| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 94.2

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 94.2 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

The Sangamo Frontier: History and Archaeology in the Shadow of Lincoln. By Robert Mazrim. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007. x, 352 pp. Cloth, $55.00, ISBN 978-0-226-51424-6. Paper, $20.00, ISBN 978-0-226- 51425-3.)

Most people today recognize that archaeology is not confined to exotic places and ancient history, and that archaeologists regularly investigate histories that are closer to our own time. In this book, Robert Mazrim continues the finest tradition of historical archaeology by adroitly combining documentary information with archaeological findings to investigate the "Sangamo Country," an early nineteenth-century region encircling today's Springfield, Illinois. Based on years of painstaking research in the field and archives, this book is a fascinating example of archaeological detective work. By following diverse research leads, Mazrim has constructed an intimate and accessible cultural history of life on the American frontier. Drawing on an enviable store of knowledge, Mazrim reconstructs the region's premodern topography, retraces forgotten roads, documents traditions of long-lost vernacular architecture, and illustrates the importance of the decorations put on dishes in faraway England. When woven together, those threads recreate the fabric of everyday life on the Illinois frontier.

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