Maritime Cultural Landscapes in the New York Bight

Abstract

The study of prehistoric maritime cultural landscapes, in the broadest sense, seeks to explore the relationship between people and the water. If we are to reconstruct the nature of this relationship over time along the Atlantic coast of North America, we must account for environmental changes, particularly sea level rise and related shifts in ecological communities and habitats on the shore and at sea. This chapter surveys the coastal archaeology of the New York Bight (the bend in the Atlantic coast between southern New Jersey and Cape Cod) over the course of the Holocene, drawing data from terrestrial, coastal plain, and now submerged sites to examine topics such as the role of coastal environments in human settlement, evidence for seafaring and fishing technology, and the origins and consequences of adopting maritime cultural adaptations.