Local and Global Ecologies: Macrobotanical Evidence from Bartram’s Garden

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Paper / Report Submission (General Sessions)", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

The effects of the pursuit of Natural History were manifold. Occurring simultaneously with imperial expansion and settler colonialism, the act of collecting and transporting natural specimens rewrote political, intellectual, and ecological landscapes. This paper focuses on the impacts of plant collecting on natural environments, by looking at how botanical gardens created unique ecosystems within their boundaries, and disrupted natural landscapes beyond them.

To do so I synthesize macrobotanical data and historical documents from Bartram’s Garden, a botanical garden in operation in Philadelphia, PA from 1728-1850. I explore evidence for changes of native and introduced flora by combining evidence from 18th and 19th century desiccated plant remains found in the historic house at the garden and the rich textual archives on the Bartram family. Finally, I suggest ways that archaeology might offer a new lens into the concurrent transformations of both global and local ecosystems.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SHA 2023 General Sessions   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2023

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Nicole Haddow