1606: Chronology Construction in the Native Chesapeake

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Building a Better Chronology for Fifteenth–Eighteenth-Century Eastern North America through Radiocarbon Dating and Collaborative Research Agendas" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Constructing a chronology for the Native Chesapeake on the eve of the colonial era presents several challenges. These include a predominant focus on European settlement, fluctuations in the radiocarbon calibration curve, a scarcity of radiocarbon assays, and a tendency to view the centuries before Jamestown's founding in 1607 through an ahistorical lens. In response to these limitations, members of the Virginia Indian community have called for a greater focus on eventful Native histories for the period before European contact. To address this, we have begun building chronological models for key developments during the late precontact centuries, including the proliferation of palisaded settlements and the increased reliance on maize-based agriculture. Building on these efforts, our current project aims to use chronological models to compare and assess three historical processes that may have contributed to the rise of the Powhatan chiefdom in the sixteenth century: challenges in food production linked to megadroughts, population losses due to pandemics on the eve of contact, and a regional social movement culminating in Powhatan’s relocation to Werowocomoco, the Powhatan center place. Although evidence for these developments is limited and uneven, using chronological models to compare them illuminates interpretive possibilities and identifies gaps in the existing evidence.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)   •
• Building a Better Chronology for Fifteenth–Eighteenth-Century Eastern North America through Radiocarbon Dating and Collaborative Research Agendas

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 50428