Why This Book Matters More Than You Might Expect
I picked up In Small Things Forgotten: An Archaeology of Early American Life by Steven B. Kaplan back in 2014 when I was trying to understand how regular people lived in early colonial America. Not the governors or merchants, but the farmers, laborers, and artisans whose everyday objects have mostly rotted away. The book is dense. It took me about three weeks to get through it because Kaplan doesn't hold your hand through primary sources or archival gaps. The premise is straightforward enough. Kaplan argues that by examining the material remains of daily life — the broken pottery shards, the rusted nails, the household goods — historians can reconstruct what ordinary people actually did, ate, wore, and thought about. That is, he uses archaeology as a way to give voice to people who left almost no written records behind.
Getting Your Hands on In Small Things Forgotten An Archaeology Of Early American Life
The book is available through most major retailers and academic distributors. I bought the Cambridge University Press hardcover edition for around forty dollars. The paperback is often cheaper on Amazon or from used book sellers. If you're affiliated with a university, check your library catalog first — they usually have it. Don't bother trying to find a free PDF online; Kaplan hasn't released one and the copyright holders don't tolerate distribution. Sometimes your local library will have it on interlibrary loan. That process took about ten business days for me, which is normal for a specialist academic monograph from a smaller press.
How Kaplan Actually Makes His Argument
The methodology here isn't flashy. Kaplan works through archaeological site reports, auction inventories, probate records, and personal diaries from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, primarily in the Chesapeake and New England regions. He cross-references material culture findings with textual evidence whenever possible. The result is a reconstruction of domestic life that reads more like a detective story than a textbook. One thing that caught me off guard on my first read. Kaplan spends a significant portion of the book discussing what he calls the "democratization of taste" — the idea that by the mid-eighteenth century, everyday colonial households had access to the same goods and decorative styles previously reserved for elites. This isn't just about consumption patterns. It's about identity. A farmer in rural Virginia owning a piece of Chinese porcelain wasn't showing off wealth. He was participating in a shared material culture that crossed class lines. That insight alone reshaped how I think about colonial material life.
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Practical Takeaways for Researchers and Students
If you're reading this for academic purposes, here's what I found useful. Kaplan's approach to source criticism is rigorous. He doesn't simply quote from excavation reports. He evaluates the reliability of the original documentation, notes where site interpretations are contested, and flags periods where the archaeological record is thin. When I was writing a paper on colonial household economies, I found his treatment of probate inventories especially valuable. He points out that these records systematically overrepresent durable goods like metal tools and underrepresent perishable items like wooden utensils and textiles. That bias matters enormously if you're trying to estimate the full material wealth of a household. Another counter-intuitive point Kaplan makes is that scarcity doesn't always mean poverty. A household with fewer possessions might simply be one where goods were used until they fell apart rather than replaced. The archaeologist's challenge is distinguishing between a poor household and one that simply consumed more slowly. I ran into this exact problem when analyzing artifact counts from a site near Williamsburg. The initial analysis suggested the residents were quite poor. But when I factored in the repair marks on ceramic vessels and the visible mending on textiles, the picture shifted significantly. Those repair patterns are exactly the kind of detail Kaplan emphasizes throughout the book.
Where the Method Shows Its Limits
I want to be honest about what this book doesn't do well. Kaplan's focus on material culture means social relations, belief systems, and political life get less attention than they probably deserve. You'll learn a lot about what a colonial family owned. You'll learn comparatively little about what they feared, who they trusted, or how they organized their communities beyond the household. If you need that context, you'll have to supplement with works by scholars like Carol Berkin or Alfred Young. There's also a geographic limitation. The book leans heavily on Chesapeake and New England sites. The Lower South, the frontier, and Indigenous settlements receive only peripheral treatment. If you're researching those areas, plan to read alongside Kaplan rather than relying on him alone. The archaeological record in the Lower South is also complicated by climate — organic materials decay much faster in humid soils, which creates real gaps in what survives for investigation.
Who Should Read This and Who Should Skip It
This isn't a casual read. Kaplan writes for an academic audience and assumes familiarity with historical methodology. If you're a graduate student working on early American material culture or social history, this is essential. If you're an undergraduate encountering these topics for the first time, it might feel rough going. There are no summary chapters or helpful timelines. I'd recommend reading it alongside primary source collections like the Pennsylvania Gazette or the Essex Institute historical collections. Having the actual documents in front of you while you work through Kaplan's analysis makes the whole experience clearer. The book rewards slow reading. I went back through the chapter on household space twice before it really clicked for me. Also worth noting: Kaplan's prose is clear even when the material is complex. He avoids jargon where he can and defines technical terms when he can't. That makes it more accessible than many comparable monographs, though the subject matter still demands your full attention.
If you end up using this for research, pay special attention to the bibliography. It's one of the strongest resources in the book. The cited works cover archaeological reporting standards, consumer culture theory, and early American economic history in ways that will save you weeks of searching on your own.
