Connecticut's Indigenous Peoples: What Archaeology, History, and Oral Traditions Teach Us About Their Communities and Cultures

by Lucianne Lavin, Paul Grant-Costa (Contributor), Rosemary Volpe (Editor)

More than 13,000 years ago, people settled on lands that now lie within the boundaries of the state of Connecticut. Leaving no written records and scarce archaeological remains, these peoples and their communities have remained unknown to all but a few archaeologists and other scholars. This pioneering book is the first to provide a full account of Connecticut’s indigenous peoples, from the long-ago days of their arrival to the present day.
 
Lucianne Lavin draws on exciting new archaeological and ethnographic discoveries, interviews with Native Americans, rare documents including periodicals, archaeological reports, master’s theses and doctoral dissertations, conference papers, newspapers, and government records, as well as her own ongoing archaeological and documentary research. She creates a fascinating and remarkably detailed portrait of indigenous peoples in deep historic  times before European contact and of their changing lives during the past 400 years of colonial and state history. She also includes a short study of Native Americans in Connecticut in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. This book brings to light the richness and diversity of Connecticut’s indigenous histories, corrects misinformation about the vanishing Connecticut Indian, and reveals the significant roles and contributions of Native Americans to modern-day Connecticut.
 

Genres: History, Archaeology, Anthropology, Native American, American History, Nonfiction

528 pages, Hardcover

First published June 1, 2013

About the author

Lucianne Lavin is Director of Research and Collections at the Institute for American Indian Studies. She lives in northwestern Connecticut.

Reviews

[Brian · Rating 4 out of 5]

I would strongly recommend this book to anyone curious about the long history of this place we now call Connecticut. Although it comes right up to the present, the majority of it focuses on the Archaic and Woodland periods before Europeans arrived. While we ultimately know relatively little about those times in the deep past, this book collects what evidence we do have and paints a surprisingly vivid picture spanning thousands of years. I was surprised and fascinated by the ways climate change and long-distance trade networks shaped people's lives here over the centuries prior to the colonial era.

[Steve · Rating 3 out of 5]

Solid read. Very dense and occasionallysty, but detailed information.

[Jennifer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Used for research. Did not read the whole thing!