Paddling Through the Past- A Landscape Archaeological Survey of a Contested Waterway

Summary

During the 17th and 18th centuries, the Lake Champlain-Richelieu River Corridor was a ‘border-zone’, highly contested between the Native and European powers of the Atlantic world.  In the summer of 2012, a team of archaeologists, educators and artists undertook a canoe-based landscape archaeological survey of the region.  The team investigated colonial period forts and Native sites with the goal of discerning whether the placement of sites within the landscape was purely strategic, or whether social and political pressures played a part in the location of settlements.  Approaching all sites from the water-level, as would have been done three hundred years ago, the team made observations, recording quantitative and qualitative data, while the artists employed historic maps and recorded data to place buildings back on the landscape.  This poster displays the results of this unique historical archaeology landscape/waterscape survey through the lens of border theory on the New France/New England boundary. 

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2013   •
• Poster Session 2

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Spatial Coverage

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 497