Understanding the use of space in an eighteenth century black loyalist community: Birchtown, Nova Scotia

Birchtown, Nova Scotia is a historically significant place in the cultural history of African Americans in Canada and the United States. Its history is not well understood however, recent historical and archaeological investigations have begun to shed light on its development and the people who once lived there. The settlers, suffering under great scarcity, did not leave much material culture behind. This thesis demonstrates how spatial analysis can be used to learn about the intellectual and social conditions of people in the past. Architecture and settlement patterning are of particular importance in this study.; As a method of managing and anaIyzing the spatial data for Birchtown. GIS and image processing technologies have been borrowed from the field of geomatics. These tools have enabled new information to be identified in Birchtown and demonstrate their benefit as an excellent complement to traditional historical archaeological and anthropological research methods.