Privies, Pigs, Rubbish, and Quacks: The Archaeology of Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century Public Health in Knoxville, Tennessee

Progressive Era (circa 1890-1920) public health reformers attempted to regulate urban sanitation by supporting reactionary public health policies and laws. Archaeologists and historians have often assumed that legislation has immediate impact on behavior when the intended legislative outcome is beneficial. Even so, in Knoxville, Tennessee, the ethnohistorical and archaeological evidence does not strongly associate implementations of sanitation legislation and changes in behavior. This suggests complex social processes underlying the reform movement and people's reaction to it in the urban sphere.

Using sanitation ordinances drawn from Knoxville City Council minutes and sanitarian literature, findings indicate that sanitation reform targeted specific social groups in the urban environment. Data recovered from four Knoxville sites suggest resistance to sanitation and healthcare reforms, but that this resistance also occurred across socioeconomic classes. Understanding resistance and how it relates to the axes of race, class, and gender improves our understanding of Southern culture and the social impacts of early public health reforms, although these factors cannot wholly explain resistance in the urban sphere. Privatism and urban inertia are important interacting factors operating alongside race, class, and gender in explaining the social dynamics of early urban public health reform.