Description
Hallock Site, currently on view in
Living Conduit – Indigenous History and Present Day, South Ocean Gallery at South Nassau Unitarian Universalist Congregation, Freeport, NY, October 3, 2026 – November 21, 2026
The Hallock Site lies within the Corchaug homeland on Long Island's North Fork. Associated with a seventeenth-century village and stone-working, it records Native labor and community life in a region now commonly described through colonial settlement and later property ownership. Making a stone tool required knowledge of materials, skilled hands, and repeated practice. The surviving evidence belongs to a history of people feeding households, working, teaching, and maintaining a home.
An archaeological site is also a place of relationships. Objects removed from the ground can become museum specimens or private possessions, separated from the communities whose history gives them meaning. Protecting this place means keeping its deposits undisturbed and recognizing Native communities as authorities in the care and interpretation of their heritage. Its name, Hallock, also reveals how a later family name can become more publicly familiar than the Native lives associated with the land.
The seventeenth century was a period of colonial expansion on the North Fork. Reading Native places only through their encounters with settlers makes village life appear secondary to someone else's beginning. Here, the starting point is the community already present and the knowledge required to sustain it. Archaeological traces do not mark the moment Native people ceased to exist; they record particular activities at a particular place. Corchaug history belongs within Long Island's continuing Native history, where family connections and community memory extend beyond the boundaries of an excavated site. Respect includes leaving materials in place and supporting interpretation in which descendants have a voice.
Artwork Details
Title: Hallock Site
Year: 2016
Medium: Archival Inkjet Print
Size: 18 x 24 inches
Edition: 3/10
