"Kathleen O' Neal & Michael W. Gear - People 9 - People Of The Mist" - читать интересную книгу автора (O'Neal Kathleen)

on the Chesapeake area. Lucia, thanks for everything, including your
warm hospitality--and most especially for the Rollerblade experience.
Thanks, too, to Ray Williamson and Carol Carnett for the valuable
discussions on archaeoastronomy.

As always, Harold and Sylvia Fenn, Rob Howard, and the rest of the
special people at H. B. Fenn deserve the warm thanks we send them.
^.X^,

Foreword

For the prehistoric occupants of the American mid Atlantic coast, the
Chesapeake Bay was a paradise. The rich estuary's environment and
temperate climate provided everything the people needed for survival.
Yearly migrations of waterfowl and anadromous fish provided a wealth of
seasonal food resources. The forest provided nut harvests, and a
habitat for turkey, deer, bear, raccoons, and other animals. From the
marshes, the people collected cord grass wild rice, muskrats, arrow
arum root for tuckahoe bread, and other foods. On shallow mud flats
they caught crabs, dug clams, and harvested oysters. Deposits of silty
loam soil grew corn, beans, squash, tobacco, and sunflowers, among
other agricultural staples.. In such a land of plenty, only the
miracle of applied English obstinacy and ethnocentrism could have led
to starvation in the Jamestown colony in 1608.

Today, the Chesapeake is still noted for the wealth of its resources,
its natural beauty, the yearly migration of waterfowl, oysters, crabs,
agriculture, and, oddly enough, when one travels a short distance up
the Potomac, politics.

Not much has changed since the days of the Late Woodland period. Then,
as today, the chiefs demanded, and were paid, tribute.

People of the Mist is set during the period archaeologists call Late
Woodland II; the date is around 1300 a.d. This was a period of cultural
change for the Algonquian
xvi Foreword peoples of the coastal plain east of the fall line. At
least three separate archaeological complexes are present during this
transition to larger villages and incipient chieftainships. For the
purposes of the novel we have identified three ethnic associations: the
Upriver villages (Montgomery complex); the Conoy (Potomac Creek
complex); the Independent villages and the Mamanatowick's villages
(Rappahannock complex). Interested readers are referred to Stephen B.
Potter's Commoners, Tribute, and Chiefs: The Development of Algonquian
Culture in the Potomac Valley for an irf-depth account of the
archaeological evidence.

Culturally, these people shared many subsistence patterns, relying on
fishing, collecting and gathering, hunting, and agriculture.
Archaeologists separate them by their pottery styles, burial practices,