Performing Colonialism: Setting the Stage at New Amstel

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "More than Pots and Pipes: New Netherland and a World Made by Trade" , at the 2022 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

The seventeenth-century colonial experiment along the Atlantic coast of North America was staged, negotiated, and subverted in ritualizing performances of exchange, diplomacy, sociability, law, and conflict. A growing body of archaeological evidence coupled with the extensive New Netherland archives is supporting analysis of the buildings, spaces, objects, and language deployed by multiple actors at a fortified settlement on a ‘sand hook’ on the west coast of what New Netherland called the South River (now Delaware), between 1650 and 1664. This paper examines these colonial encounters behind Fort Casimir’s walls (in the court, inner sanctum, and trading spaces), on the beach and in the woods bordering the fledgling settlement, on the streets and in the basements, bedchambers, and drinking places of the community.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2022   •
• More than Pots and Pipes: New Netherland and a World Made by Trade

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology