Seeing the Forest for the Trees: human-landscape interactions explored through wood charcoal assemblages from three Seneca Iroquois settlements (1670-1750 CE).

Summary

This paper presents an assessment of archaeologically recovered wood charcoal data from comparable archaeological contexts at three Eastern Seneca sites: Ganondagan (1670-1687 CE), White Springs (1688-1715 CE), and Townley-Read (1715-1750 CE). These sites were successively occupied by the same community through periods of both residential upheaval and relative peace, as well as interaction with a number of non-Seneca cultural traditions and colonial entanglements. This project’s use of archaeological materials to understand human-landscape interactions at a site-level and site sequence scale contributes to modeling dynamism in these systems, particularly in an area dominated by indigenous processes, at the ‘periphery’ of colonial control. Inter- and intra-site differences in wood species occurrence in domestic features are interpreted within a framework that places Seneca landscape practices in the context of ongoing modification of local environments, culturally specific landscape practices, and political and economic variability across the occupation of these three sites.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage