Domesticity, Trade, and Warfare: An Analysis of Three Early 17th Century Indigenous Domestic Sites in Southern New England

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

One of the most iconic moments of the Pequot War was the massacre at Mystic Fort, an event which occurred on May 26, 1637 and took the lives of hundreds of Pequot men, women, and children. Immediately following the massacre, the English retreated back to their ships and were followed by returning Pequot warriors. Throughout the process of documenting this retreat route, to later be called the Battle of the English Withdrawal, Kevin McBride, in collaboration with researchers from the Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Research Center and local metal detectorists, discovered multiple seventeenth century Pequot domestic sites. These sites represent the "largest assemblage of early seventeenth century indigenous sites associated with a single Native group ever identified in southern New England" (McBride et al. 2016:20) and are dated, based upon their material signature, to between 1611 (the arrival of the Dutch) and 1637 (the conclusion of the Pequot War of 1636-1637). This paper will discuss the diagnostic artifacts recovered from each site thus far and the spatial organization of these artifacts. This research has implications for better understanding early 17th century indigenous settlement patterns and early trade interactions in southern New England.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 26193