Movement Along the Evolutionary Scale: The Chesapeake Example

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "From Maryland’s Ancient [Seat] and Chief of Government: Papers in Honor of Henry M. Miller" , at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

Any global survey across the last 10,000 years has always found a range of more complex to less complex socio-cultural systems. Specific cultures, geographical locations, and relative levels of complexity have shifted but the differential is always present. With the rise of centralized societies that were able to establish colonies outside their home territories a replication of cultural evolution within colonization has also been noted. Distance, new environments, contact with native peoples have usually led to an initial simplification of the home culture. What has not been always recognized is that intrusive colonizing societies, unlike biological systems, have the ability to move up and down the evolutionary scale as a significant means of adaptation. Such flexibility during the first phase of the Maryland colony (1634-1690) has been powerfully demonstrated by the archaeological research of Henry M. Miller and his colleagues in the Chesapeake.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• From Maryland’s Ancient [Seat] and Chief of Government: Papers in Honor of Henry M. Miller   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2020

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Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 154