Rafts on the East Branch: An Archaeology of Industry Along the Delaware River

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Paper / Report Submission (General Sessions)" , at the 2022 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

This paper presents an exploration of the industrial and manufacturing history of the East Branch of the Delaware River. Industries that were common in the eighteenth, nineteenth, and early twentieth centuries along the Delaware include lumber camps, tanneries, mills, furniture factories, and other forest based and agricultural installations. These sites, and many of the communities that were built by and supported them, were submerged to facilitate the construction of the New York City reservoir system. At present, many of these sites are abandoned and unstudied, or remain under water. This paper presents site frequency and locations as derived from primary documents and limited previous scholarship, and evaluates the archaeological signature of each site type. Finally, this paper discusses the history of the economic and social landscape of the East Branch of the Delaware, and evaluates cultural effects resulting from the creation of the reservoir system.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SHA 2022 General Sessions   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2022

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology