North America - Northeast (Geographic Keyword)
201-219 (219 Records)
Northeastern North America contains numerous lithic sources that are found in a variety of geologic and geographic settings. These materials vary widely in their knapping quality, color, texture, translucency, and block/cobble size. Access to these sources can also vary greatly, from underwater to the top of mountains. Aboriginal traditional knowledge allowed people in the past to navigate and use these varied sources. I present data from ethnographic and ethnohistoric documents that provide an...
Transformations in Native and European Trade Networks Across Northern Iroquoia (2016)
Native North Americans began to engage in exchange with European explorers, merchants, and missionaries during the mid-to-late 16th century. Previous studies of these initial exchange interactions in Northern Iroquoia (including the Lower Great Lakes, Saint Lawrence Lowlands, and Northern Allegheny Plateau) have been narrow in spatial and social scale, focusing often on the initiation of trade relationships between Europeans and a specific nation (for instance, the Mohawk) and the rate at which...
Transitional Archaic – "Mu Awsami Saqiwe’k" in the Maritime Provinces, Canada. (2015)
The Transitional Archaic (4,100 -2,700 BP) is an often overlooked and underrepresented period in the Northeast; especially in the Maritime Provinces. To explain the origins of these "broadpoint using" cultures, archaeologists over the past few decades have embraced either a cultural diffusion or migration model. In this paper, I reopen the debate by examining existing collections from Maine and the Maritime Provinces, including the newly discovered Transitional Archaic component at the Boswell...
Turning a Blind Eye: Thoughts on an Archaeology of Disability (2015)
Since the 1990s, archaeologists have increasingly become interested in teasing apart the varied experiences of the past. Feminist and critical race frameworks have forced a reconsideration of the stories that have been told and whose viewpoints have been privileged in historical interpretation. One area that remains undertheorized and poorly understood across the discipline is the role impairment has played and its effect on people and society. This paper considers what an archaeology of...
Two-Spirits or Changing Gender Roles? An Investigation of Mortuary Remains in Southern New England (2017)
Funerary objects from three seventeenth century burial grounds were statistically associated with biological sex categories to discern what, if any, burial items were related to the sex of an individual. A handful of material objects proved to be almost exclusively associated with either sex; what also appeared from this analysis was the discovery of two burial assemblages that possessed a mixture of what are believed to be solely male or female burial goods. Utilizing archaeological and...
Uncommon Engagement: Integrating Archaeology into High School Education (2016)
Archaeology-centered education is typically relegated to throw-away curricula in elementary school classrooms, often not to be discussed again until post-secondary education. The Peabody Museum strives to break this pattern by actively engaging high school students and teachers in ways that connect archaeology to their everyday lives. This is done through a work study program focusing on hands-on interaction with artifacts, as well as teaching traditional subjects with archaeology. This model...
Underwater, terrestrial, and intertidal core extractions at the Walk Bridge, Norwalk, CT: An alternative to traditional Phase I survey (2017)
The CTDOT Walk Bridge Replacement Project in Norwalk, Connecticut presented several challenges, making it unsuitable for a traditional Phase I archaeological survey. The urbanized Area of Potential Effect (APE) has been heavily industrialized since the mid-19th century. The pervasive ground disturbance, landmaking, and hazardous soil contamination that characterize the APE presented obstacles to typical survey methods such as hand-excavated shovel test pits. Documentary research identified...
Undiscovered Country: Preliminary Results of Eleven New Sites Identified in the Susquetonscut Brook Valley, Eastern Connecticut, USA (2015)
PAL, Inc (the Public Archaeology Laboratory) conducted archaeological investigations in Connecticut, Massachusetts, New York and Rhode Island in preparation for upcoming modifications to an existing pipeline. The project in particular crossed large areas of Eastern, Central and Western Connecticut that have not previously been systematically surveyed. This paper will focus on those sites identified in Eastern Connecticut, specifically those found along the Susquetonscut Brook, a tributary of the...
"Unsavory the qualities of that soup": Diet and Foodways at Old New-Gate Prison and Copper Mine, East Granby, Connecticut, 1790-1819 (2015)
The Connecticut State Historic Preservation Office contracted AHS, Inc. to conduct a multi-phase archaeological survey at the National Historic Landmark Old New-Gate Prison and Copper Mine in East Granby, Connecticut, prior to planned repairs to the ca. 1790 prison guardhouse. Beginning in 1773, the Old New-Gate copper mine was used as a prison and criminals, Tories, and POWs were incarcerated there during the Revolutionary War. In 1790 Old New-Gate became the first state prison in the U.S. and...
The Use and Travels of Red Munsungun Chert: The Early Social Significance of a Northern New England Quarry (2017)
Red Munsungun chert from northern Maine has long been recognized as an important lithic raw material during the fluted point period of New England. Building upon this observation, recent lithic sourcing efforts using visual and XRF geochemical techniques, have demonstrated that this material is virtually ubiquitous in fluted point sites from the region. This same study also shows that red Munsungun chert is transported over longer distances than other raw materials commonly used at this time....
Using Archaeogeophysical and 3D Laser Surveying to Visualize an Integrated Landscape (2015)
Archaeogeophysical and 3D laser scanning at the Old Fort Johnson National Landmark site in Fort Johnson, New York provides a case study for creation of an integrated landscape. The ability to digitally image above and below ground features creates a new way of visualizing an integrated landscape. Above ground remains of historic structures often appear out of their original context. Defensive elements, outbuildings, agricultural areas, ceremonial areas, walkways, and shape of the ground surface...
Using GIS to investigate mortuary practice and identity at the historic Spring Street Presbyterian Church, Manhattan (2016)
This paper focuses on the use of a geographical information system (GIS) as a tool to identify the distribution and association of mortuary artifacts and skeletal remains within the Spring Street Presbyterian Church burial vaults (ca.1820–1846). The GIS study presented here is one component of a microhistorical approach to exploring a 19th century neighborhood in New York City’s 8th Ward during a period of rapidly changing urban, social, and economic landscapes. Viewing the city through the lens...
Villages, Horticulture, and the Narragansett: Native American Settlement and Resource Exploitation along the Southern Rhode Island Coast ca. 1300-1400 AD. (2016)
The Salt Pond archaeological site was identified during environmental review planning for a proposed residential subdivision in the 1980s. Archaeological investigations in the 1980s, 1990s, and early 2000s provided glimpses into Native American settlement and subsistence strategies within Rhode Island's coastal zone. Continued multi-disciplinary study of this culturally significant place has provided a wealth of new information on the late pre-contact environment, Native American village...
Visualizing 19th century Nipmuc Landscapes (2017)
The Nipmuc people once lived seasonally mobile lifestyles among the lakes, rivers and hills of what is now Central Massachusetts. Colonial encroachment affected this lifestyle greatly, at first in the form of policed and restricted mobility and pressure from the colonial government to own and farm land in severalty, and then later, in the late 18th and early 19th c., the Nipmuc community was largely dispossessed of their land by surrounding Euro-American farmers. As a result, the 19th century...
Waapushukamikw: Sacred Site and Lithic Quarry in Subarctic Quebec (2017)
Traditionally, Waapushukaamikw (‘house of the hare’) was a sacred site for Cree and closely related Northern Algonquian people in subarctic Quebec. Its use as a place of prayer was noted in the early 18th century CE by Jesuit missionaries, and some elements of this tradition have continued to modern times. Waapushukamikw, known by archaeologists as the Colline Blanche, was also an important lithic source in subarctic Quebec, used for some 6,000 years. Artifacts of Mistassini quartzite from this...
Wabanaki Foodways in the Protohistoric Quoddy Region: Hunter-Gatherer Continuity, Change, and Specialization in a Changing Social Seascape (2017)
In the context of rapid social or environmental change, foodways offer a way to track how identities are negotiated amid new realities. The Protohistoric period (550–350 BP) in the Northeast was an early site of sporadic and often indirect Indigenous-European contact in North America and the Wabanaki of Maine and the Maritime Provinces were early participants in the world economic system. Analyses of the Devil’s Head and Birch Cove sites in Passamaquoddy Bay indicate that Wabanaki diets were...
Warm or Cold Season of Capture? Oyster Middens from Block Island, Rhode Island (2017)
Previous research on Block Island, Rhode Island, indicates that during the Woodland Period, the island was likely occupied year-round and maritime resources accounted for a significant portion of peoples’ diets. Native American sites on the island include semi-permanent villages near the Great Salt Pond and fishing, temporary seasonal, and task specific camps away from villages. Season of occupation for these sites is important to frame our understanding of a developing maritime economy. Several...
What Goes Up Must Come Down: The Contribution of Upland Archaeology in Connecticut's Trap-Rock Ridges to Late Archaic Cultural Prehistory (2015)
My dissertation research at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York which I completed in 2009 involved survey of West Rock Ridge, one of many Triassic "trap-rock" ridges in Connecticut's Central Valley. These are very rugged Triassic landforms made entirely of basalt or diabase that rise like long linear spines above Connecticut's otherwise level and fertile Central Valley. The question of the research was whether data from this new and untested setting could contribute new...
What Makes a Home? Searching for Wetus in Archaic New England (2017)
Archaic Period dwellings have largely gone unnoticed in New England due to poor preservation and thousands of years of bioturbation. However, a concentration of post molds, large and small pits, and fire hearths uncovered at the Halls Swamp Site in southeastern Massachusetts are attributes that characterize, and have been associated with, the few Native American semi-subterranean dwellings identified in New England. Recognizing structural attributes is essential for understanding Native American...