Iron Age Settlement Patterns and the Origins of Class Distinction

The archaeology of townscapes can provide important information about cultural development and the transfer of settlement systems. This close examination of 17th-century settlement in northeastern New Jersey focuses on Woodbridge Township, Middlesex County, between 1669 and 1676. The study highlights the complexity of early colonial settlement systems in East Jersey and also examines the ways in which experimentation with Old World-and New England-style corporation settlement models; strong desires for land accumulation, power, and wealth; inheritance practices; and religion influenced English townscape development within northeastern New Jersey. The aspects outlined herein likely influenced the creation of other township-corporation settlements by New England immigrants to East New Jersey during the 17th century. These settlement patterns were markedly different than those developed through proprietary landgrant sales elsewhere in the colony. L'archéologie de la physionomie urbaine peut contribuer de l'information intéressante sur le développement culturel et les types de colonisation. Cet examen d'un établissement du 17e siècle dans le nord-est du New Jersey se concentre sur le village de Woodbridge dans le comté de Middlesex entre 1669 et 1676. Cette étude fait aussi ressortir la complexité des types de colonisation au New Jersey. Elle examine aussi l'influence qu'un nombre d'éléments ont eu sur le développement de la physionomie d'un village du nord-est du New Jersey : l'essai de différents modèles de colonisation, i.e. celui de l'ancien monde et celui de la Nouvelle-Angleterre; le désir profond d'acquérir des terres et du pouvoir et de s'enrichir; les pratiques liées aux héritages ainsi que les religions. Les aspects soulignés dans cette étude ont sans doute influencé la création d'autres établissements urbains similaires par des immigrants de la Nouvelle-Angleterre au 17e siècle. Ces modèles d'établissement étaient très différents de ceux développés par le biais de ventes de concessions de terres ailleurs dans la colonie.

Papers from the Institute of Archaeology, 1997

Trends in Archive Archaeology: Current Research on Archival Material from Fieldwork and its Implications for Archaeological Practice, 2024

Geographical Review, 1999

This paper presents the results of an archaeological data recovered conducted in 2005 at the P. Tulane Site in Princeton Township, New Jersey. This site contained the remains of an early-nineteenth-century cottage occupied by numerous tenant farm laborers/general laborers, known during the eighteenth through early nineteenth-century as cottagers, and later, during the mid-nineteenth century, the home of a successful yeoman. Excavations offered data about a sparsely documented aspect of early-nineteenth-century New Jersey agrarian history: cottage holding. The data recovery and new historic research offered insights into early to mid-nineteenth-century central New Jersey cottager demographics, material culture, status, housing, and land use. This information was juxtaposed against data recovered from the site’s later occupation by a successful yeoman.