North America: Northeast and Midatlantic (Geographic Keyword)
101-125 (500 Records)
This is an abstract from the "Power to the People: Cultural Resource Investigations along Utility Lines Giving a Voice to Past and Present Communities" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Recent CRM investigations have shed new light on an area known to be an extensive Native American home site and cultural gathering place spanning back thousands of years to present day. The Pokonoket Cornfield Site in Dighton, Massachusetts, was first recorded in 1939...
Cultural Corridors in South Central Pennsylvania (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. A recent cultural resource management project located in south central Pennsylvania's Path Valley identified a series of five sites oriented around one of the waterways forming the headwaters of the Potomac River Drainage. Background research and local informants indicate that a network of small- to medium-sized pre-contact sites can be found along the...
A Cultural Landscape Study of Generals Highway (2018)
Generals Highway (MD-178), a major roadway that stretches from Annapolis to the Severn River in Anne Arundel County, was paved in the early part of the twentieth century, but portions of the original colonial roadbed still exist. Anne Arundel County’s Cultural Resources Division, in partnership with Maryland State Highway Administration, conducted a multi-year investigation to identify, locate, record, assess, study, and share with the public the range of archaeological and cultural resources...
Cultural Transmission in the Paleoindian of Eastern North America (2018)
The Paleoindian (ca. 13,000–11,000 calBP) record of eastern North America has long been characterized as exhibiting a remarkable variety of fluted-point forms. The temporal, spatial, and cultural significance of this variety remains poorly understood owing to a sparse radiocarbon record as well as to inconsistencies in nomenclature and traits used to define point forms. Building on previous studies, paradigmatic classification is used to create replicable fluted-point classes from a large...
Curating Archaeological Collections in the Private Small Liberal Arts Context (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Navigating Ethical and Legal Quandaries in Modern Archaeological Curation" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper considers archaeological curation in a private, small liberal arts college (SLAC) context. Many SLACs have archaeological collections acquired through donation from alumni or local residents, occasionally through purchase or orphaning, and increasingly through student and faculty research on and off...
Current Middle Atlantic Paleoethnobotany (2018)
A growing body of research from across the Middle Atlantic reveals patterns of native plant use that are both highly variable and unique within the North American landscape. This paper provides an overview of the current state of paleoethnobotanical research across the region, with a focus on the Chesapeake Bay where maize (corn) was a relative latecomer to the native subsistence regime. Multiple lines of evidence (including macro and micro-botanical data, direct radiocarbon assays and stable...
The Current State and Future Possibilities of Ground-Penetrating Radar in Cultural Resource Management (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Archaeological Science Outside the Ivory Tower: Perspectives from CRM" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Ground-penetrating radar (GPR) is an established prospection method in cultural resource management (CRM), yet despite its contributions its use is not universal. The goal of this presentation is to demonstrate the utility of GPR surveys before and during CRM excavations, and to underscore the need for maximizing the...
The Cutting Edge: Versatility and Preference for the Semi-Lunar Knife in the Southern New England Archaic (2018)
Semi-lunar knives, or ulus, have been considered a diagnostic tool of the Laurentian Late Archaic in the Northeast since William Ritchie’s 1940 report on the Robinson and Oberlander No. 1 sites in upstate New York. Archaeological research conducted since Ritchie’s definition of the Laurentian Aspect demonstrate semi-lunar knives were used in New England long before 5,000 B.P. and occur in both coastal and interior settings. Recently identified semi-lunar knife fragments from a coastal Laurentian...
D.C. Urban Archeology Corps: The Surveying is in the Details (2018)
In the summer of 2017, the D.C. Urban Archeology Corps (UAC), jointly managed by the National Park Service, National Capital Parks-East, and Groundwork DC, conducted a Phase I shove test pit survey at the Frederick Douglass National Historic Site, where Douglass lived between 1877 and 1895. The UAC is a summer program where urban youth learn about the field of archeology and how it applies to local communities and parks. Participants research the archeological significance of local parks,...
Death in a Time of Transition: A Spatial Analysis of Mortality in Fenner, NY from 1850-1880 (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Historical and anthropological demography has long focused on the spread of infectious disease in urban spaces across time. However, few studies have examined disease in rural contexts over time. Using census records, township maps, and archaeological data to map locations and causes of death in GIS, this project examines mortality from chronic and...
Deconstructing Coffin Production: Cuts, Kerfing, and Closures (2024)
This is an abstract from the "The Arch Street Project: Multidisciplinary Research of a Philadelphia Cemetery" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Excavation of historic burial grounds produce a large number of coffins but they are often overlooked in favor of hardware and grave goods. Yet coffins were often produced by the same craftspersons producing fine furniture and are often infused with evidence of highly skilled carpentry. Here, we present a...
Deep History, Colonial Encounters, and Revitalization in the Algonquian Chesapeake (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Deep History, Colonial Narratives, and Decolonization in the Native Chesapeake" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper explores the idea that the Powhatan paramount chief’s relocation to the town of Werowocomoco represented an act of revitalization intended to renew the power of a ceremonial place. Studies of revitalization movements often trace a historical process of social stress, cultural distortion, and...
Detection of Yellow Fever Virus in Human Remains Using Mass Spectrometry-Based Protein Analysis of Dental Pulp (2024)
This is an abstract from the "The Arch Street Project: Multidisciplinary Research of a Philadelphia Cemetery" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The goal of this project was to determine if the yellow fever virus (YFV) could be detected in historic remains by analyzing the proteins found in the dental pulp of the remains. Typical YF diagnostic techniques rely on blood or liver tissue so when these tissues are not recoverable, YF detection is currently...
The Devil’s Head Site in Maine: The Organization of the Protohistoric Wabanaki World (2018)
Archaeological studies of the Protohistoric period in Maine and the Maritimes have emphasized cosmology implicitly through their focus on copper kettle burials. Archaeologically, copper kettle burials may be the only truly diagnostic archaeological manifestation of the Protohistoric period in this region. The Wabanaki ethnographic record reveals that seemingly mundane activities—the organization of space, the disposal of animal remains, for instance—were also central to Wabanaki relational...
Digging Out: Finding Creative Solutions to Four Decades of CRM Collections (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Navigating Ethical and Legal Quandaries in Modern Archaeological Curation" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. When Wetland Studies and Solutions Inc. purchased Thunderbird Archaeology in 2004, they found themselves responsible for some 800 boxes of artifacts from more than four decades of CRM projects. The story isn’t an uncommon one . . . boxes of CRM projects sitting in basements, sheds, storage units, or warehouses in...
Digital Engagement Strategies Using Location-Based Gaming in Community-Based Participatory Archaeology (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Gamification offers participatory experiences for diverse communities to engage with archaeological research. In informal and formal learning situations, undergraduate students used the location-based mobile game platform ARIS Field Day to create narratives that play through the process of excavation, addressing questions of the ethics of collecting, and...
Discoveries on Campus: Archaeology in Harvard Yard (2018)
While many may immediately associate Stephen Williams with his work and interest in the prehistory of the Lower Mississippi Valley, the historic period also caught his attention. His interests ranged from historic aboriginal groups of North America to a variety of topics and periods within historical archaeology. Williams had a notable enthusiasm and concern for the archaeology of the immediate Cambridge area and was often a first point of contact when it came to local discoveries. He took...
Dismemberment as Postmortem Disablement: The Disparate Mortuary Sites of the Collected (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Storeroom Taphonomies: Site Formation in the Archaeological Archive" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Acknowledgment of the educational value of pathological conditions in human cadavers prompted scholars of anatomy and anthropology to partition bodily tissues of the dissected among their colleagues. This scientific network of shared body parts, for the purpose of specialized study, segregated the divisible body into...
Dispatches from an Archaeological "Backwater": Microwear as a Proxy Measure of Paleoindian Landscape Use in the Far Northeast (2024)
This is an abstract from the "American Foragers: Human-Environmental Interactions across the Continents" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeologists have been examining and publishing on the fluted point period for over a century. However, the northeastern United States has received comparably less attention from the professional discipline, with one colleague describing prehistoric archaeology in New England as an archaeological backwater. This...
Diversity and Use of Ducks and Loons at the Hornblower II Site, MA (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Recent evaluation of avifauna from the Hornblower II site on Martha’s Vineyard has revealed a rich diversity of birds, including Red-breasted loon (Gavia stellata), Common loon (G. immer), and various dabbling and diving ducks (Anatidae). The majority of the identified assemblage is represented by Anseriformes (70.6%) and Gaviiformes (17.6%), with very few...
Domestic Animal Use at St. Inigoes Jesuit Plantation (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Plantations in the Southern United States functioned on a system of power over enslaved Africans that is reflected in the material culture of daily life. Zooarchaeological analysis of the fauna from St. Inigoes plantation in St. Mary’s County Maryland provides insight into what everybody on the plantation was eating, and the work enslaved peoples performed...
Domestic Pottery: Styles, Variation and Social Organization at the Droulers Site (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Droulers is a prehistoric Saint-Lawrence Iroquois village occupied during the 15th century in Southern Quebec. The site has been excavated by Université de Montréal’s field school since 2010 and the goal of the excavation, under the banner of social archaeology, was to understand the social organization of the village. In continuity with the excavation, my MA...
Domesticity, Trade, and Warfare: An Analysis of Three Early 17th Century Indigenous Domestic Sites in Southern New England (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. One of the most iconic moments of the Pequot War was the massacre at Mystic Fort, an event which occurred on May 26, 1637 and took the lives of hundreds of Pequot men, women, and children. Immediately following the massacre, the English retreated back to their ships and were followed by returning Pequot warriors. Throughout the process of documenting this...
Early Seventeenth Century French Feasting in Acadia and its Relation to Pre-Contact Mi’kmaq Practices (2018)
The early French settlers at the Port Royal Habitation relied heavily on the local Mi’kmaq to survive the cold Nova Scotia winters. In the winter of 1606-07 Samuel de Champlain initiated a social club, commonly referred to as "The Order of Good Cheer", primarily to battle against scurvy, but also to create camaraderie among the colonists and to strengthen their relationship with the local Mi’kmaq. The French developed elaborate rituals for the feasts, partly based on those of their homeland....
Early to Late Archaic Cultural Traditions in Southeast Massachusetts (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Changes in the Land: Archaeological Data from the Northeast" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Gulf of Maine Archaic Tradition is poorly represented in Southeastern Massachusetts. Following recent excavations in Somerset, hundreds, if not thousands of pieces of quartz chipping debris, cores, and expedient edge tools were recovered from a relatively small area of distribution. This large amount of non-diagnostic...