Going to Virginia: Chicacoans and the Early Northern Neck

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "A Land Unto Itself: Virginia's Northern Neck, Colonialism, And The Early Atlantic", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

Early records from Chicacoan, the first permanent English community on Virginia’s Northern Neck, refer to residents “going to Virginia,” in spite of living within that colony’s established boundaries. Settling land that the colonial government had forbidden its citizens to occupy, and openly hostile to the government of Maryland, the Chicacoans appear to have seen themselves as something apart, located between two colonies but separate from both. Work undertaken over the last decade at the site of Coan Hall has revealed how the 17th-century occupants of that site, the heart of the Chicacoan settlement, shaped the material world to form a distinctive borderland community built on mobility and diaspora. While short-lived, Chicacoan helped shape the region’s long-term sense of identity.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• A Land Unto Itself: Virginia's Northern Neck, Colonialism, And The Early Atlantic   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2023

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Nicole Haddow