Archaeologies of the Early Modern North Atlantic: An Introduction George Hambrecht1,* and Beatrix Arendt2 1Department of Anthropology, Hunter College, 695 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10065. 2Anthropology Department, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA 22304. * Corresponding author - ghambrecht@gmail.com. This special issue of the Journal of the North Atlantic has its origin in the 2006 North Atlantic Biocultural Organization (NABO) conference held at the Université Laval in Québec. One of the central themes of this conference was the early modern period (ca.1500– 1800 CE). This special volume has gathered a number of papers, some that were presented at the conference and others that were not, which represent some of the work being done in historical/post-medieval archaeology across the North Atlantic today. The regions and approaches of the authors published in this issue refl ect the variety and diversity of methodologies and subjects open to archaeologists working on the early modern North Atlantic. They also illustrate the cultural and ecological diversity of the region itself. The North Atlantic region is, as we defi ne it, the northern-temperate, boreal, and sub-arctic areas of North America and Europe that extend from the edge of the Gulf of St Lawrence to the northeast across Labrador, Greenland, and Iceland, then touching on the Faroes, the west and north coasts of the British Isles and Ireland, the Shetlands, and fi nally northern Norway far above the Arctic Circle. One common theme to this region is the infl uence of the North Atlantic Drift. This is meant to be a loosely defi ned region without strict borders, highlighting the area’s cultural and environmental interconnectedness. We see two strong possibilities for the development of a theoretical framework that can encompass a subject as vast as early modern North Atlantic archaeology and which the following articles exemplify. First, there is the historical ecology/environmental archaeology approach. Second, is the work of the Atlantic historians. There has been a great deal of substantial and productive work done in the environmental archaeology of the North Atlantic (e.g., McGovern et al. 2007). It is often hard to ignore the environmental variables in this region, and a number of contributions in this volume work explicitly within an environmental archaeology approach. We hope that showcasing the unique conditions that North Atlantic post-medieval archaeologists must work within, especially the climatic parameters, will effect the larger practice of historical archaeology throughout the world. The work within this region helps address a void pointed out by a number of scholars, namely the lack of an environmental archaeology dimension in historical archaeology research (Crumley 1994, Deagan 1996, Mrozowski 2006). A historical ecology approach to the archaeology of this region has had much success in the study of both the medieval European as well as the pre-Columbian western North Atlantic. This scholarship has demonstrated that such a methodology has great potential for the highly interconnected post-Columbian Atlantic world (Cronon 1983, Crosby 2004, McGovern et al. 2007, Woollett 2007). The potential for productive research in the North Atlantic in later time periods is great, with the high-resolution climate proxy data (such as ice and sea cores and tephrochronology) supplemented by the torrent of documents and the refi nements in dating and distribution that comes with the huge increase in fi nds (esp. pottery) in the early modern period. Later historical periods with richer data sets can allow for a historical ecology approach that is not environmentally deterministic, but rather fully recognizes the multiple interconnections of humans and nature in this critical period of rapid social and environmental change around the world. The interplay of mentality, perception, class, fashion, technology, heritage, and chance on the conscious and accidental human manipulations of the natural world, which certainly extend deep into prehistory, can be particularly effectively investigated when documentary sources become common. The post-medieval world of the past fi ve centuries was as impacted by climate change, volcanism, disease, and multi-scalar natural processes as any other portion of the Holocene, and the environmental records (especially high-resolution records such as tree rings, varved deposits, and tephra) are particularly abundant and increasingly well-studied for this period. Arguably, the interactions between humans, climate, plants, animals, soils, and landforms saw a dramatic increase in complexity in the post-Columbian world, and there is a growing recognition of the need for an expanded multi-disciplinary investigation of the human ecodynamics of modernity. Such an approach for the study of this period has the potential to examine the interaction of human intention, cognition, and historical sequence on a scale of years and decades as well as centuries and millennia. We hope to place the North Atlantic within the early modern history of the larger Atlantic region, which is often dominated by the middle Atlantic and Caribbean narratives. Though often treated as supplemental in many discussions, the North Atlantic had a central and important role in the creation of the early modern Atlantic world. As Peter Pope’s (2004) volume, Fish Into Wine, so effectively revealed, the 2009 Special Volume 1:1–2 Archaeologies of the Early Modern North Atlantic Journal of the North Atlantic 2 Journal of the North Atlantic Special Volume 1 cod-fi shing industry of Newfoundland was one of the earliest and most powerful (in both economic and cultural terms) spurs towards European expansion across the Atlantic. It was a dynamic region where traders, missionaries, farmers, fi shermen, whalers, hunters, trappers—Europeans and Native Americans—all interacted locally and within larger oceanic relationships. It contained new colonies, such as Newfoundland, as well as old, established, early medieval colonies, such as Iceland. This framework offers a new arena to study the effects of the post-Columbian world that contains the classic “haunts” of the archaeology of the modern world, but often within unique new contexts (Orser 1996). The theoretical and methodological approach is infl uenced by the Atlantic historians from whom we take the idea that the North Atlantic region is within a larger Atlantic region that has not only economic and cultural unities, but also a conceptual unity. The areas outlining the Atlantic Ocean contributed to the creation of a unique combination of conditions that were instrumental in the formation of the early modern post-Columbian World and as such, is closely connected to the development of modernity. There is thus a distinguished pedigree for identifying Atlantic history with “early” modernity, before the onset of industrialization, mass democracy, the nation-state, and all the other classic defi ning features of full-fl edged modernity whose origins both Adam Smith and Karl Marx associated with the European voyages of discovery and especially with 1492 (Armitage 2002:12). The idea of an “Atlantic history” is an emerging formulation which reveals more clearly than we have seen before a transnational, multi-cultural reality that came into existence over many years and has persisted. It helps one explain relationships that had not been observed before; it allows one to identify commonalities of experience in diverse circumstances; it isolates unique characteristics that become visible only in comparisons and contrasts; and it provides the outlines of a vast cultural area distinctive in world history. (Bailyn 2002:xix). “Atlantic history” recognizes both the conceptual unity of the overall Atlantic region as well as the numerous distinct regions and culures that it comprises. We think this is a particularily inspiring framework for viewing North Atlantic post-medieval archaeology that can supply strong insights for the discussion among the disparate regional and methodological approaches represented in this volume. Acknowledgments We would like to thank all the authors who have committed to contributing to this volume. As this is an onlineonly journal which follows an article-by-article publishing model, there is the opportunity for rolling submissions. Thus, we anticipate a number of additional articles added to this volume as they become ready for press in the months ahead. We would also like to thank Allison Bain and Jim Wollett, the organizers of the 2006 NABO conference at Laval University in Quebec that served as inspiration for this special volume of JONA. Thomas McGovern and Sophia Perdikaris provided substantial help and support, for which we are very grateful. This special volume of JONA was greatly assisted, either directly or indirectly, by the generous support of the CUNY Northern Science and Education Center, the UK Leverhulme Trust, and grants (0527732, 0732327, 0352596, 0234383) from the US National Science Foundation, Offi ce of Polar Programs (Arctic Social Sciences Program), Archaeology Program, International Polar Year Program, and Human and Social Dimensions of Global Change Program, as well as the Icelandic Millennium Fund. This volume is a product of the North Atlantic Biocultural Organization (NABO) and the International Polar Year 2007–10. Literature Cited Armitage, D. 2002. Three Concepts of Atlantic History. In D. Armitage and M.J. Braddick (Eds.). The British Atlantic World 1500–1800. Palgrave Macmillan, New York, NY, USA. Bailyn, B. 2002. Preface. In D. Armitage and M.J. Braddick (Eds.). The British Atlantic World 1500–1800. Palgrave Macmillan, New York, NY, USA. Cronon, W. 1983. 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