When Time Has Run Out: Using Space And Form To Build Context

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Digging Deep: Close Engagement with the Material World" , at the 2021 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

What does one do with artifacts recovered from disturbed proveniences? Or with artifacts recovered almost a hundred years ago and now sitting in museum collections? Are reasonable, responsible inferences possible? Space and form may help achieve what lost levels cannot: this paper considers the case of the mysterious Leedstown bead cache, a cache of hundreds and possibly thousands of glass beads buried at a spot along the Rappahannock River in Virginia. Bead forms, colors, and method of manufacture (artifact form), where the beads were/have been found (space), and spatially-associated artifacts (context) are used to date the cache and link it not to 16th-century Spaniards or a colonial ossuary (burial ground) but to the late 17th-century trade in skins, guns, and Indian slaves.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2021   •
• Digging Deep: Close Engagement with the Material World

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology