North America: Northeast and Midatlantic (Geographic Keyword)
126-150 (500 Records)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Stone walls serve as indicators of both contemporary and historic property boundaries as well as significant features such as farms, roadways, and internal property routes. The northeastern United States, particularly New England, boasts an estimated 193,121 km (120,000 mi) of stone walls. In Cultural Resource Management (CRM), it is not uncommon for...
Elemental Analysis of Archaeological Hair Compared to Soil Composition: A Case Study of a Child and Adult Female (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. This case study focused on two individuals, a child (G-009) and an adult female (G-033), recovered with intact hair masses from the former First Baptist Church of Philadelphia (FBCP) cemetery. Hair samples from both individuals were studied visually using light microscopy and chemically using inductively...
Embedding Librarians in Archaeological Field Schools (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. For the past two summers, the Anthropology Librarian and the Digital Imaging Coordinator from the University of New Brunswick Libraries have embedded as experts and co-researchers in field schools led by archaeologists in the Department of Anthropology at UNB. The goals of this project are for those library specialists: (1) to gain deeper understanding of...
English Colonists and Complex Foodways in an early northern ‘New England’ frontier (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Great Bay Archaeological Survey (GBAS) explores one of the most unique estuaries along the Atlantic Ocean and a place that formed an important early frontier in 17th century colonial ‘New England’. GBAS’s research is revealing unexpected dynamism in the lived experiences of early colonialism for both settler colonists and regional Indigenous...
Establishing Longitudinal Regional Origins in East Coast North America Using a Modern Strontium and Sulfur Isoscape in Deer Bones from Virginia (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Establishing geographical provenance and life histories of North American colonial individuals is critical for understanding early population movements related to urbanization, immigration, and the changing demographics of an emerging nation. In East Coast North American archaeological studies, oxygen stable isotopes are the primary proxy for regional...
Ethnography, Routine Archaeologies, and Social Justice Research (2018)
As the organizers of this session argue, understanding the ethics of engagement in archaeology is maturing rapidly and we are reaching the point where our community engagements are no longer self-evident. Rather we increasing understand that they need interrogation and critique, and this needs to be an embedded part of our routines. This paper will argue that knowing the nature of our engagements requires a deep ethnographic reading of the contexts of our research and the multiple roles it plays...
Evaluating the Timing and Duration of Dwelling and Non-dwelling Elements in the Reversing Falls Site, a Middle Maritime Woodland Shell Midden in the Far Northeast (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Hearth and Home in the Indigenous Northeast" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In this paper we consider the temporal relationships between dwellings and shell-bearing deposits at the Reversing Falls site in the Maine-Maritimes region of the far Northeast. Shell middens are multitemporal, comprised of the archaeological signatures of historical processes that took place over vastly different durations. They are also...
"An Ever Widening Circle": The Lighthouse Site State Archaeological Preserve (2018)
When John Elwell died in the late nineteenth century, newspapers characterized him as the "last of the Lighthouse tribe." When Sol Webster died in 1900, newspapers said he was the "last of the Lighthouse tribe." Before Mary Matilda Elwell died in 1928, she called herself the "last of the Lighthouse tribe." In fact, however, hundreds of descendants of the founding couple, the Narragansett Indian James Chaugham and his white wife Molly Barber, survive and, as historian Lewis Mills phrased it, have...
An Evidence-based Reinterpretation of the Brafferton Indian School (2018)
The 1693 Charter establishing the College of William & Mary in Virginia, includes a mandate to educate the "Western Indians." After securing funding for the Indian school from the estate of the scientist Robert Boyle, a magnificent Georgian-style structure was built to house the "Indian boys." The received history about this endeavor maintains that the Indian school at William & Mary was unsuccessful. Documentary evidence from both sides of the Atlantic, as well as archaeological evidence,...
The Evolution of the Arch Street Project (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. In late 2016, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported that human remains were uncovered at a local construction site, 218 Arch Street, formerly the First Baptist Church of Philadelphia (FBCP) cemetery. Over the course of 2017 three phases of excavation ranging from extreme salvage to controlled CRM excavation took...
Evolving Narratives of Mother Washington (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Ideal gender roles feature prominently in biographies written about George Washington. Once his father passed away, a young Washington was raised by his single mother, Mary Ball Washington. The narratives of Washington’s life, and his mother’s influence upon him, are dynamic, reflecting prevailing gender ideologies of the times in which they were written....
The Excavations at Frost Town: Public Archaeology at a 19th Century Logging Settlement (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Cumming Nature Center of Naples, New York contains a significant portion of the remains of a 19th century logging settlement, once known as Frost Town. The site, home to many Euro-American settlers throughout the 19th century, saw the rapid rise of a logging-based economy associated with the growing industrialization of Western New York, following the...
Excavations at the Springfield Furnace, Mercer Co., PA, and the Euro-British Charcoal Iron Technological Tradition in America (2018)
An archaeological field investigation, inaugurated by John R. White of Youngstown State University in 2007, ultimately revealed the remains of an antebellum, single tuyere, charcoal iron blast furnace located in Mercer County, Pennsylvania. The facility, originally called the Seth and Hill Furnace, is presently known as the Springfield Furnace by locals. The configuration, constructed generally of heavy ashlar and rubble detritus, is listed historically as utilizing heated air, or 'hot blast'...
An Experimental and Ethnographic Approach to the Analysis of Fire-Cracked Rock at Three Monongahela Sites in Southwestern PA: The Case for a Middle Monongahela Stone Boiling Technology (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Fire-Cracked Rock: Research in Cooking and Noncooking Contexts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Despite being a ubiquitous artifact class, fire-cracked rock (FCR) has been largely overlooked in traditional archaeological studies. Due in part to its shear abundance and cumbersome nature, FCR is often more cursed for its space consumption than embraced for its interpretive potential. As a result, the archaeological...
An Experimental Approach to Understanding Paleoindian Bipolar Lithic Artifacts (2018)
Bipolar lithic artifacts can be challenging for researchers to understand in the archaeological record. Although these artifacts were first noted in North American literature half a century ago, archaeologists continue to debate over terminology and considerations of morphological and functional distinctions of bipolar objects. This experimental approach aims to shed light on these disparities whilst re-examining morphological and functional characteristics attributed to manufacture and...
An Exploration of Late-Terminal Archaic Domestic Architecture and Settlement Patterns in Southern Connecticut (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeological investigations have resulted in evidence that suggests a shift in settlement patterns occurred in Connecticut during the Late and Terminal Archaic periods from interior wetlands to large river drainages. While sites dating to the Late Archaic period are common throughout the New England region, the archaeological record concerning...
Exploring Pre-Contact Pithouse Features and Artifact Assemblage at the Amoskeag West Bank Site (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper presents the results of analysis conducted using lithic and ceramic artifacts from the Amoskeag West Bank site (27-HB-079) in Manchester New Hampshire, focusing on the evidence for a pithouse feature uncommon in the regional archaeological record. A targeted data recovery by IAC in 2022 yielded an assemblage of 961 Pre-Contact Native American...
A Faunal Analysis of the Kirshner Site (36WM213) (2018)
The Kirshner Site (36WM213) is a multi-component site in South Huntington township, Westmoreland county, Pennsylvania that contains two Middle Monongahela villages. Relatively little is known about Monongahela use of animals. Fortunately, good faunal preservation has made zooarchaeological analyses of materials from this site possible. Identifying and analyzing these faunal remains with respect to taxa and skeletal elements, as well as human and animal modifications, provides important new...
Fire and Vegetation Dynamics: Blazing the Trail in Pre-contact Southern New England (2018)
The concept that Native Americans were using fire for wide spread vegetation control and subsistence procurement during the pre-contact period in Southern New England has long been excepted as common practice, leading to changes in the landscape and then settlement patterns. However, save for the accounts of early explorers and colonists, whose goal was to solicit the "new land" as a familiar landscape and not an unknown wilderness, there is little supporting scientific evidence. This paper...
The First Baptist Church of Philadelphia’s Burial Ground: "moved" in 1860; "excavated" in 2017. (2018)
In November of 2016, the Philadelphia Inquirer published an article about bones found at a construction site at 218 Arch Street. As a private project, no city office would take charge of the human remains despite the fact that construction equipment was exposing and damaging them. The Mutter Institute, as a collaborative research organization associated with the study of historic human remains, approached the property developer with an interest to learn more about the bones found at the site....
Fishing at the Beach: The Great Neck Site and an Examination of Subsistence Strategies on the Chesapeake Bay (2018)
Excavations conducted in 2015-2016 at the Great Neck site (44VB7) in Virginia Beach yielded evidence of a Middle Woodland occupation dating to AD 400. Located on Wolfsnare Creek approximately one mile from the Chesapeake Bay, the site contained a postmold pattern from a small structure, many small and shallow basin-shaped features, and several large pit features. Two of the larger pit features exhibited excellent bone preservation and were densely filled with a mix of aquatic and terrestrial...
Fluted Point Variation in Glaciated Northeastern North America (2018)
Recent syntheses for the adjacent glaciated regions of the eastern Great Lakes (EGL) and New England-Maritimes (NEM) document similar fluted point sequences associated with early and middle Paleoindian populations. Current consensus holds that these fluted biface sequences fall within a time range of 13,000-11,600 calendar years before present, and probably derive from Clovis populations (or their immediate descendants) that colonized the glaciated landscapes of the Northeast from west and...
Food as Freedom: Examining Afro-Indigenous Foodways at the Late-Eighteenth to Early-Nineteenth Century Seneca Boston-Florence Higginbotham House, Nantucket, Massachusetts (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In the face of white settler-colonialism and objection to the forces of anti-Black racism in the eighteenth century, Nantucket’s New Guinea community formed as a racially diverse group of Africans, African Americans, Native Americans, and Pacific Islanders. Central to this community was formerly enslaved Seneca Boston and his Afro-Indigenous family....
Food for Thought, Smoke for Diplomacy (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Food surrounds politics, economics, ideology, and cosmology. Food experiences go beyond the dishes. The scale of consumption varies from small daily meals to large ritual feasts. Intoxicants are used in conjunction with eating events. These substances are often paired with foods to enhance the eating experience and are used symbolically during special...
Food Production in the Borderlands: Paleoethnobotanical Investigations of the Western Basin Tradition in Ontario (2018)
This paper presents the results of a paleoethnobotanical analysis of the early Late Woodland (A.D. 1000–1300) Western Basin Tradition (WBT) sites informally known as the Arkona Cluster. Relatively little is known about WBT human-plant interaction as compared to their maize-bean-squash cultivating Iroquoian neighbors. Culture-historical models of the WBT are proving to be outdated, overemphasizing the supposed difference between WBT ‘hunter-gatherer’ subsistence strategies and Iroquoian farming....