Deep History, Colonial Narratives, and Decolonization in the Native Chesapeake

Part of: Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)

This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "Deep History, Colonial Narratives, and Decolonization in the Native Chesapeake" at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

This session considers efforts to write archaeological histories of Native societies in the Chesapeake region that span the divide between deep history and the colonial era. Archaeologists’ efforts to bring the region’s precolonial past into conversation with colonial histories face tensions stemming from divergent research questions, writing styles, temporal frames, and interpretive touchstones. Moving beyond these tensions—theoretically, methodologically, and writerly—is critical if archaeologists are to contribute to efforts to decolonize narratives of indigenous pasts.

Other Keywords
Woodland • Ethnohistory/History • contact period • Historical Archaeology • Zooarchaeology • Paleoethnobotany • Colonialism • Landscape Archaeology • Ethnographic Collection • Ceramic Analysis

Geographic Keywords
North America: Northeast and Midatlantic • United States of America (Country) • Delaware (State / Territory) • Georgia (State / Territory) • Mississippi (State / Territory) • Tennessee (State / Territory) • North Carolina (State / Territory) • Kentucky (State / Territory) • West Virginia (State / Territory) • Virginia (State / Territory)

Resources Inside This Collection (Viewing 1-8 of 8)

  • Documents (8)
Documents
  • Bridging the Divide: A Study of Fourteenth- to Eighteenth-Century Native Settlements in the Middle Chesapeake (2021)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Julia King.

    This is an abstract from the "Deep History, Colonial Narratives, and Decolonization in the Native Chesapeake" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeologists (including the author) investigating seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Native sites in the Chesapeake point out how materially different these assemblages are from those recovered from contemporary colonial sites. Characterized by materials almost wholly produced by Native hands with some...

  • Deep History, Colonial Encounters, and Revitalization in the Algonquian Chesapeake (2021)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Martin Gallivan. Jessica Jenkins.

    This is an abstract from the "Deep History, Colonial Narratives, and Decolonization in the Native Chesapeake" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper explores the idea that the Powhatan paramount chief’s relocation to the town of Werowocomoco represented an act of revitalization intended to renew the power of a ceremonial place. Studies of revitalization movements often trace a historical process of social stress, cultural distortion, and...

  • The Hand Site, Revisited: A Collections-Focused Approach to Recentering Deep History in the Lower Middle Atlantic (2021)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Taylor Triplett.

    This is an abstract from the "Deep History, Colonial Narratives, and Decolonization in the Native Chesapeake" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper reviews the Hand Site (44SN22) Reassessment Project, and broadly explores the reevaluation of existing collections as an avenue for decolonization. The Hand site is a complex, multicomponent site located on the Nottoway River in southeastern Virginia. Intensive excavations in the 1960s revealed...

  • Material Bodies, Living Objects: Bodily Adornment and Death in the Algonquian Chesapeake (2021)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Christopher Shephard.

    This is an abstract from the "Deep History, Colonial Narratives, and Decolonization in the Native Chesapeake" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper explores the relationship between the human body and the objects that adorned them within the Late Woodland through early colonial (AD 900–1680) Algonquian Chesapeake. Drawing on theories that cite the human body as the battle ground upon which political authority is established, I seek to explore...

  • Powhatan’s Pearls: Power, Prestige, Profit, and Identity in Coastal Virginia during the Late Woodland and Contact Periods (2021)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Dane Magoon.

    This is an abstract from the "Deep History, Colonial Narratives, and Decolonization in the Native Chesapeake" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. While copper and shell beads have been focal topics within the region, as items of adornment and power during later prehistory, a review of early historic accounts indicates that freshwater pearls may have been the most valued of all such commodities, during both life and death. Obtained locally, from the...

  • Provenance and Power: Decolonizing Powhatan's Mantle (2021)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Buck Woodard. Danielle Moretti-Langholtz.

    This is an abstract from the "Deep History, Colonial Narratives, and Decolonization in the Native Chesapeake" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Popularly known as “Powhatan’s Mantle,” the shell-decorated and sewn animal skins are an iconic object of material culture from seventeenth-century Virginia. On display in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, England, we argue that the Mantle’s provenance and possible links to Indigenous cosmology have been...

  • Taskscapes and Social Sustainability: Archaeobotanical and Ethnohistorical Interpretations from the Chesapeake (2021)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Jessica Young.

    This is an abstract from the "Deep History, Colonial Narratives, and Decolonization in the Native Chesapeake" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The “taskscape,” or a landscape comprised of actions and labor (Ingold 1993, 2000), provides a means for assessing the change and continuity of a place over time. Through the study of plant remains (including macrobotanical remains, phytolith residues, and starch grains), taskscapes from the Late Archaic...

  • Toward a Decolonized CRM: Challenges in Archaeological Stewardship and Interpretation for Virginia Tribes (2021)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Ellen Chapman. Victoria Ferguson.

    This is an abstract from the "Deep History, Colonial Narratives, and Decolonization in the Native Chesapeake" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Long overdue federal acknowledgment of Virginia’s tribes has created a sea change for many of Virginia’s tribal communities over the last five years. Virginia now has seven federally recognized resident tribes, and an additional five tribes have state recognition. Virginian erasures of Native history have...