Power to the People: Cultural Resource Investigations along Utility Lines Giving a Voice to Past and Present Communities

Part of: Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "Power to the People: Cultural Resource Investigations along Utility Lines Giving a Voice to Past and Present Communities" at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Cultural resource surveys being conducted for various types of utility lines under Section 106 and other federal permitting have allowed archaeologists the opportunity to investigate expansive, linear spaces that may have otherwise been overlooked by traditional research and sampling methods. Most importantly, the federal regulations afford consultation with Native American and other local stakeholders in a process that helps bring the past to the present and contributes to the present conversation about crucial cultural heritage and land management issues. Papers in this session illustrate recent CRM investigations conducted in southern New England by the Public Archaeology Laboratory Inc. (PAL).

Other Keywords
Cultural Resources and Heritage Management • Archaic • Cultural Resource Management • Settlement patterns • Lithic Analysis • Historic • Paleoindian and Paleoamerican • Coastal and Island Archaeology  • Frontiers and Borderlands

Geographic Keywords
North America: Northeast and Midatlantic

Resources Inside This Collection (Viewing 1-6 of 6)

  • Documents (6)
Documents
  • Between the Shores and the Hills: Precontact Boundaries and Behavior along the Housatonic River in Southwestern Connecticut (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only John Kelly.

    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. PAL’s archaeological investigations along a natural gas pipeline right-of-way in southwestern Connecticut identified a cluster of precontact Native American sites in Newtown situated along Rodericks Brook, a tributary stream to the Housatonic River. The sites include...

  • Cultural Continuity in Southeastern New England: The Cultural Landscape of the Pokonoket Sites (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Kristen Jeremiah.

    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...

  • Life on the Edge: How Can the Archaeological Assessment of the Physical and Cultural Landscape of Today Be Applied to Native American Settlement Choices Thousands of Years Ago? (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Dianna Doucette.

    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. Several large-scale cultural resource management surveys conducted ahead of utility line construction in Massachusetts have shed new light on the history of Native American subsistence procurement practices and settlement patterning along two of the most significant...

  • The Oldest Dates from the Ocean State: New Data for Late Paleoindian Habitation in Rhode Island (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Erin Flynn.

    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. Two of the earliest radiocarbon dates in Rhode Island have been obtained from two different archaeological sites that help connect isolated Paleoindian artifacts found in the state to the larger historic narrative of Native American habitation in the Northeast. The...

  • Utility Lines Straddling State Boundaries: Cultural Resources Angle on Accumulated Knowledge and Knock-On Effects (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Slobodan Mitrovic.

    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. In the regulatory side of archaeology we call cultural resource management, some of the utility line work undertaken in the last several decades has created enormous repositories of information. The volume of excavated soil has been equally immense, in the process...

  • Where Power, Policy, and Practice Intersect: Archaeology within Block Island’s Great Salt Pond Archaeological District (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Joseph (Jay) Waller, Jr..

    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. The Block Island Wind Farm, the nation’s first offshore wind project, was the first in a series of significant renewable energy projects proposed along the southern New England coast. At only five wind turbines, the Project served as a unique pilot study that required...