Opening the Vault: What Collections Can Say About Jamestown’s Global Trade Network

This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "Opening the Vault: What Collections Can Say About Jamestown’s Global Trade Network," at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

Initiated by the Virginia Company of London as a profitable venture, Jamestown, established in 1607, became the first successful English settlement in North America. Since 1994, the Jamestown Rediscovery archaeological project has recovered millions of artifacts from the early 17th century. While a large proportion were produced in England or the local Chesapeake region, many originated in other parts of the world. Among these imports are objects from European countries including Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, and Sweden, as well as more distant locales including China, Turkey, and Bermuda. This symposium is designed to highlight the Jamestown Rediscovery archaeological collection and situate Virginia within the global framework of the 17th century. Each paper will focus on a different aspect of the collection, connecting Jamestown to the wider world and emphasizing the importance of 17th century global trade networks to the early Virginia colony.