TITLE:
Colonial Houses and Cultural Identity in New York State’s Mohawk River Valley
AUTHORS:
Scott Stull, Michael Rogers, Kevin Hurley
KEYWORDS:
Mohawk Valley; Colonial America; GPR; Earth Resistance; Magnetometry; Built Environment
JOURNAL NAME:
Archaeological Discovery,
Vol.2 No.2,
March
25,
2014
ABSTRACT: In the mid-eighteenth century, the Mohawk River Valley was the colonial frontier in New York, and
different social, political, and cultural groups were creating their identity through action and material
culture, including the built environment. Two houses, built in 1749 and 1750, are compared
in relation to identity and social position of their owners. The landscape was investigated using
archaeogeophysics and targeted excavation to determine how the houses and their landscapes
expressed cultural identity in colonial New York. The houses and landscapes reveal how specific
identities were created by the owners of the houses as part of their efforts to improve their social,
political, and economic standing on the frontier while also providing a defensive structure in the
face of potential French raids into the region.