Facing a Mystery: An Anthropomorphic Clay Head (Re)Discovered at Nomini Plantation, Westmoreland County, Virginia

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Boxed but not Forgotten Redux or: How I Learned to Stop Digging and Love Old Collections" , at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

Excavated in the 1970s by the Archeological Society of Virginia, the Nomini Plantation (44WM12) midden assemblage represents an extraordinary collection of mid- to late-seventeenth-century material culture, including not only European goods but also pipe-making waste and an array of clay pipes produced by an historically known “Indian pipe maker” on the property. However, a full analysis and report were never completed, until recently. While processing and cataloging the collection, a small, round object assumed to be pipe-making waste was washed and discovered to actually be an anthropomorphic head. South of the Potomac River, such anthropomorphic effigy forms are atypical in the archaeological record of the Algonquin peoples who inhabited the region during the contact and early-colonial period. Additionally, relatively little literature exists on the presence of human effigies in Virginia’s Tidewater. This paper explores post-contact migration, exile, and commerce to identify possible explanations for its presence on the site.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2020   •
• Boxed but not Forgotten Redux or: How I Learned to Stop Digging and Love Old Collections

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Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 547