Taskscapes and Social Sustainability: Archaeobotanical and Ethnohistorical Interpretations from the Chesapeake

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Deep History, Colonial Narratives, and Decolonization in the Native Chesapeake" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The “taskscape,” or a landscape comprised of actions and labor (Ingold 1993, 2000), provides a means for assessing the change and continuity of a place over time. Through the study of plant remains (including macrobotanical remains, phytolith residues, and starch grains), taskscapes from the Late Archaic through the early colonial era are evaluated in Tidewater Virginia and the Chesapeake. The archaeobotanical data are informed by both the broader archaeological record as well as regional ethnohistories to interpret how these taskscapes might connect with the activities of men, women, and children. This paper seeks to bridge the divide between the precolonial and postcolonial pasts through the lens of a sustainable society (environment, economics, and social [Brundtland Report 1987; SD2015]). In addition to environmental and economic sustainability, social sustainability likely played an important role in the formation of persistent places, or places returned to over many years of time (Schlanger 1992), in Tidewater Virginia. By considering human relationships within taskscapes, this paper explores social sustainability through activities and tasks associated with the archaeological record.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)   •
• Deep History, Colonial Narratives, and Decolonization in the Native Chesapeake

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 33385