution may be reflected in the facilities (e.g. pools or basins of
water) and maintenance of the sacred area
Presence of the deity:
7. The association with a deity or deities may be reflected in the use of a cult image, or a
representation of the deity in abstract form (e.g. the Christian Chi-Rho symbol).
8. The ritualistic symbols will often relate iconographically to the deities worshipped and to their
associated myth. Animal symbolism (of real or mythical animals) may often be used, with
particular animals relating to specific deities or powers.
9. The ritualistic symbols may relate to those seen also in funerary ritual and in other rites of
passage.
Participation and offering:
10. Worship will involve prayer and special movements--gestures of adoration--and these may
be reflected in the art or iconography of decorations or images.
11. The ritual may employ various devices for inducing religious experience (e.g., dance, music,
drugs, and the infliction of pain).
12. The sacrifice of animals or humans may be practiced.
13. Food and drink may be brought and possibly consumed as offerings or burned/poured away.
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14. Other material objects may be brought and offered (votives). The act of offering may entail
breakage and hiding or discard.
15. Great investment of wealth may be reflected both in the equipment used and in the offerings
made.
16. Great investment of wealth and resources may be reflected in the structure itself and its
facilities.
______________________________________________________________________________
Source: Renfrew and Bahn (2004:416–417).
TABLE 6.4. Criteria for Identifying Magic in Archaeological Contexts
Spatial Orientation
1. Objects or symbols often occur at boundaries perceived as permeable to danger or evil forces
(e.g., doors, windows, hearths, roofs, corners, cellars, walls, fences, property boundaries,
crossroads).
2. Objects or symbols may occur in areas of close proximity to potential victims (e.g., near
beds, cradles, stables/barns).
3. Placement of magical objects or symbols may correspond to the right/up/forward/male/sacred
or left/down/behind/female/profane constructs or similar cultural associations.
4. Objects may be intentionally concealed (e.g., buried, walled-in, in hidden niches) or
deliberately overt (e.g., attached to doors/windows, carved or painted on architectural
features).
5. Objects or symbols are often situated in household or personal space, occurring in mundane
settings amidst everyday activities.
6. Orientation often corresponds with cosmologically associated directions or contains symbols
to represent this directionality.
7. Elements of the landscape may work together as an integrated magical setting (e.g., plants,
water, cardinal directions).
8. Concentrations of symbols and specially assembled and/or oriented materials in a particular
structure may indicate the presence of a specialized practitioner.
Materiality
9. Objects are usually utilitarian, possibly worn beyond use or intentionally ‘killed’ (e.g., bent,
broken, folded, pierced, cut, etc.) to act in or upon the spirit world.
10. Objects may be of natural materials deemed extraordinary (e.g., holed stones) or cosmically
powerful (e.g., iron, particular plants).
11. Written charms or symbols may combine verifiable religious names, words, and images with
invented ones.
12. Objects or symbols may include colors as correlates to natural features (e.g., blue=water),
substances (e.g., red=blood), states (e.g., black=death, spirit realm), or directions (e.g.,
black=left/down, white=right/up).
13. Objects and symbols may be combined into assemblages that include numerical and
symbolic components with human/animal elements and natural inanimate materials.
14. Objects may include human or animal elements (e.g., fingernails, hair, urine, tails, ears,
talons, skulls, carcasses).
Ideological Concepts
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15. The objects or symbols may express a sympathetic correlation with the dangers/harm they
are meant to affect or the people, animals, or property they are meant to protect or harm.
16. Symbol imagery and the number of objects will likely relate to cosmological number
associations.
17. Images, symbols, orientation, and numerology will likely be repeated across several domains
(e.g., architectural, funerary, sartorial, decorative, and landscape).
______________________________________________________________________________
Question 2: What signifies gender specific apotropaic magical practices and what can these
differences relate about gender roles, identity, and social relationships?
As useful as the preceding typologies and criterion model may be for assisting in the
identification of apotropaic magical belief and practice in the archaeological record of AngloEuropean sites, any association of gender with such practices cannot be construed from either of
them. To link gender with magical material culture requires using these typologies as a
foundation, a palette of options, if you will, to which must be added consideration of the
particular fears that motivated women and men to use magic, the context in which that fear
occurred, the range of appropriate materials they had access to, and the placement of the magic
that would best address their concerns. Tables 6.5 and 6.6 provide such a breakdown based on
the fears identified for women and men in seventeenth-century New England (Table 5.1). This
more detailed breakdown illustrates that while both women and men were concerned with and
even frightened by the circumstances that befell their respective spouses, those fears were not
personal or related to the individual’s performances, and thus were not specifically addressed by
magic from that individual.
TABLE 6.5. Correlation of women’s stressful situations and the overarching fears they
represent with the associated placements, forms, and functions of apotropaic strategies.
Situation
Butter making
Placement
1)in churn or attached
to churn bottom
2)attribute of churn
Form
1)pierced or crooked
coin; horseshoe;
needles and pins
2)churn made of rowan
wood
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Function
1&2)prevent butter
from bewitchment
Fear/Stressor
Gender competency
Inability to provide for
family
Inability to protect
house, yard, &
Situation
Placement
Form
Function
Fear/Stressor
foodstuffs
Beer brewing
1)across top of beer
barrel
1)metal bar
1)prevent thunder from
spoiling beer
Gender competency
Inability to provide for
family
Inability to protect
house, yard, &
foodstuffs
Childbirth/Pregnancy
1)under bed
2)hung over doors,
windows, and beds
3)worn around neck
4)under pillow, on
window sill
5)on threshold
1)knife or scissors
2)flora, holed stones
3)diamond
4)knife
5)knife
1)cut pain and ease
labor
2-4)ward off incubi
5)protect infant at birth
from evil forces
Death in childbirth
Gender competency
Sexual assault
House endangered
1)planted or placed on
roof
2)planted around house
and yard
1-2)flora
1-2)protect house from
storms and fire
Inability to protect
house
Household endangered
1)placed around house
boundaries
2)planted around house
boundaries/corners
3)hung on or above
door
4)across threshold
5)buried under
threshold
6)hung over windows
7)placed inside hearth
8)placed inside rafters,
cellars, walls or other
structural cache points
9) scratched on hearth
lintels, doors, beams
10) burned on beams,
rafters, and ceilings
11)hung on hearths,
bedposts, gates, doors,
concealed in walls
1)flora
2)flora
3)flora; red thread or
textile; horseshoe;
fauna
4)flora; broom/besom;
scissors/knife; pot of
water
5)scissors/knife; witch
bottle
6) flora; red thread or
textile
7)worn shoes or
garments; dead
chickens or cats; salt or
salt glazed bricks or
pottery
8) worn shoes or
garments; dead
chickens or cats;
poppets
9)circles, hexafoils,
triangles, hearts,
pentagrams, double
V’s
10)candle-flame burn
marks and candlesmoke marks
11)holed stones
1-11) prevent witches
and other evil
spirits/beings from
entering the house and
harming the
inhabitants
2, 3, 4, 5) Identify
witches as they could
not cross these barriers
Gender competency
Inability to provide for
family
Infant mortality
Indian attack/abduction
Illness and family
members afflicted
1)buried under
thresholds, in/around
hearths
2)in walls and roof,
under floors,
1)jugs, bottles
containing pins, hair
and other objects
2)poppets, knotted
cloths
1)to un-bewitch victim
or protect from
bewitchment
1&2)to identify and
harm suspected witch
Gender competency
Inability to provide for
family
Soap making
1)in soap vat
1)black-handled knife;
applewood stirring
stick
1)to drive witches out
of soap during
processing and cutting
of soap
Gender competency
Inability to provide for
family
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Situation
Vulnerability of
Infants
Placement
1)under or in cradle
2)attached to clothing
3)used by infants
4)worn around neck of
infants
Form
1)knife, fireiron, or
scissors; salt; Bible
2)red thread
3)coral teether with
bells
4)anodyne necklace
Function
1&2) protect infants
from evil spirits, the
evil eye; bewitchment
and fairy changlings
3&4)protect infants
from evil spirits and
harm
Fear/Stressor
Infant mortality
Gender competency
FIGURE 6.1. Three major foci of women’s fears: butter-making, childbirth, and infant
mortality. Photo courtesy of Todd Atteberry (historyandhaunts.com), Plymouth Plantation, MA.
TABLE 6.6. Correlation of men’s stressful situations and the overarching fears they represent
with the associated placements, forms, and functions of apotropaic strategies.
Situation
Building construction
Placement
1)built into
chimney/hearth
2)marked on hearths,
window/door sills,
ceilings, furniture
3)built into walls,
Form
1)salt-glazed bricks;
clay; niche for
apotropaia; geometric
shapes
2)symbols, geometric
shapes, words
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Function
Fear/Stressor
1-3) prevent witches
and other evil
spirits/beings from
entering the house and
undermining its
integrity
Sociopolitical failure,
lack of public authority
and respect
Gender competency
Financial failure
Situation
Placement
Form
Function
Fear/Stressor
1)jugs, bottles
containing pins, hair
and other objects
2)poppets, knotted
cloths
1)to un-bewitch victim
or protect from
bewitchment
2)to identify and harm
suspected witch
Inability to provide for
family
1)concealed in/under
stone fences/walls;
concealed in plow
handles
2)buried at field
corners or along
boundaries
3)incised on stone
fences/boundary stones
1)flora; metal; fauna
2) symbols, geometric
shapes
3)triangular burial of 3
live puppies
1-2)prevent
bewitchment and harm
to fields and crops
3)Clear field of weeds
Crop failure/loss of
livestock
Financial failure
Inability to provide for
family
Inability to protect
property
Impotence
1)hung over bed
1)flora
1)prevent or cure
impotence or infertility
Gender competency
Livestock endangered
1)hung over
stable/barn doors
2)burned/incised over
stable/barn doors
3)attached to animals
or tack
1)flora; metal; fauna;
holed stones
2)symbols, words,
geometric shapes
3)red thread/textile;
brass
1-3)prevent
bewitchment and hagriding
Crop failure/loss of
livestock
Financial failure
Inability to provide for
family
Inability to protect
property
Livestock sick
1)burned in hearth
2)buried, whole, feet
up away from other
livestock
3)buried under
threshold of
barn/stable
4)burned whole, live
animals away from
house
1)tails, ears, hearts
2)whole animal carcass
3)dogs, cows
4)horses, cows, sheep,
chickens, swine
1)to un-bewitch animal
2-3)Prevent
bewitchment/illness
from transferring to
other animals
4)To stop bewitchment
Crop failure/loss of
livestock
Financial failure
Inability to provide for
family
Inability to protect
property
Property/house
endangered
1)built into
chimney/hearth
2)marked on hearths,
window/door sills,
ceilings, furniture
3)built into walls,
roofs, or foundations
1)salt-glazed bricks;
clay; niche for
apotropaia; geometric
shapes
2)symbols, geometric
shapes, words
3)witch bottles, worn
shoes, dead cats,
animal skulls, metal
objects-horseshoes,
spoons, knives, fish
spears, pikes
1-3)prevent witches,
fairies, and evil spirits
from entering house
and doing harm; to
identify any who could
not cross these barriers
as a witch
Financial failure
Inability to provide for
family
Inability to protect
property
roofs, or foundations
3)witch bottles, worn
shoes, dead cats,
animal skulls, metal
objects-horseshoes,
spoons, knives, fish
spears, pikes
Family members
afflicted
1)buried under
thresholds, in/around
hearths
2)in walls and roof,
under floors,
Field/Crops
endangered
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Most of the situations in which women and men used apotropaic magic to prevent the
harmful infiltration and influence of supernatural forces represent concern over the successful
enactment of gender roles and related social expectations. For women this meant protecting the
house and its inhabitants as their primary female roles were those of wives and mothers whose
principal responsibilities focused on the production of children and the well-being of the family.
To ensure the health and welfare of her children and husband, the colonial woman had to
competently and confidently undertake the growing and preparation of foodstuffs, the processing
of dairy and brewing products, the fabrication of textiles, and the administration of medicinal
remedies all within the confines of her domestic sphere. The successful completion of each of
these duties could be jeopardized by the insinuation of maleficent powers into every crack and
crevice of this sphere.
Concerns about women’s appropriate sexual behaviors and reputations also prompted the
use of apotropaic magic as protection against demonic conception by incubi or rape associated
with Indian attack and abduction. Their expected fecundity and ability to birth numerous healthy
children were also perceived to be vulnerable to demonic interference through the infiltration of
such forces into the house and bedchamber. As a woman’s social and political identity and
reputation in seventeenth-century New England was inextricably bound to her fulfillment (or
not) of prescribed female gender expectations, especially reproductive expectations, it was
critical that she be able to protect herself sexually so that she could produce and raise normal,
healthy children.
Men also resorted to apotropaic magic to bolster their abilities to successfully fulfill their
gender role expectations. As primary providers for their families, their responsibilities focused
on the larger concerns of financial stability or success, which entailed the production of crops,
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the raising of livestock, and/or the participation in other capital producing businesses like
fishing, merchandising, milling, construction, or other craft occupations. Failure in these
ventures not only meant an immediate inability to provide for their families, but endangered their
capability to accrue estates sufficient enough for their offspring’s inheritance. A man’s social and
political identity and reputation were implicated primarily with his business success and
secondarily with his role as a head-of-household. Both these primary and secondary roles
emphasized a man’s obligation to provide for the welfare of his subordinate dependents by
cultivating and demonstrating his authority and reliability. Thus, when aspects of his livelihood
were subject to preternatural threat, his reputation as a competent man, husband, and father was
imperiled.
Women and men of seventeenth-century Anglo New England ideally had respective roles
and positions within social and familial hierarchies that complemented each other. When
misfortune or perceived danger upset any of the elements of these gender rubrics, they could
potentially upset the entire structure and adversely affect the relationships between husbands and
wives, parents and children, neighbors and neighbors, and men and women. The use of
apotropaic magic appears to correlate with the fears women and men experienced in their daily
lives as they continuously strove to satisfy social and familial obligations and maintain the
various relationships characteristic of small, interdependent communities while existing in a
world filled with unpredictable natural and preternatural forces.
Archaeologically the distinction between male implemented and female implemented
apotropaia primarily involves gendered activities or occupations. Table 6.7 lists the particular
occurrence of protective magical devices that have a predominately male or female connection as
well as those that were unilaterally used by both men and women. That more apotropaic
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elements fall under the male category than the other two categories reflects the reality that men
were solely responsible for the construction of buildings and thus, consequently had the
opportunities and access to embed objects and symbols into the structural fabric of those
buildings. Occupations like carpentry, coopering, metalworking, and stonemasonry were also
exclusively male domains, so only men could create the professionally manifested magical
designs worked into wood, metal and stone. The female implemented apotropaia lists only one
object exclusively made by women (embroidered symbols) and one element (domestic flora) that
usually fell under the purview of women’s work, while the other examples listed represent
objects not made by women, but appropriated to use in female activities and would only be
gendered by their association with those particular tasks. As the last column indicates neither the
construction nor the placement of some apotropaic materials offer a definitive gender
interpretation.
TABLE 6.7. Seventeenth-Century Anglo-European Gendered Apotropaia.
Male Implemented Apotropaia
Female Implemented
Apotropaia
Gender Indeterminate
Apotropaia
Inscribed carpentry or stonemason
symbols
Horseshoe, coins, fireirons associated
with dairying or brewing activities
Horseshoes hung near house thresholds
Metal objects embedded in building
fabric
Domestic flora in and around house
Knives and scissors near/around door
and window jambs and sills
Symbols integral to building
construction
Symbols embroidered on clothing and
linens
Symbols roughly burned, painted, or
inscribed in easily accessed areas of
buildings or on furniture
Symbols burned, painted, or inscribed in
difficult to access areas of buildings
Knives and applewood sticks associated
with soap making activities
Spiritual middens of fauna, shoes,
garments in hearths or easily accessed
caches in houses
Fauna buried or concealed in building
fabric
Witch bottles buried outside
Large fauna buried feet up and
unbutchered at thresholds
Poppets concealed in walls niches or
caches
Objects, fauna, or symbols associated
with field boundaries
Objects or symbols associated with crops
Objects, flora, or symbols associated
with livestock
Magical wood used to construct
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Male Implemented Apotropaia
Female Implemented
Apotropaia
Gender Indeterminate
Apotropaia
thresholds, butter churns, etc.
Witch bottles buried under hearth
Magical substances integrated with
building materials like salt-glazed bricks
Cast metal objects with integrated magic
symbols
Both women and men of seventeenth-century Anglo New England actively engaged in
magical practice to minimize the misfortunes of life in a turbulent world as one strategy in the
process of personal and social identity validation. The evidence from this dissertation does not
indicate that women believed in or used magic more or less than men, although witch trial data
does suggest there did exist at the time a perception that women were more susceptible than men
to involvement with magic both beneficial and maleficent. Coupling the understanding that a
magical mindset was the commonly held worldview of seventeenth-century women and men
with the evidence that both sexes engaged in magical practice for individual as well as shared
purposes, should encourage researchers to give greater consideration to the circumstances and
motivations that prompted magical use.
Question 3: In what way and to what degree is the recourse to traditional beliefs significant in
coping or risk management contexts?
6.2.2 Risk Management and Boundary Construction
Risk management contexts inherently involve the constitution of boundaries or
conceptual distinctions between states of safety/control/order and danger/powerlessness/chaos.
Where and how people orient themselves in relationship to these distinctions reveals not only
their relative degrees of agency and empowerment but also the traditional beliefs that inform
their options. Novelist A.S. Byatt (1990:467) captures the significance of this revelation when
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she states, “We are defined by the lines we choose to cross or be confined by.” The fundamental
truth of Byatt’s observation provides an essential departure point for archaeologists striving to
understand how past people exerted control through boundary construction and maintenance to
define, orient, and protect themselves and their worlds. The current study stands as one
illustration of the importance of integrating culturally relative traditional beliefs governing
boundaries and their associated material culture into historical archaeological studies to reveal
when, where, how, and why people erect boundaries, how these lines constrain personal, social,
and supernatural movement, and when, why, and to what extent these lines are permeable.
Studying the many guises of gendered magical material culture permits archaeologists to
understand how the use of apotropaia affects what and where those lines, or thresholds, are and
how, when, and why they may shift.
The first step toward this understanding requires an explication of the study group’s
conceptualized categories. It is by constructing defining categories that groups distinguish
themselves from others and establish validations for their place within the cosmos and the
rightfulness of their way of being. Therefore, establishing and maintaining boundaries at all
levels natural and supernatural, social and political becomes an essential prerogative of all
groups. Examples of some of these categories and the complexity of their implications have been
explored throughout this dissertation. These boundaries, while they may be physically concrete
(clothing, food, fenced territories, architectural styles, art, etc.), or more abstract (language, nonverbal communication, proxemics, knowledge of taboos and appropriate behaviors, spiritual
beliefs), all are expressed symbolically through material culture.
All boundary constructs have the potential to be violated as a result of ambiguity or
through direct challenges that manifest as anomalies or deviations of accepted cosmological and
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social norms. Managing the risks associated with boundary violations includes accounting for
the anomaly or deviation and acting to resolve the conflict. As discussed earlier, one of these
accounting mechanisms is the conceptualization of supernatural/preternatural forces and beings
and the formulation of effective behaviors and devices to counter those threats. The belief in
witches and sorcerers illustrates one such example. Regardless of the culture in which these
supernatural beings exist, they serve three functions that Evans-Pritchard (1937) delineates as:
providing an explanation for unexplainable events, misfortunes, illnesses, and deaths;
providing a set a cultural behaviors for dealing with misfortune; and
serving to define morality and the parameters of socially acceptable behavior and
interaction
In other words, this belief both provides an explanation of misfortune in all its manifestations
and a scapegoat upon whom to apportion blame and enact punishment, thus reducing social
stress and re-establishing a sense of equilibrium; hence, the risks are managed and the
boundaries are maintained. Each of these processes is evident in the use of apotropaic magic in
seventeenth-century New England.
The options available within a cultural schema to frame and address deviations from
culturally conceived boundaries are necessarily finite as they, too, are governed by the
worldview of the group in question. Douglas (1966:-40-41) sees seven possible responses to
anomalous situations occasioned by such boundary violations, which are variously available to
specific groups and may overlap in different ways: 1) redefine the anomaly; 2) eliminate the
anomaly through physical control; 3) avoid the anomaly; 4) label the anomalous
events/individuals as dangerous; 5) elevate the anomalies through ritual; 6) use the anomalies as
a source of humor or ridicule; or 7) aestheticize the anomalies and interpret them as an art form.
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The men and women in seventeenth-century New England seem to have implemented all but the
last two of these response choices in dealing with the threatening elements of life in such a place
and time. No doubt these men and women had senses of humor, but the threats against which
they used apotropaic magic were serious matters of life, death, and salvation, and not likely to be
ridiculed or laughed off. They may have used artistic symbolism like hexafoils and cherubim
heads as apotropaia, but theses expressive devices were not aestheticizing the actual threats they
were protecting against. Virtually all extreme events, including weather and geographic
conditions; birth defects; sudden, unrecognized, or epidemic human and livestock illness; and the
failure of common processes (e.g., butter churning, beer brewing) were redefined as the
infiltration and actions of malicious forces. To address these forces required labeling them as
dangerous. Having redefined and labeled them, men and women could now make choices as to
how to respond to these anomalies. Depending upon how directly the threat triggered fear in an
individual, and whether that fear was a gendered fear or a non-gendered one, determined whether
or not and how the individual would attempt to physically eliminate the menace or choose to
avoid it.
The synthesis of data from the various historical, folklore, and archaeological sources
indicate that during episodes of crisis or perceived endangerment, women and men relied on a
rich matrix of traditional beliefs to actively engage with the threat. The options available to
address the risks included magical tools employed by individuals that would most likely come
from the objects and materials associated with that person’s occupation or gender-role activities
and spatial domains. Thus, these women and men could effectively control those boundaries
(both physical and ideological) that represented their competencies and reputations, which were
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essential components to their gender and social identities and the measurements of their social
and religious worth.
Traditional beliefs underlie all the various boundary constructions and the options for
dealing with their violations. As magical belief and practice were integral factors influencing
daily decision-making regarding personal safety, identity, and interrelationships in many past
societies not just seventeenth-century Britain and Anglo-America, it is essential that
archaeologists gain a better understanding of the forms and functions of such beliefs to help
explain how and why past peoples negotiated and constructed particular spheres of authority and
security. As cited in Trigger (1989:13), the anti-positivist Frankfurt School scholars Jürgen
Habermas and Herbert Marcuse “stress that social conditions influence both what data are
regarded as important and how they are interpreted” by individuals. Related to Bourdieu’s
(1972) idea of habitus and educational psychology’s schema, together these theories posit that
people’s interpretation of any given circumstance and their subsequent decisions and actions
stem from or are filtered through culturally and individually acquired worldviews and beliefs.
Because these worldviews and beliefs are usually not directly articulated in written sources,
historical archaeologists are specially poised to discover the expression of these concepts through
artifactual, architectural, and landscape feature evidence. As Calvert (1992:4) observes:
The link between artifacts and cultural constructs makes the study of material
culture an important method for gaining access to cultural beliefs and assumptions
so basic that they are rarely verbalized, and to social fears too emotionally
laden for direct discussion.
To this end then, archaeologists can utilize magically associated material culture in the quest for
understanding the multivalent nature of traditional belief systems and their importance in
constituting, challenging, maintaining, or altering bounded personal and social
conceptualizations. In fact, historical archaeological research that postulate past peoples were
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first and foremost pragmatic in their daily behaviors and only secondarily (if at all) concerned
with or influenced by their belief systems can only hope to create a superficial and partial picture
of the past. Armed with knowledge of traditional beliefs and their manifestation in material
culture, historical archaeologists will be better able to interpret the archaeological record to show
how these concepts were foundational in people’s behaviors. Knowledge of the underlying
belief systems that precipitated the magical material culture found in the archaeological record
will particularly allow archaeologists to formulate meaningful interpretations of crisis or risk
situations.
6.3 Future Directions
This dissertation has enhanced the historical and archaeological understanding of
apotropaic magical belief and use among Anglo colonists of seventeenth-century New England,
but it has also highlighted just how poorly studied this aspect of human experience actually is
both historically and archaeologically. Certainly much more attention needs to be given to
seventeenth-century New England, although the same is true for all historic times and places. At
the conclusion of this project, I will continue to address this documentation issue by developing a
field manual for the historic archaeology of magic and ritual as a practical aid for archaeologists,
historic preservationists, and anyone else likely to encounter magical deposits in the course of his
or her work on historic sites. This guide will provide detailed documentation forms for the
recordation of artifacts including sections for numerological, directional, and symbolic attributes
and patterns. Additionally, it will offer informational sections on particular magical artifact
types with descriptions, illustrations, typology charts, and references for further reading. Finally,
it will include contact information for discoverers to submit their documentation to a centralized
database maintained by me, but posted through the Society of Historic Archaeology’s forum on
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magical material culture. The field manual and the database should ultimately provide
researchers with a tool to assist in better recognizing, documenting, and understanding the
archaeological footprints of magic and ritual as well as a comparative dataset from which they
may draw for interpretation or further research. Increasing documentation of magical material
culture, as important as it is, is only one of many necessary components of the broader field of
magic and ritual. The burgeoning field offers numerous other opportunities for researchers to
pursue that would significantly contribute to the greater understanding of magic and ritual.
6.3.1 Archaeological Research Recommendations
This dissertation has limited its focus to apotropaic magic at seventeenth-century New
England domestic sites, but people carried their belief in and need for magic with them wherever
they went, so extending the study of apotropaic magic into non-domestic sites for this same
period and region is needed to illustrate the similar and differential uses of magic in various
contexts including commercial, military, and religious settings. This study has focused on the
little-studied Anglo-American New England colonist, a group that still requires more in-depth
attention that focuses on variations in practice due to their interactions with other ethnic and
cultural groups that resulted in hybrid and more culturally complex settings. Additionally, a
great deal more research must be done to account for apotropaic magic use amongst AngloAmericans across geographic areas and historical time periods. Although this dissertation
captures the range of forms and materials apotropaic magic assumed in the past, specialized
study of each of these forms and/or materials could add depth to the known breadth of
knowledge. Studies focused on flora, fauna, metal objects (horseshoes, blades), reflective
objects (mirrors, glass), and image magic among others could reveal patterns or connections not
understood with only cursory information.
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As briefly alluded to earlier, builders and sailors were known to hold magical beliefs
related to their occupations. Zusne and Jones’ (1989:15) research substantiates these
occupational correlations, and they observe that:
Superstitions and magical rituals are more prevalent in occupations where
chance plays a large role and the outcomes of one’s actions are less predictable,
as among gamblers, soldiers, sailors, and actors. Lesser uncertainties in practical
affairs similarly invite magical rituals: games, examinations, and the weather
are prime examples.
Other than Easton (1998, 1999a, 1999b) and Evans (2011), researchers have not considered the
connection between occupation and magical practice. This is an area requiring concerted inquiry
and one that, because of correlations between traditional gender roles and occupations, could
offer important insights into gendered practice and identity.
As indicated by the data in this dissertation, crisis situations generally spawn an increase
in apotropaic magical use. More concentrated work needs to be done on each type of crisis that
people encounter, including extreme weather and environmental events like storms, floods,
droughts, earthquakes, and volcanic eruptions; periods of extreme economic and political
instability; and situations of imminent physical danger like riots, criminal attacks, warfare,
isolation, and endemic disease to understand better the correlation between magical use and
crisis events. Related to both occupation and crisis, warfare/battlefield magic offers a
specialized area of research that has recently been inaugurated by historians and material culture
researchers. Saunders (2003) and Saunders and Dennis (2003), material culture scholars, have
published two works on ‘trench art’ (modified objects from battlefield contexts) that include
discussion of amulets; Kimball’s (2004) Trench Art: An Illustrated History provides an in-depth
visual treatment of these objects; and Chambers’ (2007) doctoral dissertation at the University of
London concentrates specifically on British soldiers’ protective mascots and charms from World
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War I and World War II. As yet, no archaeological study of war/battlefield magic has been
undertaken; however, the expansion of battlefield archaeology in recent years could provide
initial artifactual data for an archaeological study of battlefield magic. Conversely, the study of
war-related magic could move battlefield archaeology beyond the recovery of military
movements and stratagems to include a more humanistic understanding of the phenomenology of
emotions and beliefs associated with life and death conflict situations.
Reiterated throughout this dissertation is the assertion that cosmological elements are
integrally implicated with magical material culture. In fact, as Fogelin (2007:66) states:
In the past few decades archaeologists have made great strides in deciphering
cosmological principles. Now archaeologists must develop methods for
identifying how cosmological or religious concepts are materially enacted or
communicated through ritual.
Nevertheless, applying these cosmological principles to the magical material culture of AngloEuropeans has not been argued until this dissertation. Some of these cosmological ideas, like
notions of right/left and up/down associations with gender and good/evil forces were briefly
discussed earlier; however, these directional concepts require a great deal more consideration in
archaeological analysis. DeBoer (2005) explains that directionality can also be symbolically
associated with and by other attributes like color, which in turn relates to gender and
positive/negative supernatural powers. Clearly the archaeological study of magic must approach
each of these constructs from a plurality of symbolic perspectives. Part of the cosmological
understanding and phenomenological experience of spatial placement and orientation involves
sensory stimuli including sounds, visualizations, and smells—all elements that play prominently
in the choice and use of apotropaic magic. Sensory studies in historical archaeology are
currently in their infancy and refer mostly to landscape studies with an emphasis on view shed
and visual perspective as power and surveillance devices (e.g., Leone and Hurry 1998; Delle
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1999; Leone et al. 2005), but similar to war/battlefield archaeology, the expansion of sensory
studies to specifically consider the implications of cosmology, directionality, symbolism, sensory
elements, and gender with magical material culture benefit both sensory and magical research.
Finally, the emphasis here has been on magic specifically intended to protect people and
property from preternatural dangers, so the wider spectrum of magic (e.g., divination, healing,
funerary) has yet to be analyzed either for seventeenth-century New England or for any other
historical time and area. Documentation and analysis of each type of magical practice is
necessary to eventually build a more comprehensive picture of historical magical belief and
practice.
In order to recognize potential magical material culture requires that archaeologists are
well-versed in the range and application of such materials. Analysis of magical and/or ritualistic
materials needs to be a standard unit in artifact analysis training to ensure that this elemental
aspect of human behavior is neither ignored nor misinterpreted. The fact that much AngloEuropean domestic apotropaia is not obvious, either in its form or location, makes a standard
knowledge of its characteristics essential for two reasons: first, to account for equifinial
interpretations of various artifacts and formation processes; and secondly and most importantly,
to provide a methodological approach for distinguishing magical/ritual usage from other
functions. Ultimately, the inclusion of magical/ritualistic artifacts in artifact analysis courses
prompts consideration of the human circumstances and agency connected to the material record.
6.4 Conclusion
The results of this dissertation not only provide a broader understanding of the gendered
components of magical belief systems that motivated and informed the behaviors of early EuroAmericans in negotiating personal, social, spiritual, political, and environmental conflicts, but
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they should motivate researchers to consider the implications of including traditional beliefs
systems in their own research studies. Additionally, the demonstration that only through the
synthesizing of numerous evidentiary strands can a more accurate picture of any past people be
drawn, should enlighten archaeologists as to the importance of considering a wider range of
documentation, including a culture’s folklore and artistic works, before analyzing or interpreting
the archaeological record of any context (Walker 1998; Walker and Lucerno 2000; GazinSchwartz 2001; Becker 2005). This dissertation has highlighted the complexity inherent in
interpreting the motivations, choices, and magical material manifestations associated with risk
management in historical contexts. Nevertheless, regardless of time or place, people’s capacities
to effectively cope with the both the challenges intrinsic to human life and those relative to
specific times, places, and cultures are what make the study of humanity interesting, worthwhile,
and rewarding. The strategies they devise to face life’s struggles emerge from their worldviews,
and it is these worldviews, these belief systems, that underwrite the entire spectrum of material
culture. It is our challenge and responsibility as archaeologists to perceptively read the material
clues and give voice to the very real human emotions, motivations, and experiences they were
used to express.
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[352]
Appendix A: Witchcraft Accusations by Colony
Colony
Town
Year
Accused’s Name
Verdict
Punishment
Conn.
Windsor
Wethersfield
Wethersfield
Wethersfield
Fairfield
Fairfield
Windsor
Easthamptona
Saybrook
Wethersfield
Saybrook
Saybrook
Hartford
Hartford
Hartford
Hartford
Wethersfield
Wethersfield
Hartford
Hartford
Hartford
Farmington
Hartford
Hartford
Setauketb
Hartford
Hartford
Setauketb
Setauketb
Saybrook
Stamford
Wethersfield
Stamford
Windsor
Wethersfield
Hartford
New Haven
Fairfield
Stamford
Fairfield
1647
1648
1651
1651
1651
1653(?)
1654
1658
1659
1660
1661
1661
1662
1662
1662
1662
1662-3
1662-3
1662-3
1662-3
1662-3
1663
1663 (Jan)
1663 (Jul)
1664
1665
1665
1665
1665
1667
1667
1668
1669
1673
1678
1682
1689
1692
1692
1692
Alice Young
Mary Johnson
John Carrington
Joan Carrington
(f) Bassett
(f) Knapp
Lydia Gilbert
Elizabeth Garlick
Unknown
Katherine Palmer
Margaret Jennings
Nicholas Jennings
Judith Varlet
Mary Sanford
Andrew Sanford
(f) Ayers
Elizabeth Blackleach
John Blackleach
James Wakeley
Rebecca Greensmith
Nathanial Greensmith
Mary Barnes
Elizabeth Seager
Elizabeth Seager
Mary Hall
Elizabeth Seager
James Wakeley
Mary Hall
Ralph Hall
Hannah Griswold
William Graves
Katherine Harrison
Sarah Dibble
(f) Messenger
(f) Burr
Unknown
(f) Bowden
Mercy Disborough
Elizabeth Clawson
Mary Staples
Convicted
Convicted
Convicted
Convicted
Convicted
Convicted
Convicted
Acquitted
--Acquitted
Acquitted
Acquitted(?)
Convicted
Acquitted
----Convicted
Convicted
Convicted
Acquitted
Acquitted
-Convicted
-Acquitted
Acquitted
--Convicted
-----Convicted
Acquitted
--
Executed
Executed
Executed
Executed
Executed
Executed
Executed(?)
[353]
Executed(?)
Escaped
Escaped
Executed
Executed
Executed
Reversed
Escaped
Reversed
Reprieved
Colony
Town
Fairfield
Fairfield
Fairfield
Wallingford
Stratford
Wallingford
Wallingford
Colchester
Year
1692
1692
1692
1692
1692
1697
1697
1724
Accused’s Name
Mary Harvey
Hannah Harvey
(f) Miller
Winifred Benham
Hugh Croasia
Winifred Benham
Winifred Benham, Jr.
Sarah Spencer
Verdict
-----Acquitted
Acquitted
Acquitted
Maine
Kittery
1725
Sarah Keene
Acquitted
Mass.
Boston
Cambridge
Charlestown
Charlestown
Springfield
Watertown
Marblehead
Marblehead
Springfield
Springfield
Springfield
Springfield
Dorchester
Rowley
Watertown
Lynn
Gloucester
Gloucester
Gloucester
Gloucester
Ipswich
Portsmouthb
Portsmouthb
Hamptonb
Boston
Northampton
Gloucester
Andover
Andover
Cambridge
Cambridge
Yorkc
Cambridge
Cambridge
1638
1647(?)
1648
1648
1649
1650
1650
1651
1651
1651
1651
1651
1651(?)
1652
1652
1653
1653
1653
1653
1653
1655
1656
1656
1656
1656
1656
1657
1659
1659
1659
1659
1659
1660
1660
Jane Hawkins
Elizabeth Kendall
Margaret Jones
Thomas Jones
(f) Marshfield
Alice Stratton
Jane James
Jane James
Mary Parsons
Hugh Parsons
Sarah Merrick
Bessie Sewell
Alice Lake
John Bradstreet
Alice Stratton
Jane Collins
Agnes Evans
Grace Dutch
Elizabeth Perkins
Sarah Vincent
(f) Batchelor
Jane Walford
(f) Evans
Eunice Cole
Ann Hibbens
Mary Parsons
William Brown
John Godfrey
John Godfrey
Winifred Holman
Mary Holman
Elizabeth Bailey
Winifred Holman
Winifred Holman
-Convicted
Convicted
-----Acquitted
Convicted
--Convicted
Acquitted
-------Acquitted(?)
-Acquitted
Convicted
--Acquitted
-Acquitted(?)
Acquitted(?)
Acquitted
---
[354]
Punishment
Executed
Executed
Reversed
Executed
Executed
Colony
Town
Haverhill
Haverhill
Portsmouthb
Haverhill
Cambridge
Marblehead
Salem
Ispwich
Portsmouthb
Hadley
Amesbury
Lynn
Groton
Hamptonb
Lynn
Northampton
Springfield
Northampton
Newbury
Newbury
Salem
Lynn
Boston
Salem(?)
Salem(?)
Salem(?)
Salem(?)
Kitteryc
Springfield
Hadley
Hadley
Ipswich
Boston
Boston
Boston
Boston
Boston
Boston
Northampton
Topsfield
Topsfield
Boston
Salem Village
Andover
Andover
Year
1662
1662
1662-3
1665
1665
1667
1667
1669
1669
1669
1669
1670(?)
1671
1673
1673
1674-5
1677
1679
1679
1679
1680
1680
1680
1680s(?)
1680s(?)
1680s(?)
1680s(?)
1682
1683
1683
1685
1687(?)
1688
1688
1688
1688
1689
1691
1691
1692
1692
1692
1692
1692
1692
Accused’s Name
John Godfrey
John Godfrey
(f) Evans
John Godfrey
(f) Gleason
Jane James
Edith Crawford
Thomas Wells
Jane Walford
Robert Williams
Susannah Martin
Ann Burt
(f)
Eunice Cole
Anna Edmunds
Mary Parsons
Alice Beamon
(f)
Caleb Powell
Elizabeth Morse
Bridget Oliver
Margaret Gifford
Mary Hale
(f)
(f)
(f)
(f)
(f)
James Fuller
Mary Webster
Mary Webster
Rachel Clinton
(f) Glover
(f)
(f)
(f)
(f)
Mary Hale
Mary Randall
Nehemiah Abbot
Nehemiah Abbot, Jr.
Capt. John Alden
Daniel Andrew
Abigail Barker
Mary Barker
[355]
Verdict
Punishment
Acquitted
--Acquitted
-----Acquitted
Acquitted(?)
Acquitted(?)
-Acquitted
-Acquitted
--Acquitted
Reversed
Convicted
Acquitted(?)
-Acquitted
-----Acquitted
Acquitted
--Executed
Convicted
-------Released
Accus W/D
Escaped
-Escaped
-Confessed
Confessed
Colony
Town
Andover
Andover
Lynn
Salem Village
Salem Village
Salem Village
Salem Village
Salisbury
Andover
Andover
Andover
Salem Village
Wells, ME
Salem Town
Salem Town
Andover
Andover
Andover
Andover
Andover
Woburn
Charlestown
Haverhill
Ipswich
Salem Village
Salem Town
Lynn
Reading
Salem Village
Salem Village
Andover
Wenham
-Salem Village
Gloucester
Gloucester
Gloucester
-Andover
Reading
Reading
Andover
Salem Village
Gloucester
Haverhill
Year
1692
1692
1692
1692
1692
1692
1692
1692
1692
1692
1692
1692
1692
1692
1692
1692
1692
1692
1692
1692
1692
1692
1692
1692
1692
1692
1692
1692
1692
1692
1692
1692
1692
1692
1692
1692
1692
1692
1692
1692
1692
1692
1692
1692
1692
Accused’s Name
William Barker
William Barker, Jr.
Sarah Basset
Bridget Bishop
Edward Bishop
Sarah Bishop
Mary Black
Mary Bradbury
Mary Bridges
Sarah Bridges
Hannah Bromage
Sarah Buckley
George Burroughs
Candy
Hannah Carrell
Martha Carrier
Andrew Carrier
Richard Carrier
Sarah Carrier
Thomas Carrier
Bethia Carter
Elizabeth Cary
Mary Clarke
Rachel Clenton
Sarah Cloyse
Sarah Cole [I]
Sarah Cole [II]
Elizabeth Colson
Giles Corey
Martha Corey
Deliverance Dane
Sarah Davis
(f) Day
Mary DeRich
Rebecca Dike
Elizabeth Dicer
Ann Doliver
Mehitabel Downing
Joseph Draper
Lydia Dustin
Sarah Dustin
Rebecca Eames
Mary Easty
Esther Elwell
Martha Emerson
[356]
Verdict
Confessed
Confessed
-Convicted
---Convicted
Confessed
Confessed
--Convicted
Confessed
-Convicted
Confessed
Confessed
Confessed
Confessed
---------Convicted
Confessed
-------Confessed
---Convicted
-Confessed
Punishment
Executed
Escaped
Escaped
Escaped
Executed
Executed
Escaped
Escaped(?)
Pressed
Executed
Reprieved
Colony
Town
Manchester
Salem Town
Salem Town
Lynn
Andover
Andover
Andover
Andover
Rowley
Malden
Malden
Andover
Manchester
Andover
Manchester
Andover
Salem Village
Piscataqua, ME
Salem Village
-Haverhill
Salem Town
Beverly
Topsfield
Topsfield
Topsfield
Topsfield
Rowley
Salem Village
Haverhill
Lynn
Rowley
Rowley
Salem Town
Salem Village
Salem Town
Salem Village
Andover
Andover
Andover
Andover
Andover
Andover
Andover
--
Year
1692
1692
1692
1692
1692
1692
1692
1692
1692
1692
1692
1692
1692
1692
1692
1692
1692
1692
1692
1692
1692
1692
1692
1692
1692
1692
1692
1692
1692
1692
1692
1692
1692
1692
1692
1692
1692
1692
1692
1692
1692
1692
1692
1692
1692
Accused’s Name
Joseph Emons
Phillip English
Mary English
Thomas Farrer
Edward Farrington
Abigail Faulkner
Abigail Faulkner, Jr.
Dorothy Faulkner
Capt. John Flood
Elizabeth Fosdick
Elizabeth Fosdick, Jr.?
Ann Foster
Nicholas Frost
Eunice Frye
Dorcas Good
Sarah Good
Mary Green
Thomas Hardy
Elizabeth Hart
Rachel Hatfield
Sarah Hawkes
Margaret Hawkes
Dorcas Hoar
Abigail Hobbs
Deliverance Hobbs
William Hobbs
Elizabeth How
John Howard
Elizabeth Hubbard
Francis Hutchens
Mary Ireson
John Jackson
John Jackson, Jr.
George Jacobs
George Jacobs, Jr.
Margaret Jacobs
Rebecca Jacobs
Abigail Johnson
Elizabeth Johnson
Elizabeth Johnson, Jr.
Rebecca Johnson
Stephen Johnson
Mary Lacey
Mary Lacey, Jr.
John Lee
[357]
Verdict
-----Convicted
Confessed
Confessed
---Convicted
---Convicted
----Confessed
-Convicted
Convicted
Confessed
-Convicted
-----Confessed
Convicted
-Confessed
--Confessed
Convicted
-Confessed
Convicted
Confessed
--
Punishment
Escaped
Escaped
Reprieved
Reprieved
Executed
Reprieved
Reprieved(?)
Executed
Executed
Escaped
Reprieved
Reprieved
Colony
Town
Salem Village
Malden
Andover
Amesbury
Beverly
Beverly
Salem Village
Salem Village
Andover
Charlestown
Salem Town
Andover
Salem Town
Gloucester
Boxford
Rowley
Andover
Gloucester
Salem Village
Salem Village
Salem Village
Salem Village
Salem Village
Gloucester
Marblehead
Reading
Beverly
Andover
Andover
-Woburn
-Salem Town
Chelmsford
Reading
Salem Village
-Billerica
Billerica
Billerica
Beverly
Andover
Andover
-Andover
Year
1692
1692
1692
1692
1692
1692
1692
1692
1692
1692
1692
1692
1692
1692
1692
1692
1692
1692
1692
1692
1692
1692
1692
1692
1692
1692
1692
1692
1692
1692
1692
1692
1692
1692
1692
1692
1692
1692
1692
1692
1692
1692
1692
1692
1692
Accused’s Name
Mercy Lewis
Jane Lilly
Mary Marston
Susanna Martin
Mary Morey
Sarah Morrill
Rebecca Nurse
Sarah Osborne
Mary Osgood
Elizabeth Paine
Alice Parker
Mary Parker
Sarah Pease
Joan Peney
Hannah Post
Mary Post
Margaret Prince
Benjamin Proctor
Elizabeth Proctor
John Proctor
Sarah Proctor
William Proctor
Ann Pudeator
Abigail Roe
Wilmot Reed
Sarah Rice
Susanna Roots
Henry Salter
John Sawdy
Margaret Scott
Ann Sears
Susannah Sheldon
Abigail Soames
Martha Sparks
Mary Taylor
Tituba Indian
Jerson Toothaker
Mary Toothaker
Roger Toothaker
[Dgh. of R. Toothaker]
Job Tookey
Johanna Tyler
Martha Tyler
(f) Vincent
Mercy Wardwell
[358]
Verdict
---Convicted
--Convicted
-Confessed
-Convicted
Convicted
--Confessed
Convicted
--Convicted
Convicted
-Confessed
Convicted
-Convicted
----Convicted
-----Confessed
-Confessed
---Confessed
Confessed
-Confessed
Punishment
Executed
Executed
Executed
Executed
Reprieved
Reprieved
Executed
Executed
Executed
Executed
Executed
Town
Andover
Andover
Salem Village
Topsfield
Haverhill
Salem Village
Andover
Andover
Andover
Boston
Boston
Year
1692
1692
1692
1692
1692
1692
1692
1692
1692
1693
1693
Accused’s Name
Samuel Wardwell
Sarah Wardwell
Mary Warren
Sarah Wilds
Ruth Wilford
John Willard
Sarah Wilson
Sarah Wilson, Jr.
Mary Withridge
(f)
(f)
Verdict
Convicted
Convicted
Confessed
Convicted
-Convicted
Confessed
Confessed
----
NHamp
Hampton
Hampton
Hampton
Portsmouth
1680
1680
1680
1682
Rachel Fuller
Isabella Towle
Eunice Cole
Hannah Jones
Acquitted
Acquitted
Acquitted
--
NHaven
New Haven
New Haven
New Haven
New Haven
New Haven
New Haven
1653
1654
1655
1655
1655
1657
Elizabeth Godman
Mary Staples
Elizabeth Godman
(f) Bailey
Nicholas Bailey
William Meaker
--Acquitted
Acquitted
Acquitted
--
Plmth
Scituate
Scituate
1660
1676
(f) Holmes
Mary Ingham
-Acquitted
RI
Aquiday
Aquiday
Aquiday
Newport
1640
1640
1640
1672
Ann Hutchenson
(m) Collins
(m) Hales
Katherine Palmer
-----
Colony
a
Punishment
Reprieved
Now belonging to New York, was then under Connecticut Colony
Now belonging to New Hampshire, was then part of Massachusetts Bay Colony
c
Now belonging to Maine, was then part of Massachusetts Bay Colony
(--) =no action known or recorded (m) or (f) = male or female name unknown (?) =probable but not confirmed
(Taylor 1908:143-157; Koehler 1980:474-491; Godbeer 1992:238-242; Demos 2004:402-409)
b
[359]
Executed
Executed
Appendix B: Supernatural Creatures
Creature
Billy Blind (also called Billy Blin, Belly
Blin, Blind Barlow)
Characteristics
Benevolent household spirit; protects
house and family; offers advice and
practical assistance
Country/Region of Belief
England; Scotland
Black Annis
A witch-like creature that inhabits
isolated hills who scratches to death and
devours children then dries their skins in
her cave
Leicestershire, England
Black Shuck (also called Old Shuck)
‘Shuck’ from scucca, Anglo-Saxon for
‘demon’; demonic black dog inhabiting
river banks, lonely roads, and
graveyards; associated with the night; in
some areas akin to a werewolf, in others
protects travelers
East Anglia, England
Bodach
Lives in chimney during the day; comes
out at night to terrorize children; putting
salt in the hearth prevents the bodach
from crossing into the house
Scotland
Bogey (also called bogeyman)
Associated with the night, powerless
during the day; terrorizes children
England
Boggart
Troublesome household spirit akin to a
poltergeist; shape-shifter
Northwestern England
Bogle
Mischievous spirit akin to a boggart;
inhabits both buildings and outlying
lands
Lincolnshire, England; Scottish borders
Brag
Shape-shifting goblin normally taking
horse shape; lures humans to mount it
then after a terrorizing ride, dumps them
in the middle of a pond
Northern England
Brownie
Household spirit; appears at night to
undertake some chore in house or barn
until offended by gifts of recompense
Northern, Eastern, and Midlands areas of
England; Scotland
Bucca (also called Knocker, Tommy
Knocker)
Hobgoblin that inhabits mines and ships;
foretells shipwrecks; volatile but
controllable through offerings of food,
fish, and drops of ale spilled
intentionally
Cornwall, England
Bugbear
Hobgoblin taking bear shape to scare
children
England
Buggane
Dangerous shape-shifting spirit
associated with waterfalls usually
assuming shape of horse, calf, black bull,
or ram; also haunted old chapels
Isle of Man, England
Bwbachod (also called Bwca)
Household spirit akin to brownie;
particularly mischievous towards
teetotalers
Wales
Cabbyl Ushtey
Water horse that would carry its victims
into the sea or a river; hooves were
reversed back to front
Isle of Man, England
Coblynau
Inhabit mines, guide miners to ore veins,
but throw stones at them if offended
Wales
[360]
Creature
Evil eye (known as ‘overlooking’)
Characteristics
While not an embodied creature, it is an
evil force that emanates from the eyes of
witches and others possessed of
maleficent supernatural power
Country/Region of Belief
England; Scotland
Fairy
A race of beings that inhabit particular
landscape features like mounds, trees,
glens, etc.; often attempt to change their
offspring for human babies; waylay,
mislead, confound, and otherwise pose
danger to humans, especially at night, in
the woods, or in isolated areas
England; Scotland
Fendoree
A human-sized brownie household
spirit; has great supernatural power;
temperamental
Isle of Man, England
Fetch (also called doppleganger; shadow
soul, wraith)
A spirit-double, ghost, or apparition
usually of a living person usually seen
by family members at the moment of the
person’s death; a fetch-candle or fetchlight is a ghostly light seen in the night
that presages a death
England; Ireland
Glashan
Naked human-like creatures inhabiting
the hillsides; for food payments would
work for farmers
Isle of Man, England
Ghost
The ephemeral apparition of a deceased
person
England; Scotland; Wales; Ireland
Gwyllion
Mischievous spirits that waylay and
mislead unwary night travelers
Wales
Gytrash
Spirit appearing as silent horse or large
dog on lonely roads to help or hinder
night travelers
Northern England
Hedley kow
Trickster spirits associated with
agricultural and wool spinning mishaps
England
Henkie
Dancing, limping trolls that live by the
sea in caves or sand dunes
Scotland
Hobyah
Anthropophagic hobgoblins that
terrorize children
New England; Scotland
Imp
Little demons often considered witches’
familiars or helpers
England
Incubus
Male demon that seduces sleeping
women; the offspring of such liaisons
thought to be witches, or are evidenced
by birth defects, mental defects, or twin
births
England
Kelpie
Water horse spirit that lures travelers to
mount it then dives into water where it
drowns and eats its victim. To see a
kelpie is an omen of ill fortune or death
Scotland
Mermaid
Half fish, half human sea creatures that
lure sailors to their death
England; Scotland; Ireland
Redcap
Goblin that inhabits dark places and
ruins where atrocities have occurred;
their caps are red from soaking them in
human blood
Scotland
[361]
Creature
Characteristics
Country/Region of Belief
Roane and Selkie
Seals that shed their skins on land and
assume human shape; can marry and
procreate with humans
Scotland; Ireland
Sluagh
Fairy race; a host of unforgiven souls
that haunt the places of their crimes;
dangerous and feared as they can capture
living humans
Scotland
Succubus
Female counterpart of the incubus;
offspring of incubi or succubae believed
to be witches, or are evidenced by birth
defects, mental defects, or twin births
England
Tangie
Mischievous water spirits appearing as
old men or seaweed covered horses that
can carry their victims into the sea, but
do not kill or devour them as kelpies do
Orkney Islands, Scotland
Taroo-Ushtey (also called Theroo Ushta)
A water bull that comes out of the sea to
feed and mate with cattle; plagues local
inhabitants; destroys cropfields
Isle of Man, England
Trow
Dwarfish trolls inhabiting seaside caves
and sand dunes; dangerous and
malicious
Orkney and Shetland Islands, Scotland
Werewolf
Shape-shifting cannibalistic creature;
either human bewitched into wolfish
form or has supernatural power to
transform at will
England
(Scot 1584; Beaumont 1707; Scott 1895; Hazlitt 1905; Burne 1913; MacCulloch 1921; Thompson 1932; Leach
1949; Briggs 1953, 1957, 1976, 1978, 2003[1967]; Briggs and Tongue 1965; Reader’s Digest 1973; Waring 1978;
Hand 1981; Hunt 1988, 1990, 1991; Botkin 1989; Walker 1990; Pipe 1991; Whitlock 1992; Evans-Wentz 1994;
Turner 1994; Jones 1995; Wilby 2000; Gilmore 2003; Purkiss 2003; Kirk 2008[1691])
[362]
Appendix C: Common Seventeenth-Century Magical Flora for Domestic Boundary Protection
and Their Apotropaic Locations
This appendix is divided into two parts, A and B. Part A provides a visual glossary, including
both a color photograph and a line drawing, for each of the most commonly cited plants in
seventeenth-century Anglo-European sources to magically protect domestic boundaries. This
glossary is intended as a model identification aid for archaeologists surveying sites to bring to their
attention potentially magical plant use.
The second section of this appendix features a table delineating the discrepancies between the
historic and folkloristic list of apotropaic plants and the plants specifically noted as growing, either as
native or introduced, in New England in the seventeenth century. This cross comparison list can be
used in future research to test which of these plants were actually present and cultivated in New
England during this time period.
Part A: Visual Glossary
Angelica (Angelica archangelica): grown in house garden; burnt in hearth, on bricks, and in chafing pans
Bay Laurel (Laurus nobilis): bushes planted around house perimeter; attached to doors
[363]
Birch (Betula pendula): crosses cut from birch placed above front door; planted in front of houses;
branches hung on barn/stable doors and placed on manure piles
Blackthorn (Prunus spinosa): planted along fence lines
Buckthorn (Rhamnus frangula): planted near doors and windows
Chicory (Cichorium intybus): grown in house garden; placed under bed of pregnant women
Deadly Nightshade (Atropa belladonna): garlands hung over doors and windows
[364]
Dill (Anethum graveolens): grown in house garden, near doors; mixed with trefoil, St. John’s wort, and
vervain and placed at house entrance
Elder (Sambucus nigra): planted around house and yard perimeters; planted on and placed in graves;
coffins made of elder wood
Fennel (Foeniculum vulgare): wreaths hung over doors and windows; seeds stuffed in keyholes; grown in
house garden
Foxglove (Digitalis purpurea): grown in house garden
[365]
Hawthorn (Crataegus oxyacartha): hung over windows, on doors, and in rafters; hung outside cowsheds;
grown in house garden
Holly (Ilex aquifolium): planted along house edges, under windows, and as hedges along property lines
and roads; used to construct thresholds
Houseleek (Sempervivum tectorum): planted on roofs
Ivy (Hedera helix): grown on exterior walls of house
Mugwort (Artemisia vulgaris): hung over doors; grown in house gardens
[366]
Peony (Paeonia officinalis): grown in house gardens; around beds
Pine cones (any variety of pine; pictured here White pine (Pinus strobis)): affixed to garden gate posts
Primrose (Primula vulgaris): grown in house garden
Rosemary (Rosmarinus officinalis): strewn on doorsteps; grown in house garden and near house door;
placed under beds
Rowan/Mountain Ash (Sorbus aucuparia): planted at house corners; butter churns made from rowan
wood; rowan twigs attached to butter churns and milk buckets
[367]
Rue (Ruta graveolens): grown in house garden and planted in window boxes or under windows; rubbed
on house floors
Sage (Salvia officinalis): grown in house garden; hung in windows
St. John’s Wort (Hypericum perforatum): wreaths thrown on roofs; flowers hung over doors; grown in
house garden
Sow Thistle (Sonchus oleraceus): grown in house garden
[368]
Valerian (Valerianan officinalis): hung on door; grown in house garden
Vervain (Verbena officinalis): planted in house gardens and around doors; carved on amulets; made into
brooms
Wormwood (Artemisia pontica): spread around the inside perimeter of the house
Yarrow (Achillea millefolium): grown in house garden; strewn on doorstep; suspended over cradles; hung
in houses; nailed to doorways
[369]
Part B: Table of Apotropaic Plants and Their Noted Presence in New England.
Apotropaic Plants
Noted in Anglo
Folklore and
Historical
Sources
Apotropaic Plants
Native to New
England
(noted by
Josselyn 1672)
Apotropaic Plants
Imported by
Colonists
(noted by Josselyn
(1672) and in letters
(Emerson 1976))
Angelica
Apple
Ash
Bay Laurel
Beans
Birch
Blackthorn
Broom
Buckthorn
Chicory
Clover
Dill
Elder
Fennel
Fern
Foxglove
Groundsell
Hawthorn
Hemp
Holly
Houseleek
Hyssop
Ivy
Juniper
Laurel
Marchwort
Mistletoe
Mugwort
Myrtle
Nightshade
Oak
Onion
Peas
Peony
Pine
Primrose
Red Thistle
Rosemary
Rowan
Angelica
Birch
Elder
Hawthorn
Oak
Pine
St. John’s Wort
Yarrow
Apple
Bay Laurel
Beans
Clover
Dill
Fennel
Hemp
Ivy
Nightshade
Onions
peas
Sow Thistle
[370]
Apotropaic Plants in
the SeventeenthCentury Herb
Garden at the
Saugus Iron Works
National Historic
Site
(McDowell nd)
Angelica
Houseleek
Hyssop
Mugwort
Rosemary
Rue
Sage
Valerian
Wormwood
Yarrow
Apotropaic Plants
in 17th Century
Privy at Cross
Street Back Lot
Site, Boston, MA
(Dudek et al.
1998:66)
Apple
Buckthorn
Elder
Hawthorn
Nightshade
Apotropaic Plants
Noted in Anglo
Folklore and
Historical
Sources
Apotropaic Plants
Native to New
England
(noted by
Josselyn 1672)
Apotropaic Plants
Imported by
Colonists
(noted by Josselyn
(1672) and in letters
(Emerson 1976))
Apotropaic Plants in
the SeventeenthCentury Herb
Garden at the
Saugus Iron Works
National Historic
Site
(McDowell nd)
Apotropaic Plants
in 17th Century
Privy at Cross
Street Back Lot
Site, Boston, MA
(Dudek et al.
1998:66)
Rue
Sage
St. John’s Wort
Seaweed
Sow Thistle
Valerian
Vervain
Wormwood
Yarrow
Yew
Sources:
(Coles 1656; Blagrave 1671; Markham 1683, 2011[1615]; Aubrey 1670, 1686; Mather 1689; Culpeper 1814[1652];
Gregor 1881; Pettigrew 1884; Brand 1888; Burne 1913; Leach 1949; Leighton 1970; Kittredge 1972; Reader’s
Digest 1973; Boland 1976; Parkinson 1976[1629]; Erichsen-Brown 1979; Williams 1982; McLaren 1984;
Cunningham 1985; Botkin 1989; Wilde 1991[1885]; Whitlock 1992; Turner 1993; Jones 1995; Lipp 1996; Patterson
1996; Boyer and Nissenbaum 1997; Picton 2000; Gifford 2000; Gazin-Schwartz 2001; Burr 2002[1914]; Lipp
2006; Bishop 2007; McDowell nd)
[371]
Appendix D: Historic and Folklore Raw Data Tables
This appendix is divided into two parts, A and B. Part A, Historic Sources, provides the raw
data tables converted from the Microsoft Access and Excel spreadsheets for the general historic
sources and the Salem witch trial transcripts. Part B, Folklore Sources, provides the similarly
converted Microsoft Access spreadsheet of the folkloristic raw data used in this dissertation. These
tables have been condensed and reformatted from their original forms to fit the scale and layout of
the dissertation format.
PART A- HISTORIC SOURCES
General Historic Sources
Code*
C/G/P
x
x
Artifact
Description
Material
Location
Function
Repel evil
forces,
storms, and
disease.
Carved in a
belfry in
Cornwall,
Eng., "By
which are
scar'd the
fiends of
hell, and all
by virtue of
a Bell.”
Protect
newborn
from evil
spirits
Bells
Church or
handheld bells
Metal
In belfries or
handheld
x
Cloth
Scarlet cloth
Textile
Laid on
infant’s head
when it is
carried
upstairs in
house
x
Necklace
Anodyne necklace
Anodyne
Worn around
infant’s neck
Bricks
Salt-glazed bricks
Clay
Built into
chimney
Baby rattle
Baby rattle; “coral
and bells” coral
shaft set in silver
handle surrounded
Silver and red
coral
m
x
x
[372]
Ease child’s
teething pain
and
vulnerability
to evil forces
Prevent
entry of
witches/evil
through
hearth
Protect
infant from
evil eye
Comments
Source
St. Thomas
Aquinas "The
atmosphere is a
battlefield between
angels and
devils…the tones of
the consecrated
metal repel demons
and arrest storms
and lightning."
Spencer
(2003:44-48);
Aubrey
(1670:91)
Accompanied by
silver and gold in
baby's hand and
carried upstairs as a
ritual "to bring him
wealth and cause
him always to rise
in the world."
Judge Sewell
1694 in Earle
(1893:5)
Earle (1893:8)
Deetz and Deetz
(2000:91)
Multifunctional
object-teether, toy,
status marker,
magical amulet.
Calvert
(1992:6);
Gardner
(1942:98);
Code*
C/G/P
Artifact
Description
Material
Location
Function
“Coral…considered
to possess the
power of keeping
off evil spirits and
averting…the Evil
Eye.” (Pettigrew
1844:82)
by tiny silver bells
x
f
Necklace
or pendant
Lodestone pendant
Magnetic
oxide;
magnetite
Worn or hung
by bed
Promote
fertility
x
f
Necklace
or pendant
Dried quail heart
made into a
hanging amulet
Fauna
Worn or hung
by bed
Promote
fertility
x
f
Necklace
or pendant
Carolina Root
made into an
hanging amulet
Flora
Worn or hung
by bed
Promote
fertility
x
f
Knotted
cord
Ligature or knotted
cord
Textile
Placed under
bed
Prevent
conception
x
m
x
Plant
Squill (a lily-type
plant with blue star
shaped flowers
Flora
Hung over
bed
Promote
fertility and
cure
impotence
x
m
x
Dog or
cow
Unbutchered,
buried alive
Fauna
Near property
or stable
boundaries
x
m
x
Animal
Undetermined
“creature”, buried
feet up
Fauna
Under
threshold of
stable or
cowshed
x
m
Cock
Unbutchered,
buried alive
Fauna
x
m
x
Cock
Black cock along
with patient’s hair
and fingernail
clippings
Fauna
Stop cattle
plague
caused by
witches
Save herd
from
bewitchment
and illness
Cure
insanity (a
demonic
affliction)
Cure
epilepsy (a
demonic
affliction)
x
m
x
Toads
Nine living toads
on a string
Fauna
m
x
Puppies
Fauna
Buried in
field corner
m
x
Horse, hog,
sheep, or
chicken
Three live puppies
arranged in a
triangle
Burned alive, or
just the hearts, ears
or tails burned
Fauna
Along
property
boundaries or
in hearth
x
Comments
Buried under
bed or floor
or at spot
where patient
falls
Buried along
property line
[373]
Deflect
bewitchment
onto
suspected
bewitcher
Clear the
field of
weeds
Save animals
from
bewitchment
and illness
and to
deflect
Bride/wife could
create one which
would counter any
made by illwishers;
she could then untie
and release the spell
at her leisure.
Source
Pettigrew
(1844:82)
N. Culpeper
1656, Directory
for Midwives,
in McLaren
(1984)
N. Culpeper
1656, Directory
for Midwives,
in McLaren
(1984)
Katherine
Boyle, 1634-91.
Reciept Book.
Wellcome MS
1340 in
McLaren (1984)
McLaren (1984)
N. Culpeper
1656, Directory
for Midwives,
in McLaren
(1984)
Kittredge
(1972:95)
Kittredge
(1972:95)
Kittredge
(1972:95)
Kittredge
(1972:95)
Kittredge
(1972:95)
Kittredge
(1972:95)
Kittredge
(1972:96-97)
Code*
C/G/P
x
f
x
m
x
m
x
Artifact
Description
Material
Location
Hen
Burned alive
Fauna
In hearth
Stuffed
cloth ball
and pins
Cloth ball filled
with horse or cow
hair, hoof parings,
and horn parings,
with pins and 3
needles
Composite:
fauna, textile,
metal
Burned in
hearth
x
Pierced
animal
heart
Animal heart stuck
with pins, needles,
or thorns
Composite:
fauna, metal
Hung up
inside
chimney to
roast/parch
x
Pierced
pigeon
heart
Pierced
bacon
Pigeon heart stuck
with pins
Composite:
fauna, metal
Hung in
chimney
Bacon stuck with
pins
Composite:
fauna, metal
Hung in
chimney
x
Pierced
animal
heart
Heart stuck with
pins and needles
Composite:
fauna, metal
Buried in the
ground
around house
perimeter,
under
foundation or
in house
fabric
Burned in
hearth
x
x
f
x
Pierced red
cloth
Red cloth pierced
with 60 needles
and half penny’s
worth of pins
Composite:
textile, metal
x
b
x
Witch
bottle
Stoneware
Bellarmine jugs or
glass bottles
containing urine,
pins, needles,
nails, thorns,
fingernail pairings,
hair, cloth hearts
Composite:
ceramic, metal,
human bodily
elements,
textile
f
x
Butter
churn
Flora
f
x
Coin
f
x
Fire poker
Butter churn
and/or the stirring
sticks made out of
rowan wood
Crooked, pierced,
or folded shilling
or sixpence
Iron fire poker or
fireiron
Buried under
thresholds,
foundations,
hearth stones,
and placed in
hearths
Metal
Placed in
butter churn
Metal
House corners
[374]
Function
bewitchment
onto
suspected
bewitcher
Save animals
from
bewitchment
and illness
Save animals
from
bewitchment
and illness
and to
deflect
bewitchment
onto
suspected
bewitcher
Deflect
bewitchment
onto
suspected
bewitcher
Against bad
luck in
fishing
Prevent
entry of
witches/evil
through
hearth
Protect
house from
witches
Identify and
turn
bewitchment
onto
bewitcher; to
unbewitch ill
person
Protect
house from
witches; to
identify and
turn
bewitchment
onto
bewitcher; to
unbewitch ill
person
Protect the
cream from
bewitchment
Protect
cream from
bewitchment
Protect
house from
witches
Comments
Source
Kittredge
(1972:96)
Timothy Crowther
was the Yorkshire
parish priest
T. Crowther,
1694-1760 in
Kittredge
(1972:97)
Kittredge
(1972:97)
Kittredge
(1972:98)
Kittredge
(1972:98)
Heart may be
extracted from live
animal; pins and
needles often
multiples of three
Kittredge
(1972:98)
Red cloth often
heart-shaped
Joan Bayly,
1610 in
Kittredge
(1972:99)
Kittredge
(1972:102)
Giffard’s
Dialogue, 1593
in Kittredge
(1972:167)
Kittredge
(1972:167)
Touch each corner
of the house with
the red-hot poker—
Kittredge
(1972:167)
Code*
C/G/P
x
x
x
Description
Material
Location
Function
f
x
Horseshoe
Iron horseshoe
Metal
Placed in
butter churn
Protect the
cream from
bewitchment
f
x
Needles
and pins
Seven needles and
nine pins
Metal
Placed in
butter churn
Protect the
cream from
bewitchment
m
x
Sod
Four sections of
cut sod
Flora
Cut from
corners of
fields
m
x
Plow
handle
Bored out plow
handle filled with
herbs and salt
Composite:
flora, mineral
Sieve and
scissors
Round wooden
sieve with metal
meshing, iron
scissors
Lateen spoon with
fig-shaped bowl
Composite:
wood, metal
Protect the
field and
crops from
evil forces
Used to plow
fields and
protect the
field, crops
and farmer
from
bewitchment
Detect
witches
m
m
x
Spoon
m
x
Holed
stone
Stone with a
natural hole
through it,
preferably flint
Mineral
m
x
Witch
bottle
Composite:
ceramic, fauna,
metal
Buried by
barn or stable
thresholds
b
x
Horseshoe
Stoneware or glass
bottle containing
horse hair, hoof
clippings,
horseshoe nails
Iron horseshoe
metal
Hung on
doors
f
x
Iron bar
Iron bar or fire
iron
metal
Laid across
beer barrels
f
x
Children’s
teeth
Children’s shed
teeth wrapped in a
cloth with salt
Composite:
human body
elements,
textile, mineral
m
x
Twisted
plants
Bittersweet and
holly twisted
together
Flora
Hidden in
dark corners
in the house
or thrown into
hearth
Hung in barns
and stables;
attached to
horses
Wolf fang
teether
Wolf fang set in
silver
Composite;
fauna, metal
Houseleek
Houseleek plants
Flora
x
x
Artifact
f
x
Metal
Embedded in
chimney
foundation
Hung over
stables and
managers
Planted on
roofs
[375]
Protect
house from
evil
Prevent
horses from
being ‘hag
ridden’ by
witches
Unbewitch
horses
Comments
should leave burn
marks
Placed in churn redhot, also use fire
irons, spits, or
pokers. These
should leave burn
marks inside butter
churns
Should be located
around dairying
areas or with butter
churns
Sod was blessed
and replaced in
field
Source
Kittredge
(1972:167)
Kittredge
(1972:167)
Kittredge
(1972:171)
Kittredge
(1972:171)
Similar to using the
Bible and Key; also
used in divination
Kittredge
(1972:198-199)
John Farrington’s
house, Dedham,
MA
St. George
(1998:194)
Aubrey
(1670:90)
Aubrey
(1670:90)
Prevent
witches from
entering
Prevent beer
from souring
due to the
evil forces in
thunder
Protect
children
from witches
Aubrey
(1670:91)
Prevent
horses from
being ‘hag
ridden’ by
witches
Protect
children
from witches
Aubrey
(1686:28)
Protect
house from
thunder and
Aubrey
(1670:90)
Aubrey
(1686:11)
Used as a
combination teether
and amulet like the
coral and bells
Aubrey
(1686:115)
Aubrey
(1686:167)
Code*
C/G/P
Artifact
Description
Material
Location
x
Twisted
plants
Twisted
wheat/barley “corn
dolly”
Flora
Hung in
chimney
f
x
Trees
Holly trees
Flora
m
x
Hypericon
Herb hypericon
Flora
m
x
Trees
Rowan trees
Flora
x
m
x
Written
charms
Paper
x
m
x
Snake
Symbols and/or
words written on
paper or scratched
onto beams
Snake or snake
skin
Planted
around and
near house
Placed under
pillows and
bed
Planted at
corners of
house and
used in
agricultural
tools
In corners of
house
x
b
x
Poppets
Image magic
objects shaped like
humans
Composite:
textile, wax,
flora, metal
x
b
x
Pebbled
Mineral
x
b
x
m
x
Wolf head
Pebbled ‘fired’ or
burnt
Round wooden
sieve with metal
meshing, iron
scissors
Wolf head
Fauna
Nailed to
house door
f
x
Garlic and
Alicium
Garlic and alicium
plants
Flora
Hung in roof
rafters
x
Dog blood
and gall
Blood and gall of
black dog
Fauna
x
Betony
Betony herb
Flora
Spread on
house walls
and posts
Planted
around house
x
Wax
Melted wax from
candles dripped in
a cross-shape
Wax
x
Roof tile
Burnt roof tile or
roof thatching
sprinkled with salt
and urine
Composite:clay
or flora,
mineral, human
body elements
x
x
m
x
Sieve and
Scissors
Fauna
Buried under
threshold or
attached to
exterior doors
Buried under
and around
house, also
concealed in
niches and
walls
Buried under
threshold
Composite:
flora, metal
Dripped on
the threshold
and smeared
above doors
of barns and
stalls
Burned under
a trivet or
gridiron then
the ashes
buried by
threshold of
[376]
Function
lightning
Protect
house and
ensure
abundance
for next
year’s crop
Protect
house from
evil forces
Keep ghosts
out of
bedroom
Protect
house, crops,
and livestock
Comments
Source
Aubrey
(1686:172)
Aubrey
(1686:189)
Aubrey
(1686:231)
Pins for oxen yokes
made of rowan
Aubrey
(1686:247)
Drive away
haunting
spirits
Scot (1584:140)
Protect
house
against
bewitchment
Reverse
bewitchment
back onto
bewitcher
Scot (1584:145)
Identify
thieves
Identify
thieves
Scot (1584:149)
Protect
house
against
bewitchment
Keep
witches and
evil spirits
away
Drive out
witches and
devils
Protect
house from
all evil
mischief
Protect cattle
from
bewitchment
Reverse
bewitchment
back onto
bewitcher
Scot (1584:146)
Similar to using the
Bible and Key; also
used in divination
Scot (1584:149)
Scot (1584:152)
Scot (1584:152)
Scot (1584:152)
Scot (1584:152)
This should be done
at Easter.
Scot (1584:160)
The tile or thatch
comes from above
the door of the
suspected witch.
Blagrave
(1671:154)
Code*
C/G/P
Artifact
Description
Material
Location
suspected
witch
Engraved on
the front of
houses
m
x
Symbols
Engraved
characters/symbols
x
m
x
Stone
cherub
head
Stone cherub head
gate post topper
Mineral
Affixed to
gate post tops
x
b
x
Rag ball
Rags wrapped
around human
fingernails and toe
nails
Composite:
textile, human
body elements
Buried in
secret places
b
x
Holed
stone and
key
Stone with a
natural hole
through it tied to a
door key
Composite:
mineral, metal,
textile
Hung in
stables and on
bedsteads
x
b
Rosemary
Herb rosemary
Flora
Placed in
graves
x
b
Colored
rags
Clothing rags of
various colors
Textile
Placed on
trees and
bushes around
supernaturally
powerful
water sources
Hung in
stables and
barns
m
x
Hooks and
shears
Iron hooks and
shears
Metal
m
x
Eel trident
Iron tri-pointed eel
spear
Metal
x
f
x
Horseshoe
Iron horseshoe
Metal
x
f
x
Bay Laurel
Herb Bay Laureal
Flora
Embedded
above house
door near
chimney
Hung over
house door
Around the
perimeter of
house
Code*
C=Crisis
G=Gender (f-female, m-male, b-both female and male)
P=Physical boundary
[377]
Function
Protect the
house from
all manner of
evil
Protect
house and
property
from evil
Drive out
consumption
Prevent
horses from
being “hag
ridden” by
witches and
humans from
having
‘nightmares’
(attack by
incubi and
succubae)
Protect the
soul from
evil
Unbewitch
victims and
cure
ailments
including
madness
Prevent
horses from
being “hag
ridden” by
witches
Protect
house from
power of evil
spirits
Prevent
witch from
entering
house
Protect
house from
power of evil
spirits
Comments
Source
Pettigrew
(1844:65)
S. Sewell’s
Diary, 1692, in
Hall (1989:217)
Rags are from
victim’s own
clothing.
Consumption
thought to have
supernatural causes.
Pettigrew
(1844:98)
Pettigrew
(1844:118)
Brand
(1888:451)
Brand
(1888:522-523)
Brand
(1888:733-734)
St. George
(1998:92)
Deposition of
Esther Wilson
against Elizabeth
Morse, 1680,
Newbury, MA
Undertaken by
Goodwife Mary
Hortado against
lithobolic attack,
1683, Barwick, ME
Drake
(1869:275)
I. Mather,
Remarkable
Providences, in
Burr
(2002[1914]:38)
Witch Trial Transcripts
Code*
C/G/P
x
x
f
x
Artifact
Description Material Location Function Comments
x
Horseshoe
Iron horseshoe
Metal
Above door
Prevent
witch’s entry
x
Bay Laurel
Bay Laurel herb
Flora
“stick the
house round
with Bayes”
Protect
against evil
spirits
x
Pot and pins
“pot with urin,
and crooked pin
in it”
Unknown pot
material;
metal pins
In hearth
Rag dolls
Composite:
textile, fauna
Unspecified
Reverse
bewitchment
back onto
bewitcher
Reverse
bewitchment
back onto
bewitcher
Metal
Prevent
witch’s entry
Prevent
witch’s entry
x
f
x
f
x
Horseshoe
Small ragdolls
made of rags and
stuffed with goat
hair “and other
such ingredients”
Iron horseshoe
x
f
x
Bay Laurel
Bay Laurel herb
Flora
Nailed on
door
Unspecified
x
m
Unspecified
Unspecified
Unspecified
Unspecified
Identify witch
and
unbewitch
victim
x
f
Poppet
Poppet dolls
shaped out of wax
Wax
Unspecified
Inflict harm
upon victim
x
f
Sieve and
scissors
Round wooden
sieve and iron
scissors
Composite:
flora, metal
Unspecified
Identify illdoers
Poppet
Poppet and thorns
Composite:
unknown
material for
poppet, flora
Composite:
textile, fauna,
metal
Unspecified
Inflict harm
upon victim
Stuffed in
holes in cellar
walls
Inflict harm
upon victim
Fauna
Burned in
hearth
Identify witch
and
unbewitch
swine
Identify witch
and
unbewitch
swine
x
x
x
f
x
Poppet
x
m
x
Pig tail and
ear
Ragdolls made of
rags and “hogs
Brussels, with
headless pins in
them, the points
being outward”
Severed pig tail
and ear
x
m
x
Pig ear
Severed pig ear
Fauna
Burned in
hearth
x
f
Horseshoe
Iron horseshoe
Metal
Unspecified
[378]
Prevent entry
of witch
Source
I. Mather,
Illustrious
Providences, in
Burr
(2002[1914]:31)
I. Mather,
Illustrious
Providences, in
Burr
(2002[1914]:38)
R. Chamberlain
in Burr
(2002[1914]:74)
Male user only
described using a
counterwitchcraft
‘trick’
C. Mather,
Memorial
Providences in
Burr
(2002[1914]:104)
Drake
(1869:275-276)
Court Records,
Hampton, MA in
Drake
(1869:275-276)
C. Mather,
Memorial
Providences in
Burr
(2002[1914]:128129)
Deodat Lawson,
A Brief and True
Narrative in
Burr
(2002[1914]:163)
Letter of Thomas
Brattle, in Burr
(2002[1914]:181182)
Tryal of G.
Burroughs in
Burr
(2002[1914]:219)
C. Mather,
Wonders of the
Invisible World
in Burr
(2002[1914]:223)
Records of the
Colony of New
Haven in Burr
(2002[1914]:239)
C. Mather,
Wonders of the
Invisible World
in Burr
(2002[1914]:239)
The Life of His
Excellency, Sir
Wm. Phips in
Boyer and
Code*
C/G/P
Artifact
Description Material Location Function Comments
x
f
Sieve and
keys
Round wooden
sieve and metal
keys
Composite:
flora, metal
Unspecified
Identify illdoers
x
f
Nails
Iron nails
Metal
Unspecified
Unspecified
x
f
Peas
Peas
Flora
Unspecified
Unspecified
x
f
Cake
Determine if
illness was
bewitchment
f
Knotted rags
Composite:
flora, human
body
elements
Textile
In hearth
x
“Witch” cake
composed of rye
meal and urine of
afflicted victims
Rags tied in knots
Unspecified
Used as
poppets to
inflict harm
on victim
x
f
Mirror
“Venus glass” and
egg
Composite:
glass, fauna
Unspecified
Identify illdoers or
future
husbands
Bottle
Glass bottle filled
with urine
Composite:
glass, human
body
elements
In hearth
Reverse
bewitchment
back onto
bewitcher
x
x
x
x
f
Sieve
Round wooden
sieve
Flora
Unspecified
Identify illdoers
x
f
Poppet
Poppet and pins
Composite:
unknown
material for
poppet, metal
Unspecified
Inflict harm
upon victim
x
f
Knotted rag
Rag tied in knot
Textile
Unspecified
Used as
poppets to
inflict harm
on victim
x
f
Sieve and
scissors
Round wooden
sieve and iron
scissors (“sive
and sissers)
Composite:
flora, metal
Unspecified
Identify illdoers
[379]
Source
Nissenbaum
(1977)
The Life of His
Excellency, Sir
Wm. Phips in
Boyer and
Nissenbaum
(1977)
The Life of His
Excellency, Sir
Wm. Phips in
Boyer and
Nissenbaum
(1977)
The Life of His
Excellency, Sir
Wm. Phips in
Boyer and
Nissenbaum
(1977)
Boyer and
Nissenbaum
(1977)
Thomas
Hutchinson,
History of MA
Bay, p. 26 in
Boyer and
Nissenbaum
(1977)
Suffolk Co.
Records Case
No. 2712, p. 49
in Boyer and
Nissenbaum
(1977)
Suffolk Co.
Records Case
No. 2708, p. 31
in Boyer and
Nissenbaum
(1977)
Essex Co.
Archives, Salem,
Witchcraft Vol.
2, p. 18 in Boyer
and Nissenbaum
(1977)
Essex Co.
Archives, Salem,
Witchcraft Vol.
2, p. 22 in Boyer
and Nissenbaum
(1977)
Essex Co.
Archives, Salem,
Witchcraft Vol.
2, p. 22 in Boyer
and Nissenbaum
(1977)
Essex Institute
MMS Collection
in Boyer and
Nissenbaum
(1977)
Code*
C/G/P
Artifact
Description Material Location Function Comments
x
f
x
Book
Book of Palmistry
Paper
Unspecified
Unspecified
x
m
x
Book
Book of Palmistry
Paper
Unspecified
Unspecified
x
f
x
Poppet
Wooden dolls
Flora
Unspecified
Inflict harm
upon victim
x
m
Poppet
Poppet
Unspecified
Unspecified
Inflict harm
upon victim
x
m
Poppet
Poppet
Unspecified
Unspecified
Inflict harm
upon victim
x
f
x
Poppet
Poppet and pins
Composite:
unknown
material for
poppet, metal
Unspecified
Inflict harm
upon victim
x
m
x
Horse flesh
Burned horse
flesh
Fauna
Around barn
Identify witch
and
unbewitch
horse
x
f
Rag poppets
and pins
Poppets described
as “rags of stripes
of clothe” stuck
with pins
Composite:
textile, metal
Unspecified
Inflict harm
upon victim
x
f
Poppet
Wooden doll
made of “birch
Rhine”
Flora
Unspecified
Inflict harm
upon victim
Sieve
Round wooden
sieve
Flora
Unspecified
Identify illdoers
x
x
x
f
Rags
Rolled rags
Textile
Unspecified
Used as
poppets to
inflict harm
on victim
x
f
Spindle
Iron spindle
Metal
Unspecified
Inflict harm
[380]
Source
Essex Co.
Archives, Salem,
Witchcraft Vol.
1, p. 80 in Boyer
and Nissenbaum
(1977)
Essex Co.
Archives, Salem,
Witchcraft Vol.
1, p. 80 in Boyer
and Nissenbaum
(1977)
Essex Co.
Archives, Salem,
Witchcraft Vol.
1, p. 50 in Boyer
and Nissenbaum
(1977)
Essex Co.
Archives, Salem,
Witchcraft Vol.
1, p. 50 in Boyer
and Nissenbaum
(1977)
Essex Co.
Archives, Salem,
Witchcraft Vol.
1, p. 51 in Boyer
and Nissenbaum
(1977)
Essex Co.
Archives, Salem,
Witchcraft Vol.
2, p. 49 in Boyer
and Nissenbaum
(1977)
Essex Co.
Archives, Salem,
Witchcraft Vol.
1, p. 148 in
Boyer and
Nissenbaum
(1977)
MA Archives,
Vol. 135, No. 34
in Boyer and
Nissenbaum
(1977)
MA Archives,
Vol. 135, No. 34
in Boyer and
Nissenbaum
(1977)
Suffolk Court
Records No.
2707, p. 30 in
Boyer and
Nissenbaum
(1977)
Essex Co.
Archives, Salem,
Witchcraft Vol.
2, p. 24 in Boyer
and Nissenbaum
(1977)
Essex Co.
Code*
C/G/P
Artifact
Description Material Location Function Comments
upon victim
x
x
x
Tobacco pipe
Tobacco pipe
Unspecified
Unspecified
Inflict harm
upon victim
Rags and
quills
Rags and quills
tied up together
and described as
“persal of rags”
and a “persal of
quils tied up”
Composite:
textile, fauna
Unspecified
Used as
poppet to
inflict harm
on victim
x
f
Poppets and
pins
Poppets stuck
with pins and
knitting needle
Composite:
unknown
material for
poppet, metal
Unspecified
Inflict harm
upon victim
x
m
Handkerchief
Rolled up
handkerchief
Textile
Unspecified
Inflict harm
upon victim
x
f
x
Poppet and
needle
Poppet stuck with
needle
Unspecified
Inflict harm
upon victim
x
f
x
Skillet and
human hair
Iron skillet with
human victim’s
hair boiled in it
Composite:
unknown
material for
poppet, metal
Composite:
Metal, human
body
elements
In hearth
Identify witch
and
unbewitch
victim
x
f
Rag and pins
Rag with pins
stuck in it
Composite:
textile, metal
Unspecified
Inflict harm
upon victim
x
m
Poppet
Poppet
Unspecified
Unspecified
Inflict harm
upon victim
x
m
x
Sword
Iron sword
Sword
Unspecified
x
m
x
Pig tail
Severed pig (sow)
tail
Fauna
In hearth
x
m
x
Angelica
root
Angelica root
herb
Flora
Unspecified
x
f
Poppets and
thorns
Poppets stuck
with thorns
Composite:
unknown
material for
poppet, flora
Unspecified
Determine if
someone is
bewitched
Identify witch
and
unbewitch
swine
Protect house
from witches
and evil
forces
Inflict harm
upon victim
[381]
Source
Archives, Salem,
Witchcraft Vol.
2, p. 24 in Boyer
and Nissenbaum
(1977)
Essex Co.
Archives, Salem,
Witchcraft Vol.
2, p. 24 in Boyer
and Nissenbaum
(1977)
Boston Public
Library, Dept. of
Rare Books and
Manuscripts in
Boyer and
Nissenbaum
(1977)
Essex Institute
MSS Collection
in Boyer and
Nissenbaum
(1977)
Essex Institute
MSS Collection
in Boyer and
Nissenbaum
(1977)
MA Historical
Society in Boyer
and Nissenbaum
(1977)
Essex Co.
Archives, Salem,
Witchcraft Vol.
2, p. 31 in Boyer
and Nissenbaum
(1977)
Suffolk Co.
Records Case
No. 2705, p. 28
in Boyer and
Nissenbaum
(1977)
Suffolk Co.
Records Case
No. 2706, p. 26
in Boyer and
Nissenbaum
(1977)
Tomlinson
(1978)
Tomlinson
(1978)
Tomlinson
(1978)
Boyer and
Nissenbaum
(1977)
Threshold Associations: Salem Witchcraft Trials, 1692-1693 (Boyer and Nissenbaum 1977)
[382]
[383]
PART B- FOLKLORE SOURCES
Code*
C/G/P
f
x
x
Description
Material
Salt
Salt
Mineral
Swaddling
clothes
Linen cloth for
wrapping infants
Textile
Color green
Textile color
Textile
x
Water
Water in a
container
Water
x
Finger
Finger of dead
theif
Human body
element
f
f
Artifact
f
Pea pod
x
Flora
Thread
Red thread
Textile
Rowan tree
Rowan tree
Flora
Location
Function
Comments
Source
In/around
cradles;
sprinkled on
doorsteps; on
breast of
corpse in a
dish or
w/candle
Hung on
trees/bushes in
woods, near
water; at
liminal
thresholdsrivers,
crossroads,
hills
Worn as
clothing or
used as
household
linens
In bucket or
pan brought
into house at
night
Repel fairies;
protect corpse
from demons;
repel witches
and evil forces
Mother’s carried in
pockets to protect
unbaptized infants;
carry a pinch in the
hand at night to
protect oneself
in/from the dark
Transfer fairy
changeling
essence or
illness
imprinted in
cloth to
bushes
Swaddling clothes
applied at birth,
worn about 6-9
months and believed
to keep baby
healthy, protected,
and necessary for
their limbs to grow
straight
Never dress
unbaptized infant in
green
Tongue 1965;
Reader’s
Digest 1973;
Waring 1978;
Whitlock
1992; Purkiss
2003; Roud
2003
Schmitt 1983;
Purkiss 2003
Buried under
the house
threshold
Attached over
house or
bedroom door
Worn on
person,
attached to
animals, sewn
into domestic
linens
Planted in
yards, around
houses; tied to
buckets, made
into crosses
over house
and stable
doors, butter
churns and
churn staffs
[384]
Avoid using
green to ward
off fairies
Waring 1978;
Purkiss 2003
Quench fairy
thirst so they
don’t
vampirize
household
Protect house
and residents
against theft
Divine future
husband
Campbell
1895; Purkiss
2003
Repel witches
Gregor 1881;
Burne 1913;
Roud 2003
Repel witches
and protect
against Evil
Eye
Gregor 1881;
Waring 1978;
Whitlock
1992; Jones
1995; Roud
2003
Evans 1906
Burne 1913
Code*
C/G/P
f
Unspecified
x
Coin
Silver coin
Metal
Placed in
butter churn;
placed in
water basin
x
Glass shards
Broken glass
shards
Glass
x
Shadow
Holy shadow
Strewn into
intended
victim’s
footprints
Placed within
fabric of
building at the
time of
construction
x
Bells
Church bells or
hand-held bells
Metal
In church
belfries and in
houses
x
Barrel
Large wooden
barrel with metal
bands
Composite:
flora, metal
Placed in
little-used
rooms which
are then
sealed off
x
Chalk circles
“Witch Marks” 3
drawn chalk
circles
Chalk
Drawn on
hearths
x
Stone pile
Pile of stones on
grave
Mineral
Placed on
burial spot of
criminal
x
Chips of
stone
Chips of stone
broken off
standing stones
Mineral
Carried on
person or kept
in house
x
Coins
Holed or bent;
specially minted
with image of
defeated Devil
Metal
f
x
Broom
Wood and straw
broom
Flora
f
x
Shears or
knife
Thorn stick
Shears or sharp
knife
Thorn stick
Metal
Tucked into
standing stone
crevices or
carried on
person
Placed behind
house door or
across house
threshold
Placed under
pillow or bed
Carried on
person or kept
in house
Forked
stones
Forked/split stones
Mineral
x
x
Location
Fauna
m
x
Material
Mutton blade bone
x
x
Description
Bone
f
x
Artifact
m
m
x
Flora
Found
naturally on
landscape
[385]
Function
Sympathetic
device to harm
or control
victim
Guard cream
from
bewitchment;
lift Evil Eye
curse
Identify and
inflict harm
upon enemy
Supernaturally
protect and
insure
architectural
stability
Drive away
evil spirits;
bring fair
winds, expel
witches;
purify air of
disease
causing
demons
Seal up ghost
and prevent it
from haunting
Prevent
witches from
entering
through hearth
Prevent ghost
from rising
from hanged
victim’s grave
Ward off
Devil and
bring good
luck
Ward off evil
and bring
good luck
Ward off
witches and
prevent them
from entry
Ward off
nightmares
Identify witch
and reverse
bewitchment
Cure illness
Comments
Source
Burne 1913
‘Charmed’ water
from basin used to
wash afflicted child
Burne 1913;
Waring 1978;
Roud 2003
Burne 1913
Also done by
measuring
someone’s footprint
or shadow and
including the
measurement within
the structure
Burne 1913
Waring 1978;
Spencer 2003
All windows and
doors to room
blocked so ghost
cannot escape;
called “Vanished
Rooms”
Turner 1993
Turner 1993
Turner 1993
Turner 1993
Coins with Devil
image called “touch
pieces”
Waring 1978;
Turner 1993
Bergen 1896;
Roud 2003
Bergen 1896
Used to scratch
witch and draw
blood, thereby
reversing
bewitchment
Natural holed or
forked openings in
stones/trees
Turner 1993
Burne 1913;
Hunt 1988;
Roud 2003
Code*
C/G/P
x
m
x
m
m
x
x
x
x
Silver bullet made
out of a melted
sixpence
Horse brass
Metal
Metal
Attached to
horse tack or
hung in
stables
Protect horses
from the Evil
Eye
Straw plait tied
with or interwoven
with red wool
cloth or thread
Dried pig tails and
bladders;
unbutchered pig
Composite:
flora, textile
Protect horses
from
bewitchment
Yew in paper
Clipped yew in
paper packaging
Composite:
flora, paper
Plaited into
horse’s mane
and tail; hung
in stables
Pig tail and
bladder worn
on person;
unbutchered
diseased pig
buried feet up
near property
boundary
Hidden under
carter’s bed
Marchwort
Marchwort herb
Flora
Mixed with
horses’ water
Insure horse’s
good health
On an area by
stable, place at
each corner of
compass with
a stone in the
middle
Buried under
foundation of
house; as
symbol on
weather vanes
and on hinges
Bury living
cock at the
confluence of
three streams
Nailed to barn
door
Cure sores on
horse’s back
Horse brass
Fauna
m
x
Red Thistle
Red Thistle
Flora
m
x
Cock
Cock
Fauna
m
x
Cock
Cock
Fauna
m
x
Owl
Owl skin
Fauna
Shrew
Shrew plugged in
hole in an ash tree
Fauna
Buried under
new building
doorposts or
walls
Function
Bullet
Pig
m
Location
Fauna
m
m
Material
Black dog
Straw plait
x
Description
Dog
m
m
x
Artifact
Live shrew
sealed in hole
bored into an
ash tree trunk
[386]
Guard houses
or other
buildings from
misfortune;
repel the
Devil; protect
against ghosts
and demons
Kill witches
Comments
believed to cure
wide range of
maladies especially
in children
Buried on north side
of churches where
Devil’s door is
located
Source
Whitlock
1992
Whitlock
1992
Most efficacious if
adorned with
symbols—acorns,
birds, beasts,
flowers, hearts, and
swastikas
Waring 1978;
Whitlock
1992
Whitlock
1992
Protect from
disease and
ague; protect
swine herd
from
bewitchment
and disease
Pigs believed able
to see the wind;
eating pig brains
forces eater to tell
the truth
Whitlock
1992
Insure horse’s
good health
Kept under bed for a
year before being
added to horses’
rations
Picked with left
hand, without
looking back, then
mixed with horses’
drinking water
Gather before
daybreak
Whitlock
1992
Protect house
against evil
spirits
Cock enemy of
ghosts and demons
because one
heralded Christ’s
birth
Whitlock
1992
Protection
from harm and
promote
fertility
Protect barn
and animals
from evil
spirits
Remedy for
cows whose
milk dried up
through
Celtic practice at
Imbolc (Candlemas)
Feb. 2nd
Whitlock
1992
Whitlock
1992
Whitlock
1992
Reader’s
Digest 1973;
Whitlock
1992
Whitlock
1992; Roud
2003
Code*
C/G/P
x
Artifact
Description
Material
Location
Function
bewitchment
Cure hernia,
rickets, and
other ailments
Ash tree
Split ash tree
Flora
Found
naturally on
landscape
x
Beans
Beans
Flora
Unspecified
Neutralize
bewitchment
p
Birch tree
and rags
Composite:
flora, textile
Propped
against stable
door
Clover
Birch tree tied
with red and white
rags
Clover
x
Elder tree
Elder tree
Flora
Found
naturally on
landscape
Protect horses
from
bewitchment
Bring good
luck and the
power to
detect witches
and see fairies
Associated
with witches,
so could
identify
witches
x
Groundsel
Groundsel
Flora
Found
naturally on
landscape or
growing on
thatched roofs
Associated
with witches,
so could
identify
witches
x
Hawthorn
Hawthorn
Flora
Hemp
Hemp
Flora
Twigs hung
from house
rafters or
outside
cowsheds
Grown in
fields
Protect against
witches and
lightning;
insure good
milk yield
Causes
barrenness
x
Holly
Holly
Flora
Protects
against
witches;
prevents entry
of witches;
Protection
against
lightning and
preternatural
afflictions
x
x
Hyssop
Hyssop
Flora
Thresholds
made of holly;
grown as
hedges around
yards/fields;
placed in
cowsheds;
walking sticks
made of holly
for magical
protection
Carried on
person
x
x
Ivy
Ivy
Flora
x
m
x
x
f
Flora
Grown or
hung on house
exterior
[387]
Protects
against the
Evil Eye
Protect house
and
inhabitants
from
misfortune
and evil;
brings good
luck; cures
wide range of
ailments
Comments
Must be a sapling
from a seedling and
one that has never
been cut
Ghosts and spirits
live in bean fields;
girls were not
supposed to go into
bean fields alone
Source
Whitlock
1992
Whitlock
1992
Whitlock
1992
Whitlock
1992
Never have in
house, particularly
dangerous to burn in
house; avoid after
dark or falling
asleep under one;
witches turn into
elder trees
Patches mark spot
where witches
gather or urinate;
growing on thatch
indicate witch
landed on or took
off from that roof
Maypoles and
brooms made of
hawthorn
Whitlock
1992; Roud
2003
Women not
supposed to work in
hemp fields because
of its power;
McLaren
1984;
Whitlock
1992
Waring 1978;
Whitlock
1992; Roud
2003
Whitlock
1992
Whitlock
1992; Roud
2003
Whitlock
1992
Cups made of ivy
had curative
powers; unlucky to
bring ivy plant into
house
Waring 1978;
Whitlock
1992; Roud
2003
Code*
C/G/P
Artifact
Description
Material
Location
Function
Grown around
house; burnt
in hearth and
around cattle;
placed in
cow’s tail
Hung on
house wall;
carried on
person
Repels
witches and
cattle plague;
brings good
fortune
x
x
Juniper
Juniper
Flora
x
x
Mistletoe
Mistletoe
Flora
x
x
Mugwort
Mugwort herb
Flora
Hung over
house door;
laid under
threshold;
roots placed
under pillow
x
Oak tree
Oak tree
Flora
Doors made
of oak
x
Onion and
pins
Onion stuck with
pins
Composite:
flora, metal
x
Peony
Peony
Flora
Hung in
chimney; set
in rows along
window sill
and doorways
of cowsheds
Planted in
house garden;
dried roots
hung about
neck
x
x
Rosemary
Rosemary herb
Flora
Dried and
hung in house;
burnt in
hearth; grown
near house
door
x
x
St. John’s
Wort
St. John’s Wort
herb
Flora
Hung over
house doors
f
x
Vervain
Vervain herb
Flora
Grown around
house; made
into brooms
f
x
Wormwood
Wormwood
Flora
f
x
Fireirons
Iron fire tool
Metal
Spread around
house
perimeter
Placed in a
cross over
f
x
x
[388]
Protects house
from
lightning;
charm against
witchcraft and
injury in battle
Repel witches
and devil;
protect house
from
lightning;
prevent
spouses from
quarreling;
allows
maidens to
divine
husband
Protect house
from
lightning;
cures
toothache
Protect
livestock from
evil and
disease; divine
husband
Protect house
from witches
and evil
spirits; charm
against
nightmares
Expel witches
and evil spirits
from house
Repel witches
and evil
spirits; protect
house against
tempests and
thunder;
protection
against incubi
Protect against
bewitchment
and banish
evil spirits
Repel witches
and fleas sent
by witches
Protect
newborns
Comments
Juniper smoke
drives away evil
Source
Whitlock
1992
Waring 1978;
Whitlock
1992
Thought that leaves
always turn toward
the north
Whitlock
1992
Nail driven into an
oak tree is cure for
toothache
Whitlock
1992
Reader’s
Digest 1973;
Whitlock
1992
Roots can only be
dug up by dog
Whitlock
1992
Burned with rue,
hemlock, and
blackthorn to smoke
out witches and
spirits; believed to
flourish only where
wife rules the
household
Waring 1978;
Whitlock
1992
Vervain brooms
‘swept’ house clean
of evil
Whitlock
1992
Reader’s
Digest 1973;
Whitlock
1992; Jones
1995
Whitlock
1992
Whitlock
1992
Code*
C/G/P
Artifact
Description
Material
Location
cradles
x
x
x
Iron
Any iron object
Metal
x
Bible
Bible
Paper
Placenta
Dried placenta
Human body
element
x
Coin
Corpse money
Metal
Placed under
pillow or bed
x
Holed flint
Naturally holed
stone
Mineral
x
Laurel tree
Laurel tree
Flora
x
Witch bridle
Horse tail hair
Composite:
fauna
x
Water
Water
Water
Darning needle
Metal
m
x
Darning
needle
Door latch
Hung over
house and
stable doors;
kept under
bed
Planted
around houses
and fields
Concealed
between
lathing and
outside
boarding of
house
Around
houses and
naturally
occurring in
landscape
Unspecified
Door latch
Metal
On house door
f
x
Apple tree
stick
Apple tree stick
Flora
Unspecified
f
x
Black-handled
butcher knife
Made out of
rowan, iron, silver
Composite:
flora, metal
Composite:
Metal, Flora
Unspecified
x
Butcher
knife
Cross
x
Nails
Iron nails
Metal
x
Coral
Coral
Fauna
c
x
f
x
f
x
x
f
m
x
x
f
x
Diamond
Diamond
Mineral
x
f
x
Horseshoe
Iron horseshoe
Metal
Placed on,
under, or
around cradle
Placed in, on,
or under
cradle
Kept locked in
chest; carried
on person
Hung on or
above doors
and stables;
drawn or
incised on
hearths and
doors
Pounded into
door frames
and on doors,
particular the
kitchen door
lintel
Worn on
person
Worn on
person
Plunged into
[389]
Function
from fairies
and witches
Ward against
witches and
fairies
Protect against
evil, witches,
and fairies
Bring good
luck; protect
travelers,
especially at
sea
Prevent
conception,
especially
from incubi
Comments
Whitlock
1992; Roud
2003
Whitlock
1992
Whitlock
1992
Corpse money was
coin that had been
held in dead
person’s hand for 2
or more minutes
Protect against
witches; ward
off witch-born
ailments like
cramp
Protect house
and field from
lightning
Used by
witches to
hag-ride
victims
Prevent
witches from
entering house
Paralyze
witches
Prevent
witches from
entering house
Bring good
luck in soap
making
Drive witches
out of soap
Protection
against all
forms of evil
Prevent entry
of witches,
fairies, and
evil,
especially if in
cross-shape
Protect against
bewitchment
Ward off
incubi
Unbewitch or
Source
Whitlock
1992
Whitlock
1992; Roud
2003
Boland 1976
Botkin 1989
Believed witches
could not cross
water, especially
running water
Botkin 1989;
Roud 2003
Botkin 1989
Botkin 1989
Botkin 1989
Stabbed into the
soap
Works against
witches, the Devil,
vampires,
werewolves, fairies,
etc.
Botkin 1989
A found rusty nail is
more powerful than
a new nail; same
idea applies to
horseshoes
Waring 1978;
Jones 1995
Jones 1995
Waring 1978;
Jones 1995;
Roud 2003
Jones 1995
Must be red-hot
Waring 1978;
Code*
C/G/P
m
x
x
m
f
Description
Material
Location
butter churn
or attached to
bottom of
churn
Hung in house
and barn
x
Corn dolly
Dolly made from
last sheaf of
harvested grain
Flora
x
Dove
Dove symbol
Fauna
Carved on
gravestones
and
embroidered
on textiles
“Hand of
Glory”
Preserved human
hand
Human body
element
Carried on
person
Quartz
Quartz crystal
Mineral
Unspecified
x
Rue
Bunch of fresh rue
herb
Flora
Hung in house
x
Silver nails
Silver coffin nails
Metal
On coffins
x
Wren
feathers
Primroses
Feathers bunched
and tied
Bowl of primroses
Fauna
Hung in house
Heart of sheep or
bullock studded
with pins and nails
Placed under
cradle or
child’s bed
Hung in
chimney
x
Sheep or
bullock heart
with nails
and pins
Cross
Composite:
ceramic,
flora
Composite:
fauna, metal
Cross
Unspecified
Drawn on
hearth
x
Iron bars
Iron bar
Metal
Laid across
beer barrel
Acorns
Acorn
Flora
Carried on
person;
symbol on
horsebrasses
Hung by
chimney, in
hearth, or in
rafters
Spread on
doorsteps and
around house
perimeter
Hung in barn;
x
x
f
Artifact
f
x
m
x
Adder skin
Dried snake skin
Fauna
x
f
x
Ashes
Ashes from hearth
Flora
m
x
Axe
Iron axe head with
Composite:
[390]
Function
unenchant
butter
Insure fertility
of crops by
warding off
evil
Ward off evil
Render
possessor
invisible or
stupefies all
around
Curative
powers to
overcome
bewitchment
Used to
sprinkle holy
water in
bedroom to
avert evil and
promote
fertility of
marriage bed
Seal coffin
lids and
prevent dead
from rising as
ghost or
vampire
Ward against
witches
Protect against
witches
Prevent entry
of witches into
house through
hearth
Protect house
from demons
and witches
Prevent
demons or
thunder from
souring beer
Promote
health and
longevity
Comments
when plunged into
butter
Jones 1995
Jones 1995
Ultimate symbol of
purity and
goodness; believed
to be the only form
the Devil cannot
assume
Preserved hand of a
hanged criminal
Waring 1978;
Jones 1995
Jones 1995;
Roud 2003
Jones 1995
Jones 1995
Jones 1995
Jones 1995
Reader’s
Digest 1973
Reader’s
Digest 1973
Must be drawn with
an iron poker
Sympathetically
associated with oak
as a long-lived tree
Bring good
luck and
protect house
from fire
Protect against
witches and
evil
Protect cattle
Source
Reader’s
Digest 1973
Reader’s
Digest 1973;
Waring 1978;
Roud 2003
Waring 1978
Waring 1978;
Roud 2003
Waring 1978
Cattle step over axe
Waring 1978
Code*
C/G/P
Artifact
Description
Material
metal, flora
laid across
barn door
threshold
from evil
Prevent entry
of witch or
evil spirit;
prevent fairies
from carrying
off sleepers;
ward off
nightmares
Repels
witches and
cattle plague
Protect against
danger; insure
financial
stability
Keep evil at
bay; attract
lover
x
Knife
Any sharp bladed
knife
Metal
Laid on
doorstep;
placed under
pillow; under
window sill;
at end of
bedstead
Unbutchered,
burned calf
carcass
Severed and dried
tip of calf’s tongue
Fauna
Burned alive
and buried
near barn
Carried on
person; in safe
place in house
m
x
Calf
x
m
x
Calf tongue
x
f
x
Candle
Candle
Wax
m
x
Primroses
Primroses
Flora
x
Chicory
Chicory
Flora
x
Dung
x
Poppet with
pins
f
x
m
x
x
x
f
Fauna
Fauna
Placed in
window sills
or by
bedsteads
Scatter on
stable and
barn floors
Carried on
person; hung
in house
Clay
Placed around
house
perimeter
Unspecified
Ferns
Flora
Hung in house
x
Horns/antlers
Fauna
Hung in house
x
Hotcross
buns
Dried buns with a
cross cut into their
tops
x
Mirror
Glass mirror
shards
Glass
x
Myrtle
Myrtle bush
Flora
x
Stocking and
Pins
Deadly
Nightshade
Textile stocking
stuck with pins
Deadly
Nightshade vines
Composite:
textile, metal
Flora
x
Function
wooden handle
x
x
Location
Clay poppet stuck
with pins
Hung in
houses and
ships
Broken shards
thrown into
fast running
water
Planted on
either side of
house
entrance
Hung over
bedstead
Garlands
placed about
house or
stable
[391]
Protect cattle
from
bewitchment
Bring good
luck; open
locks and
remove
obstacles
Bring good
luck; ward off
evil
Lift spell of
Evil Eye
Protect house
from thunder
and lightning
Ward off the
Devil and the
Evil Eye
Protect house
from evil and
fire; and
protect ships
from
shipwreck
Avert bad luck
Bring good
luck,
happiness, and
peacefulness
to household
Ward off
nightmares
Ward off evil
spirits
Comments
on their way to
pasture for first time
in spring; bad luck
to bring axe into
house
Placed on threshold
at birth of child to
protect from witches
or fairies
Source
Waring 1978;
Roud 2003
Waring 1978
Waring 1978
Candles lit at
liminal transition
times: marriage,
birth, death
Waring 1978
Waring 1978
Waring 1978
Waring 1978
Used similarly for
curse and
countercurse
Waring 1978
Waring 1978
Ox horn potent
against the Devil;
stag’s antler against
the Evil Eye
Waring 1978
Waring 1978;
Roud 2003
Remedy for
removing curse of
bad luck from
breaking mirror
Waring 1978
Waring 1978
Waring 1978
Waring 1978
Code*
C/G/P
Artifact
Description
Material
Location
Function
Ward off evil
spirits and
prevent fire
Protect against
witchcraft
x
Seaweed
Dried seaweed
Flora
Hung in house
x
Sow thistle
Sow thistle herb
Flora
Worn on
person or
hung in house
[392]
Comments
Source
Waring 1978
Waring 1978