Life on the Edge: How Can the Archaeological Assessment of the Physical and Cultural Landscape of Today Be Applied to Native American Settlement Choices Thousands of Years Ago?

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Power to the People: Cultural Resource Investigations along Utility Lines Giving a Voice to Past and Present Communities" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Several large-scale cultural resource management surveys conducted ahead of utility line construction in Massachusetts have shed new light on the history of Native American subsistence procurement practices and settlement patterning along two of the most significant river drainages in southern New England: the Charles and Taunton Rivers. Regulated archaeological survey along the traditional waterways and homelands of the Wampanoag and Nipmuck Tribal Nations coupled with their involvement, helped fill in the gaps along the rivers’ edges. This paper considers the predictability of Native American settlement choices along the Charles and Taunton Rivers and their many tributaries in eastern Massachusetts during the precontact period and draws from numerous surveys conducted by the Public Archaeology Laboratory Inc. (PAL) and other professionals over the past five decades.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Power to the People: Cultural Resource Investigations along Utility Lines Giving a Voice to Past and Present Communities   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 40330.0