Culture change along the tobacco coast: 1670-1720

This study tests the proposition that Anglo-American culture in the Chesapeake Bay region, Maryland and Virginia, changed significantly during the period 1670 to 1720. This is accomplished by measuring temporal variation in selected categories of material culture: architecture, food remains, ceramics, and domestic furnishings and utensils taken to represent living standards. Directional changes in patterns of variation for each material category together are inferred as representing a shift in cultural norms. These changes are causally related to a broader cultural shift occurring throughout Anglo-America and northern Europe. The specific trajectory of change in the Chesapeake is embedded in local conditions of social development reflecting adaptation to the alien environment and a resulting cultural impoverishment. Manifestation of a consumer revolution in the 18th century is attributed to the transformation of the Chesapeake from a society that was relatively unstructured to one that was stratified and led by a creole gentry elite.