Grassland, Forest, and Historical Settlement

This volume presents a detailed examination of early American settlement processes and patterns during the frontier and postfrontier period in a portion of northeastern Missouri covering an area of approximately 444 square miles.The research was conducted in the central Salt River valley as part of the Cannon Reservoir Human Ecology Project sponsored by the St. Louis District of the United States Corps of Engineers.The project, directed by anthropologist Michael J. O'Brien, was an interdisciplinary effort involving the perspectives of anthropology, geography, and history.In the words of the authors, the book "is really a synthesis of eight years effort to investigate and understand changes in the Euro-American settlement of the Salt River Valley" (6).Employing ecological and spatial approaches to reconstruct the dynamic picture of frontier settlement in the study area, the authors organized their research around four general topics: the household, the farmstead, the community, and the settlement patterns.Specific research questions dealt with settlement location, land acquisition, land use, land productivity, family organization, household organizations, social hierarchy, and ideological forces.A key section of the book is devoted to settlement theory.The authors present an exhaustive review of the literature in the field, with particular emphasis on anthropology and geography.A synthetic model of historical settlement in the project area follows.The model, which is aimed at explaining changes in settlement configuration through time, recognizes three stages: colonization, filling in, and competition.While generally patterned after J. C. Hudson's theory of rural settlement, the authors add several economic and sociocultural dimensions as well as physical environmental dimensions of the Salt River valley to better explain the pattern of observed settlement in the study area.Throughout the study the authors stress the dynamic character of the frontier settlement in Missouri.Settlement required adaptation, and adaptation changed constantly and rapidly as perceptions and circumstances altered.The empirical study of settlement in the Salt River valley focuses on six topics, each constituting a chapter: (1) the physical environment;(2) general patterns of settlement; (3) environmental dimensions of , 480

Agroforestry · Archaeology · Geography · Grassland · Settlement (finance · American Environmental and Regional History · Archaeology and Natural History · Ecology · Environmental Science · Forest Management and Policy · Forestry