The Hand Site, Revisited: A Collections-Focused Approach to Recentering Deep History in the Lower Middle Atlantic

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Deep History, Colonial Narratives, and Decolonization in the Native Chesapeake" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

This paper reviews the Hand Site (44SN22) Reassessment Project, and broadly explores the reevaluation of existing collections as an avenue for decolonization. The Hand site is a complex, multicomponent site located on the Nottoway River in southeastern Virginia. Intensive excavations in the 1960s revealed over 600 features, including house remains, pits, and a large burial area. While initial evaluations placed the site within the Protohistoric period and emphasized the site’s ties to colonial actors, a reexamination of the site’s chronology instead suggests a deep history of emplacement extending over 1,000 years. Situated between the Chesapeake and Albermarle worlds, the Hand site provides a vital lens for exploring the histories of Nottoway, Meherrin, and Nansemond peoples who were at the fringe of seventeenth-century colonial accounts. As exemplified by this project, curated collections provide opportunities to refocus long-standing archaeological narratives in ways that acknowledge the depth and complexity of Native histories.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)   •
• Deep History, Colonial Narratives, and Decolonization in the Native Chesapeake

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 33368