Bayesian modelling of radiocarbon dates to construct detailed chronologies has become a key metho... more Bayesian modelling of radiocarbon dates to construct detailed chronologies has become a key methodology in North America's 'historic turn,' though the Middle Atlantic has seen few efforts to apply these techniques. Drawing from 70 legacy dates and 25 new assays, this study develops Bayesian chronological models for 10 Late Woodland (AD 900-1600) sites in the Potomac Valley. Our goal is to assess how the arrival of Luray communities impacted the region's settlement history. During the Late Woodland period Native communities tied to three cultural traditions established a series of towns in the Potomac Valley, at times close to one another. With evidence of population movements, intergroup violence, and coalescent communities, the Late Woodland Potomac Valley appears to have represented a dynamic borderland during these centuries. The chronology developed in this study points toward a landscape of settlements we have labelled Persistent Places, Unsettled Settlements, and Transitory Towns.
The Archaeology of Villages in Eastern North America, 2018
This chapter proposes a Powhatan theory of power and suggests links to the archaeology and ethnoh... more This chapter proposes a Powhatan theory of power and suggests links to the archaeology and ethnohistory of towns in the lower Chesapeake. Early colonial-era sources highlight a recurring process whereby powerful outside forces, materials, and people were socialized within the Powhatan settlements known as Kings’ Houses. We suggest that a key Algonquian concept for understanding this process is manitou—the vital spiritual force manifest in dangerously potent people, animals, objects, and places. Within the Kings’ Houses of the colonial-era, Powhatan leaders harnessed manitou by orchestrating ritual, trade, and the built environment. Archaeological evidence of feasting, ditches, and palisades points toward similar practices associated with the construction of boundaries—ditches and palisades—within prominent settlements, starting in the thirteenth century AD. By transforming the objects and people that transgressed these boundaries, religious practitioners and political leaders exerci...
Chapter 5 focuses on archaeological investigations along the Chickahominy River and a history of ... more Chapter 5 focuses on archaeological investigations along the Chickahominy River and a history of residential settlements, subsistence practices, and burial grounds during the Middle to Late Woodland transition. In the sixth century A.D., Native communities living along the Chickahominy River began to bury the deceased in communal burial grounds (ossuaries) located in the drainage’s swampy interior. During the Late Woodland period, new places were established along the Chickahominy with the construction of dispersed farmsteads, burial grounds, and a palisaded compound. In this history of placemaking we see evidence of the spatial practices whereby forager-fishers became the Chickahominy. As is apparent from colonial accounts of the Chickahominy, the “coarse-pounded corn people,” a horticultural economy was a part of this ethnogenetic process. Bioarchaeological study of skeletal remains from the Chickahominy, including stable isotope analysis, provides a basis for considering the hist...
Chapter 4 discusses how the Virginia Algonquian landscape first coalesced as a result of populati... more Chapter 4 discusses how the Virginia Algonquian landscape first coalesced as a result of population movements and social interactions involving different communities of hunter gatherers during the early centuries A.D. As documented within the Kiskiak site, the archaeology of this period records the appearance of new settlement forms, subsistence practices, and a ceramic tradition shared across a broad swath of the coastal Middle Atlantic. Historical linguistic studies raise the possibility that these developments resulted from the rapid replacement of indigenous foragers by newly arrived Algonquian speakers migrating from the north. The archaeological record on the James-York peninsula, by contrast, documents the coexistence for several centuries of distinct communities of practice linked to different material traditions. The archaeology of interior encampments and of riverine settlements with shell middens points toward seasonal movement between places where forager-fishers gathere...
Chapter 7 addresses the enduring power of place in the Virginia Algonquian spatial imaginary. Res... more Chapter 7 addresses the enduring power of place in the Virginia Algonquian spatial imaginary. Resistance to colonists’ encroachment on traditional lands, burial grounds, and sacred spaces took the form of coordinated revolts in 1622 and 1644. These Powhatan uprisings resulted in English retaliation and further Native loss of life and land. And yet, archaeological evidence from this period indicates that Virginia Algonquians made pilgrimages to persistent places to bury ancestors, sacrifice animals, and inter objects, even after the residential population had departed. The continuation of such practices in colonial Tsenacomacoh contradicts a narrative of abandonment, acculturation, and disappearance.
Chapter 2 considers the ways that Virginia Algonquian communities constructed places and made his... more Chapter 2 considers the ways that Virginia Algonquian communities constructed places and made history, beginning with disparate and contradictory representations of the Chesapeake found in colonial-era maps. These include the Map of Virginia and the Zuñiga chart, both produced by English sources. Native mapping practices appear in Powhatan’s Mantle and in a divination ceremony performed by Pamunkey priests. These contrasting cartographic depictions of the Chesapeake colonial landscape highlight the distinct icons and tropes through which Natives and newcomers represented the Chesapeake region. While Virginia’s colonial historiography typically foregrounds early encounters understood from the perspective of English and Powhatan leaders, these maps illustrate how Tsenacomacoh’s past may be understood as a longer and deeper narrative keyed to geographic spaces, meaningful places, and a broadly inclusive notion of landscape.
Chapter 6 addresses Werowocomoco’s archaeological and ethnohistorical records as well as the town... more Chapter 6 addresses Werowocomoco’s archaeological and ethnohistorical records as well as the town’s role in the Virginia Algonquian spatial imaginary. Shortly after its establishment as a town circa A.D. 1200, Werowocomoco’s residents reconfigured the settlement’s spaces, constructing a residential area lining the river and an interior zone marked by a series of trenches. A biography of place and a close reading of colonial-era accounts suggest that Werowocomoco was reconfigured and redefined several times as a ritualized location. By the seventeenth century, Werowocomoco represented the center place of the Powhatan chiefdom and the scene of several consequential encounters with English colonists. The construction of monumental earthworks and chiefly architecture within Werowocomoco made reference to construction episodes dating centuries earlier, suggesting that Werowocomoco’s history of placemaking influenced Powhatan’s decision to move there during the sixteenth century. As a tow...
Chapter 1 outlines an archaeological history of the Algonquian Chesapeake which examines the cult... more Chapter 1 outlines an archaeological history of the Algonquian Chesapeake which examines the culturally specific ways that Virginia Algonquians dwelled within the estuary. The study is influenced by scholarly conversations about space, place, and landscape on the one hand and, on the other, by contemporary Native communities’ demands for research which challenges triumphalist colonial narratives hinging on Native defeat, fragmentation, and abandonment. Primary evidence comes from a reassessment of colonial-era documents and from three archaeological studies, the Werowocomoco Project, the Chickahominy River Survey, and excavations at the Powhatan town of Kiskiak. Previous research in the region, summarized in this chapter, sets the stage for a deep historical anthropology of landscape that crosses the historic / precolonial divide. Chapter 1 closes by summarizing the remainder of the book, organized around sociologist Henri Lefebvre’s model of space that includes three axes: spatial ...
The Powhatan Landscape traces the Native past in the Chesapeake from the Algonquian arrival circa... more The Powhatan Landscape traces the Native past in the Chesapeake from the Algonquian arrival circa A.D. 200 through the rise and fall of the Powhatan chiefdom. Martin D. Gallivan argues that the current fixation with the English at Jamestown in 1607 has concealed the deeper history of Tsenacomacoh (sehn-uh-kuh-MAH-kah), the Algonquian term for Tidewater Virginia. Drawing from maps, place names, ethnohistory and, above all, archaeology, Gallivan shifts the frame of reference from English accounts of the seventeenth century toward a longer narrative of Virginia Algonquians’ construction of places, communities, and connections in between. Riverine settlements occupied for centuries oriented the ways Algonquian people dwelled in the Chesapeake estuary, initially around fishing grounds and collective burials visited seasonally, and later within horticultural towns occupied year-round. Ritualized spaces, including trench enclosures within the Powhatan center place of Werowocomoco (WAYR-uh-...
How should archaeologists respond to descendant communities whose essentialism runs counter to co... more How should archaeologists respond to descendant communities whose essentialism runs counter to constructivist notions of identity? For native communities in Virginia, the 17th-century landscape described by Jamestown’s colonists represents a powerful documentary basis for countering discourse that denies or ignores their existence. Strategic essentialism tied to the notion of tribes as transhistorical subjects offers a means of connecting contemporary native communities to accepted national narratives. While such strategies may be necessary in the short term, research at Werowocomoco, capital of the Powhatan chiefdom ca. 1607, highlights other modes of native social construction. Tidewater communities constructed pluralistic networks prior to contact and reconfigured social ties after 1607. They have done so by incorporating new practices while retaining connections to meaningful places and kinship ties stretching across communities. The expanding involvement of native consultants in research at Werowocomoco and elsewhere provides a point of departure for ‘decolonizing’ discussions of this past.
Chapter 3 considers Virginia Algonquian place names, concluding that the Tsenacomacoh landscape w... more Chapter 3 considers Virginia Algonquian place names, concluding that the Tsenacomacoh landscape was understood and labelled from the vantage of a canoe. Place names typically referenced navigation along and across rivers as well as favoured locations for fishing and for gathering wild, wetland plants. Such representations of space and of mobility hint that Tsenacomacoh was constructed on an estuarine landscape initially inhabited by forager-fishers. The rivers, streams, and embayed waters of the Chesapeake estuary provided the primary pathways connecting places in this setting. Algonquian place names framed travel through Tsenacomacoh’s waterscape, resulting in naming practices keyed to the dynamic interface between dry land and tidal water.
The Oxford Handbook of North American …, Jan 1, 2012
... Maryland has at least 12 Native descendant communities, none of-ficially recognized as an ind... more ... Maryland has at least 12 Native descendant communities, none of-ficially recognized as an indigenous tribe (Hughes and Henry 2006). ... 2000). In coastal Virginia, the Werowocomoco Research Group has developed a framework for consultation and collaboration with six ...
Bayesian modelling of radiocarbon dates to construct detailed chronologies has become a key metho... more Bayesian modelling of radiocarbon dates to construct detailed chronologies has become a key methodology in North America's 'historic turn,' though the Middle Atlantic has seen few efforts to apply these techniques. Drawing from 70 legacy dates and 25 new assays, this study develops Bayesian chronological models for 10 Late Woodland (AD 900-1600) sites in the Potomac Valley. Our goal is to assess how the arrival of Luray communities impacted the region's settlement history. During the Late Woodland period Native communities tied to three cultural traditions established a series of towns in the Potomac Valley, at times close to one another. With evidence of population movements, intergroup violence, and coalescent communities, the Late Woodland Potomac Valley appears to have represented a dynamic borderland during these centuries. The chronology developed in this study points toward a landscape of settlements we have labelled Persistent Places, Unsettled Settlements, and Transitory Towns.
The Archaeology of Villages in Eastern North America, 2018
This chapter proposes a Powhatan theory of power and suggests links to the archaeology and ethnoh... more This chapter proposes a Powhatan theory of power and suggests links to the archaeology and ethnohistory of towns in the lower Chesapeake. Early colonial-era sources highlight a recurring process whereby powerful outside forces, materials, and people were socialized within the Powhatan settlements known as Kings’ Houses. We suggest that a key Algonquian concept for understanding this process is manitou—the vital spiritual force manifest in dangerously potent people, animals, objects, and places. Within the Kings’ Houses of the colonial-era, Powhatan leaders harnessed manitou by orchestrating ritual, trade, and the built environment. Archaeological evidence of feasting, ditches, and palisades points toward similar practices associated with the construction of boundaries—ditches and palisades—within prominent settlements, starting in the thirteenth century AD. By transforming the objects and people that transgressed these boundaries, religious practitioners and political leaders exerci...
Chapter 5 focuses on archaeological investigations along the Chickahominy River and a history of ... more Chapter 5 focuses on archaeological investigations along the Chickahominy River and a history of residential settlements, subsistence practices, and burial grounds during the Middle to Late Woodland transition. In the sixth century A.D., Native communities living along the Chickahominy River began to bury the deceased in communal burial grounds (ossuaries) located in the drainage’s swampy interior. During the Late Woodland period, new places were established along the Chickahominy with the construction of dispersed farmsteads, burial grounds, and a palisaded compound. In this history of placemaking we see evidence of the spatial practices whereby forager-fishers became the Chickahominy. As is apparent from colonial accounts of the Chickahominy, the “coarse-pounded corn people,” a horticultural economy was a part of this ethnogenetic process. Bioarchaeological study of skeletal remains from the Chickahominy, including stable isotope analysis, provides a basis for considering the hist...
Chapter 4 discusses how the Virginia Algonquian landscape first coalesced as a result of populati... more Chapter 4 discusses how the Virginia Algonquian landscape first coalesced as a result of population movements and social interactions involving different communities of hunter gatherers during the early centuries A.D. As documented within the Kiskiak site, the archaeology of this period records the appearance of new settlement forms, subsistence practices, and a ceramic tradition shared across a broad swath of the coastal Middle Atlantic. Historical linguistic studies raise the possibility that these developments resulted from the rapid replacement of indigenous foragers by newly arrived Algonquian speakers migrating from the north. The archaeological record on the James-York peninsula, by contrast, documents the coexistence for several centuries of distinct communities of practice linked to different material traditions. The archaeology of interior encampments and of riverine settlements with shell middens points toward seasonal movement between places where forager-fishers gathere...
Chapter 7 addresses the enduring power of place in the Virginia Algonquian spatial imaginary. Res... more Chapter 7 addresses the enduring power of place in the Virginia Algonquian spatial imaginary. Resistance to colonists’ encroachment on traditional lands, burial grounds, and sacred spaces took the form of coordinated revolts in 1622 and 1644. These Powhatan uprisings resulted in English retaliation and further Native loss of life and land. And yet, archaeological evidence from this period indicates that Virginia Algonquians made pilgrimages to persistent places to bury ancestors, sacrifice animals, and inter objects, even after the residential population had departed. The continuation of such practices in colonial Tsenacomacoh contradicts a narrative of abandonment, acculturation, and disappearance.
Chapter 2 considers the ways that Virginia Algonquian communities constructed places and made his... more Chapter 2 considers the ways that Virginia Algonquian communities constructed places and made history, beginning with disparate and contradictory representations of the Chesapeake found in colonial-era maps. These include the Map of Virginia and the Zuñiga chart, both produced by English sources. Native mapping practices appear in Powhatan’s Mantle and in a divination ceremony performed by Pamunkey priests. These contrasting cartographic depictions of the Chesapeake colonial landscape highlight the distinct icons and tropes through which Natives and newcomers represented the Chesapeake region. While Virginia’s colonial historiography typically foregrounds early encounters understood from the perspective of English and Powhatan leaders, these maps illustrate how Tsenacomacoh’s past may be understood as a longer and deeper narrative keyed to geographic spaces, meaningful places, and a broadly inclusive notion of landscape.
Chapter 6 addresses Werowocomoco’s archaeological and ethnohistorical records as well as the town... more Chapter 6 addresses Werowocomoco’s archaeological and ethnohistorical records as well as the town’s role in the Virginia Algonquian spatial imaginary. Shortly after its establishment as a town circa A.D. 1200, Werowocomoco’s residents reconfigured the settlement’s spaces, constructing a residential area lining the river and an interior zone marked by a series of trenches. A biography of place and a close reading of colonial-era accounts suggest that Werowocomoco was reconfigured and redefined several times as a ritualized location. By the seventeenth century, Werowocomoco represented the center place of the Powhatan chiefdom and the scene of several consequential encounters with English colonists. The construction of monumental earthworks and chiefly architecture within Werowocomoco made reference to construction episodes dating centuries earlier, suggesting that Werowocomoco’s history of placemaking influenced Powhatan’s decision to move there during the sixteenth century. As a tow...
Chapter 1 outlines an archaeological history of the Algonquian Chesapeake which examines the cult... more Chapter 1 outlines an archaeological history of the Algonquian Chesapeake which examines the culturally specific ways that Virginia Algonquians dwelled within the estuary. The study is influenced by scholarly conversations about space, place, and landscape on the one hand and, on the other, by contemporary Native communities’ demands for research which challenges triumphalist colonial narratives hinging on Native defeat, fragmentation, and abandonment. Primary evidence comes from a reassessment of colonial-era documents and from three archaeological studies, the Werowocomoco Project, the Chickahominy River Survey, and excavations at the Powhatan town of Kiskiak. Previous research in the region, summarized in this chapter, sets the stage for a deep historical anthropology of landscape that crosses the historic / precolonial divide. Chapter 1 closes by summarizing the remainder of the book, organized around sociologist Henri Lefebvre’s model of space that includes three axes: spatial ...
The Powhatan Landscape traces the Native past in the Chesapeake from the Algonquian arrival circa... more The Powhatan Landscape traces the Native past in the Chesapeake from the Algonquian arrival circa A.D. 200 through the rise and fall of the Powhatan chiefdom. Martin D. Gallivan argues that the current fixation with the English at Jamestown in 1607 has concealed the deeper history of Tsenacomacoh (sehn-uh-kuh-MAH-kah), the Algonquian term for Tidewater Virginia. Drawing from maps, place names, ethnohistory and, above all, archaeology, Gallivan shifts the frame of reference from English accounts of the seventeenth century toward a longer narrative of Virginia Algonquians’ construction of places, communities, and connections in between. Riverine settlements occupied for centuries oriented the ways Algonquian people dwelled in the Chesapeake estuary, initially around fishing grounds and collective burials visited seasonally, and later within horticultural towns occupied year-round. Ritualized spaces, including trench enclosures within the Powhatan center place of Werowocomoco (WAYR-uh-...
How should archaeologists respond to descendant communities whose essentialism runs counter to co... more How should archaeologists respond to descendant communities whose essentialism runs counter to constructivist notions of identity? For native communities in Virginia, the 17th-century landscape described by Jamestown’s colonists represents a powerful documentary basis for countering discourse that denies or ignores their existence. Strategic essentialism tied to the notion of tribes as transhistorical subjects offers a means of connecting contemporary native communities to accepted national narratives. While such strategies may be necessary in the short term, research at Werowocomoco, capital of the Powhatan chiefdom ca. 1607, highlights other modes of native social construction. Tidewater communities constructed pluralistic networks prior to contact and reconfigured social ties after 1607. They have done so by incorporating new practices while retaining connections to meaningful places and kinship ties stretching across communities. The expanding involvement of native consultants in research at Werowocomoco and elsewhere provides a point of departure for ‘decolonizing’ discussions of this past.
Chapter 3 considers Virginia Algonquian place names, concluding that the Tsenacomacoh landscape w... more Chapter 3 considers Virginia Algonquian place names, concluding that the Tsenacomacoh landscape was understood and labelled from the vantage of a canoe. Place names typically referenced navigation along and across rivers as well as favoured locations for fishing and for gathering wild, wetland plants. Such representations of space and of mobility hint that Tsenacomacoh was constructed on an estuarine landscape initially inhabited by forager-fishers. The rivers, streams, and embayed waters of the Chesapeake estuary provided the primary pathways connecting places in this setting. Algonquian place names framed travel through Tsenacomacoh’s waterscape, resulting in naming practices keyed to the dynamic interface between dry land and tidal water.
The Oxford Handbook of North American …, Jan 1, 2012
... Maryland has at least 12 Native descendant communities, none of-ficially recognized as an ind... more ... Maryland has at least 12 Native descendant communities, none of-ficially recognized as an indigenous tribe (Hughes and Henry 2006). ... 2000). In coastal Virginia, the Werowocomoco Research Group has developed a framework for consultation and collaboration with six ...
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