"Sloops of 30 Tuns are Carried Overland in This Place":  Cart Roads, Trade, and Settlement in the Northern Delmarva Peninsula, C. 1670-1800.

Summary

Since 2008 numerous previously unknown early colonial homestead sites have been discovered in association with a network of cart roads established from the 1670’s to connect the Upper Chesapeake Bay with the lower Delaware River.  The research, commissioned by the Delaware Department of Transportation as part of the U.S. Route 301 highway project, is drastically revising models of settlement in the region.  The cart roads were used for both legal commerce and an extensive illicit trade, the latter centering initially on the shipment and export of tobacco.  The roads, and the trade along them, evidently encouraged extensive and prosperous early settlement in the border zone between Maryland and the northern parts of Delaware: the latter initially part of New Netherland.  Documentary sources are often uninformative about the occupants of these sites, who appear to have taken advantage of the legal uncertainties of the border to remain elusive to colonial authorities.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• At Home and Abroad: Travel as an Archaeological Problem   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2013

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Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 710