Historical Archaeology of Chesapeake Landscapes in Transition

Part of: Society for Historical Archaeology 2025

This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "Historical Archaeology of Chesapeake Landscapes in Transition," at the 2025 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

Millenia of human occupation in the Chesapeake have reshaped the landscape in dramatic ways, a fact that has occupied historical archaeologists working the region since the discipline’s inception. In recent decades, Chesapeake archaeology’s emphasis has veered from the materials of elite colonial “founders” towards studies of the lives of free and unfree persons of color, the persistent damages of colonialism, the identification of nuanced intraregional variation, and more.

Papers in this session span the geographical and temporal reach of colonial and postcolonial life in the Chesapeake. Individually, they highlight the discipline’s pioneering origins in the region and the recent scientific and theoretical advances championed by current Chesapeake scholars. Collectively, they chart trajectories of social, political, and economic change both historically and archaeologically over the course of nearly 500 years in a region that was anything but static.

Other Keywords
Slavery • community archaeology • African Diaspora • Chesapeake • mission • Industry • Plantation • Zooarchaeology • Spatial Analysis • Households

Geographic Keywords
Chesapeake • Virginia • Mid-Atlantic • MIDDLE ATLANTIC • Chesapeake Region • Maryland, Chesapeake • Mid-Atlantic, Chesapeake, Maryland • Mid-Atlantic/Greater Chesapeake

Resources Inside This Collection (Viewing 1-13 of 13)

  • Documents (13)
Documents
  • Archaeology and the Challenge of Storytelling at George Washington Birthplace National Monument. (2025)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Philip Levy.

    This is an abstract from the session entitled "Historical Archaeology of Chesapeake Landscapes in Transition", at the 2025 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Recent excavations and archaeological record re-study projects have enabled considerable changes in the interpretation of the George Washington Birthplace National Monument National Monument (NPS). Sites there have been the subject of excavations from as early as the 1890s and has seen several digging approaches...

  • Beyond the Church: Rebuilding Trust with and within the First Baptist Church Descendant Community (2025)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Crystal A Castleberry.

    This is an abstract from the session entitled "Historical Archaeology of Chesapeake Landscapes in Transition", at the 2025 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. In 2020, the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation began excavating the site of the original First Baptist Church of Williamsburg, one of the nation’s oldest extant Black congregations. From the beginning, the project has been a partnership with the current First Baptist Church congregation, many of whom are descendants...

  • Community as Client: A Descendant-Based Archaeological Research Approach at a Presidential Plantation Site (2025)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Matthew Reeves.

    This is an abstract from the session entitled "Historical Archaeology of Chesapeake Landscapes in Transition", at the 2025 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. The Clientage Model, as defined by Dr. Michael Blakey and his team, is one in which the archaeologists give the descendants primacy in defining the research and interpretive agenda directed towards their ancestral material record. We have strove to have descendants guide our approach to the archaeological record at...

  • Foundations and Fieldwork: Completing the First Phase of the 1857 Slave Dwelling Restoration Project (2025)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Eric Proebsting. Karen McIlvoy. Erin S. Schwartz.

    This is an abstract from the session entitled "Historical Archaeology of Chesapeake Landscapes in Transition", at the 2025 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Recent efforts have focused on completing the first phase of the 1857 Slave Dwelling Restoration Project at Thomas Jefferson’s Poplar Forest. This collaborative partnership with members of the African American community is designed to explore the history and legacy of this building – the only structure designed to...

  • In Their Elements: Geometric Morphometrics, Stable Isotope Analysis, and Multispecies Theory in Chesapeake Zooarchaeology (2025)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Valerie MJ Hall.

    This is an abstract from the session entitled "Historical Archaeology of Chesapeake Landscapes in Transition", at the 2025 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Human-animal relationships are entangled, with the rhythm of our daily practice structured by the needs of nonhuman companions. Similar rhythms existed in the past – daily rhythms of animal care and seasonal/yearly rhythms involving exploitation of resources. Alongside standard zooarchaeological methods, which...

  • An Investigation of the Spatial Arrangements of Early Enslavement: A Case Study from Flowerdew Hundred (2025)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Elizabeth A Bollwerk. Fraser Neiman. Jillian Galle.

    This is an abstract from the session entitled "Historical Archaeology of Chesapeake Landscapes in Transition", at the 2025 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Flowerdew Hundred, a 1000-acre plantation tract located on the south side of the James River in Virginia was the focus of decades of excavations by the College of William and Mary and University of California, Berkley. Three sites – 44PG64, 64/65 and 65 – represent one of the earliest 17th century settlements...

  • An Object Biography of the 1857 Slave Dwelling at Poplar Forest (2025)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Steve T. Lenik.

    This is an abstract from the session entitled "Historical Archaeology of Chesapeake Landscapes in Transition", at the 2025 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. This paper examines the 1857 Slave Dwelling at Thomas Jefferson’s Poplar Forest in Bedford County, Virginia, as an object with its own life-history. Originally built as housing for enslaved laborers, the structure has seen several modifications during its existence, while it has gradually deteriorated since it...

  • "Old Doll Cannot Have Forgot": What 250-year Old Bottled Fruit Can Tell us of Plantation Landscapes and the Making of an American Cuisine at George Washington’s Mount Vernon (2025)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Jason Boroughs. Lily Carhart.

    This is an abstract from the session entitled "Historical Archaeology of Chesapeake Landscapes in Transition", at the 2025 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. In the Spring of 2024, Mount Vernon archaeologists recovered 29 intact bottles of fruit from a series of sub-floor storage pits in the cellar of Washington’s 18th century mansion. The bottles were carefully placed and intentionally buried under the floor between 1758-1775. Resting in situ for a quarter millennium,...

  • Over the Ridge and Through the Woods: Analyzing Intra-State Connections at the Buffalo Forge Iron Plantation (2025)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Erin S. Schwartz.

    This is an abstract from the session entitled "Historical Archaeology of Chesapeake Landscapes in Transition", at the 2025 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Iron plantations played diverse economic roles in the early mid-Atlantic. While designed to refine and transport iron products along waterways to regional markets or specialty iron operations, iron plantations also served as nodes of bidirectional exchange between Virginia’s coastal and inland areas, including...

  • Recreating forgotten sites of Jesuit enslavement at St. Inigoes (2025)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Laura E Masur. Sierra S Roark. Haylee Backs. Stephan T Lenik.

    This is an abstract from the session entitled "Historical Archaeology of Chesapeake Landscapes in Transition", at the 2025 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Disturbed sites, disparate grids, and limited excavations are all-too-common in historical archaeology. But tricky archaeological projects nonetheless play a central role in the way that descendant communities reconnect with former plantation landscapes. This paper examines archaeological evidence from St. Inigoes,...

  • Reproducible Methods for Linking Archaeological Contexts to Households at Monticello (2025)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Fraser Neiman. Christine Devine. Crystal O’Connor. Corey Sattes. Derek Wheeler.

    This is an abstract from the session entitled "Historical Archaeology of Chesapeake Landscapes in Transition", at the 2025 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Forty years of excavation at Monticello have yielded artifacts from thousands of contexts created by diverse taphonomic processes. These include spatially scattered quadrats in plowzone sites, lithostratigraphic units from sites with extensive horizontal stratification, and discrete features. This paper describes...

  • They Looked to the Water: An Ancestor Forward Approach to Commemorating the Chancellor’s Point Burying Ground (2025)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Hess Stinson. Travis G. Parno.

    This is an abstract from the session entitled "Historical Archaeology of Chesapeake Landscapes in Transition", at the 2025 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. During the 2020–2021 COVID-19 shutdown, a treefall on the edge of a bluff at the Chancellor’s Point site at Historic St. Mary’s City (HSMC), Maryland partially exposed a buried ancestor of African descent. A second ancestor was found nearby interred at the base of a tall tree near the bluff’s edge. Both ancestors...

  • Witnesses of Wallsville: Documenting a Southern Maryland Rural Community (2025)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Alex Glass. Patricia Samford. Scott Strickland.

    This is an abstract from the session entitled "Historical Archaeology of Chesapeake Landscapes in Transition", at the 2025 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. In the decades following the Civil War, opportunities for land ownership for Black citizens both created and sustained rural communities in the second half of the 19th century. A recent NPS-funded interdisciplinary project studied the shifting demographics of land ownership in a small rural southern Maryland...