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Excavated in the 1970s and 80s by Lefty Gregory, the Hatch site is arguably among the most significant precolonial archaeology sites in the Commonwealth of Virginia. Though the collection sat in storage for decades, it recently became accessible to researchers. The thorough excavation combined with abundant radiocarbon data allow the historical narrative of this magnificent site to come into focus. an unusual place, hidden in a remote location, the Hatch site witnessed at least 600 years of regularly occurring ritualized gatherings. These gatherings involved the sacrifice and internment of dogs as well as elaborate feasts on both estuarine and terrestrial resources. This study focuses on the ornate zone-decorated pottery found at the Hatch site. This unusual ceramic type originated in the Delaware River Valley during the second half of the Middle Woodland period. It appeared at the Hatch site during the Late Woodland period when Native people used it in the largest and most elaborate of these feasting rituals. This thesis presents the precolonial history of the Hatch site and discusses the place of zone-decorated pots within this narrative.

The end of slavery in North America presented an opportunity for African Americans in Jacksonville, Florida to reinvent themselves. The reconstruction era brought about new social, political, and economic opportunities for African Americans living in Jacksonville. Despite the failure of Reconstruction and the implementation of Jim Crow, Jacksonville gave birth to a vibrant African American aristocracy. Jacksonville's Black elite comprised of doctors, lawyers, morticians, religious leaders, business people and other professionals. Jacksonville's Black elite thrived in the early half of the twentieth century, many of them used their knowledge and skills to contribute to the social and economic development of Jacksonville's African American community. During this period, Jacksonville's African American aristocracy provided their community with legal protection, healthcare, vocational training, employment opportunities, goods, and other critical services such as life insurance and burial. This study centers on a historical African American cemetery cluster that was established during the early twentieth century by Jacksonville's Black aristocrats. This cemetery cluster consists of four cemeteries which include: Pinehurst, Mount Olive, Sunset Memorial, and Memorial. This cluster is located on the Northside of Jacksonville city, along the intersecting roads of 45th street and Moncrief road, and contains an estimated 70,000 African American burials. I argue that this cemetery is reflective of the social, political, and economic changes undergone by Jacksonville's African American community.

The English fifth-rate frigate Saphire was set on fire by its commander in Newfoundland during an attack by a French squadron in September 1696. Prior to its untimely sinking, this small warship had served the Royal Navy for over two decades, primarily in the Mediterranean, acting as convoy and escort to English shipping. This study combines multiple lines of evidence, including archaeology and material culture recovered from the wreck and contemporary documents, art, and illustrations, to explore the significance of the Saphire through a series of multi-scalar and diachronic interpretive lenses. The approach is inspired by an analytical framework for the study of wrecks first proposed by Muckelroy in 1978, while employing a multi-disciplinary methodology informed by social theory to orient the ship in its social and historical context. The first lens considers the Saphire at the broadest level, as an entangled tool of the Royal Navy built and operated at great cost to advance the imperial ambitions of England’s Stuart rulers in the late 17th century. Contemporary records allow the formulation of a biography of this small warship from its launching in 1675 to its loss in 1696, situated against the backdrop of the major political, military and social events of 17th century England. Although the ship was not fully excavated, available archaeological information, naval correspondence and contemporary images illuminate the material processes of constructing, outfitting, operating and maintaining the Saphire as a complex technological artifact. The second lens focuses on the significance of the Saphire at the regional level by examining the social and economic relationships between naval personnel and the settlers and fishers of Newfoundland in the late 17th century. At that time, naval commanders played a role not only in defense, but also in government and judicial affairs of the island. A comparison of material culture recovered from the Saphire with the archaeological record of settlements such as Ferryland illustrates how seaborne trade led to an increasingly globalized material culture that represents a growing consumerism. The third lens examines social relationships and daily life on a small warship in the late 17th century through the material culture from the wreck and contemporary documents. It looks at how naval hierarchy was established, expressed and contested. The concept of assemblages of practice is used to better understand how the artifacts recovered from the wreck reflect the habitus of the daily lives of 17th-century seamen.

No description available.

This study examines long-term change in Indigenous settlement in Virginia's Rappahannock River Valley and its underlying causes during the Archaic Period (10,000-3000 BP). Previously-unstudied archaeological collections from two sites along the Rappahannock River provided evidence of demographic changes from the Middle Archaic to the Late Archaic period, and offered evidence of shifting settlement patterns. To evaluate why different locations were selected for Middle Archaic settlement versus Late Archaic settlement, the overall topography, hydrology and environmental settings of the two sites were evaluated by geospatial analyses of LiDAR images. The reasons for the changes were assessed further using the research framework of Historical Ecology to consider long-term environmental data in conjunction with paleoclimate, biological and archaeological information. Climate change, sea-level rise, formation of the Chesapeake Bay and the effects of embayment on the landscape of the tributary Rappahannock River were evaluated. I present a line of reasoning that links the Late Archaic choice of settlement location to the new riverine resources that became available as the Rappahannock River flow-rate slowed dramatically with Chesapeake embayment. A rationale and broad time-line for this transition are deduced. This information is coupled with analyses of the archaeological lithic assemblages to examine Indigenous actions and choices made relevant to settlement, subsistence and technology in the face of environmental change. These studies benefited from consultation with present-day members of the Rappahannock Tribe.

The Great Smoky Mountains National Park has been prized as an area of unmatched biodiversity in the Eastern United States. However, the presentation of the Park as an unpeopled, pristine wilderness does not acknowledge that the Park is a heterogeneous space where nature and culture are entangled. Recognizing and remembering the region’s cultural history is vital to understanding the Smoky Mountains in the past and present. The archaeology of the 20th-century timber industry is largely forgotten within the context of the National Park today, though the industry and its associated artifacts contradict popular myths about Appalachia. In 2019, I recorded the physical remains of Little River Lumber Company activity through survey and connected them to local histories and archival documents. By considering the timber industry’s impacts on the National Park as we know it today through historical archaeology, we can examine the industry’s role in broader interpretations of Appalachia.

The Hand site is a complex Native American village site located on the Nottoway River in southeastern Virginia. Intensive excavations in the 1960s identified over 600 archaeological features, including hearths, pits, structural remains, and a complex of human and canine burials, long assumed to date to the Protohistoric period. While previous researchers emphasized the site’s ties to the colonial actors, a reexamination of the collection instead suggests the site was a geographic locus for Indigenous peoples for over a thousand years. A close attention to chronology as well as space speaks to a deep history of emplacement, whereby social memory was integral to making place.

This study explores how illicit transatlantic trade relations with the Dutch in seventeenth-century Virginia can be identified through the material record. The research was motivated by recent excavations at a seventeenth-century plantation on Virginia’s Eastern Shore. Eyreville, as it is now known, was a hub of transatlantic trade during the formative years of the Virginia colony. The recognizable presence of Dutch trade goods, coupled with the site’s pro-Dutch merchant residents, prompted the investigation into material signatures of illicit trade on the Eastern Shore and the Chesapeake. The identification of these material signatures is based on extensive research into geopolitical histories, trade networks, the production and distribution of trade goods, and archaeological evidence. This is achieved through the lens of network analysis and structuration theory. Combined with a rich documentary record, archaeological and artifactual analysis illuminates the effects of European globalization, specifically conflicts such as the War of Three Kingdoms from 1642-1649, and regulations such as those imposed through the British Navigation Acts and by the Dutch West India Company. Considering the complexity of this historical context and the modes of analysis involved, a multiscalar approach/perspective is key to discerning how these trade relations occurred.

Betty’s Hope plantation and Shirley Heights fort complex were key features of the colonial-period landscape of Antigua, West Indies. Antigua and its sister island Barbuda are small islands located in the Lesser Antillean chain of the Caribbean. As such, it has long been assumed that these islands and others like them relied more heavily on imported provisions compared to larger islands like Jamaica that implemented significant localized provisioning systems. However, select colonial-period sites throughout the region have begun to produce zooarchaeological data contrary to this assumption via significant contributions of local tropical taxa to the faunal assemblages. Yet the overarching narratives for the islands continue to downplay the importance of these findings. Combining historical documents and faunal material as the primary lines of evidence allows for integration of broad politico-economic contextualization with the ecological parameters of each Caribbean island. For socially-stratified sites such as plantations and forts, divisions of class and rank are manifested on the landscape. Therefore, differential distribution of faunal material can attest to these various types of provisioning systems. For the colonial Caribbean, existing historical literature has long focused on the long-distance provisioning systems across the Atlantic. Yet the faunal material can also demonstrate short-distance and locally-acquired tropical resources. Thus, these data fill critical lacunae in the documentary evidence about quotidian lifeways and how Caribbean residents adjusted to large-scale political and/or environmental changes through localized solutions within and between islands. Specifically, my research focuses on re-centering two often-overlooked taxa in historical zooarchaeology: fish and mollusks. These taxa are typically considered to be bulk protein sources, primarily examined via ecological niche exploitation and capture methods utilized. Unfortunately, fish and mollusks are rarely engaged with in the same nuanced ways that other animals are—particularly domesticates—with respect to foodways practices and elite performative dining. In contrast, I argue that these taxa provide critical insight into the ways that specific taxa were differentially utilized in colonial Caribbean plantation and fort contexts. Each context further provided the opportunity to examine expressions of status and access to certain markets and ecological niches for planters, servants, enslaved Africans, officers, and soldiers. Although all taxonomic classes were identified, the fish and mollusks were the most variable taxa within and between the plantation and fort contexts. This research integrates critical data to the region’s corpus of colonial-period faunal research, and addresses distinct lacunae in colonial Caribbean discussions of provisioning and dining.