Transcending Borders: A New Approach to Prehistoric Contexts in North Carolina

Summary

The North Carolina Office of State Archaeology reviews information about hundreds of newly-identified archaeological sites each year and advises the State Historic Preservation Office regarding their ability to provide important information about the past. The need to synthesize accumulated data so that assessments of site significance can better reflect our potential state of knowledge is both pressing and daunting. Updating prehistoric contexts for North Carolina is a particularly challenging task due to the state’s regionally diverse ecological settings and its position at the intersection of distinct sociopolitical networks centered to the north, south, and west. In this paper, we review existing spatiotemporal systems used to organize the study of North Carolina archaeology and propose modifications that take into account the research potential of border regions. By calling explicit attention to such boundary zones through time, we invite site assessments to address the potential for studying how American Indian communities in North Carolina creatively negotiated cultural, political, and economic differences. While such an approach requires the synthesis of a considerable amount of information, the rewards in our understanding of past social dynamics will be considerable.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

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

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 22724