Reinterpreting New England’s Past For the Future

This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "Reinterpreting New England’s Past For the Future," at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

Massachusetts and Rhode Island histories have been documented by archaeologists, historians, and communities within which sites and commemorative places are located. This session explores the well-known site of the Myles Standish House in Duxbury; largely forgotten places including two cemeteries in Boston and Providence’s Gaspee Street neighborhood; and formerly hidden sites like the Martha’s Vineyard brickyards and rum distilleries in Bristol’s waterfront district. Each site paper examines how these places were documented over time and why they were remembered or forgotten. By re-examining the archaeological, written, and oral history of each site with a twenty-first century perspective, new and sometimes very different stories are being carried into the future. The session concludes with ways in which innovative digital technology can be used to interpret these types of archaeological sites and provide interactive visitor experiences, with examples from the Martha’s Vineyard brickyard and a shipwreck discovered in South Boston’s seaport district.