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Reviews
| The Line of Forts: Historical Archaeology on the Colonial Frontier of Massachusetts. By Michael D. Coe. Hanover, N.H.: Univ. Press of New England, 2006. xiv+234 pp., illus., maps, plans, diags., notes, appens., bibl., index. $19.95 pb (ISBN 1-58465-542-9).
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Michael D. Coe's The Line of Forts, published by the University Press of New England, is the latest volume in the field of historical archaeology. The forts in his title were a series of log forts constructed across western Massachusetts during King George's War (1744–1748), which were intended to protect Massachusetts settlers from Indian attacks. Still, such attacks were rare, and local settlers were more often assaulted while in their fields, rather than inside their forts. The Line of Forts was in use but briefly. The forts were abandoned by the end of the 1750s, and even most of the timbers were gone by the 1760s.
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Coe is Charles J. MacCurdy Professor of Anthropology, Emeritus, at Yale University and synthesizes an impressive array of historical sources as he recreates life inside the forts. Coe's writing style is invariably lively and insightful, and he has especially focused upon the very powerful role played by several elite families, the so-called River Gods of the Connecticut River Valley. Preeminent among these was the Williams family, who created and provisioned the forts, and especially prominent was Colonel Ephraim Williams, Jr., who lost his life in 1755 during the Bloody Morning scout action at the beginning of the Battle of Lake George. It is Ephraim who is credited with founding Williams College.
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Coe could have written a valuable account of the opening and defense of the western Massachusetts frontier if he had relied solely upon the abundant muster rolls, military orders, and account books that have survived. The availability of excellent records is certainly testimony to the importance of the Williams family in the early history of Massachusetts. However, between 1971 and 1972 Daniel Ingersoll, then at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, undertook the excavation of the site of Fort Pelham, located in the tiny town of Rowe. This was followed in the summer of 1974 by Coe's own excavation of Fort Shirley in the adjacent town of Heath. The excavation of these two small log forts (really little more than blockhouses) prompted the writing of The Line of Forts. This volume is more than just an attractive site report with good descriptions of each fort site and of the artifacts that were recovered. The book also includes much useful information about all of the colonial wars, with especially detailed information about colonial events and processes in western Massachusetts.
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Coe is a masterful storyteller who has written a host of books on archaeological topics, but his other projects and writings have all focused upon Mesoamerica (with the exception of one book that describes the early city of Angkor in Cambodia). In his first book-length foray into historical archaeology, Coe does not disappoint. Blending cultural history, natural history, and material culture, Coe presents an integrated perspective on the early frontier. The excavated remains of Fort Pelham and Fort Shirley bring immediacy to what would otherwise be a "buried in the documents" type of story. There are plenty of excellent site and artifact drawings and photographs, adding to what is possibly the best analysis yet done of the remains of small, ephemeral log forts. This detail could have been dry in the telling, but Coe has livened up his book with much information about the individuals who lived on the frontier. Fortunately, it is very much a narrative about people and not just an analysis of fort construction techniques.
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A preconception at the beginning of Coe's research was that "I would have been dealing with the material culture of a self-sufficient frontier society" (p. 136), but archaeology at the two forts demonstrated something rather unexpected, which was that a flood of consumer items was making its way to the far fringes of the American frontier with nearly everything made in Britain. Consumer goods from across the Atlantic traveled quickly from Boston out to western Massachusetts, and artifacts suggest that those who dwelled at frontier forts really lived quite well. Our so-called homespun ancestors functioned as part of an international exchange network. Archaeology conducted at even the humblest of log forts shows that military suppliers and storeowners helped ordinary citizens transcend any sort of localized folk culture that could otherwise have been the result of life in isolated rural areas.
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For IA readers, reading this book will be a pleasant trip into a related field, that of military history and archaeology. None of the features excavated at Coe's two forts—including barracks, cellars, dumps, wells, and possibly a powder magazine—may be classified as "industrial," but nevertheless this book provides an excellent look at British and American military culture, consumer behavior, and rural life just prior to the rise of industrialization.
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