“A River Runs through It”: Reinterpreting Late Woodland Settlement Patterns in the Upper Delaware Valley

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Rivers are important natural boundary markers that, in modern contexts, commonly form political boundaries and, in archaeological contexts, are commonly used to delineate culture areas. In eastern North America, river drainages are often used for both purposes, which has impacted how archaeologists interpret the archaeological record. In the history of the discipline, many archaeologists have defined where they work by both the local river drainage. But commonly these archaeologists have only excavated in one state, and thus, when working in a river drainage separating states, only on one side of the valley. In this paper, I will examine how this practice of only working on one side of a river valley has influenced archaeological interpretations and fueled intra-regional debates. Specifically, I will focus on how archaeologists working in the Upper Delaware Valley have reached different conclusions about settlement patterns during the Late Woodland by drawing their data only from sites in either Pennsylvania or New Jersey. Using feature data from sites on both the eastern and western banks of the Delaware River from sites in the Minisink National Historic Landmark, I will examine how different locations were being utilized and what this implies about settlement patterns during the Late Woodland.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)   •
• SAA 2021: General Sessions

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 32930