European colonization of southern New England in the 17th century AD is known to have profoundly altered the environment of the region. Yet many questions remain about the impacts that European settlers had on the ecology of New England, and old answers to these questions are currently being revisited. Was southern New England an anthropogenic landscape, modified by Native peoples in the millennia prior to European colonization? What exactly happened to the forests, fields, and animals of the region in the years following European arrival? In this talk, I will outline ethnohistorical and archaeological evidence capable of answering these questions. The presently available data suggest that 17th century southern New England witnessed a dramatic shift from sustainable environmental management and resource use by Native peoples to the unsustainable extraction of resources by Euro-American colonists. I will discuss the implications of these results for the history, archaeology, and ecology of colonial New England, but also for our broader understanding of sustainable environmental policy today.