Hybrid Methods for Locating and Excavating Early Historical Conflict-Related Domestic Sites

Abstract

Since 2012, the Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Research Center in Mashantucket, Connecticut, in collaboration with the University of Connecticut, has carried out a research program to survey and document the battlefields of the Pequot War (1636–1637). The unique nature of the project has required the refinement of the long-standing field methods of battlefield archaeology. In this article, we argue that these techniques, while originally developed to explore sites of conflict, can be operationalized to locate 17th-century indigenous domestic sites. We describe this modified method and provide a site-specific case study to present its efficacy.