The importance of an ordered landscape at pleasant hill shaker village: Past and present issues

Abstract

Pleasant Hill Shaker village in central Kentucky, an interpreted historic site open to the public for day visits, overnight lodging, and conferences, is a powerful and complex place to visit. As I have explored it archaeologically since the early 1990s, I have observed both a high density of architectural features and some very unusual ones. In this chapter, I try to find a context to better understand some unusual archaeological features at a washhouse at Pleasant Hill and to make sense of its overall gendered landscape. I begin with a brief historical overview of the community, followed by an analysis of the archaeological material and the new insights it provides. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the challenges in the preservation of the gendered landscape. © 2010 Springer-Verlag New York.