Reconsidering the Colonial Encounter in Plymouth Colony, Massachusetts

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Perspectives from the Study of Early Colonial Encounter in North America: Is it time for a “revolution” in the study of colonialism?" , at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

One of the interesting disjunctures in the narrative of the colonial encounter in the 17th-century Plymouth Colony is the difference between the historical and archaeological accounts. In historical accounts and out popular culture versions of this history, Native people feature prominently, and engage in specific cultural exchanges with the colonists. However, much of the 20th-century archaeological research on the Plymouth Colony focused on how English material culture, housing designs, and a “medieval mindset” were transplanted to the New World, removing Native people from the interpretive landscape. Through several years of excavation of part of the original 1620-1650 Plymouth settlement we have been working to “revolutionize” this narrative, investigating the ways the colonial context and Native people shaped the colony. This paper presents some results of our study with an emphasis on the exchange of materials, cultural knowledge, and the shaping of the colonial landscape.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2020   •
• Perspectives from the Study of Early Colonial Encounter in North America: Is it time for a “revolution” in the study of colonialism?

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Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 474