Wolf Pits in 17th Century Delaware

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.

During the early colonial period Governmental authorities recognized the physical dynamics of free-ranging forms of various livestock set against the backdrop of a wolf-laden wilderness, was or could be a costly nuisance and thus ordered wolves to be hunted and trapped in order to mitigate the problem. In May of 1676, Sheriff, Captain Edmund Cantwell of Appoquinimink (present day Odessa) stated that “wolves being so over frequent and doing such daily damage to sheep, cattle and hogs that any person who brings in a wolf skin or head to the local magistrate be paid a bounty of forty (Dutch) gilders from a public levy”. This order was ineffectual, so on January 5, 1677, it was ordered that the inhabitants erect 54 “woolf-pitts” along the streams before May 1st, under penalty of seventy-five gilders. One such pit was excavated in the summer of 2012 in Delaware.

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