Archaeological Overview and Assessment of the Cape Cod National Seashore, Massachusetts

Previous archeological and relevant documentary research at the Cape Cod National Seashore
is reviewed and evaluated. The Cape Cod National Seashore is located on what is known as the
outer Cape, an area whose history goes back thousands of years, when the area's marine,
estuarine, and terrestrial resources, all located in proximity to one another, drew Native
Americans here. The area was an important center of Native American life into the seventeenth
century, when it was the homeland of the Nauset, Monomoyick, and Pamet communities. It was
also the site of some of the first recorded European visits to the Northeast. Among these early
visitors were the people commonly known as the Pilgrims, who explored parts of the region
before deciding to settle in Plymouth. A generation later, English settlers acquired land in the
area. As they began to farn and clear the forests, they initiated a sequence of environmental and
economic transformations that continues to this day. The settlers' agricultural and forest clearance
practices caused environmental degradation and deforestation, soils were depleted, agricultural
growth was arrested. At the same time, exploitation of shellfish, fish, and whales near the shores
of the Cape's bayside increased until overfishing depleted these resources and fishermen turned
to deeper waters.

Archeological research efforts have demonstrated that the Cape Cod National
Seashore contains a wide variety of archeological resources including Native American
habitations thousands of years old, shipwrecks, farmsteads, tourist facilities, industrial facilities,
and military installations. Thus far, the information from these resources has been tapped
unevenly. Archeology has contributed much to our understanding of precontact Native American
settlement and subsistence, and to our knowledge of the in-shore whaling industry of the late
seventeenth and early eighteenth century. Archeology can continue to make important
contributions to our understanding of many aspects of the history of the outer Cape, provided that
significant archeological resources are be protected from destruction. The Seashore must take
steps to minimize the effects of looting and erosion; these two are perhaps the biggest threats to
archeological resources in the Seashore today. Future research should be focused on areas where
threats from erosion and looting are most serious. Monitoring of threatened areas, subsurface
testing for site evaluation, and even data recovery of threatened sites may be necessary. More
generally, education must be an important element of any preservation program since it can foster
a public attitude of stewardship towards fragile archeological resources. The conservation ethic
as well as the results of archeological research can and should be integrated into the interpretive
programs at the Cape Cod National Seashore.