North America: Northeast and Midatlantic (Geographic Keyword)

DOCUMENT Citation Only Justin Reamer.

Landscapes are formed by diverse human actions and interactions with their surroundings through the performance of various tasks, or what Ingold referred to as the "taskscape." Recently archaeologists have turned their attentions to a previously neglected aspect of the landscape created through quotidian tasks, the agricultural field. These studies, however, tend to focus on preserved built structures still visible in the modern landscape. Direct study of agricultural fields in Eastern North...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Joel Dukes.

This is an abstract from the "Public Lands, Public Sites: Research, Engagement, and Collaboration" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Before Henry Wadsworth Longfellow moved into the yellow house on Brattle Street in Cambridge, MA, it was already historic, having served as the home and headquarters for General George Washington in 1775–1776. In anticipation of the upcoming 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States, the NPS Northeast...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Heather Wholey.

Middle Atlantic archaeology is unique due the tremendous ecological and cultural diversity present within a relatively small, compressed region. The ecological transect model has been widely applied in regional archaeological research for the past thirty years. It is essentially a landscape approach that traverses several major physiographic provinces to encompass the range a discrete and interconnected cultural activities across a broad region. This work employs the transect model to explore...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John Bedell.

The Potomac Gorge is a canyon through which the river passes through the Falls Zone from Great Falls down to Washington, D.C. Ever since John Smith met Indians fishing below Little Falls in 1608, it has been widely assumed that the Potomac Gorge was a prime Native American fishing spot. The numerous prehistoric archaeological sites along this stretch of the river have often been interpreted as fishing stations. However, re-examination of the archaeological record in the Gorge, carried out as...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kathleen Allen.

Previous analyses at two early contact period Haudenosaunee village sites in the Cayuga region of central New York State (Parker Farm and Carman) have provided evidence for differences in the intensity of occupation and in the distribution of activities. Interpretations of site activities have included a more intensive focus on pottery production and utilization at Parker Farm and greater emphasis on hunting and shell bead production at Carman. Although differences in the reasons for the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kathleen Allen.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper focuses on the practices of potters within several communities in central New York State. This area was occupied during late prehistoric/early historic times and abandoned shortly after contact when populations were consolidating in greater numbers in neighboring regions. Occupants at two of these sites (Parker Farm and Carman) were engaged in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dane Magoon.

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. While copper and shell beads have been focal topics within the region, as items of adornment and power during later prehistory, a review of early historic accounts indicates that freshwater pearls may have been the most valued of all such commodities, during both life and death. Obtained locally, from the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Stephen Mrozowski.

This paper outlines the continuing development of the Hassanamesit Woods Project – a ten-year collaboration between the Fiske Center for Archaeological Research at the University of Massachusetts Boston and the Nipmuc Nation of Massachusetts and Connecticut. Drawing inspiration from the writings of pragmatic philosophers such as Fredrick Peirce, John Dewey, Henry James, Richard Rorty and Patrick Baert, this paper outlines the benefits of working collaboratively with indigenous groups such as the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gwendolyn Jones.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Massachusetts has long been at the center of historic archaeology in the United States, but there is a clear focus on the land and lives of upper class families. Through my research at MacLeish Field Station, an over 200-acre plot of land in Whately, Massachusetts owned by Smith College, I seek to provide a look at the daily lives history has ignored. During...

DOCUMENT Citation Only George Leader. Kimberlee Moran. Jared Beatrice. Anna Dhody.

The material culture found in association with the skeletal remains recovered from the historic First Baptist Church of Philadelphia cemetery, which was in use from 1700-1860, provides a valuable glimpse into colonial and post-colonial burial practices in one of early America’s most important cities. The interior material culture in the form of burial goods is most often minimalistic with few exceptions while the exterior material culture (i.e. coffin hardware) assists in relative dates while...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jennifer Ort. Ora Elquist.

The study of Northeast pre-contact archaeology is faced with many challenges including, but not limited to preservation and impacts on the archaeological record from centuries of development. Especially concerning is the decline in academic-based research and positions. University departments once populated with individuals dedicated to Northeastern pre-contact history have traditionally been the primary means for how practitioners of the region’s archaeology reproduce themselves, now have...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kerry Gonzalez. Joseph Blondino. Joanna Wilson-Green. Jazriel Cruz. Martin Levin.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Dovetail Cultural Resource Group conducted an emergency excavation of two Native American burials in the Southern Chesapeake Region of Virginia which were AMS dated to 620±20 and 540±20 RCYBP. The ensuing analysis of the human remains showed evidence for prehistoric dentistry in one of the individuals, a male who died between the ages of 40–45. A large...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Heather Wholey. Daria Nikitina. Katherine Dowling.

This is an abstract from the "Beyond Triage: Prioritizing Responses to Climate Change Impacts on Archaeological Resources" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Delaware Bay is the second largest estuary along the US Atlantic coast and is experiencing some of the gravest effects from climate-driven sea level rise along the East Coast. Certain areas along the bay have the lowest mean elevation in the USA and are experiencing both accelerated sea level...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Carole Nash.

This is an abstract from the "Beyond Triage: Prioritizing Responses to Climate Change Impacts on Archaeological Resources" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The upland forests of the Appalachians are among the most diverse natural communities in the temperate world, providing the setting for a study of change and flexibility as an essential feature of existence, both for precontact and historic cultures. However, upland archaeology has lagged due to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Katherine Sterner. Robert Ahlrichs.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In the Eastern United States, the most common material stone tools are made from is quartz (Lewis 2021). However, there have been only a few microwear studies published on quartz in the Americas. Sussman (1985; 1988) used a combination of incident light microscopy and SEM, but she relied on bright field illumination instead of the now more commonly used...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Buck Woodard. Danielle Moretti-Langholtz.

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. Popularly known as “Powhatan’s Mantle,” the shell-decorated and sewn animal skins are an iconic object of material culture from seventeenth-century Virginia. On display in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, England, we argue that the Mantle’s provenance and possible links to Indigenous cosmology have been...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Elizabeth Crowell.

The current paper will address the history of public archaeology and outreach in the Middle Atlantic region. It will focus on programs that engage the interested public to participate in archaeology. It will also look at the contributions of local and state jurisdictions and organizations to establish avocational archaeology certification programs.

DOCUMENT Citation Only Danielle Cathcart. Suzanne Spencer-Wood.

This is an abstract from the "Deepening Archaeology's Engagement with Black Studies" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. 71 Joy Street was home to several free Black families in the mid–late nineteenth century followed by working-class white tenants into the early twentieth century. Evidence of their daily lives and identity performances was discovered in a privy sealed after approximately 75 years of continuous use. The objects speak to the public and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Joseph A. M. Gingerich.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Understanding intra-site spatial patterning has long been a focus in archaeology. This poster focuses on patterns observed through a detailed analysis of an Early Paleoindian site. The models developed from these analyses provide testable hypothesis to compare to other mobile hunter-gatherer sites. In total, over 18,000 artifacts with exact spatial coordinates...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Evalyn Stow. Desiree Clark. Jacob Harris. Curtis Marean. Erik Otarola-Castillo.

This is an abstract from the "Novel Statistical Techniques in Archaeology II (QUANTARCH II)" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Toward the end of the Pleistocene, North America experienced a mass extinction of large mammals, including Proboscideans such as mammoths and mastodons. The role of human predation in these extinctions is widely debated across several scientific disciplines, including Conservation Biology, Paleontology, and Archaeology. A...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Adam Zimmer.

This is an abstract from the "The Future Is Fluid...and So Was the Past: Challenging the 'Normative' in Archaeological Interpretations" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Anatomical skeletal collections have often been framed as encompassing "the poorest of the poor" or the most marginalized of a given society. This framework has shaped the way that these collections have been studied for decades. A queered understanding of how these collections were...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Megan Springate.

Using a queer lens, this research looks at respectability and resistance at a resort landscape on Lake George in New York State’s Adirondack Mountains. In the late nineteenth century, this vacation resort served a mixed gender, middle-class clientele; beginning in the very early twentieth century, it has served a mixed-class, all female clientele. Respectability played a crucial role in how people navigated both of these landscapes. The flip side of respectability is resistance. Looking at...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mandy Ranslow.

The Connecticut Department of Transportation is the steward of two Connecticut State Archaeological Preserves. This paper will highlight the Preserves and give an overview of how an agency, generally in the business of building roads and bridges, has contributed to the preservation of two significant archaeological districts. The Quinebaug River Prehistoric Archaeological District in Canterbury was listed as a Preserve in 2003. The 22 acre preserve includes five National Register-eligible...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sturt Manning.

This is an abstract from the "Dating Iroquoia: Advancing Radiocarbon Chronologies in Northeastern North America" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper outlines the aims and methods of the Dating Iroquoia project by which we propose to achieve calendar chronological precision from radiocarbon for Iroquoian sites at, or better than, the level of individual settlement spans – i.e. calendar resolution at the level of approximately one to two...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jennifer Birch. Sturt Manning.

This is an abstract from the "Constructing Chronologies II: The Big Picture with Bayes and Beyond" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper summarizes work completed to date by the Dating Iroquoia project. Our aim has been to construct refined regional chronologies for select Northern Iroquoian community relocation sequences through radiocarbon dating and Bayesian chronological modeling, including novel approaches for overcoming the ca. AD...