Theses and Dissertations Collection

Nauvoo, Illinois is a small town, known today as a summer tourist destination because of rich religious history of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS or Mormons) and other branches of the Mormon restoration movement such as the Community of Christ church. The last several seasons (2015-2019) were spent excavating the property of Samuel Harrison Smith, brother to Joseph Smith who was the first LDS prophet of the church. The excavations revealed a small foundation to a Mormon period structure along with about 35,000 artifacts, suggesting it must have been a sort of community structure if not a community waste disposal area. This thesis presents the faunal remains and the ceramics will help to understand the foodways of Mormon people as a community and others living on the frontier during the Mormon occupation of Nauvoo. Results of the artifact analysis have revealed patterns of diasporic behavior of a religious group holding on to a life they knew while also adapting to changes their movements bring.