A Land Unto Itself: Virginia's Northern Neck, Colonialism, And The Early Atlantic

Part of: Society for Historical Archaeology 2023

This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "A Land Unto Itself: Virginia's Northern Neck, Colonialism, And The Early Atlantic," at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

Virginia's Northern Neck, like many colonized regions in the early Atlantic world, was an important point of intersection between an emerging modern European world and, in this case, the Indigenous world of eastern North America. European, Indigenous, and African residents and immigrants, animals, plants, and goods moved within and beyond this relatively understudied region, connecting and forging a new global reality. At the same time, the Northern Neck's relatively isolated location and its comparatively late date of settlement forged an imagined and even real distinctiveness that is itself an important point of evidence that deserves interpretation. The papers in this session explore this region of persistent if displaced Indigenous communities, landscapes of ecological transformation, rebel ancestors of American icons, and the contested roots of racialized slavery.

Other Keywords
Landscape • Chesapeake • settlement • Ceramics • Trade • Zooarchaeology • Trails • Colonoware • Exchange • Livestock

Geographic Keywords
Chesapeake • MIDDLE ATLANTIC • Mid-Atlantic • Middle Atlantic USA • Mid-Atlantic US • Northern Neck (Virginia, U.S.A.) and Portugal • Northern Neck of Virginia • Northern Neck, Virginia

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

  • Documents (8)
Documents
  • Anne Washington's Diamond Ring: Rethinking Global Commodities and the Forces of Debt in a Colonial Edge Land. (2023)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Philip Levy.

    This is an abstract from the session entitled "A Land Unto Itself: Virginia's Northern Neck, Colonialism, And The Early Atlantic", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. The John Washington Site on the Potomac River was excavated in the 1930s and the 1970s. The site was occupied by English colonial settlers from the 1650s until the end of the century and conforms to reigning understandings of regional architecture and assemblages: a gentry family's modest home...

  • Centers of Exchange: Comparing Virginia's Northern Neck and Maryland's Potomac Valley (2023)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Caitlin E Hall.

    This is an abstract from the session entitled "A Land Unto Itself: Virginia's Northern Neck, Colonialism, And The Early Atlantic", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Since 2016, more than 20 Indigenous sites have been tested in the Northern Neck. Two sites, Baylor and Camden, stand out for the thousands of Indigenous ceramics present. A trend seen nowhere else in the Northern Neck, it is seen at Posey, a site along the Potomac in Maryland. This paper...

  • Early Colonial Livestock in the Northern Neck: A View from Coan Hall (2023)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Brigid M. Ogden. Barbara J. Heath.

    This is an abstract from the session entitled "A Land Unto Itself: Virginia's Northern Neck, Colonialism, And The Early Atlantic", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. In the early 17th century, European colonists introduced new livestock and agricultural practices to Virginia which developed into unique management and farming practices. These practices had significant influence on the development of environmental and cultural spheres of interaction within the...

  • Going to Virginia: Chicacoans and the Early Northern Neck (2023)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Barbara J. Heath.

    This is an abstract from the session entitled "A Land Unto Itself: Virginia's Northern Neck, Colonialism, And The Early Atlantic", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Early records from Chicacoan, the first permanent English community on Virginia’s Northern Neck, refer to residents “going to Virginia,” in spite of living within that colony’s established boundaries. Settling land that the colonial government had forbidden its citizens to occupy, and openly...

  • A Landscape They Didn’t See: The Great Rappahannock Town at Mid-Century (2023)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Julia King.

    This is an abstract from the session entitled "A Land Unto Itself: Virginia's Northern Neck, Colonialism, And The Early Atlantic", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. The Northern Neck of Virginia appears to have had an especially large Indigenous population at the moment of English occupation in 1607. That population grew through the 17th century as colonial authorities generally prevented settlers from moving into the region while Indigenous nations from...

  • Learned Landscapes: Colonoware Concentrations on Virginia's Northern Neck (2023)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Katherine P Gill.

    This is an abstract from the session entitled "A Land Unto Itself: Virginia's Northern Neck, Colonialism, And The Early Atlantic", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Colonoware, found on many sites throughout the Mid-Atlantic, a locally-made ware rooted in cross-cultural pottery-making traditions, has been recovered from Virginia’s Northern Neck. Northern Neck colonoware differs from that recovered elsewhere in Virginia in terms of temper, surface treatment,...

  • Practical and Preferable: An Analysis of Portuguese Coarseware on Virginia’s Northern Neck (2023)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Elizabeth Tarulis.

    This is an abstract from the session entitled "A Land Unto Itself: Virginia's Northern Neck, Colonialism, And The Early Atlantic", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. The John Hallowes site is a 17th-century fortified house site located in Westmoreland County, Virginia. A reanalysis conducted in 2010-2012 determined that the site was occupied beginning in 1647, when John Hallowes and his family moved from Maryland just after Ingle’s Rebellion, and likely...

  • Roads of Rebellion and Resistance: Tracing English and Indigenous Paths Across Virginia’s Northern Neck and Middle Peninsula (2023)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Megan D. Postemski.

    This is an abstract from the session entitled "A Land Unto Itself: Virginia's Northern Neck, Colonialism, And The Early Atlantic", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Bacon’s Rebellion (1676–1677) was the first wide-scale armed insurrection in English America. Trouble began in 1675 in Virginia’s Northern Neck with retaliatory raids between colonial militias and Native Americans. While some settlers dug in, fortifying their plantations, others rallied behind...