North America - Northeast (Geographic Keyword)
151-175 (219 Records)
A unique project in Washington, D.C. was initiated by residents when redevelopment threatened a property once owned by Yarrow Mamout. Freed in 1797, Yarrow was literate in Arabic when he was enslaved in west Africa. He purchased a Georgetown lot in 1800 and upon his death was said to be buried in his garden. While many Georgetown residents at the time were former slaves, Yarrow stands out only because his portrait was painted twice. As with most formerly enslaved property owners, he left only a...
Public Engagement and Compliance Archaeology in a Museum Setting (2015)
Public engagement in compliance archaeology is inherent in Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act as well as many state historic preservation ordinances. Engagement in publically funded projects allows those who pay for the research to share in the project results but also provide information as stakeholders of the past. Although such regulations provide for public engagement, the process and type of involvement varies by project, geographic area, and archaeological resource. This...
Python Scripting and Archaeological Applications Using ArcGis (2017)
When ArcGis software enabled Python computer scripting language as a platform whereby users can automate tasks, edit and create new programs; it opened a door for archaeologists to enhance much of the work they do mapping, and performing spatial analysis. This session looks at the utilization of Python scripting language for automating a number of tasks which archaeologists do routinely, as well as other open source software and how its applications can lend new dimensions to the way we analyze...
Reading the chisel’s chippings: Changing religious attitudes about death and eighteenth-century New England gravestones (2016)
The eighteenth century was a dynamic period of religious change, particularly in New England, as the Calvinistic influence of the Puritan settlers waned and new denominations emerged. This was also a time of rapidly changing funerary ritual, when the inscriptions on grave markers shifted from emphases on marking the remains of the decedent to commemorating them, and gravestone motifs became more diverse. This study examines the ways that religious attitudes towards death change, using a database...
Recent Archaeological Studies in National Parks of the Northeast Region (2015)
The Northeast Region of the NPS extends from Saint Croix Island on the Maine-New Brunswick border to Booker T. Washington National Monument in Virginia, and from Cape Cod National Seashore to New River Gorge in West Virginia. The national parks of this region contain the archaeological signatures of presidents, poets, war, human rights struggles, maritime history, industrial history, and thousands of years of American Indian heritage. This paper discusses recent archaeological studies in the...
Reconsidering the Monuments of the Precontact Peoples of the Northeastern United States (2017)
In the literature on monumentality there is little to no discussion of pre-contact Native American monuments in the northeastern United States. However, this does not mean the region was completely devoid of monumental architecture before the arrival of European, but monuments are not a common topic of archaeological research in the northeast. In this paper, I will discuss two structures- shell mounds, and stone and brush heaps- and argue that they should be discussed as monuments and further...
Reevaluating the Archaic/Woodland Transition in the Northeast (2016)
This paper is the result of an ongoing research project into the technological and social changes occurring in northeastern North America from the Late Archaic to the Late Woodland. This dynamic period in the region’s prehistory is traditionally marked as the boundary between mobile hunter-gatherer-fishers and ceramic-producing horticulturalists. The overall effect of these changes on regional populations is still, however, unclear. I argue that to better understand this period we must couple...
Refitting Paleoindian Workspaces and Activity Areas (2017)
Shawnee-Minisink represents one of the most spatially intact Clovis assemblages ever found. Recent work focusing on artifact spatial distributions and lithic refitting allow me to better define activity areas within the site. While previous analyses suggest that hide scraping was a common activity at the site it is unclear how such work areas were arranged compared to other features or work areas. This poster presents preliminary refitting results from a Clovis living floor, which suggest the...
Reinterpreting Winney’s Rift: Material culture, language, and ethnogenesis outside of Iroquoia (2016)
Winney’s Rift, located along Fish Creek in Saratoga County, New York, has been the focus of several systematic and publicly reported excavations, as well as countless disturbances by looters, collectors, and amateur archaeologists. This paper reviews the history of material recovery and interpretation by these various parties before reexamining the anthropological significance of the site. Reported artifacts show occupations at the site ranging from two Clovis points through to present-day...
Repatriation in Rhode Island: NAGPRA in Practice at a New England Museum (2017)
Located within a city park in Providence, Rhode Island, the Roger Williams Park Museum of Natural History has been a popular scientific and cultural institution since it was founded in the late nineteenth century. Only about 1% of the Museum’s quarter million pieces are currently on display. Included in this vast collection are approximately 25,000 archaeological and ethnographic objects from around the world, a number that was higher prior to the passage of NAGPRA in 1990. Since this pivotal...
Resilience and Continuity in Iroquoia: An Analysis of Animal Remains from the 17th-Century Seneca Iroquois White Springs Site. (2015)
In the summer of 1687, the Marquis de Denonville led a punitive expeditionary force from New France against the Seneca Iroquois in what is now western New York State. As a response to imminent invasion, the Senecas fled under the protective umbrella of the Cayugas. Upon returning to their homeland the following year, with all four settlements destroyed, the Senecas constructed two nucleated villages, one of which was located at White Springs, near present-day Geneva, New York, where they...
The Ripley Site Midden: Iroquoian Refuse Disposal in Chautauqua County, Western New York (2015)
The Ripley Site is a Late Woodland through Historic period Iroquoian site overlooking Lake Erie, in the Eastern Lake section of the Central Lowlands physiographic province in western New York. In its continuing investigations of the bluff-top site, Mercyhurst University (Erie, PA) is focusing attention on a presumed refuse midden, where the village’s inhabitants cast refuse downslope toward Young’s Run, which lies to the east of the village, proper. Here, we define the boundaries of the midden,...
Ritual Apprenticeship? A Case Study from The Eastern Finger Lakes of New York State (2016)
The Early Woodland Period In New York state is a unique time period with many changes from the preceding Late Archaic and Transitional periods. Many of the Western Finger lakes were not only used for their abundant resources, but were integral parts of the landscape used as ceremonial spaces. We know much less about the role of the Eastern Finger Lakes, but the Canadarago Lake I site can shed new light on the role they played. Excavations conducted as part of a Cultural Resource Management...
Sandy Hill: A Preliminary Reanalysis (2016)
The Sandy Hill Site (72-97) was dug on the Mashantucket Pequot Reservation over the course of several years as part of large-scale, multi-phase cultural resource management (CRM) excavations. The site, which dates to the Early Archaic, produced a dense assemblage of quartz lithic artifacts, as well as thousands of charred botanicals and calcined bone fragments. Very few bifacial tools were recovered, which has led to the argument that this site may represent a southern manifestation of the Gulf...
Seas of Change: Overfishing and Colonial Encounter in the Gulf of Maine (2015)
This paper looks at the story of the colonization of New England from the perspective of the Ocean. It was the Ocean, and its marine resources, that first brought Europeans to the Northwest Atlantic and into contact with the region’s indigenous communities in the 16th and 17th centuries. As Europeans expanded their colonial presence on land, they likewise expanded their presence on the sea, increasing commercial fishing in the Northwest Atlantic. During this early colonial period, New England...
A Sediment Story: Anthropological and Environmental Continuity and Change along the Hudson River Estuary (2016)
Wetlands have a long history of anthropogenic influence due to their proximity to watersheds, traditionally optimal localities for human settlement. Sediment stratigraphy from these ecosystems is an important source of paleoecological data, as they experience high depositional rates and, due to their anoxic environments, preserve organic material. Humans have acted upon one such watershed, the Hudson River Estuary, since the Paleo-Indian Period (10,500-8000 BCE) and have been a keystone species...
Seeing Red: Characterizing Historic Bricks at Sylvester Manor, Shelter Island, New York 1652-1735 (2015)
This project develops a basic material characterization of pre-mechanized, handmade bricks excavated at the site of Sylvester Manor on Shelter Island, New York. In the early Manor period of 1650-1690, this early Northern provisioning plantation supplied Barbadian sugar operations and pursued mercantile interests independent of state control. The technology and processing of pre-mechanized brick and other architectural ceramics have received comparatively little attention in historical...
Seeing the Forest for the Trees: human-landscape interactions explored through wood charcoal assemblages from three Seneca Iroquois settlements (1670-1750 CE). (2016)
This paper presents an assessment of archaeologically recovered wood charcoal data from comparable archaeological contexts at three Eastern Seneca sites: Ganondagan (1670-1687 CE), White Springs (1688-1715 CE), and Townley-Read (1715-1750 CE). These sites were successively occupied by the same community through periods of both residential upheaval and relative peace, as well as interaction with a number of non-Seneca cultural traditions and colonial entanglements. This project’s use of...
Settlement Organization of Paleoindian Caribou Hunters: Inferences from the Other Side of the Valley–The Potter Site, Randolph NH. (2017)
In the Northeast and especially New Hampshire, Paleoamerican small lithic sites or scatters represents one of the most common site types. Even though represented by small lithic scatters some of these sites also contain evidence of short-term habitation, food preparation and tool production activities. Twenty km to the east, opposite the Israel River Complex, is situated a site with an area of 2 ½ acres, 11 excavation units (1m x 1m or greater) and approximately 15,900 lithic artifacts, known as...
Settlement scaling in the Northeastern Woodlands (2017)
In the late pre-contact Northeastern Woodlands, processes of aggregation, migration, and geopolitical realignment led to the formation of settlements which give the impression of being too large to be called villages but possessed organizational structures associated with segmentary societies. This paper utilizes empirical data generated from Iroquoian community plans to present a study of scaling relationships in Northern Iroquois. The results are then considered in the context of the...
Simulating Clovis Technological Diffusion (2016)
Explanations for the rapid appearance of Clovis technology across the North American landscape as a population migration. Detractors from this hypothesis argue that the spread of Clovis more closely resembles the movement of a technology through a small, highly mobile population. Using a computer simulation approach this paper explores the conditions under which it would be possible for such a technological spread to occur. This simulation explores the requirements of population size,...
Site Distribution Patters at Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore (2015)
Recent work at Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore has increased survey coverage, allowing for consideration of site distribution patterns within the dunes. Specifically, we focus on Native American short-term habitation sites located within the Tolleston dune formation. Although the eastern and western units of the park are separated by only approximately 5 miles of private land with industrial development, site densities differ significantly between the two units. These differences remain even...
Site Formation and Paleoenvironmental Reconstruction at a Terminal Archaic/Woodland Period Site in Central Nova Scotia, Canada. (2015)
Despite being the area of earliest European occupation in Canada, with ample Contact period ethnohistorical evidence, very little is known about Pre-Contact occupation along the Annapolis River drainage system, in central Nova Scotia. At present there are less than 50 recorded Pre-Contact sites and virtually no private collections. This has long puzzled local archaeologists, as the Annapolis River is an obvious travel route to the interior, and a large (2130 km2) watershed rich in plant and...
Small Stemmed in the Northeast: Technology and Cultural Continuity in the Late Archaic (2015)
Small Stemmed projectile points were made and utilized across a wide area of eastern North America, and are one of the most frequent point types found in Archaic contexts in New England. Recent excavations have shed new light on associations with features, dated contexts, and other artifact types. This paper looks at radiocarbon dating of Small Stemmed features across southern New England to document the connections between this point type and others during this complex time period. These...
Smoking Areas: Change and continuity of Eastern Pequot smoking practices through spatial analysis and clay tobacco pipe distributions. (2016)
Throughout the process colonialism many cultural traditions have been negotiated through the interactions of different sociocultural groups. One such tradition that was deeply affected was smoking. Tobacco, a staple product of the Americas, was returned to Europe by colonizers; this began a tobacco smoking revolution which spread clay tobacco pipes back to North America in the 17th-century. These instruments made smoking a more accessible and leisurely activity for Native American and European...