Centers of Exchange: Comparing Virginia's Northern Neck and Maryland's Potomac Valley

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.

Since 2016, more than 20 Indigenous sites have been tested in the Northern Neck. Two sites, Baylor and Camden, stand out for the thousands of Indigenous ceramics present. A trend seen nowhere else in the Northern Neck, it is seen at Posey, a site along the Potomac in Maryland. This paper explores the striking similarities between these three sites while also revealing important differences. Artifact assemblages indicate these sites may have served as trading posts. In Maryland, the Calverts used exchange relationships to maintain Indigenous leaders, reinforcing Indigenous structures of authority while displacing them from the land. Conversely, the unique position of the Northern Neck weakened the control of the government, allowing Indigenous people to construct trade relationships outside political structures of the colonial government.

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