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"Under the teeming metropolis that is present-day New York City lie the buried remains of long-lost worlds. The remnants of nineteenth-century New York reveal much about its inhabitants and neighborhoods, from fashionable Washington Square to the notorious Five Points. Underneath are traces of the Dutch and English colonists who arrived in the area in the seventeenth century, as well as of the Africans they enslaved. And beneath all these layers is the land that Native Americans occupied for hundreds of generations from their first arrival eleven thousand years ago. Now two distinguished archaeologists draw on the results of more than a century of excavations to relate the interconnected stories of these different peoples who shared and shaped the land that makes up the modern city."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

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Publishers Weekly Review

Rutgers's Cantwell and City College's Wall, anthropologists both, track the evolving practice of urban archeology, and document much of what it has uncovered (and is still uncovering) in the Big Apple. From the oldest remnants of Native Manhattanites to 18th-, 19th- and 20th-century detritus, Cantwell and Wall explore how archeologists painstakingly expose and determine the past as well as the objects they find. Continually surprising objects of great import the intricate nature and use of "wampum beads"; a full crate of wine bottles from a Wall Street store lost in the great 1835 fire; children's toys and mugs from mid-19th century middle-class homes balance the book's academic underpinnings with its obvious intention to entertain and to illuminate the past. Whether dealing with the discovery of glass urinals found behind a brothel in the notorious Five Points section of the city, or an extraordinarily moving account of the preservation of a colonial African-American burial ground uncovered during excavation for a new high-rise in lower Manhattan, the authors are always mindful of the endless battle between embracing new growth and respecting and safeguarding the past. (Oct.) Forecast: New York's many Gotham-centered museums and store shelves should be a source of steady, if slow, sales to curious browsers, and introductory urban archeology courses should pick this up as a central text. The multicultural evidence provided by many of the discoveries could make this a stockable title in other urban centers with analogous histories. (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

CHOICE Review

In this superb book synthesizing the archaeology of New York City, anthropologists Cantwell (Rutgers Univ.) and Wall (City College of New York) present a humanistic view of the city's past, focusing on the daily lives of the city's peoples and the dynamic environment they inhabited. The excavation project at the Stadt Huys Block in Manhattan is used to introduce the concepts of archaeology and to outline the modern regulatory framework governing excavation. Five chapters on the "deeper past" explore the archaeology of prehistoric sites in the city, skillfully integrating past work with that of modern professional archaeologists. The narrative brings the artifacts to life, drawing evocative pictures of the activities and beliefs of past Native Americans. Nine chapters on the "recent past" cover the arrival of Europeans, daily life in the city, the evolving urban environment, and the archaeology of the African Burial Ground, one of New York's most visible and controversial excavations. An emphasis on local geography and human alteration of the landscape is a major strength of the book. Both scholarly and accessible, this work provides an ideal model for the presentation of archaeological interpretation. Highly recommended for all levels and collections. D. B. Landon University of Massachusetts at Boston

Notas de autor provistas por Syndetics

Anne-Marie Cantwell is associate professor of anthropology at Rutgers University.

(Bowker Author Biography)