Abstract PICK up any issue of the Dublin Seminar for New England Folklife proceedings and you will find early Americans hard at work. The Seminar's commitment to everyday life and its grounding in the region's material culture have long made it a beacon for scholars interested in early American labor history, especially the daily experiences of work in early America. This orientation is visible from its earliest issues, Puritan Gravestone Art (1977), which featured carvers and stonecutters, and New England Historical Archeology (1980), which highlighted many forms of labor, from carpentry to food production and glass work, that left their mark in and on New England's soil.1 The seminar's breadth over the years has invited insights into a wide range of labors, from crafts and decorative arts to spiritual work and entertainment, and a diverse set of workplaces, from “The Farm” to “House and Home,” the “Streets and Commons” and “New England at Sea.”2 In recent years, a 2022 Seminar dedicated to “Tools and Toolmaking in New England” included scholarship on Indigenous, African, and European descended technologies and traditions, signaling an ongoing and expansive interest in these core themes and questions that continue to engage seminar participants and readers.3
Caylin Carbonell (Mon,) studied this question.