Early Colonial Livestock in the Northern Neck: A View from Coan Hall

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.

In the early 17th century, European colonists introduced new livestock and agricultural practices to Virginia which developed into unique management and farming practices. These practices had significant influence on the development of environmental and cultural spheres of interaction within the colony. This paper presents a zooarchaeological analysis of the Coan Hall archaeological site, a 17th- to early 18th-century colonial site in Northumberland County on Virginia's Northern Neck. The results provide evidence of livestock management and consumption at Coan Hall over time, particularly the ways in which the demands of livestock production and management may have influenced daily life at Coan Hall and altered the existing ecology of the Northern Neck region. As a case study, these findings provide insight into how similar environmental changes across the colony may have influenced the broader Atlantic World.

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