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Exploration and Colonization

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The Archaeology of Science

Part of the book series: Manuals in Archaeological Method, Theory and Technique ((MATT,volume 9))

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Abstract

Beginning with its emergence in Africa, the lineage Homo has dramatically expanded the range of environments that could be successfully occupied. This chapter examines exploration and colonization as processes that foment the creation of new scientific knowledge, as people learn to procure and process resources of the natural environment. This chapter has three major sections (1) scenarios of colonization and exploration, which conclude with a series of questions to orient research on these processes, (2) a case study on knowledge created by the eminently successful Polynesian colonization of New Zealand, and (3) a case study on England’s late sixteenth-century expeditions to the “Virginia country,” which augmented the quality and quantity of scientific knowledge about this place and also established the Roanoke Colony.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Noël Hume’s description of the date is misleading: the true date has only a 0.67 probability of falling within the bracket (assuming one sigma); he does not mention calibration.

  2. 2.

    This report exists in two versions, neither of which was included in the site report I consulted. Nicholas Luccketti provided me with the preliminary version, Robert M. Ehrenreich the final; I used only information from the latter.

  3. 3.

    http://www.firstcolonyfoundation.org/archaeology/dig_reports.aspx, accessed 19 September 2012.

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Acknowledgments

I thank Nicholas M. Luccketti, of the First Colony Foundation, for pointing me to sources on Noël Hume’s project and for providing a version of the archaeometry report; Robert M. Ehrenreich supplied an updated version of the latter, for which I am grateful. I am indebted to Christopher A. Price, Museum Curator, Fort Raleigh National Historic Site, who generously furnished a pdf of Noël Hume’s monograph.

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  1. School of Anthropology, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA

    Michael Brian Schiffer

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Schiffer, M.B. (2013). Exploration and Colonization. In: The Archaeology of Science. Manuals in Archaeological Method, Theory and Technique, vol 9. Springer, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-00077-0_9

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