From Seafaring to Settling Downeast: Town Formation and the Eastern Frontier Landscape

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.

The primary goal of settlement ecology is to understand how and why people decide to settle a particular landscape. Although often applied to farming communities, this approach can be applied to any society because all settlement patterns are produced through human decision-making. Adopting a settlement ecology lens, I examine how Euroamericans transformed the Eastern frontier as they colonized, divided, and enclosed the Downeast Maine landscape to form towns from the late 18th century onward. Since the frontier environment is typically portrayed as intractable, I juxtapose 18th- and 19th-century maps with Google Earth and Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) imagery to identify and analyze how patterns of settlement and enclosure became embedded in the landscape. While such patterns have evolved over time, results highlight the contingency of the contemporary landscape as evidence of early settlement patterns endures, preserved by features like stone walls, roads, vegetation, and modern property boundaries.

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