Tombstones in Scotland and Indiana

Abstract

Students of traditional material culture in the United States have devoted a considerable amount of their research to seeking European origins for American material. This is especially true for Pennsylvania German material culture and its German counterparts and other German groups in the United States—in Missouri and Texas, for exampl—ehave not been neglected in this connexion.

It is generally acknowledged by American folklife researchers that Great Britain is the primary source for the traditional material culture of the eastern United States, yet this relationship has been only partially documented. Some effort by Americans has been devoted to seeking British sources for American folk or vernacular architecture,² but efforts to locate British origins for other aspects of material culture have been desultory and uneven.