Managing the Worlds’ Edge: Human-Environmental Relationships and Manitou in the Chesapeake

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Culture, Climate, and Connections: Eventful Histories of Human-Environment Relations" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The edges of forests and waterways in the Chesapeake region were spiritually potent places on the Woodland period landscape, serving as thresholds that opened pathways between worlds. Powhatan historical ethnography hints that these liminal spaces required people to perform ceremonies and offer gifts to maintain balance with other-than-human persons. In this paper, we examine how people and their landscapes/waterscapes were co-constitutive in the Chesapeake, as communities actively managed the edges of forests and waterways. Specifically, we consider evidence of commoning through controlled burning and mariculture to maintain and propagate cosmologically and socially significant edge species: berries, deer, and oysters. Our analysis draws on archaeological, paleoenvironmental, and ethnographic evidence to explore how these practices sustained the spiritual and material well-being of Woodland period communities in the region.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)   •
• Culture, Climate, and Connections: Eventful Histories of Human-Environment Relations

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 52212