Taking Our Water for the City

April M. Beisaw is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie New York. Since publishing Identifying and Interpreting Animal Bones: A Manual, with Texas A&M University Press, April has focused on the archaeology of the recent past. Her work on the impacts of the New York City water system on contemporary watershed communities has appeared in the International Journal of Historical Archaeology and as a chapter within the volume Contemporary Archaeology and the City: Creativity, Ruination, and Political Action.

“The book is short and filled with vivid stories that bring the research to life. It does a marvelous job of developing an archaeological model for investigating the hidden histories of power that lie beneath seemingly natural landscapes. As such, the book will prove a highly useful text for undergraduate archaeological training.” • Hist Arch“Beisaw takes the reader along with herself and her students as they walked over, through, and around the watershed communities of New York whose lands and livelihoods continue to be impacted by New York City’s ever-increasing need for water. The careful and example-filled work provides the best sorts of nuance about the ways that text, artifact, and oral history can be harnessed by archaeological practice to show the real stakes of our collective use of water, and how that world-sanctioned human right will be even further at risk as the oceans rise and our climate continues to change.” • Rebecca S. Graff, Lake Forest College

• IntroductionUrban Water as an (Un)natural ResourceArchaeology’s Unique PerspectiveBook OutlineChapter 1. Archaeology and the Contemporary PastPast, Present, FutureArchaeological Method and TheoryConnections and ConclusionsChapter 2. New York City’s Water SystemStarting on Manhattan IslandReaching Off-IslandAcquiring More Distant LandsConnections and ConclusionsChapter 3. Kent: A Town RepurposedIntroductionHistoryArchaeology of City-Owned LandsConnections and ConclusionsChapter 4. Olive: A Town TraumatizedIntroductionHistoryArchaeology of City-Owned LandsConnections and ConclusionsChapter 5. Water Pasts for Water FuturesAn Archaeology of Watershed CommunitiesArchaeologists as Effective Activists?ConclusionBibliography