Seeing Forests Through the Seas: Ship Timbers as Landscape Artifacts in the Middle Atlantic

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "New Avenues in the Study of Plant Remains from Historical Sites" , at the 2022 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

The colonization of North American landscapes and seascapes was closely tied, connected by imperatives to expand, urbanize, and increase economic production. In North America’s Middle Atlantic, landscape colonization and concomitant urbanization led to changes in both the region’s terrain and its economic activities. Shipbuilding and shipbreaking, activities vital to the coastal region, developed their own significance and communities of practice in the area following the opening of colonial land for commercial agriculture. Built from trees harvested from forests, ships were as closely tied to the changing terrain as they were the waters of the region. These connections are well-understood for the impact forest composition has on shipbuilding, but have been less consistently situated as a part of wider ecological changes. This paper examines how archaeological inquiry into ship timbers as landscape artifacts can provide insight into the changing terrestrial and maritime scapes of the 18th and 19th-century Middle Atlantic.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• New Avenues in the Study of Plant Remains from Historical Sites   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2022

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology