GALLERY LXVIII
The Worked Continent
The land the colonists called wilderness was worked land — burned, planted, drained and hunted on a schedule. They did not find an empty continent; they found a depopulated one.
ON THE FLOOR
Charles Horton Cooley
Theorist designate - flagged from the theory registry (#8494)
“You learned who you are by watching what other people reflected back at you. The mirror, it turns out, was people all along.”
ON THE FLOOR
Edward Soja
Theorist designate - flagged from the theory registry (#8494)
“Space is not the stage the story happens on - it is one of the actors. Ask WHERE, and half the mystery answers itself.”
ON THE FLOOR
George Herbert Mead
Theorist designate - flagged from the theory registry (#8494)
“The self is a conversation: the I speaking, the Me listening with everyone else's ears. You rehearse society every time you think.”
AM1-001 · The Worked Continent — Open the drawer
A ceramic bowl containing burned hickory nuts, typical of debris from Indigenous food processing and storage sites across the eastern woodlands, dating to the pre-contact period.
AM1-002 · The Worked Continent — What is this thing?
A blackened hickory nutshell, split and scored by stone or bone tools, recovered from a midden layer dated to the early contact period. Evidence of Indigenous food processing and controlled burning.
AM1-003 · The Worked Continent — Read the source
A printed travel narrative describing New England's forests, wildlife, and Indigenous land management practices, written by an English colonist after a brief residence and published to attract settlers.
AM1-004 · The Worked Continent — Map it / time it
A woodcut map of southern New England from William Wood's promotional tract, showing forest cover, Native settlement locations, and waterways—a document students can test against archaeological and ecological evidence of Indigenous land management.
AM1-005 · The Worked Continent — Two sources disagree
Watercolor map and written observations by English surveyor Thomas Harriot, made during the 1585–1586 Roanoke colony, documenting cleared fields, Indigenous settlement patterns, and forest composition in coastal Virginia.
AM1-006 · The Worked Continent — State the claim
Charred wood fragments from a soil layer dated to pre-contact eastern North America, showing evidence of repeated controlled burning that maintained open forest and meadow for hunting and cultivation.
AM1-007 · The Worked Continent — Take the other side
A colonial-era cartographic document showing land parcels, waterways, and settlement zones in early Virginia, illustrating the limits of European knowledge and the patchiness of indigenous land management claims.
AM1-008 · The Worked Continent — Weigh it
A stratigraphic soil sample showing repeated charcoal deposits in pre-contact eastern woodland sediment, evidence of fire use across centuries before European arrival.
AM1-009 · The Worked Continent — Build the answer
A cross-section of a tree showing multiple fire scars in its rings, evidence of repeated controlled burning in pre-contact eastern woodlands. Demonstrates deliberate, cyclical land management by Indigenous peoples before European arrival.
AM1-010 · The Worked Continent — For the file
Handwritten survey records from early 17th-century Virginia documenting ring-barked trees in forest clearings, evidence of deliberate woodland management by Indigenous peoples prior to English settlement.
AM1-011 · The Worked Continent — Go and look
A colonial-era surveyor's manuscript page documenting property boundaries, featuring marginal sketches of deliberately girdled trees used as survey markers. Trees killed by bark-stripping were visible landmarks for decades, evidence of prior Indigenous land management.
AM1-012 · The Worked Continent — Now, today
A municipal stream daylighting permit, site plan, and pre-restoration photographs showing buried creek channel beneath asphalt and lawn, revealing how modern urban land obscures prior management and requires active intervention to restore.
AM1-013 · The Worked Continent — Teach it back
A ceramic bowl containing blackened hickory nut shells, representative of controlled burning and nut management by Eastern Woodland peoples. Evidence of deliberate landscape tending through fire.
AM1-014 · The Worked Continent — The other place
A representative colonial-era map documenting the acequia networks of the Rio Grande valley, showing Spanish hydraulic engineering that depended on and redirected indigenous water management knowledge and labor.
AM1-015 · The Worked Continent — One object, close
A reconstructed fish weir—a V-shaped stone or wooden trap built into a riverbed—represents Indigenous seasonal harvesting infrastructure that colonists encountered and sometimes dismantled, revealing land management practices predating European arrival.
From the gallery’s own wall — “AM1-001 · The Worked Continent — Open the drawer”.
🎧 A moment to consider
What will you carry out of this room?