Unbounding the Land: Reinterpreting Late Woodland Lenape Villages in the Upper Delaware Valley

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The traditional definition of Indigenous villages in the Eastern Woodlands can be considered synonymous with the archaeological site. Villages are bounded discrete entities that often curiously mirror historic or current property lines. While presumed agricultural field areas may be considered in these conceptions, villages, hamlets, farmsteads, camps, and so on are still bounded using Western, Eurocentric notions of space and do not reflect the lived experiences of the Indigenous people who formed the archaeological record we study. In this paper, I will explore how the dividing of sites based on past property lines in the Upper Delaware Valley impacts our interpretations of the archaeological record. In particular, I will focus on the Minisink National Historic Landmark (NHLM), which is comprised of nineteen separate archaeological sites. Only a portion of the Minisink NHLM is considered part of the large Late Woodland Lenape Village present there. I will argue that the entire 1,320 acres of the Minisink NHLM, and perhaps more, should be conceived of as a singular place and not distinct sites. In reconceptualizing the Minisink NHLM as a singular place, we can better approach how the Lenape actually lived in and used the area.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 37497.0