Virginia (Other Keyword)
1-25 (42 Records)
Within the first few weeks of landing on Jamestown Island in the spring of 1607 the colonists set about constructing a triangular palisaded fort. At first tents served to house the colonists, and to shelter their place of worship. Slowly but surely with the first public buildings, the storehouse and the church, more permanent structures began to rise. The interior of the fort would see many changes during these years, both reflected in the documentary record as well as the archaeological record....
The Archaeological Context of the 1617 Church Excavations (2020)
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Excavating the Foundations of Representative Government: A Case Study in Interdisciplinary Historical Archaeology." , at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. In 2016, the Jamestown Rediscovery team began excavations inside the 1907 Memorial Church with the intentions of locating and contextualizing the location of the oldest continuous law-making body in the Western Hemisphere. In anticipation of the construction of...
The Archaeology And Forgeries Department: A Novel Interdepartmental Approach For Obtaining Historically Accurate Reproductions At George Washington’s Boyhood Home (2020)
This is a paper/report submission presented at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. The newly reconstructed Washington Family Home at Ferry Farm is unique in that visitors are encouraged to immerse themselves in eighteenth century life by sitting on the chairs, lying on the beds, going through the drawers of desks, and handling the tea and tablewares. Additionally, the entire structure and everything in it is informed by Washington’s historical and archaeological...
The Bewhiskered Germans of Jamestown: Bartmann Jugs from Early Seventeenth-Century Virginia (2023)
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Bartmann Goes Global - Exploring the Cultural Contexts, Meaning and Use of Bellarmine Jugs Across the Globe", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Bartmann jugs from England’s first successful transatlantic settlement at Jamestown, Virginia, are an incomparable resource for creating a much needed typochronology of the ware. Archaeological excavations since 1994 on the site of James Fort, Virginia, have produced...
Camp 'a Colchester: Fairfax County, VA (2016)
Acquired in 2006 the Old Colchester Park and Preserve is over 145 acres located in Lorton, Virginia situated on the Occoquan River and is part of the Fairfax County Park Authority’s system of parks. Archaeological investigations in the park have revealed foundations contemporary to the Colchester port tobacco town that was in operation from ca. 1754-1830. Through research and various survey methods the Colchester Archaeological Research Team (CART) have discovered the presence of numerous...
Characterizing Colonowares from Three Sites in the Central Virginia Piedmont (2016)
First described in the literature in 1962, colonowares were initially interpreted by Ivor Noël Hume as low-cost provisions to enslaved people that substituted for more costly colonial ceramics. Later archaeologists argued that they were the products of enslaved potters or represent a creolized folk pottery that mixed Native American, African and European potting traditions. Whoever made them, a growing body of evidence indicates that they were used by enslaved and free people across racial...
The Comparative Archaeology of Anglo-American Slavery Regimes: Reconsidering the Chesapeake from the Perspective of Bermuda (2013)
Recent comparative scholarship by historians of Anglo-American slavery has emphasized the dynamic relationship between statute law and social practice, particularly as this relationship bears on such issues as economic agency, resistance to enslavement, and collective identity. This paper revisits selected quarter sites excavated in Tidewater Virginia in view of the material life of enslaved Bermudians during the eighteenth century. Recent discoveries at a c. 1720-1860 domestic site in the...
Comparative Ceramics Analysis of Enslaved Contexts at Thomas Jefferson’s Poplar Forest (2017)
Ceramics and socioeconomic analyses are useful tools for comparing market access, choice, and economic status between sites associated with enslaved people. Located in Bedford County, Virginia, Poplar Forest plantation was home to enslaved peoples beginning with its establishment in the mid-18th century and continuing through multiple owners until emancipation. Archaeology conducted since the 1990s has yielded substantial datasets for several different slave quarters on the property, which...
Crafting Tradition: Historical Archaeology and the Persistence of the Patawomeck Eel Pot (2021)
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Digging Deep: Close Engagement with the Material World" , at the 2021 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Traditional crafts associated with Virginia Indian tribes have drawn the attention of colonizers, collectors, anthropologists, and material culture researchers for hundreds of years. The vast majority of these crafts have a connection to traditional foodways systems and serve as major aspects of tribal identity and...
Current Interpretations at the "Cemetery" Site at Old Colchester Park and Preserve (2016)
The Old Colchester Park and Preserve (OCPP), located in southern Fairfax County along the Occoquan River, was acquired by the Fairfax County Park Authority in 2006. The nearly 145 acres of preserved parkland includes numerous prehistoric and historic sites spanning 10,000 years of human occupation. Prominent among these sites is the colonial tobacco port town of Colchester, ca. 1754-1830. Current excavations are focused on the site immediately adjacent to the cemetery, located about half a mile...
Daniel Gookin’s Atlantic World: Comparative Archaeological Landscapes in Ireland and Virginia. (2013)
This poster illustrates an enhanced comparative approach to understanding colonial projects by using the archaeological biography of Daniel Gookin Jr. (1612-1685), an important but relatively unknown figure involved in English plantation projects in Ireland, Virginia, Maryland, and Massachusetts. The study of individual biography provides a framework from which to better situate archaeological sites of the seventeenth-century Chesapeake in the greater Atlantic world. Through creating a broader...
Developing Long-Term Research Goals at Gloucester Point through Problem-Oriented Research (2018)
Fieldwork and archival research has been conducted at Gloucester Point since the mid-1970s, yet only recently has an effort begun to synthesize the data developed from this piecemeal effort. Synthesis requires a concentrated effort at compiling and organizing cartographic and historical records, not solely to develop context and create narratives for the occupants of this place over time, but also to create research questions that can be addressed with the vast amount of available archeological...
The Distribution of Cowrie Shells in Colonial Virginia (2013)
Cowrie shells (Cypraea moneta and Cypraea annulus) have been found in historic contexts associated with African enslavement on New World sites in the Caribbean, the American South, the Middle Atlantic, and the Northeast. Historical archaeologists have come to see these tiny shells as generally indicative of African presence and as specific evidence of spirituality at the sites where they are recovered. In this paper, I examine the role of cowrie shells in the global economies of the 17th, 18th,...
"For the Convenience of its Guests": Archaeological Perspectives on the 18th-century Tavern Porch. (2022)
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Paper / Report Submission (General Sessions)" , at the 2022 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. By the late eighteenth century, Virginia taverns were regularly equipped with long covered porches that served as outdoor living spaces for socializing and much-needed respite from the region's stifling heat and humidity. This paper draws on recent archaeological excavations of three eighteenth-century Williamsburg public houses:...
Four Ships, Three Years, Two Blocks: Managing Alexandria’s Derelict Merchant Fleet (2020)
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Urban Archaeology: Down by the Water" , at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Adopted by City Council in November of 1989 and incorporated into the zoning ordinance in 1992, Alexandria’s Archaeological Protection Code serves to preserve the city’s rich heritage for future generations of scholars and the public. Recent large-scale projects along the waterfront have unearthed amazing finds, perhaps beyond what the...
Glass and Lapidary Beads at Jamestown, Virginia: An Updated Assessment After 25 Years of Excavation (2020)
This is a poster submission presented at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. An updated assessment of the trade beads in the Jamestown collection was long overdue since Heather Lapham’s 1998 study. The size and variation of the collection has expanded to include nearly 4000 glass beads representing over 100 Kidd types, as well as nearly 100 lapidary beads made of amber, coral, jet, amethyst, carnelian, chalcedony, agate, and quartz. The Jamestown assemblage...
A Historical look at American Archeology
This project was set up by ASU undergraduate Aaron Deguzman for a individual study project that he did with FPMcManamon in the Spring semester of 2011. Included are digital copies of some of the historic publications he read and some of his written summaries and assessments of these readings. The following two paragraphs are Aaron's statement of what he hoped to get out of the readings course. What I'd like to study is the history of archeology with an emphasis on the public outlook on...
"In a New York State of Mind: Developing Stoneware Traditions in Virginia from Richmond to the Upper Shenandoah Valley" by Kurt C. Russ (2016)
From urban centers like Richmond to backcountry markets in the upper Shenandoah Valley, developing Virginia stoneware manufacturing traditions were strongly influenced by New York and New Jersey production. The migration of potters rooted in this early transplanted Germanic stoneware tradition -- many sought out by Virginia businessmen and entrepreneurs beginning in the last decade of the eighteenth century – resulted in regional styles and variation in production in Virginia reflective of...
Interpreting The Constructs For Enslaved Worker Housing In Virginia (2017)
Scholars from the fields of archaeology, architectural history, and history have established common categories and cultural conditions for the building types used to house enslaved African Americans in Virginia between the 17th century and the American Civil War. This paper examines architectural, political, and social constructs deemed critical to understanding both the diversity and the patterning of Virginia slave housing. Recent research regarding surviving slave buildings, together with...
"It’s not about us": Exploring Race, Community, and Commemoration at the "Angela Site" on Jamestown Island, Virginia. (2020)
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Community Archaeology in 2020: Conventional or Revolutionary?" , at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. This paper explores the complex relationship between making African Diaspora history and culture visible at Historic Jamestowne, a setting that has historically been seen as “white”. The four hundredth anniversary of the forced arrival of Africans in Virginia has created a fraught space to examine African American...
The Landscape through Nat Turner’s Eyes (2018)
Landscape, to some degree, is in the eye of the beholder. In the late summer of 1831 in Southampton, Virginia, enslaved African Nat Turner led one of the largest slave revolts in U.S. history. Devoutly religious, Turner believed God summoned him to violently rise up against the white master class to end slavery. Where once Turner had gazed upon a bleak rural landscape of captivity—farms, fields, and woods, intersected by dirt roads and footpaths, as he led his insurrection, Turner saw the...
Mary C. Beaudry: The Missing Virginia Years, 1972 to 1980 (2022)
This is an abstract from the session entitled "“Historical Archaeology with Canon on the Side, Please”: In Honor of Mary C. Beaudry (1950-2020)" , at the 2022 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Biographies of Mary Beaudry's career usually begin in Virginia, where Mary was an undergraduate at the College of William and Mary. There, Mary's interest in archaeology was born when she volunteered on a project for the late Norman Barka at Maycock's Point. Mary left...
New Directions for Underwater Archaeology in Virginia (2018)
More than two thousand ships have been lost in Virginia waters since the first European explorers ventured here. In addition, countless prehistoric sites and historic piers, wharves and other structures now lie underwater. Yet, except for a few significant exceptions, little emphasis has been placed on locating and studying Virginia’s submerged sites. In a partnership with the Virginia Historic Resources Department, the Archeological Society of Virginia recently formed a Maritime Heritage...
Notes on the State of Virginia: Query XI (1801)
Thomas Jefferson, in his mission to describe Virginia, (more or less unknowingly) writes a small ethnographic chapter on the Native Americans that inhabit his place of interest. One intensely interesting point of discussion lies in Jefferson's short description of his archeological findings of a burial mound.
Old Questions, New Direction: Research at Ash Lawn-Highland (2016)
As part of Ash Lawn-Highland’s strategic direction, the historic site has undertaken a new phase of research to address lingering mysteries about the standing house and its story as a portion of James Monroe’s 1799 main residence. Addressing the questions involves a multi-disciplinary team and opens the door to the creation of revised public narratives. This paper discusses the points at which uncertainty entered the site’s established narratives, the range of research efforts in the current...