Archaeology: First Year Seminar Resources

ABL Closed Stacks - Special Collections

ABL Closed Stacks - Special Collections

ABL Closed Stacks - Special Collections

This exquisitely detailed, full-color field guide provides the identification details and practical information needed to find and properly use many of the medicinal plants and wild plant foods that provide chemicals necessary for optimum health and disease prevention. The book takes the user from simple and familiar plants ones that are less common and more difficult to identify. Each of the 122 plant entries includes a color photograph, plant description, and location. Plants are grouped according to how common or rare they are, as well as to where they are found: prairies, woodlands, mountains, deserts, and wetlands. Relevant facts about each plant include toxicity, historical uses, modern uses, as well as wildlife/veterinary uses. Additional information featured in this extraordinary field guide: explanations of how each plant affects the human body; cultural and ethnic uses of medicinal herbs and cooking spices; others creatures who consume the plants; a list of most recommended garden herbs; web site resources, and much more.

The essential gardener's guide to growing native in New England Plants native to New England evolved to thrive in local conditions and survive harsh seasons. Native Plants for New England Gardens culls the expertise of the New England Wild Flower Society to help anyone create lovely, hardy gardens that will tolerate drought, resist disease and encourage biodiversity. This handy guide to 100 great native flowers, ground covers, shrubs, ferns, and grasses that will thrive in New England gardens features practical information accompanied by beautiful color photography. Find and nurture the native plants that your garden is missing--the planet will thank you.

Despite its small size, Connecticut has impressive biodiversity, in large part due to its varied landscapes, which include several forest types. In fact, much of the state has become reforested over the past century and once again features rich hardwood communities. This means that wildlife abounds in the Constitution State, from the state bird (American Robin) to the state insect (European Praying Mantis) to the state wildflower (Mountain Laurel) and state tree (Charter Oak). To better acquaint you with the rich natural history of the Constitution State, we have packaged together three portable references--Birds, Trees & Wildflowers, and Wildlife--in an attractive acetate bag. Each guide features beautiful illustrations of over 100 common species, as well as an ecoregion map showing top bird-finding, botanical, or wildlife-viewing hotspots. Laminated for durability, these lightweight, 12-panel folding pocket guides comprise a terrific three-pack for educators, learners, naturalists, birders, botanists, and wildlife enthusiasts who want to sharpen their identification skills and develop a deeper understanding of the fascinating lives of Connecticut's plants and animals. Made in the USA.

ABL 2nd floor - Stacks

Describes the history, geography, government, economics, and people of Connecticut.

Connecticut's history is full of engaging and fascinating stories, rocks that are national monuments, the "people's sculptor," football players on chapel finials, moons on the Travelers calendars, artists Frederic Church and Eric Sloane and even a Thanksgiving Day touch football game with a future president. These are tales from Greenwich to Enfield, from Sharon to Old Lyme and so much in between. Follow along with historian Wilson Faude in this "must-have" Connecticut book as he traverses the state in search of hidden history.

ABL Closed Stacks - Special Collections

A groundbreaking volume on the rich 13,000-plus-year history and culture of Connecticut's indigenous peoples   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.   Published in association with the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History

ABL 2nd floor - Stacks

By focusing on the complex cultural and political facets of Native resistance to encroachment on reservation lands during the eighteenth century in southern New England, Beyond Conquest reconceptualizes indigenous histories and debates over Native land rights.   As Amy E. Den Ouden demonstrates, Mohegans, Pequots, and Niantics living on reservations in New London County, Connecticut--where the largest indigenous population in the colony resided--were under siege by colonists who employed various means to expropriate reserved lands. Natives were also subjected to the policies of a colonial government that sought to strictly control them and that undermined Native land rights by depicting reservation populations as culturally and politically illegitimate. Although colonial tactics of rule sometimes incited internal disputes among Native women and men, reservation communities and their leaders engaged in subtle and sometimes overt acts of resistance to dispossession, thus demonstrating the power of historical consciousness, cultural connections to land, and ties to local kin. The Mohegans, for example, boldly challenged colonial authority and its land encroachment policies in 1736 by holding a "great dance," during which they publicly affirmed the leadership of Mahomet and, with the support of their Pequot and Niantic allies, articulated their intent to continue their legal case against the colony.   Beyond Conquest demonstrates how the current Euroamerican scrutiny and denial of local Indian identities is a practice with a long history in southern New England, one linked to colonial notions of cultural--and ultimately "racial"--illegitimacy that emerged in the context of eighteenth-century disputes regarding Native land rights.

This volume highlights the work of the late Gordon M. Day, renowned for his research on the history and culture of the Western Abenakis and their Indian neighbours. Synthesizing data from fragmentary historical records, oral traditions and place names, Day reconstructs New England's native past.

ABL Closed Stacks - Special Collections

Exploring the many facets of Connecticut's unique geology In a series of entertaining essays, geoscientist Jelle Zeilinga de Boer describes how early settlers discovered and exploited Connecticut's natural resources. Their successes as well as failures form the very basis of the state's history: Chatham's gold played a role in the acquisition of its Charter, and Middletown's lead helped the colony gain its freedom during the Revolution. Fertile soils in the Central Valley fueled the state's development into an agricultural power house, and iron ores discovered in the western highlands helped trigger its manufacturing eminence. The Statue of Liberty, a quintessential symbol of America, rests on Connecticut's Stony Creek granite. Geology not only shaped the state's physical landscape, but also provided an economic base and played a cultural role by inspiring folklore, paintings, and poems. Illuminated by 50 illustrations and 12 color plates, Stories in Stone describes the marvel of Connecticut's geologic diversity and also recounts the impact of past climates, earthquakes, and meteorites on the lives of the people who made Connecticut their home.

ABL Closed Stacks - Special Collections

A collection of primary source documents offers new insight into the settlement of Connecticut's Western Reserve in northeastern Ohio In 1784 Connecticut laid claim to a territory stretching from Pennsylvania's western border 120 miles along Lake Erie. In 1786 Congress took steps to legitimate this claim, and explicitly recognized it in 1800. The Peopling of New Connecticut presents primary documents that define Connecticut's complex relationship with this territory, known then as the Western Reserve. Using excerpts from previously published official records, diaries, newspapers, periodical journals, pamphlets, and the occasional book that illustrates the process whereby Connecticut transplanted some of its people to a distant, western land, this Acorn Club publication illuminates not only the experience of the emigrants as they journeyed to Ohio and settled in the Western Reserve but also the effect that the emigrants' departure had on the society they left behind. The volume comes with an introduction and commentary about the significance of these republished materials. The Peopling of New Connecticut is a vital, enlightening record of this special chapter in Connecticut's history and provides unique insight into the early westward movement after the Revolutionary War.

LAW Treatises