• we tend to think of it as machines, particularly computers
• but it certainly includes the tools people use, no matter how unsophisticated
• and the things that are made with those tools
  
• technology also includes specific processes for modifying the environment, even if they aren't physical objects
• technologies are the things and ideas we use to modify our environment
• two kinds of technology--craft technology and science-based technology--that is developed by formal scientific research
  
• I use the word "science" only for formal scientific knowledge
  
• basic science is knowledge for the sake of knowledge
• spectrum:  pure science--applied science--engineering science--engineering research--engineering development

• settled agriculture in some areas
• Native Americans in the southeast set fires to open up the forest so that there would be more berries and more grass to attract deer--the longleaf pine-wiregrass ecosystem of the coastal plain of North and South Carolin and Georgia was actually dependent on native American burning
• that native Americans lived in harmony with the environment rather than manipulating it is a myth
• notice that Cowan gives you a lot of evidence to show that myth is not true
  

• early colonial farmers often didn't even have plows, and those they had weren't well suited for conditions until the invention of the shovel plow in the mid-1700s

Shovel Plow at Mt. Vernon

• relied on farming techniques they learned from the native Americans
• a local blacksmith and in richer towns a local carpenter
• basic knowledge about building and even metalworking was widely diffused, specialized knowledge very rare
• most goods used (eg. cloth, soap, candles) were made at home in many areas
• Southern plantations had to be more organized and had specialized artisans, often slaves, but didn't have much need of labor-saving devices
• an improved axe was one of the most important American contributions--allowing trees to be felled three times faster

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Hagood Mill, Pickens, SC, PEM photo 

• to see a mill in operation visit Hagood Mill 3 miles north of Pickens on Highway 178 on the 3rd Saturday of the month between 10 am and 4 pm
  
• these varied in design depending on the scale of the operation
• locally built except for a few key components
• 
  

 Grist Mill (for grinding grain)

 iron smelting

• these were particularly common in Pennsylvania and Virginia
• even in the north they were first worked by slaves
• some ironworking techniques were brought by slaves from Africa, which had its own tradition of small-scale iron-smelting
• plentiful supplies of ore and wood meant little need for technological innovation

  African Iron Smelting

Trade was the center of the economy

• most farmers were not self-sufficient--they needed to buy some things
  
• mercantile theory of the role of government: government promotes and controls trade
• the purpose of a colony was to supply raw materials to the mother country
  
• England enforced a colonial order, seeking to prevent manufacture in the colonies

• when land was cleared for agriculture trees were often burned and the ashes sold for the manufacture of potash
• settlers were interested in cash crops and purchased more necessities
• many people moved west from the long-settled coast
• James Fenimore Cooper, The Pioneers, gives a very vivid account