FOLK HOUSING REVISITED

As Fred Kniffen observed, vernacular buildings identify culture and record our relationships with physical and social environment. Influenced by Kniffen, twentieth-century cultural geographers used spatially correlated log homebuilding attributes as diagnostics. The present study used a qualitative meta-study approach to evaluate studies citing such correlations in the eastern temperate forests of North America. Forty-two studies involving sixty-three geographic entities and twenty-two attribute types were evaluated. The meta-study's findings were consistent with an Eastern Woodlands regional model described by Kniffen, Terry Jordan, and Wilbur Zelinsky. A majority of the spatially correlated attributes involved building materials, cited cultural and/or environmental influences to explain their findings, and cited correlations at state/province or county scales. Today, identification of building culture undoubtedly continues to offer potential guidance to sustainability efforts, and, although untapped, vernacular building continues to offer potential as a key diagnostic.