Theory on borders has been increasingly explored since the late twentieth century, and current political events continue to bring attention globally to boundaries between nations. This presentation reviews some of these theories and explores the question of whether material culture can provide a window into aspects of border relations using artifacts recovered from Historic Fort Wayne in Detroit. The fort’s construction began in 1843 as a result of continued tensions between British Canada and the United States due to the Rebellions of 1837 and the related Patriot War (1837–1838), a series of republican uprisings in Canada. Monitoring for a water line installation in 2023 revealed the location of the fort’s dump. Recovered smoking pipe fragments suggest possibilities for interpreting ideologies and/or ethnicities of those who used them.

Cuttatawomen, located on the Rappahannock River in Tidewater Virginia, was first identified and surface-collected in 1937, and then extensively tested in 1964 and again in 1973. Reanalysis of these collections along with a careful review of the few surviving field records reveals an important late 16th-century fortified settlement at the western limit of Algonquian territory in the Rappahannock River valley. The thousands of ceramics recovered from the site differ significantly from those recovered from settlements to the east and from those farther west in Siouan territory, raising questions about Cuttatawomen's relationship to places near and far. Further, following the arrival of settlers in the river valley, the settlement remained occupied with an unusual but unmistakable English-style house, erected ca. 1650. Was Cuttatawomen the product of migration from elsewhere in Algonquian country, or did its location foster a materially diverse crossroads community? The answer is not entirely clear.

Tobacco (Nicotiana sp.) is an American product that pervaded Europe and, eventually, the globe beginning in the 16th century. During this process, European colonists gained knowledge of consumption practices, botanical characteristics, and medicinal uses of tobacco from the Indigenous peoples with whom they interacted. This paper discusses the presence of tobacco pipes made from North American clays that were recovered from colonial sites throughout New England. Utilizing Laser Ablation-Inductively Coupled Plasma-Mass Spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS) to analyze their elemental composition, I discuss patterns in the production, distribution, and discard of these pipes, as well as the potential movements of the people who carried them. I conclude with a brief discussion of tobacco smoking in New England.

The Maumee River has been an important riparian landscape for humans since time immemorial. The river was used by Indigenous people for millennia, as a food source, a means of transportation and for religious practice. In the 18th century, the Maumee River became an integral route for moving goods and people from the Great Lakes region into the Northwest Territory. In particular, forts dotted along the river valley became important locations for the region’s Indigenous, American and British occupants during a time when boundaries within the region were being hotly contested. This study presents a synthesis of multiple fort sites within the Maumee River landscape, and what the material culture from these sites can tell us about life in an 18th-century North American borderland. Emphasis is given to the role these sites played within the broader context of the Sixty Years’ War in the Great Lakes region.

If you were to ask northeastern Oregonians what stands out in the town of Echo’s history, their top two answers would be Fort Henrietta and the Oregon Trail. This location, however, was also a permanent camp of the imatalamłáma (Umatilla people), directly influencing its selection as the site of the first Indian Agency in the Oregon Territory. From 1850 to 1855, the Utilla Indian Agency served the territorial government’s intentions to develop political and economic relationships with the Walla Walla, Cayuse, and Umatilla tribes, which would later come to be known as the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation (CTUIR). In this paper I discuss my endeavors on behalf of the CTUIR Cultural Resource Protection Program to recenter historical and ongoing tribal presence amongst locally held narratives of this site using archaeological materials and interpretations to develop a supplementary social studies curriculum for local school districts.

Southern Blacks crossed many borders when they participated in the Great Migration and imagined a better life in the North. By circa 1915, they began leaving tenant farms, sharecropper agreements, low wages, and Jim Crow by the tens-of-thousands. Many departed with little more than what they wore or carried in a suitcase. After crossing the Mason-Dixon Line demarcating the American South from the North, most experienced better treatment, lending greater hope for that better life. Migrants arriving in urban centers such as Chicago were still expected to conform to Black and White community expectations and continued to experience forms of discrimination. Household deposits
excavated in Chicago’s Black Metropolis bear out these conditions. At the close of the Great Migration in 1970, more than 6 million African Americans had crossed regional boundaries. In the process, they altered the character of the cultural regions they left and subsequently settled.

Borders around Detroit were created at several levels on the socio-cultural landscape, from nations to regions and neighborhoods. At the survey level of landscape archaeology, sites of people or places involving borders were mapped and their archaeological potential was assessed based on site preservation or later disturbance. Racial segregation was an important meaning of Detroit’s border landscapes and sites, from the Underground Railroad stations conducting enslaved people to freedom in Canada and Black people crossing the Mason-Dixon Line in the Great Migration to northern cities, to redlining creating racial borders between neighborhoods, materialized in Detroit’s surviving Birwood Wall that was built to physically segregate a middle-class white neighborhood from a poorer black neighborhood. Some reform women crossed borders and pursued social justice in Detroit by founding institutions to assist minorities and women. Black feminist theory underpins proposals to include more information about minorities, especially women, in Detroit’s historical markers.

This paper considers how borders of U.S. coloniality are reinforced and negotiated through disaster recovery contexts in Puerto Rico. Here, I examine the intersection of colonial politics and dominant heritage narratives within the production of a contemporary archaeological disaster assemblage in the southern municipality of Ponce. Ponce’s Historic Center has many beloved 19th and early 20th century architectural patrimony sites, which today are abandoned, earthquake stricken, and dangerous to enter. The paradoxical discourse that follows is one where these sites are both markers of pride for many Ponce residents and points of frustration over their continued decay. As these sites burden residents with disaster memories and promises of collapse, this landscape forces a question about the implications of heritage laws and preservation ideologies across political borders. I expand this question by examining where mechanisms of memory, preservation, and disaster recovery converge as the contemporary archaeological border markers of disrepair.

Since the first Presidency of Donald Trump the U.S. – Mexico border has been in constant flux from construction of steel bollard border walls. In Texas, the wall had been built by the State of Texas during the Biden Administration on private lands when federal building was paused. Today, the ramping up of new locations where border walls were not built has now started post-haste with renewed emphasis and construction. International Boundary Monuments from the 1840/50s and new monuments in the 1890s are now threatened by renewed construction on the land border of three western states. Older river monuments (Reference Points) on both sides of the border and outdated banco monuments are impacted along the Rio Grande. Examination of the land and river boundary of the U.S. – Mexico borderlands is discussed in new archeological sites being found and the emphasis of how the bollard wall impacts them.

The lands and waters currently demarcated as the State of Maine are the home to 4 federally recognized Native American tribes. These groups are collectively known as the Wabanaki, or “People of the Dawnland”. Undeterred by the modern US-Canadian border, these nations have ties in New Brunswick and Quebec. Additionally, there is strong historical and archaeological evidence that western Maine was the homeland of the Abenaki people, who relocated to reservations on the St. Lawrence River due to European colonization. As the Maine State Museum undergoes a redesign of our flagship archaeology exhibit, consultation with these Native American and First Nations groups is an activity that goes beyond legal necessity but falls firmly in the realm of ethical archaeology. This paper draws on our work at the museum to discuss some of the political tribulations and triumphs of working with descent populations on both sides of a modern international border.

As a Federal Agency, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) considers any potential effects that may occur as a result of proposed undertakings in compliance with Section 106 of the National Historic Protection Act (NHPA). Compliance efforts span multiple states and tribal territories and often include a myriad of land owners. Due to the extensiveness of CBPs geographic area and rapidly changing policy, compliance and consultation efforts require significant interagency cooperation, comprehensive knowledge of procedures, and adaptability to rapidly changing policy. This presentation examines NHPA compliance along the U.S. Border including programmatic agreements and highlights the role of historic resource subject matter experts in planning, compliance, and consultation in support of border security and operations.