The Archaeology of the North American Fur Trade

Author(s): Michael Nassaney

Year: 2013

Summary

The fur trade was a multi-faceted, global phenomenon that had a formative influence on the history and cultures of post-Contact North America. Archaeological investigations of fur trade-related sites coincide with the inception of historical archaeology. This paper begins with a brief historical overview of the fur trades and summarizes some of the interpretive frameworks that have been employed to impose spatial and temporal order on this large-scale process. It also discusses the historiography of the archaeologies of the fur trades and examines how sites and sources have been mined, and what has been learned. The archaeology of Fort St. Joseph, an eighteenth-century fur trading post in the western Great Lakes region, underscores some of these trends and the relevance of fur trade archaeology in the twenty-first century. 

Cite this Record

The Archaeology of the North American Fur Trade. Michael Nassaney. Presented at Society for Historical Archaeology, Leicester, England, U.K. 2013 ( tDAR id: 428665)

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Keywords

Spatial Coverage

min long: -129.199; min lat: 24.495 ; max long: -66.973; max lat: 49.359 ;

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 133