Native Textiles Of The Chesapeake

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Opening the Vault: What Collections Can Say About Jamestown’s Global Trade Network", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

The preservation of textiles and basketry is exceedingly rare in the archaeological record of the Indigenous Chesapeake. However, Historic Jamestowne’s collection offers an unusual window into Native textiles of the region, with multiple examples of weaving technologies and preserved forms. While these materials have extraordinary contexts and chronologies, they cannot be affiliated unilaterally with neighboring Algonquian speakers, owing to the extensive English exploration and culture contacts across a wide Mid Atlantic geography. Combined with Late Woodland ceramic impressions, the ethnohistorical record, and comparative ethnographic data, we examine collections-based evidence for Native textiles in the Chesapeake region. Our lens on Chesapeake textiles and basketry technologies crosscuts the prehistoric/historical divide, revealing new details about Native communities of practice and illustrating specific aspects of Mid Atlantic material culture heretofore underrepresented in the archaeological and ethnological record.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2023   •
• Opening the Vault: What Collections Can Say About Jamestown’s Global Trade Network

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Nicole Haddow