Reconsidering the Monuments of the Precontact Peoples of the Northeastern United States

Summary

In the literature on monumentality there is little to no discussion of pre-contact Native American monuments in the northeastern United States. However, this does not mean the region was completely devoid of monumental architecture before the arrival of European, but monuments are not a common topic of archaeological research in the northeast. In this paper, I will discuss two structures- shell mounds, and stone and brush heaps- and argue that they should be discussed as monuments and further studied by archaeologists trying to understand the precolonial societies of the northeastern United States. I will first discuss the documentation of shell mounds and stone and brush heaps in ethnohistoric and survey records, such as those of Cyrus Thomas. I then will argue for why these structures should be included in archaeological discussions of monumentality. While I recognize the problems that keep archaeologists from studying these structures, I argue that this neglects an important aspect of the archaeological record. Lastly, I make an argument for how archaeologists of the northeastern United States can further our study of these structures to gain a fuller picture of the region's archaeology.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 82nd Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC (2017)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 16925