Overview

With humans moving easily from water to land, the archaeology of the shore should likewise be seamless. This principle of the “seamlessness” of human interaction with the maritime environment undergirds author Ben Ford’s sweeping survey. In The Shore Is a Bridge: The Maritime Cultural Landscape of Lake Ontario, Ford explores human interaction with the waters of the lake, spanning the international border, from 5,000 years ago to the early twentieth century. He interprets written and archaeological sources using a maritime cultural landscape approach to investigate how the perception of place influences the interaction between humans and the physical environment. Ford focuses on the lake shore, which served as a link between the maritime and terrestrial worlds of the people who lived around it. Lake Ontario was the first of the Great Lakes to be developed by Europeans, and it was part of the home ranges of the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois), the Huron-Wendat, and the Mississauga, as well as other Native American groups known only from their archaeological remains. Consequently, Lake Ontario was at the heart of early Great Lakes maritime culture. Using terrestrial and submerged archaeological methods, history, and ethnography, the author meticulously weaves together previously disparate data to construct a cohesive and holistic understanding of this important region from ancient to modern times. The Shore Is a Bridge presents a new way to interpret the maritime archaeological record and maritime culture by synthesizing archaeological data, historical documents, and oral histories into an all-inclusive view of the lakeshore.

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9781623496050

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Reviews

While it is first and foremost a book suited to professional scholars, the authors exceptional writing clarity makes it accessible to the sophisticated general reader with a strong interest in local, Lake Ontario, or Great Lakes history. --Sea History--Sea History In combing along Lake Ontario's archaeological tidemarks, both above and below the water's surface, and skillfully stitching together his findings with a rich backdrop of source material, Ben Ford has crafted a sweeping and significant study of human interaction with Lake Ontario. He offers a truly borderless view of a human past that has always straddled the lake's ever-changing shore. --Jonathan Moore, Parks Canada, Underwater Archaeology Service -- (03/29/2017) . . . a considerable contribution to maritime studies, to maritime archaeology, to understanding Lake Ontario, and to the rapidly expanding literature on the concept, theory, and method of maritime cultural landscapes. The Shore Is a Bridge: The Maritime Cultural Landscape of Lake Ontario [has] revolutionized maritime archaeology . . . a classic work. --James P. Delgado, author of Khubilai Khan's Lost Fleet: In Search of a Legendary Armada and Misadventures of a Civil War Submarine: Iron, Guns, and Pearls --James P. Delgado

In combing along Lake Ontario's archaeological tidemarks, both above and below the water's surface, and skillfully stitching together his findings with a rich backdrop of source material, Ben Ford has crafted a sweeping and significant study of human interaction with Lake Ontario. He offers a truly borderless view of a human past that has always straddled the lake's ever-changing shore. --Jonathan Moore, Parks Canada, Underwater Archaeology Service -- (03/29/2017) . . . a considerable contribution to maritime studies, to maritime archaeology, to understanding Lake Ontario, and to the rapidly expanding literature on the concept, theory, and method of maritime cultural landscapes. The Shore Is a Bridge: The Maritime Cultural Landscape of Lake Ontario [has] revolutionized maritime archaeology . . . a classic work. --James P. Delgado, author of Khubilai Khan's Lost Fleet: In Search of a Legendary Armada and Misadventures of a Civil War Submarine: Iron, Guns, and Pearls --James P. Delgado

Author Information

Ben Ford is professor of archaeology in the department of anthropology at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. He is the editor of The Archaeology of Maritime Landscapes and coeditor of the Oxford Handbook of Maritime Archaeology. He resides in Indiana, Pennsylvania.

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