| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 110.2

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 110.2 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Canada and the United States

Patricia E. Rubertone. Grave Undertakings: An Archaeology of Roger Williams and the Narragansett Indians. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution. 2001. Pp. xxi, 248. $40.00.
Inanimate objects speak to those who will listen to them. For historians, the things that speak loudest are books and manuscripts. But not all scholars listen only to words on a page. Archaeologists make nonwritten objects speak. Oral historians collect wisdom maintained by specific members of a community. They listen in the most literal sense.	1
Patricia E. Rubertone is an archaeologist whose excellent study of Rhode Island draws its strength from the fact that she has tried to integrate all three kinds of evidence into her book. The setting for much of her analysis is a Narragansett graveyard discovered in North Kingstown in 1982. Now known by the infelicitous name of RI-1000, this parcel of land has yielded new insight into the history of perhaps the most unusual of the thirteen mainland Anglo-American colonies.	2
According to the standard wisdom of American history textbooks, Rhode Island's colonial history was dominated by a single individual, Roger Williams, who had an influence over his colony greater than any other colonial magnate, with the possible exception of William Penn. But unlike Penn, Williams was no favorite of a monarch. Rather, as textbooks emphasize, he was forced to leave the province of Massachusetts for his views. In Rhode Island, he recognized the central importance of Native Americans to his nascent community's success. As a result of that observation, he studied the Narragansetts and wrote A Key to the Language of America, published in London in 1643. The book remains crucial to scholars' understanding of Rhode Island's history and the early contact history of the Narragansetts.	. . .

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