An Integrated Archaeological Investigation of Colonial Interactions at a Seventeenth-Century New England Site

The focus of this research is the ways in which interactions between Indigenous peoples and English settler-colonists were manifested in the landscape at a seventeenth-century site in South Glastonbury, Connecticut. Magnetometry and ground-penetrating radar allowed for the location of anthropogenic and geological features on the landscape, and for the seventeenth-century landscape to be recreated. This reconstruction indicated that Europeans and Indigenous peoples may have been cohabitating the site. Archival research helped to uncover what types of interactions may have been occurring at the site. Excavations uncovered Indigenous artifacts in a European context, leading to the reconsideration of the prevailing perspectives on culture change in the region. All of these data led to the examination of the nuanced relationships that were fostered between Indigenous peoples and English settler-colonists during the first decades of colonialism in the Connecticut River Valley