Prior to colonization, North America was a place filled with cities, towns, and villages. Across the continent, Indigenous peoples produced architecture and monumental construction. Christoph Strobel, Department Chair and Professor of History at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell, gave a 65-minute on-line presentation on the topic on that was posted on the Tewksbury Public Library Network on October 9, 2024. Click here for description of a presentation he did on Native Americans of New England.

The ancient and medieval communities of North America were fed by agriculture. Moreover, Indigenous Americans actively managed their environment and participated in long distance exchange networks.

(Above) Among the many sites he described was the Moundbuilder Site near Chillicothe, Ohio, which contained many objects and ideas likely brought there through trade over long distances.

Strobel is the author of War and Colonization in the Early American Northeast, Native Americans of New England, and The Global Atlantic: 1400 to 1900.