The Agency of Flowing Water in Human Mobility and Interaction

Summary

Water is one of the most powerful agents of change on the planet. Flowing water can build and destroy landscapes rapidly in dramatic fashion as with flash flooding or gradually through incremental natural processes, shaping the terrain through sedimentation, erosion, and seasonal fluctuations in water flow. Within human societies, these waterways may be perceived as a source of danger, but also provide subsistence and non-subsistence resources, and serve as landscape features that alter how people move through the physical world. Though scholars widely recognize the extent to which humans have incorporated flowing water into cultural processes such as for trade, this paper focuses on the idea that waterways introduce possibilities and limitations to which communities respond. I consider several case studies in North America, with a focus on the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic regions, to show that flowing water is not a passive element of the human environment, but an active participant in the creation of physical and social worlds. Flowing water alters human mobility and resultant interaction spheres, particularly during period of significant social and economic transformation such as occurred during the early reorganization associated with early colonial presence along the Atlantic coast of North America.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 83rd Annual Meeting, Washington, DC (2018)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 22360