A beautifully illustrated field guide to the Mid-Atlantic region, from the Jersey Shore to Cape Hatteras The Outer Banks of North Carolina and the beaches of the Mid-Atlantic Coast are among the most popular tourist destinations in the United States. This book is a richly illustrated field guide that surveys the geology, environmental history, natural history, and human history of a region that spans the eastern seaboard from Sandy Hook in New Jersey south to Cape Hatteras on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. It is organized around environments, not particular locations. Included are the geology of beaches and barrier islands, the environmental history of the region, as well as detailed looks at the natural history of beaches, dunes, maritime forests, coastal marshes, and estuaries. Also covered are issues involving human activity and climate change, which have become dominant forces shaping geophysical and biological environments. This guide will enable users to walk into a salt marsh or onto a beach and identify much of what they see.

For the prehistoric people of the Middle Atlantic region, copper held a fascination higher than rank, achievement, or status. Native copper artifacts, along with other exotic objects, were seen as a conduit or connection between the living and the dead and were used in burial. Other studies have viewed the use of such artifacts in burials as indicative of an individual’s status and rank, providing evidence for complex society. In Archaeology, Copper, and Complexity, Gregory Denis Lattanzi contends that such economic explanations should be rethought, arguing that the presence of highly exotic artifacts like copper beads and gorgets could be representative of the different mechanisms at play within prehistoric ideology, ceremonialism, and ritual.