Algonquian Coastal Gardens and Landscape: Interpretations from Archaeobotany

Summary

This paper explores how coastal Algonquian and shell midden sites in Tidewater Virginia relate to the greater Virginia Algonquian landscape. Through archaeological plant remains (including macrobotanical, starch grains, and phytoliths), ethnographic records, and historical documents, I am exploring landscape and garden designs along the shores of the coastal plain. The project’s archaeological sites span a combined 1,600 years (early Middle Woodland period to the early Colonial era), and the archaeological and archaeobotanical remains offer a window into transformations and uniformity of landscape management and cultivation throughout this time span’s historical and temporal transitions. The evidence suggests that coastal sites fit into a diversity of roles related to subsistence and population movement and that the landscape’s ecology was entwined with community and traditions.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage