Presented by the non-profit Gundalow Company. Light refreshments offered.
In this talk based on her recent book, The Shock of Colonialism in New England: Fragments from a Frontier, archaeologist Dr. Meghan C. L. Howey shares her research on the seventeenth-century colonial frontier of the Great Bay Estuary/P8bagok through the Great Bay Archaeological Survey (GBAS).
Combining archaeological excavations, ‘forensic’ archival research, collaboration with contemporary Indigenous knowledge keepers, and community engagement, GBAS’s work has revealed this landscape holds forgotten stories of what it meant for everyday people to live through the global shock of colonialism. This includes unexpected diversity and dynamism among English colonists, multifaceted encounters with Indigenous peoples, and lasting environmental damage from labor-intensive extractive industries.
There is a race against time to find more of these hidden stories as sea-level rise is, quite literally, washing the material evidence of them away.