8 Hidden In(site): Meritocratic Stewardship and the Materiality of Volunteering

Abstract

The Dr. James Still Historic Office and Homestead—home to a nineteenth century, self-educated, African American doctor, born to formerly captive parents, who would go on to become the third largest landowner in a predominantly White rural community in Southern New Jersey—has been the focus of the Dr. James Still Community Archaeology Project (DJSCAP) since 2013. This paper, however, shifts the target of archaeological exploration and asks what we can glean from the actors in and around the site. Using data collected by DJSCAP, this chapter critically examines how a community comes to understand and commemorate their efforts to protect and preserve Dr. Still's meritocratic narrative via a material engagement with the site. Reflecting on the simultaneous navigation of the past, present, and future via objects, the chapter explores how “things” such as donations and donor plaques do the social work of volunteering, informing perceptions of effort, talent, memory, and entitlement around the site. Using materiality theory and an archaeological lens attuned to nowness, this chapter identifies key instances in which the articulation of bodies, ideas, objects, and labor generate fascinating insights into the theorization of meritocracy as a moral economy that underpins volunteering. This contemporary archaeological approach uncovers the materiality of austerity, informing how communities navigate systemic failures in heritage site management through individual and collective efforts that I call meritocratic stewardship.