Fort Pentagoet, situated at the confluence of the Bagaduce River and Penoscabot, is the site of the last major Acadian holding before the frontier with New England, and takes it name from the area it was designed to control. This report gives a historical and archaeological profile of the Fort area starting at the emergence of camps upon the site as early as 1600 and the three forts built on the site through that century. Archaeological details include information on conflicting historical templates, ground-penetrating radar predictions, excavation sequence, chronology from pipestem bores and includes a discussion of products and by-products made by the smithy of the Fort, clay tobacco pipes, ceramics, foodways, personal belongings and trade goods, and includes a account of the Henri Brunet, a supply ship that delivered to the area.
"This book has essentially created a new field of study with a surprising range of insights on the ethnicity, class, gender, and foodways of French speakers of European and African descent adapting to life under British, Spanish, or American political regimes."--Gregory A. Waselkov, author of A Conquering Spirit: Fort Mims and the Redstick War of 1813-1814 "Significant and intriguing. Strengthens the view that French colonists and their descendants are an important part of American heritage and that the worlds they created are significant to our understanding of modern life."--John A. Walthall, editor of French Colonial Archaeology: The Illinois Country and the Western Great Lakes Correcting the notion that French influence in the Americas was confined mostly to Québec and New Orleans, this collection reveals a wide range of vibrant French-speaking communities both during and long after the end of French colonial rule. This volume highlights the complexity of Francophone societies, the persistence of their cultural traditions, and the innovative means they employed to cope with the cultural and environmental demands of living in the New World. Analyzing artifacts including clay pipes, colonoware, and food remains alongside a rich body of historical records, contributors focus on how French descendants impacted North America, the Caribbean, and South America even after 1763. Taken together, the essays argue that communities do not need to be located in French colonies or contain French artifacts to be considered Francophone, and they show that many Francophone groups were composed of a mix of ethnic French, Métis, Native Americans, and African Americans. The contributors emphasize the important roles that French colonists and their descendants have played in New World histories. Elizabeth M. Scott, former associate professor of anthropology at Illinois State University, is the editor of Those of Little Note: Gender, Race, and Class in Historical Archaeology.
"By analyzing what she describes as richly detailed archaeological site biographies, De Cunzo reconstructs how Delaware's farming people actively created their identities and shaped their interactions at home, at work, at church, and in the marketplace as they began to confront industrial capitalism. Informed by a contextual, interpretive perspective, this valuable work reveals the complex interrelationships among environment, technology, economy, social order, and cultural praxis that defined the "cultures of agriculture" in Delaware during the last three centuries."--Jacket.
Historic Contact divides native northeastern America into three subregions where the histories of thirty-four "Indian Countries" are described and mapped in detail, including all National Historic Landmarks. In the North Atlantic Region are the Eastern and Western Abenaki, Pocumtuck-Squakheag, Nipmuck, Pennacook-Pawtucket, Massachusett, Wampanoag, Narragansett, Mohegan-Pequot, Montauk, Lower Connecticut Valley, and Mahican Indian Countries; in the Middle Atlantic Region, the Munsee, Delaware, Nanticoke, Piscataway-Potomac, Powhatan, Nottoway-Meherrin, Upper Potomac-Shenandoah, Virginian Piedmont, Southern Appalachian Highlands, and Lower Susquehanna Indian Countries; and in the Trans-Appalachian Region, the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, Seneca, Niagara-Erie, Upper Susquehanna, and Upper Ohio Indian Countries.
Proto-colonial archaeology explores the physical origins of the world culture that evolved out of contacts made in the Age of Exploration, from Columbus to Cromwell. The early defended sites show how colonizing Europeans first responded to the challenges of new environments and new peoples, and how their choices led to conquest, adaption, or failure. Fortifications, once necessary to protect the colonies, are now essential clues to understand their history. The first comparative study of proto-colonial fortifications, First Forts is a collection of essays written by leading archaeologists in the field. Meeting the needs of archaeologists and historians around the globe, this book will also appeal to military enthusiasts, preservationists, and students of the Age of Exploration. Contributors are David Orr, Kathleen Deagan, Steven Pendery, Eric Klingelhofer, Nicholas Luccketti, Edward Harris, Roger Leech, Paul Huey, Jay Haviser, Oscar Hefting, Christopher DeCorse, Ranjith Jayasena and Pieter Floore.
This book highlights studies addressing significant anthropological issues in the Americas from the perspective of environmental archaeology. The book uses case studies to resolve questions related to human behavior in the past rather than to demonstrate the application of methods. Each chapter is an original or revised work by an internationally-recognized scientist. This second edition is based on the 1996 book of the same title. The editors have invited back a number of contributors from the first edition to revise and update their chapter. New studies are included in order to cover recent developments in the field or additional pertinent topics.
The Delaware Valley is a distinct region situated within the Middle Atlantic states, encompassing portions of Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Maryland. With its cultural epicenter of Philadelphia, its surrounding bays and ports within Maryland and Delaware, and its conglomerate population of European settlers, Native Americans, and enslaved Africans, the Delaware Valley was one of the great cultural hearths of early America. The region felt the full brunt of the American Revolution, briefly served as the national capital in the post-Revolutionary period, and sheltered burgeoning industries amidst the growing pains of a young nation. Yet, despite these distinctions, the Delaware Valley has received less scholarly treatment than its colonial equals in New England and the Chesapeake region. In Historical Archaeology of the Delaware Valley, 1600–1850, Richard Veit and David Orr bring together fifteen essays that represent the wide range of cultures, experiences, and industries that make this region distinctly American in its diversity. From historic-period American Indians living in a rapidly changing world to an archaeological portrait of Benjamin Franklin, from an eighteenth-century shipwreck to the archaeology of Quakerism, this volume highlights the vast array of research being conducted throughout the region. Many of these sites discussed are the locations of ongoing excavations, and archaeologists and historians alike continue to debate the region’s multifaceted identity. The archaeological stories found within Historical Archeology of the Delaware Valley, 1600–1850 reflect the amalgamated heritage that many American regions experienced, though the Delaware Valley certainly exemplifies a richer experience than most: it even boasts the palatial home of a king (Joseph Bonaparte, elder brother of Napoleon and former King of Naples and Spain). This work, thoroughly based on careful archaeological examination, tells the stories of earlier generations in the Delaware Valley and makes the case that New England and the Chesapeake are not the only cultural centers of colonial America.
In this sweeping, enthralling biography, acclaimed Pulitzer Prize–winner David Hackett Fischer magnificently brings to life the visionary adventurer who has straddled our history for 400 years. Champlain’s Dream reveals, with rare immediacy and drama, the story of a remarkable man: a leader who dreamed of humanity and peace in a world riven by violence; a man of his own time who nevertheless strove to build a settlement in Canada that would be founded on harmony and respect. With consummate narrative skill and comprehensive scholarship, Fischer unfolds a life shrouded in mystery, a complex, elusive man among many colorful characters. Born on France’s Atlantic coast, Samuel de Champlain grew up in a country bitterly divided by religious wars. But, like Henry IV, one of France’s greatest kings whose illegitimate son he may have been and who supported his travels from the Spanish Empire in Mexico to the St. Lawrence and the unknown territories, Champlain was religiously tolerant in an age of murderous sectarianism. Soldier, spy, master mariner, explorer, cartographer, and artist, he maneuvered his way through court intrigues in Paris, supported by Henri IV and, later, Louis XIII, though bitterly opposed by the Queen Regent Marie de Medici and the wily Cardinal Richelieu. But his astonishing dedication and stamina triumphed…. Champlain was an excellent navigator. He went to sea as a boy, acquiring the skills that allowed him to make 27 Atlantic crossings between France and Canada, enduring raging storms without losing a ship, and finally bringing with him into the wilderness his young wife, whom he had married in middle age. In the place he called Quebec, on the beautiful north shore of the St. Lawrence, he founded the first European settlement in Canada, where he dreamed that Europeans and First Nations would cooperate for mutual benefit. There he played a role in starting the growth of three populations — Québécois, Acadian, and Métis — from which millions descend. Through three decades, on foot and by ship and canoe, Champlain traveled through what are now six Canadian provinces and five American states, negotiating with more than a dozen Indian nations, encouraging intermarriage among the French colonists and the natives, and insisting, as a Catholic, on tolerance for Protestants. A brilliant politician as well as a soldier, he tried constantly to maintain a balance of power among the Indian nations and his Indian allies, but, when he had to, he took up arms with them and against them, proving himself a formidable strategist and warrior in ferocious wars. Drawing on Champlain’s own diaries and accounts, as well as his exquisite drawings and maps, Fischer shows him to have been a keen observer of a vanished world: an artist and cartographer who drew and wrote vividly, publishing four invaluable books on the life he saw around him. This superb biography (the first full-scale biography in decades) by a great historian is as dramatic and richly exciting as the life it portrays. Deeply researched, it is illustrated throughout with 110 contemporary images and 37 maps, including several drawn by Champlain himself.
The Encyclopedia of Historical Archaeology is a ground-breaking compendium of information about this ever-growing field. Concentrating on the post-1400 period as well as containing generic explanations of historical archaeology where needed, the encyclopedia is compiled by over 120 experts from around the world and contains more than 370 entries covering important concepts and sites.
