Indigenous, pre-Contact, farming, deforestation, coastal, New England, charcoal (Other Keyword)

1-1 (1 Record)

Think Small: What charcoal fragments and tiny sites teach us about indigenous land modifications and farming around Narragansett Bay, Rhode Island. (2015)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Pierre Morenon.

Are eye-witness descriptions in 1524 of extensive farming and intensive habitat modifications around Narragansett Bay by indigenous people just fantasies? Pollen evidence in now urban industrial Rhode Island remains unconvincing. To date, less than a dozen pre-Contact Rhode Island sites containing Zea maize have been found. This paper examines ongoing experiments with charcoal, particularly from RI 1898 – a tiny intact spot with a remarkably preserved stone tool manufacturing assemblage on...