The Shawmut Peninsula, the promontory of land on which Boston, Massachusetts will one day be built, was originally connected to the mainland to its south by a narrow isthmus, Boston Neck, and surrounded by (using modern names) the waters of Boston Harbor and the Back Bay, an estuary of the Charles River.

Like much of the Massachusetts landscape, the peninsula was shaped by glacial erosion and deposits left by retreating glaciers at the end of the last ice age.

Several prehistoric Native American archaeological sites excavated in the city have shown that the peninsula was inhabited as early as 5000 BCE.

Here, anglers of the twenty-seventh century BCE construct an elaborate fish weir consisting of sixty-five thousand stakes interwoven with branches to trap their prey in tribal waters.