"Yorktown’s Second Most Famous Couple": Landscape, Heritage, and the Politics of Memory in Yorktown, Virginia

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Paper / Report Submission (General Sessions)", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

Yorktown, Virginia occupies a substantial space in the American national historical consciousness: it was the location at which the British Army surrendered to George Washington’s Continental Army, effectively ending the Revolutionary War and establishing American independence from Great Britain. The battlefield was once again used in the Civil War during the 1862 siege of Yorktown.

The 1931 designation of Colonial National Historical Park set in motion a process of land acquisition that would over the course of the next fifty years radically remake Yorktown in the name returning the landscape to how it might have looked in 1781. These five decades would see a dramatic transformation of the battlefield and town, including large-scale community displacement that disproportionately affected African-Americans.

This paper traces this history and how it interfaces with nationalism, memory, and the politics of heritage. It also discusses the complicated nature of researching, reckoning with, and interpreting this history.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SHA 2023 General Sessions   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2023

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Nicole Haddow