Allen, J. R. L. 1997. The geoarchaeology of land-claim in coastal wetlands: a sketch from Britain and the north-west European Atlantic-North Sea coasts. Archaeological Journal 154.
Amos, C. L. 1978. The postglacial evolution of the Minas Basin, Nova Scotia-a sedimentological interpretation. Journal of Sedimentary Petrology 48 (3).
Atlantic Geoscience Society 2001. The Last Billion Years , A Geological History of the Maritime Provinces of Canada , . Halifax, Nova Scotia,
: Nimbus Publishing Ltd.
Blackstone, Sir William. The Laws of England: In Four Books with an Analysis of the Work
Google Books 1832 [cited 25 April 2011. Available from http://books.google.ca/books?id=PPpBAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA58&lpg=PA58&dq=england+statute+23+h8+c5&source=bl&ots=tNo7cN4EkI&sig=qRUKTx4hA7eEz4o7dG-a-UcjoLg&hl=en&ei=hRmyTeyxAo-C0QG1lIGpCQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBcQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false.
Bleakney, J. Sherman. 2004. Sods, soil, and spades: the Acadians at Grand Pré and their dykeland legacy. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press.
In this publication, Sherman Bleakney, Professor Emeritus, Acadia University provides a wealth of information on dyking practices in the Grand Pre region of Nova Scotia.
Butzer, Karl W. 2002. French Wetland Agriculture in Atlantic Canada and Its European Roots: Different Avenues to Historical Diffusion. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 92 (3).
Theme: Transfer of dyking technology from northwestern Europe to Acadia.
A section of Professor Butzer’s abstract is;
“Wetland reclamation, a form of agricultural expansion and intensification, appeared in estuarine environments of northwestern Europe during medieval demographic expansion, prior to the Black Death. It included sea walls, one-way sluice gates, drainage canals, and fields reclaimed from salt marsh. French settlers introduced estuarine reclamation to Atlantic Canada (Acadia) during the early 1600s. This article examines its readaptation in Nova Scotia.”
Gulf of Maine Council on the Marine Enviroment. 2008. Salt Marshes in the Gulf of Maine: Human Impacts, Habitat Restoration, and long-term Change Analysis.
Hatvany, Matthew G. 2002. The Origins of the Acadian Aboiteau: An Environmental-Historical Geography of the Northeast. Historical Geography 30,
Also available at http://www.historical-geography.net/volume_30_2002/hatvany.pdf.
Hatvany, Matthew George. 2003. Marshlands : four centuries of environmental change on the shores of the St. Lawrence, Aboiteaux of Kamouraska. Sainte-Foy, Quebec : Presses de l'Université Laval.
This book contains excellent background material on the fascinating history of salt marsh exploitation. He explains that all societies living in tidal wetland regions of the world have had a long-term relationship with salt marsh ecosystems. Since prehistoric times these fertile estuarine marshlands have been dyked, ditched, and drained for agricultural purposes.
Hustvedt, Eric. 1987. Maritime Dykelands: the 350 year struggle. Province of Nova Scotia: Department of Agriculture and Marketing.
Prior to the publication of Bleakney’s book, “Maritime Dykelands: The 350 Year struggle” (Maritime Dykelands: the 350 year struggle, 1987) was the primary source for information on Maritime dyking practices. This publication documents the dyking methods of the Acadian and the English settlers on the very large salt marshes in Maritime Canada.This book is especially useful in tracing the technology used in the construction of machine made dykes. Much of the information was gathered as a consequence of the signing of the 1949 Maritime Marshlands Rehabilitation Act.
National Archives. COMMISSIONERS OF SEWERS FOR THE EAST RIDING [cited 17 April 2011. Available from http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/a2a/records.aspx?cat=047-csr&cid=0#0.
Nixon, Scott W. 15 March 2011. The Ecology of New England High Salt Marshes: A Community Profile. Fish and Wildlife Service, US Department of the Interior 1982 [cited 15 March 2011]. Available from http://www.nwrc.usgs.gov/techrpt/81-55.pdf.
Office of the Legislative Counsel (Nova Scotia House of Assembly). (1758 to 1835
). The Statutes at Large of the Province of Nova Scotia, . Retrieved 17 April 2011
from http://nslegislature.ca/legc/at_large.htm
Perry-Giraud, Christian. Thirty Years Assessment of the Cornwallis Estuary Evolution, Aerial Photography and GIS Analysis
2005 [cited 16 March 2011. Available from http://www.bofep.org/PDFfiles/GISCornwallis_PerryGiraud.pdf.
Rippon, Stephen. 2000. The transformation of coastal wetlands : exploitation and management of marshland landscapes in North West Europe during the Roman and medieval periods, British Academy postdoctoral fellowship monograph. Oxford ; New York: Oxford University Press.
Rippon, Stephen, Nigel Cameron, and Council for British Archaeology. 2006. Landscape, community and colonisation : the north Somerset levels during the 1st to 2nd millennia AD. York: Council for British Archaeology.
Ross, Sally and Deveau, Alphonse. 1992. The Acadians of Nova Scotia Past and Present. Halifax: Nimbus Publishing Limited.
Russell, Howard S. 1976. A Long, Deep Furrow: Three Centuries of Farming in New England: University Press of New England, Hanover, N.H. .
Sebold, Kimberly R. FROM MARSH TO FARM:
The Landscape Transformation of Coastal New Jersey. National Park Service,
1992 [cited 7 July 2010. Available from http://www.nps.gov/history/history/online_books/nj3/contents.htm.
Sebold, Kimberly R. 1998. Low Green Prairies of the Sea: Economic and Cultural Construction of Salt Marshes Along the Gulf of Maine Ph.D, History, University of Maine.
Sebold, Kimberly R. 2008. Transforming the Salt-Marsh Landscape: A Geographic, Economic and Cultural Comparision. In Association of American Geographers-2008 Annual Meeting. Boston,Massachusetts.
Theme: Dyke building is a practice that depends entirely on co-operative labour and organization.
In this paper Professor Sebold states that:
“This paper will examine the importance of cooperation and organization as it corresponds to successful land reclamation. It will compare and contrast the success of salt-marsh reclamation along coastal Maine and coastal New Jersey. More importantly, it argues that coastal New Jersey’s reclamation schemes were far more successful because of the organizational layers that reinforced cooperation and because many of those involved in reclamation were attached to each other via Quakerism. Maine’s coastal reclamation schemes were far less successful because there were little to no organizational layers to reinforce the cooperation needed for the drainage of its salt marshes. Furthermore, the paper will speculate on why this lack of complex management existed in Maine.”
The Statutes at Large of the Province of Nova Scotia, 1758 to 1835, Second Session of the Second General Assembly, Chapter 7,. An Act for appointing Commissioners of Sewers,
(
) 1760 [cited 13 April 2011. Available from http://nslegislature.ca/legc/scanned/at_large/volume1/1760.pdf.
Webb, Sidney and Beatrice. 1922. English Local Government: Statutory Authorities for Special Purposes
London, New York, Bombay, Calcutta, and Madras: Longmans, Green and Co. .
In 1970 the Nova Scotia Government took over the responsibility for managing the dykelands within its boundaries and the responsibility for maintaining of the dykes and aboiteaux (Perry-Giraud, p6). Prior to this a special statute of the Nova Scotia Legislature gave the owners of any dyked salt marsh in the province the option of having their marsh body treated as an independent governmental entity that in today’s terminology is called a special-purpose district (Wikipedia, p1) or a Statutory Local Authority for a Special Purposes (Webb, p 3). Special-purpose districts are a form of local government that offer specialized services only to those persons who own land within the district and the administrators of such a district are empowered to tax the districts land owners. For dyked Nova Scotia salt marshes the special-purpose was dykeland agriculture and the specialized services provided involved the building and maintenance of the hand-made dykes, aboiteaus, and dales (a particular drainage method performed with a horse and plough) in order to prevent the dykeland from being inundated at high tide.
A form of statutory local government for dykland agriculture existed in England as early as the thirteenth century when records indicate that efforts were being made to drain and embank various wetlands. Success was limited due to the lack of cooperation and organization among the owners and inhabitants of the meadows and marshes. The historians Sidney and Beatrice Webb trace the development of wetland local government in England and how it came to be called Commissioners of Sewers in the time of King Henry VIII. The concept of Commissioners of Sewers was introduced into Nova Scotia in 1760 when the Nova Scotia Legislature introduced an act titled “An act for appointing Commissioners of Sewers” (The Statutes at Large of the Province of Nova Scotia, 1758 to 1835, p 59).
Wynn, Graeme. Late Eighteenth-Century Agriculture on the Bay of Fundy Marshlands. Acadiensis, Volume 8 Issue 2 1979 [cited 15 March 2011. Available from http://www.google.ca/search?client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&channel=s&hl=en&source=hp&q=Late+Eighteenth-Century+Agriculture+on+the+Bay+of+Fundy+Marshlands&meta=&btnG=Google+Search.
Graeme Wynn states that generally, contemporary commentators are critical of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries farming methods of the post-expulsion settlers in the Upper Bay of Fundy. He gives examples of the widespread perception that Planter and Loyalist settlers had great difficulty in mastering techniques in which the Acadians were proficient. Professor Wynn’s provides an argument that challenges these views and he “contends that in the basic matter of dyking technique, continuity rather than hiatus marked Fundy marshland agriculture in the second half of the eighteenth century.” He provides evidence that “adverse contemporary comparisons of "English" and Acadian cropping patterns were misleading because they ignored crucial questions of market demand, population size, and subsistence requirements.”