ABSTRACT

Cultural landscapes have developed over the entire history of human settlement to the date of observation. Urban and suburban landscapes may seem obviously cultural or human produced, but the open countryside should not be imagined as the antithesis of cultural landscapes. The Newark Basin and Highlands, south of the terminal moraine, seem to have had some of the more dense Lenape populations; the rugged ridges and the extensive coastal marshes were less appealing, though doubtless visited for hunting or fishing. The Lenape's semipermanent houses were made of saplings placed upright in the earth, a few feet apart along the walls and bent over at the top to touch one another, either in a circle, giving a domed roof, or in a rectangular plan, producing an arched or gabled roof. Pre-European New Jersey was a bounteous place, providing an admirable variety of wild and cultivated food for the Lenape.