Native American Collections

Terms Defined

In the context of the Native American Collections at Saugus Iron Works National Historic Site, Indigenous is occasionally used interchangeably with Native and Native American.

 

A variety of different sized flakes, or chips of stone, are created through the production of stone tools. NPS Museum Collections, Flakes- SAIR 8181, Projectile Points- SAIR 4825, 4221, 743, 4204, 4184.

NPS Photo / Claire Norton 

Native Americans have lived in Saugus, MA and the New England region for around 13,000 years, since the recession of the glacial ice sheet at the end of the Ice Age between 20,000-15,000 years ago. This geologic event changed the New England landscape, creating new lakes and raising the sea level.

The New England environment continued to greatly shift for thousands of years, as did the Indigenous peoples, in ways that are unique to them. Disease and conflict, as a result of the arrival of colonizers to the North American continent in the 17th-century, had detrimental effects on Indigenous populations in New England, but these communities survived and are still present today.

The Native American archeological collections at Saugus Iron Works National Historic Site contain artifacts that can begin to teach us about the vast and deep past of the Indigenous experience in New England. In analyzing archeological collections there are two key questions that should be asked:

• What are the different precolonial archeological time periods in New England?
• What are the main categories of material culture found at Indigenous sites?

The information gleaned from these questions can aid in understanding the use of Saugus Iron Works through time. Follow the links below to dig deeper into our collections!

 

• 

  Types of Native American Artifacts

  The Native American archeology collections at the Iron Works consist of a variety of material types totaling over 14,000 artifacts!

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  New England Archeological Time Periods

  Archeological collections at the Iron Works can help us understand how the site was used through time by Indigenous peoples.

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  How Do Archeologists Talk About Time?

  There are many different types of dating methods archeologists use to determine the date of artifacts and sites.

 

 

Selected Bibliography and Resources

Bibliography

Boudreau, Jeff. A New England Typology of Native American Projectile Points. City: Publisher,  2016. 
 

Bragdon, Kathleen J. Native People of Southern New England, 1500-1650. Norman: University  of Oklahoma Press, 1996.  
 

Bragdon, Kathleen J. Native People of Southern New England, 1650-1775. Norman: University  of Oklahoma Press, 2012.  
 

Brooks, Lisa T. Our beloved kin: a new history of King Philip's war. New Haven: Yale  University Press, 2018.  
 

Company of Undertakers of the Iron Works in New England. Records of the iron works at Lynn,  Mass., 1650-1686. Accounts current, 1651-1652. Accounts current, 1651-1652. Mss:301  1650-1685 L989 Box 1, Folder 8, Baker Library Special Collections, Harvard Business  School. Page (seq. 2). Baker Library. Harvard Business School, Harvard University. Date  Accessed April 13th, 2021: https://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HBS.Baker.GEN:38963050-2019?n=2.
 

Hoffman, Curtiss. A Handbook of Indian Artifacts from Southern New England. Massachusetts  Archaeological Society Special Publication #4. Middleborough: Massachusetts  Archaeological Society, 1991. 
 

Luedtke, Barbara E. “The Pennsylvania Connection: Jasper at Massachusetts Sites.” Bulletin of  the Massachusetts Archaeological Society 48, no. 2 (1987): 37-47.  
 

Silliman, Stephen W. “Archaeologies of indigenous survivance and residence: Navigating  colonial and scholarly dualities.” In Rethinking Colonial Pasts Through Archeology, 57- 75. Edited by Neal Ferris, Rodney Harrison, and Michael V. Wilcox.  2014.  
 

Silliman, Stephen W. “Change and continuity, practice and memory: Native American  persistence in colonial New England.” American antiquity 74, no. 2 (2009): 211-230. 
 

Strobel, Christoph. Native Americans of New England. Santa Barbara: Praeger. 2020.

Other Reading

Bohaker, H., Bouwman, H., Brooks, J., Bross, K., Fitzgerald, S., Gustafson, S. M., Leibman, L.  A., McBride, K. A., Murray, D., Murray, L. J., O'Brien, J. M., Plane, A. M., Round, P.  H., Schorb, J., Silverman, D. J., & Wyss, H. E. Early native literacies in New England: A  documentary and critical anthology.  Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press. 2008. 
 

Nicholas, George, editor. Being and Becoming Indigenous Archaeologists. Left Coast Press, Inc.  2010. 
See Chapter 11 for Dr. D. Rae Gould’s discussion on “Indigenous Archaeology and Being Indian in New England.”  
 

O’Brien, Jean M. Firsting and Lasting: Writing Indians Out of Existence in New England.  Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. 2010.  
 

Senier, Siobhan, editor. Dawnland Voices: An Anthology of Indigenous Writing from New  England. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. 2014.

New England Indigenous Collaborative Archaeology Projects

Eastern Pequot Archaeological Field School collaborative project between the Eastern Pequot Tribal Nation and the Anthropology Department at University of Massachusetts Boston. Check out this film produced in 2021 highlighting the voices of Eastern Pequot people talking about their heritage, “Listen to Their Voices:” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CsJ2znR-Wq8 , http://easternpequottribalnation.org/archaeology.html.  
 

Gould, D. Rae, Holly Herbster, Heather Law Pezzarossi, and Stephen A. Mrozowski. Historical  Archaeology and Indigenous Collaboration: Discovering Histories that Have Futures.  Gainesville: University Press of Florida. 2020: https://upf.com/book.asp?id=9780813066219.  
 

Craig N. Cipolla & James Quinn. “Field School Archaeology the Mohegan Way: Reflections on  Twenty Years of Community-Based Research and Teaching.” Journal of Community  Archaeology & Heritage 3, no. 2 (2016): 118- 134, DOI: 10.1080/20518196.2016.1154734.