Archaeological Study of Colonial Chesapeake Culture

DOCUMENT Full-Text Catherine Alston.

Midden analysis charts produced for the Comparative Archaeological Study of Colonial Chesapeake Culture project

DOCUMENT Full-Text Catherine Alston.

Artifact images produced for the Comparative Archaeological Study of Colonial Chesapeake Culture project

DOCUMENT Full-Text Catherine Alston.

Artifact distribution maps produced for the Comparative Archaeological Study of Colonial Chesapeake Culture project

DOCUMENT Full-Text Catherine Alston.

Artifact images produced for the Comparative Archaeological Study of Colonial Chesapeake Culture project

DOCUMENT Full-Text Catherine Alston.

Artifact distribution maps produced for the Comparative Archaeological Study of Colonial Chesapeake Culture project

DOCUMENT Citation Only Catherine Alston.

Midden analysis charts produced for the Comparative Archaeological Study of Colonial Chesapeake Culture project

DOCUMENT Full-Text Catherine Alston.

Artifact images produced for the Comparative Archaeological Study of Colonial Chesapeake Culture project

DOCUMENT Full-Text Catherine Alston.

Artifact distribution maps produced for the Comparative Archaeological Study of Colonial Chesapeake Culture project

DOCUMENT Full-Text Catherine Alston.

Midden analysis charts produced for the Comparative Archaeological Study of Colonial Chesapeake Culture project

DOCUMENT Full-Text Catherine Alston.

Artifact images produced for the Comparative Archaeological Study of Colonial Chesapeake Culture project

DOCUMENT Full-Text Catherine Alston.

Artifact distribution maps produced for the Comparative Archaeological Study of Colonial Chesapeake Culture project

DOCUMENT Full-Text Catherine Alston.

Midden analysis charts produced for the Comparative Archaeological Study of Colonial Chesapeake Culture project

DOCUMENT Citation Only Catherine Alston.

Artifact distribution maps produced for the Comparative Archaeological Study of Colonial Chesapeake Culture project

DOCUMENT Full-Text Catherine Alston.

Midden analysis charts produced for the Comparative Archaeological Study of Colonial Chesapeake Culture project

DOCUMENT Full-Text Catherine Alston.

Artifact images produced for the Comparative Archaeological Study of Colonial Chesapeake Culture project

DOCUMENT Full-Text Catherine Alston.

Artifact distribution maps produced for the Comparative Archaeological Study of Colonial Chesapeake Culture project

DOCUMENT Full-Text Catherine Alston.

Midden analysis charts produced for the Comparative Archaeological Study of Colonial Chesapeake Culture project

DOCUMENT Full-Text Catherine Alston.

Artifact images produced for the Comparative Archaeological Study of Colonial Chesapeake Culture project

DOCUMENT Full-Text Catherine Alston.

Artifact distribution maps produced for the Comparative Archaeological Study of Colonial Chesapeake Culture project

DOCUMENT Full-Text Catherine Alston.

Artifact images produced for the Comparative Archaeological Study of Colonial Chesapeake Culture project

DOCUMENT Full-Text Catherine Alston.

Artifact distribution maps produced for the Comparative Archaeological Study of Colonial Chesapeake Culture project

DOCUMENT Full-Text Catherine Alston.

Artifact images produced for the Comparative Archaeological Study of Colonial Chesapeake Culture project

DOCUMENT Full-Text Catherine Alston.

Artifact distribution maps produced for the Comparative Archaeological Study of Colonial Chesapeake Culture project

DOCUMENT Full-Text Catherine Alston.

Midden analysis charts produced for the Comparative Archaeological Study of Colonial Chesapeake Culture project

DOCUMENT Full-Text Catherine Alston.

Artifact images produced for the Comparative Archaeological Study of Colonial Chesapeake Culture project

DOCUMENT Full-Text Catherine Alston.

Artifact distribution maps produced for the Comparative Archaeological Study of Colonial Chesapeake Culture project

DOCUMENT Full-Text Catherine Alston.

Artifact images produced for the Comparative Archaeological Study of Colonial Chesapeake Culture project

DOCUMENT Full-Text Catherine Alston.

Artifact distribution maps produced for the Comparative Archaeological Study of Colonial Chesapeake Culture project

DOCUMENT Full-Text Julia King.

In the last 25 years, a number of studies have emerged demonstrating that, while vertical stratigraphy is indeed destroyed by plowing, the horizontal or spatial distribution of materials is affected only minimally. Artifacts recovered from plow zone contexts are usually found close to where they were both used and discarded, with important implications for examining the spatial layout of archaeological sites. Distributions of plow zone artifacts and soil chemicals have been used to identify room...

DOCUMENT Full-Text Katherine D. Cavallo.

This paper examines the types, quantities, and distributions of marked and decorated white clay tobacco pipes from four 17th century archaeological sites located along the lower Patuxent River in southern Maryland. Although marked pipes often account for a relatively small percentage of total pipe assemblages, important patterns in both their temporal and spatial distribution are clearly evident. For example, even though records indicate that Bristol pipemaker Llewellin Evans was working from...

DOCUMENT Full-Text Catherine Alston.

A group of scholars interested in the daily lives and social and cultural relationships of the inhabitants of the Colonial Chesapeake developed the project A Comparative Archaeological Study of Colonial Chesapeake Culture, funded in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Virginia Department of Historic Resources. Beginning in the fall of 2003 we began collecting information from 18 rural 17th to 18th century archaeological sites in Maryland and Virginia into digital form....

DOCUMENT Full-Text Catherine Alston.

In 2003, a consortium of researchers at various institutions undertook the project, ‘A Comparative Archaeological Study of Colonial Chesapeake Culture,’ funded by grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Virginia Department of Historic Resources. This project is designed to document and interpret the interactions between the multiple groups that made up the Chesapeake society by comparing material culture recovered from various colonial sites in Maryland and Virginia. The...

DOCUMENT Full-Text C. Jane Cox. Al Luckenbach. Dave Gadsby. Shawn Sharpe.

Tobacco pipes made in the colonial Chesapeake are often referred to as “terra-cotta” pipes. Made of local clays, they often exhibit a brown, reddish, earthen color, though they also come in a fascinating array of colors from orange to pink to almost pure white. These New World products have been fascinating Tidewater archaeologists for decades. Who in colonial society most likely produced and used terra-cotta pipes has been an ongoing discussion for over three decades. Theories have...

DOCUMENT Full-Text Dennis J. Pogue.

My own long-term interest has been to trace the process by which English cultural norms were adapted to New World conditions, to provide insight into why that adaptation occurred, and to assess the role of material culture in effecting that change. As such these are the kinds of questions that have been in the air at least since the 1970s, but which require a rich corpus of comparative and regionally representative evidence in order for archaeologists to have any hope of success in answering...

DOCUMENT Full-Text Edward E. Chaney.

All too often, archaeological studies of the Contact Period, as it occurred in the Chesapeake Bay region, have focused on the European impact on Native American life. The opposite side of this interaction—the effects Indians had on colonial life—has been downplayed. Indian-made artifacts found on colonial sites are often seen as little more than indicators of “trade.” However, a closer examination of the evidence suggests that the Native impact on English settlers was more profound. Using data...

DOCUMENT Full-Text Philip Levy. John Coombs. David Muraca.

In previous papers we have sought to use archaeological data to rethink some of the reigning assumptions about life in colonial Chesapeake, and move toward a new vision of an early colonial Virginia “frontier.” Our work has focused principally on a few sites in the Virginia tidewater and along the upper reaches of the Rappahannock spanning the years between 1640 and 1760. Last year, for example, we used the artifactual and architectural data from a circa 1690 Rappahannock plantation to argue...

DOCUMENT Full-Text Catherine Alston.

Conducting comparative archaeological studies is a trend that has developed over the past few decades, and with each project the concept and methodologies become more and more robust. In doing such comparative projects, digital technologies are essential for a successful study. Due to a comprehensive database set and the ability to spatially map the material culture recovered at the sites, the project “A Comparative Archaeological Study of Colonial Chesapeake Culture” is proving to be a powerful...

DOCUMENT Full-Text Anne Dowling Grulich.

This article follows a diminutive, headless, seventeenth century pipe clay figurine of a king from its conception in post-medieval Europe through its use, interment, and rebirth three centuries later in southern Maryland, USA. It is not so much the monarch it represents or the historical figure who owned it, but the meanings embodied by the artifact and our role in that process that this biography develops. This battered 300 year old figurine beckons us with its props and its demeanor. ...

DOCUMENT Full-Text Mary Ellen N. Hodges.

The Camden National Historic Landmark is located along the south side of the Rappahannock River, approximately two kilometers downriver from the town of Port Royal in Caroline County, Virginia. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places November 17, 1969, Camden was designated a National Historic Landmark November 11, 1971. The 1969 nomination form described the Camden manor house, constructed 1857-1859, as "one of the most complete and best preserved Italianate country houses in...

DOCUMENT Full-Text Howard MacCord.

The Camden Site was the site of a single cabin, occupied about 1680 by an Indian family which had come to the site from the Potomac Valley. Assuming that the silver medal found in the site belonged to the occupant, we can identify him as the chief of the Machotick tribe. The styles of tobacco pipes and domestic ceramics were undergoing change from prehistoric wares to the Colono-Indian wares, known to have continued in use well into the 18th Century in Tidewater Virginia. Stone tools were...

DOCUMENT Full-Text Fraser Neiman.

Stratford Hall, located in Westmoreland County, Virginia, was built about 1730 by Thomas Lee, scion of a family which has produced some of the most illustrious individuals in our nation's history. It stands today as one of the most famous mansions of the Colonial period. In contrast, The Clifts Plantation, located a little more than half a mile from the Lees' great brick house, was, until recent archaeological excavations uncovered it, known only to the farmers who for the last two hundred and...

DOCUMENT Full-Text Fraser Neiman.

Between 1976 and 1979, archaeological investigations were undertaken at The Clifts Plantation Site (.44 WM 33), located at Stratford, Westmoreland County Virginia. The excavation were funded by a generous grant from the Lilly Endowment, Inc. to the Robert E. Lee Memorial Association, and overseen by the Virginia Historic Landmarks Commission and the Virginia Research Center for Archaeology. The following report is intended as a foundation for the work that is still to be done. It presents an...

DOCUMENT Full-Text Joanne Bowen.

In 1984, Henry Miller completed his synthesis of dietary patterns in the Chesapeake, beginning with the first years of settlement as the colonists began to establish plantations and following with how dietary patterns changed as the plantation economy evolved. In this very important piece of work, Miller observed that wildlife helped to sustain the colonists through the early years. On the average, wildlife (excepting oysters and crabs) provided up to 30% of all meat consumed. Only later,...

DOCUMENT Full-Text Tim Morgan. Nicholas M. Luccketti. Beverly Straube. S. Fiona Bessey. Annette Loomis. Charles Hodges.

This volume is a technical report on the excavations of six archaeological sites at Jordan's Point: 44PG151, 44PG300, 44PG302, 44PG303, 44PG315, and 44PG333. It is the fourth in a series of reports on archaeological investigations at Jordan's Point sponsored primarily by the Virginia Department of Historic Resources (VDHR) Threatened Sites Program. The first three volumes were written by the Virginia Commonwealth University Archaeological Research Center (VCU-ARC) on excavations conducted by...

DOCUMENT Full-Text Douglas C. McLearen. L. Daniel Mouer. Donna M. Boyd. Douglas W. Owsley. Bertita Compton.

This report presents technical information and preliminary interpretations of the results of archaeological studies conducted during the period March 1992-October 1993 at three sites on Jordan’s Point, Prince George County, Virginia. The studies were conducted as part of an on-going effort to rescue vital archaeological materials and data threatened by development on the Point. Four sites received considerable attention this year, but one of those — 44PG307 — will be the subject of a separate...

DOCUMENT Full-Text L. Daniel Mouer. Douglas C. McLearen. R. Taft Kiser. Christopher P. Egghart. Beverly Binns. Dane Magoon.

Archaeological site 44Pg302 comprises the remains of the household complex founded by Samuel Jordan, his wife Cicely, her daughters, and their adult male servants. For present purposes, we have estimated the dates of occupation of the site as encompassing the fifteen-year period between ca. 1620 and ca. 1635. In the 1620's, the new settlement of Jordan's Journey was one of the largest English enclaves in what was then referred to as "the upper parts" of James River, and was included within...

DOCUMENT Full-Text David Muraca. Philip Levy. Leslie McFaden.

In 1988, two boys found several artifacts while playing on a road construction site that was part of a new housing development. Accompanied by their parents, the boys brought their finds into Colonial Williamsburg’s archaeology laboratory to see if the fragments were important. The curators at the lab are frequently called on to identify recently unearthed objects, most of which turn out to be modern castoffs. Once in a great while, however, someone comes in with an artifact that is an...

DOCUMENT Full-Text Leslie McFaden. Philip Levy. David Muraca. Jennifer Jones.

This manuscript is presented as an interim report on the archaeological investigation of Rich Neck Plantation (state site 44WB52), in Williamsburg, Virginia. Chapter 1 provides a project background and a brief physical description, including the environs of the site and a list of those responsible for the excavation. Chapter 2 recounts the history of the property. Chapter 3 describes the excavation strategy and summarizes the results from 1993 through 1998. Chapters 4 and 5 present...

DOCUMENT Full-Text Seth Mallios.

Archaeologists from the Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities (APVA), excavated archaeological site 44JC568 during the summers of 1996 and 1997. The work in 1996 was conducted from June 17th to July 26th by 13 field school students earning credits from the University of Virginia. In 1997, 18 field school students, again earning credits from the University of Virginia, worked at the site from June 30th to July 25th. Archaeologists named the site after the area’s first...

DOCUMENT Full-Text Andrew Edwards.

In his celebrated 1982 volume on Martin’s Hundred, Ivor Noël Hume wove a fascinating narrative of early seventeenth-century life in Tidewater Virginia, intertwined with archaeological sleuthing, murder, war, and intrigue, reminiscent of an Agatha Christie mystery novel. Unlike most books dealing with archaeological subjects, the reading is engaging, conjuring images of massacre and mayhem at early Martin’s Hundred. The characters Noël Hume portrays—Harwood, Kingston, “Granny”—tend to be like...

DOCUMENT Full-Text Seth Mallios.

From 1996-98, archaeologists under the direction of the Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities’ (APVA) Jamestown Rediscovery project excavated site 44JC802. In the summer of 1996, APVA staff members instructed and supervised work at the site by 13 field-school students enrolled in a University of Virginia (UVa) archaeological field school. A full-time crew of excavators continued digging from November 1997 to August 1998. Field school students, again affiliated with a UVa...

PROJECT Uploaded by: Gregory Brown

The Bennett’s Point (18QU28) site represents the principal dwelling at a colonial period tobacco plantation located in Queen Anne’s County, Maryland. The home of Elizabeth and Richard Bennett III between 1700 and 1749, Bennett’s Point was also a major port. Bennett was a lawyer, planter, merchant and one of the wealthiest men in the colony. The Bennett’s Point collection represents the domestic core of a large tobacco plantation, one of a very few early to mid-18th-century household sites...

PROJECT Al Luckenbach.

Homewood's Lot (18AN871) is located off Whitehall Creek near the Chesapeake Bay in Anne Arundel County, Maryland. Continuously occupied since 1650, Homewood's Lot is one of eight known sites associated with the Puritan town of Providence (1649) (Luckenbach 1995). James Homewood arrived in Providence in 1649 and, in 1650, a parcel of land was laid out for him. James' brother, John Homewood, lived on Homewood's Lot until his death in 1681/82, leaving the land to his wife Sarah and first nephew,...

PROJECT Al Luckenbach.

The Burle's Town Land Site (18AN826) is located within the 17th-century settlement of Providence in Anne Arundel County, Maryland. Providence had been settled primarily by a group of Puritans invited by Lord Baltimore to Maryland in 1649. The colony’s Act Concerning Religion, passed that same year, guaranteed that the Puritans would not be harassed for their religious beliefs as they had been in Virginia. While the relationship between the newly arrived settlers at Providence and the Maryland...

PROJECT Al Luckenbach.

The Chalkley site (18AN711) represents the remains of a small planter’s earthfast dwelling and is located in Anne Arundel County, Maryland. Occupied for less than a decade by tobacco planter Thomas Jeffe, Jr. and his family, the site revealed evidence of a simple 16 ½-x-20 foot earthfast dwelling. Artifacts, along with archaeological and documentary evidence, suggest Jeffe Jr. built and occupied this earthfast dwelling with his wife Mary between 1677 and 1685. Observation of the surrounding area...

PROJECT Al Luckenbach.

The Chaney’s Hills site is located in Riva, southern Anne Arundel County, Maryland. The 3.7-acre site lies within the southwestern portion of an 89.7-acre parcel south of Governor’s Bridge Road and west of Riva Road, located near Flat Creek, a tributary of the South River. Chaney’s Hills was occupied by Richard Chaney and his wife Charity from 1658 until just before his death in 1686. Chaney's will indicates that he had three daughters and three sons. His probate inventory indicated that he had...

PROJECT Dennis J. Pogue.

King’s Reach (18CV83), part of the plantation known as “St. Leonard,” is a tobacco plantation homelot site occupied from 1690 until 1711 in Calvert County, Maryland. The site is located on the grounds of the Jefferson Patterson Park and Museum (JPPM) and is associated with a nearby quarter (18CV84) and large tobacco barn (18CV85). King’s Reach is probably the home of Richard Smith, Jr., a wealthy colonist with close ties to the Calvert family. Documentary evidence suggests that Smith probably...

PROJECT Julia King.

The Patuxent Point site (18CV271) was the domestic core of an approximately 100-acre tobacco plantation occupied from c.1658 through the 1690s in Calvert County, Maryland. Excavations at the site revealed an earthfast dwelling, borrow pits, an ash-filled pit, middens, post holes, post molds, and eighteen human graves. Patuxent Point is situated approximately 800 feet east of the Compton site (18CV279), and their relationship to each other is still being investigated. The Patuxent Point site...

PROJECT Uploaded by: Gregory Brown

The Compton Site (18CV279) is a mid-17th-century tobacco plantation located near the mouth of the Patuxent River at Solomons in Calvert County, Maryland. The traces of at least two earthfast structures and post and rail fencing dating between 1651 and 1685 were uncovered in advance of residential construction. William and Magdalen Stevens acquired the Compton Site in 1651, when they are believed to have come to Maryland from Virginia. The Stevens and their children remained at the site until...

PROJECT Uploaded by: Gregory Brown

Mattapany (18ST390) was the 17th-century home of Charles Calvert, the third Lord Baltimore and Proprietor of Maryland, as well as the location of the colony’s main weapons magazine. The site, once part of a 1200-acre manor, is located near the mouth of the Patuxent River aboard what is today the Naval Air Station Patuxent River. Although documentary evidence indicates that Europeans had established a presence on the property by 1637, it appears that 18ST390 was first occupied around 1663, when...

PROJECT Julia King.

The Posey Site (18CH281) is located near Mattawoman Creek in Charles County, Maryland, aboard what is now the Naval Surface Warfare Center–Indian Head Division. The site was initially identified in 1963 by Navy chemist Calvert Posey, in an area that had been damaged by an earlier explosion at Indian Head’s Biazzi Nitration Plant, where nitroglycerin was manufactured. In 1985, the site was tested by William Barse as part of a much larger archaeological survey of the Indian Head facility. The site...

PROJECT Howard MacCord.

The Camden archaeological site (44CE3) is located on the south side of the Rappahannock River approximately 2.5 miles east of Port Royal in Caroline County, Virginia. It was excavated in the 1960s, under the supervision of Howard A. MacCord (1969). The site was occupied by Virginia Indians from c. 1650 until c. 1690, and was part of a much larger complex of Native American settlement that occurred in this area during the 17th century. Twenty sites, including 44CE3, are located in an...

PROJECT Fraser Neiman.

Summary of Documentary Evidence and Intra-site Chronology (Adapted from material provided by Fraser D. Neiman) The Clifts Plantation (44WM33) is located on the south shore of the Potomac River in Westmoreland County, Virginia. The site lies on a tract of land now owned by the Robert E. Lee Memorial Association, Inc., a group devoted to the preservation of Stratford Hall, the 18th-century mansion that was the birthplace of Robert E. Lee. The site was excavated over a three-year period, from...

PROJECT Julia King.

The Old Chapel Field site (18ST233) is part of an early Jesuit settlement located south of St. Mary’s City in St. Mary’s County, Maryland. St. Inigoes Manor, as the settlement was known historically, was in Jesuit hands by 1637. St. Inigoes served as their mission’s headquarters and home plantation throughout the 17th century. In addition, a fort was built there by 1637, in an effort to protect the fledgling colony from naval attack. This fort was large enough to accommodate the local population...

PROJECT Uploaded by: Gregory Brown

The sites associated with the early 17th-century settlement known as Jordan’s Journey were located at Jordan’s Point near the confluence of the James and Appomatox rivers in Prince George’s County, Virginia. The property was initially occupied by Weyanoke Indians, one of the groups that formed the Powhatan chiefdom. About 1620, Samuel Jordan, his wife, Cecily, her two daughters, and their adult male servants took up residence at Jordan’s Point; this occupation is probably archaeological site...

PROJECT Uploaded by: Gregory Brown

Rich Neck was one of the founding plantations of Middle Plantation, the Lower Peninsula community that preceded Williamsburg. Rich Neck’s architectural sophistication and elaborate layout set it apart from nearly all of its colonial neighbors. Started in 1636 by Richard Kemp, the Secretary of the Colony, the plantation grew to over 4,000 acres in size by the middle of the seventeenth century. Richard Kemp and his wife Elizabeth built two structures executed entirely in brick, a rarity in 1640s...

PROJECT Seth Mallios.

Archaeological site 44JC568 (also known as the Reverend Richard Buck site, after the property’s first owner) was located about one-half mile north of Jamestown. 44JC568 was occupied from c. 1630 until c. 1650 by a series of individuals, many of them descended from Reverend Buck. Although close to Jamestown, in an area known as Neck-of-Land, the site was not located directly on navigable water. Archaeologist Seth Mallios has described Neck-of-Land as a “leading Jamestown suburb,” with 145...

PROJECT Seth Mallios.

Archaeological site 44JC802 was located atop an 85 foot bluff overlooking the James River in James City County, Virginia, approximately five miles east of Jamestown. 44JC802 was occupied from c. 1630 until c. 1650, although the identification of the site’s residents is unclear. The land on which the site was located, an approximately 400 acre tract, appears to have been in the possession of Edward Grendon by 1628 (and possibly as early as 1624). At his death in 1628, Grendon left the property...

PROJECT Uploaded by: Gregory Brown

Carter’s Grove Site 8—also known as CG-8 (44JC647)—is part of the Martin’s Hundred settlement, located on the James River in James City County, Virginia. The site was probably occupied sometime in the second quarter of the 17th century and abandoned by c. 1650, at a time when the price of tobacco had dropped in Virginia. Its occupants appear to have been at the lower end of the economic scale, in contrast with the Martin’s Hundred residents described by Ivor Noël Hume in his book, Martin’s...

PROJECT Julia King.

Using detailed comparisons of the archaeological assemblages from 18 early sites in the Chesapeake, this project explores the material conditions of culture contact, plantation development and organization, the rise of slavery, and consumer behavior. Comparable artifact databases have been created for the 18 sites, and analysis of artifact distributions has provided great insight into differences and similarities.