The old and new world archaeologies have been mutually attractive forces for many decades. Respect for the success of the New World, i.e. the settlements along the Hudson River dating back to the Dutch merchant explorers, led to supreme world power in the twentieth century and reflected favourably on the country of origin. In turn, Dutch archaeologists were also impressed by the way the Americans approached the historical archaeology of the newcomers and interacted with the indigenous people. Excavations were needed, because the landscape and cultural history were supplanted by the American way of life, which entailed constructing large motorways on the site of the town of Beverwijck and consequently destroying Fort Orange, rescued thanks only to the commendable work of Paul Huey. In the 1980s the Americans were somewhat envious of the abundance of discoveries in Dutch urban archaeology, compared with the mediocre consideration for the material in their own structures and sites.
The first Dutch archaeologist to cross the Atlantic to join the debate and study material culture was Jan M. Baart, the inspiring and prolific urban archaeologist from Amsterdam. In the 1980s his articles on customs and exchanges of goods such as beads, tobacco, pipes, etc. between the Dutch immigrants, settlers, and the Native Americans living in what was later called New Netherlands opened up new horizons. Baart was pivotal in the Japanese project Unearthed Cities (1996), in which archaeological records from the seventeenth century of world cities such as London, Tokyo, Nagasaki, New Amsterdam (later renamed New York), and of course Amsterdam, were compared to highlight the unique excavations of the Waterlooplein cesspits. In that same year the Boijmans van Beuningen Museum in Rotterdam, at the time the flag bearer of material culture in the Netherlands, issued the catalogue
The New World was left to carry on independently. The fruits of this work feature in the fifteen articles in this volume edited by a wellknown archaeologist from the East Coast and a scholar from Amsterdam. Explaining that the time had come for a synthesis of all projects conducted in recent decades (which is provided separately), the editors argue that the same holds true for the in-depth elaboration of the theme in various articles on the presence of the Dutch in the New Netherlands. While some articles disclose the state of the art on wellknown subjects such as marbles and cooking pots, other topics are new to Dutch readers such as myself.
In one of these articles, Liebknecht describes recognizing wolf traps in the archaeological records. Living on the edge of the wilderness, European settlers had serious problems with these dangerous predators that killed their valuable herds and were a threat to humans as well. Hoping to clear the area of wolves without needing to hunt them, the settlers dug wolf trap pits. These circular excavated areas were surrounded by a ring of postholes and had a hole shaped like a coffin in the centre. Beside the circular excavated area was a large posthole, where the upright pole with a balance arm stood, holding a large counterweight at one end and bait such as a pig at the other end over the pit. The pit was covered with branches and large rocks on top of them. Wolves jumping at the bait would come down on the breaking branches and were then killed by the rocks falling on top of them. The technique seemed to have come from countries around the Netherlands, such as Sweden and Germany, where many wolves still roamed in the seventeenth century. This imported knowledge was combined with the technique of the Native Americans for catching these animals by digging a pit with a stake inside containing carcasses. In the Netherlands this kind of feature may well have been found in the archaeology of remote medieval and post-medieval settlements without ever being recognized as such.
Other articles such as the one by Lucas and Traudt shed light on Dutch drinking practices. Their taverns with the drinking glasses, bottles, and tobacco convey that the settlers enjoyed the same pleasures as at home. They gambled, ate, and drank excessively to forget their daily worries on the frontier.
Marijn Stolk has written a message from the motherland. Her thesis concerns research on the long-awaited publication of the records and backgrounds of the cesspits of the Waterlooplein in Amsterdam, excavated in the 1980s. Some of these waste containers may be considered a treasure trove for cross-cultural material culture and specifically with respect to the Sephardi-Jewish immigrants in Amsterdam. She situates Dutch urban development within material culture (e.g. the greater diversity of ordinary red ceramics) and describes which global trends appear, such as smoking tobacco in tobacco pipes, with Amsterdam as a capital of world trade capital and an ethnic melting pot in the seventeenth century.
As for the actual volume; although much has been written about the New Netherlands, and the subject is well known, the working group has maintained a low profile in this publication. All the plates are black and white, which makes the material culture depicted less striking. The maps and archaeological drawings are all in different styles. Although the book will be affordable to libraries, its price is not within the budget of students. Deciding to include selected extensive articles on highly specialized subjects makes the volume less accessible and causes readers to wonder what target group the editors envisaged. Had the book been more appealing to readers, highlighted by, for example, the illustrative work of Tantillo and good maps, then the target of a retrospective work of half a century digging in the New Netherlands might have been more easily attainable.