Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Contributors -- Introduction -- Chapter One: The Chesapeake Ecosystem: Its Geologic Heritage -- Chapter Two: Climate and Climate History in the Chesapeake Bay Region -- Chapter Three: Forests before and after the Colonial Encounter -- Chapter Four: Human Influences on the Physical Characteristics of the Chesapeake Bay -- Chapter Five: ALong-TermHistory of Terrestrial Birds and Mammals in the Chesapeake-Susquehanna Watershed -- Chapter Six: Living along the "Great Shellfish Bay": The Relationship between Prehistoric Peoples and the Chesapeake -- Chapter Seven: Human Biology of Populations in the ChesapeakeWatershed -- Chapter Eight: AUseful Arcadia: European Colonists as Biotic Factors in Chesapeake Forests -- Chapter Nine: Reconstructing the Colonial Environment of the Upper ChesapeakeWatershed -- Chapter Ten: Human Influences on Aquatic Resources in the Chesapeake BayWatershed -- Chapter Eleven: Land Use, Settlement Patterns, and the Impact of European Agriculture, 1620-1820 -- Chapter Twelve: Chesapeake Gardens and Botanical Frontiers -- Chapter Thirteen: Genteel Erosion The Ecological Consequences of Agrarian Reform in the Chesapeake, 1730-1840 -- Chapter Fourteen: Farming,Disease, and Change in the Chesapeake Ecosystem -- Chapter Fifteen: Bird Populations of the Chesapeake Bay Region: 350 Years of Change -- Commentary: Reading the Palimpsest -- Index.