UCLA UCLA Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title Barriers, Boundaries, and Byways: Water, Mobility, and Society in the Woodland and Colonial Period of the North American Atlantic Coast Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0rq69557 Author Salwen, Stephanie A. Publication Date 2017 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Los Angeles Barriers, Boundaries, and Byways: Water, Mobility, and Society in the Woodland and Colonial Period of the North American Atlantic Coast. A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in Archaeology by Stephanie Anne Salwen 2017 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Barriers, Boundaries, and Byways: Water, Mobility, and Society in the Woodland and Colonial Period of the North American Atlantic Coast. by Stephanie Anne Salwen Doctor of Philosophy in Archaeology University of California, Los Angeles, 2017 Professor Monica L. Smith, Chair Rivers and streams not only shape the physical geography but can alter cultural perceptions of landscape and influence social organization within and among human communities. Rivers are often perceived as conduits to movement yet waterways have nuanced and at times contradicting characteristics, which people may emphasize differently over space or through time. This study defines four ways in which rivers are incorporated in human mobility patterns: as conduits, obstacles, boundaries, and barriers. These uses reflect the entanglement between humans and moving waterways, suggesting that a waterway’s perceived utility is dependent on both the environmental characteristics of the water and the cultural contexts. In this dissertation, I consider the archaeological evidence for these mutable uses through a comparative spatial analysis of site distribution relative to streams within two Atlantic coast river basins, the ii James River basin in Virginia and the Saint John River basin that extends through Maine and New Brunswick (Canada). The complex landscapes of inland lakes and rivers have played an active role in the development of native culture in these regions by facilitating navigation, trade, and interaction from prehistory through colonial occupation. Each region provides a different perspective on the human-hydro relationship due to differences in environmental and cultural contexts. Diachronic shifts in site distribution relative to water demonstrate the effects of colonialism on local populations. The project also considers the taphonomic effects of database management on the archaeological record and the implications for extracting usable data from government and CRM datasets for database-driven research. iii The dissertation of Stephanie Anne Salwen is approved. John K. Papadopoulos Gregson T. Schachner Min Li Monica L. Smith, Committee Chair University of California, Los Angeles 2017 iv TABLE OF CONTENTS FIGURES………………………………………………………………………… VII TABLES ................................................................................................................. VIII ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ....................................................................................... IX CURRICULUM VITA ……………………………………………………………xi CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION .............................................................................. 1 Waterways in Human Culture ......................................................................................................... 3 Archaeology of Waterways: Contextualizing and Defining this Research .................................... 5 Organization of this Dissertation .................................................................................................. 10 CHAPTER 2: WHY STUDY WATER? THE CURRENT WATER CRISIS AND ARCHAEOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES ............................................................... 14 Water Concerns in the Modern World .......................................................................................... 15 The Hydrological Cycle ................................................................................................................ 20 Stream systems ......................................................................................................................... 23 Anatomy of a catchment ........................................................................................................... 24 Mechanics of flow .................................................................................................................... 30 Compressing moving, linear phenomena into geographic narrative ............................................ 33 Streams as geographic narrative: ecological phenomena ....................................................... 33 Streams as cultural narrative: social network phenomenon ................................................... 36 Social Networks ....................................................................................................................... 38 Rivers and Mobility ...................................................................................................................... 40 Reproducibility and Predictability of River Use ...................................................................... 44 Four “Roles” of Waterways in Population Mobility: Conduit, Barrier, Boundary, Obstacle 47 CHAPTER 3: WATERWAYS AND CULTURE IN NORTH AMERICA ........... 56 Hydrology of North America ........................................................................................................ 57 Historic, Ethnographic, and Archaeological Riverine Cultures of North America ...................... 62 Case Studies: Framework and Regional Background ................................................................... 66 Comparative Framework ......................................................................................................... 67 Case Study 1: James River Basin, Virginia ............................................................................. 75 Case Study 2: St John River, Maine and New Brunswick........................................................ 91 CHAPTER 4: ARCHAEOLOGY OF LANDSCAPES, MOBILITY, GIS, AND WATERWAYS ...................................................................................................... 102 Physical Aspects of the Natural World ....................................................................................... 103 Mapping and Geographic Information Systems ......................................................................... 106 Evolving applications of GIS in Archaeology ........................................................................ 110 Current Methods: Experiencing Physical Landscapes, Quantifying Cultural Landscapes .. 112 v CHAPTER 5: MOBILITY AND MODELING ARCHAEOLOGICAL PATTERNS OF RIVER USE ................................................................................ 122 Conceptualizing Mobility and Quantifying Movement .............................................................. 123 Dimensions of Movement ....................................................................................................... 125 Archaeology of Movement ......................................................................................................... 128 Objective One: Characterizing the Evidence of Movement ................................................... 129 Objective Two: Characterizing the Environment .................................................................. 136 Anticipated Archaeological Correlates ................................................................................. 138 CHAPTER 6: DATA AND ANALYSIS FOR RIVER USE IN A MID- ATLANTIC RIVER BASIN: THE JAMES RIVER OF VIRGINIA ................... 143 Objectives ................................................................................................................................... 144 Data ............................................................................................................................................. 145 Environmental Data ............................................................................................................... 145 Archaeological Data .............................................................................................................. 152 Probabilistic Conversion of Time Period Data ..................................................................... 163 Analyses ...................................................................................................................................... 170 Environmental Component .................................................................................................... 171 Woodland Period Occupations .............................................................................................. 174 Contact Period Occupations .................................................................................................. 179 Continuous Occupations ........................................................................................................ 182 Interpretations and Discussion .................................................................................................... 183 Conclusions ................................................................................................................................. 191 CHAPTER 7: DATA AND ANALYSIS FOR RIVER USE IN A NORTHEASTERN RIVER BASIN: THE SAINT