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9Monacan Archaeology of the Virginia Interior, A.D. 1400-1700 JEFFREY L. HANTMAN An abundant and accessible ethnohistoric record and an increasingly well-synthesized prehistoric and contact-era archaeology make the Algonquian Powhatan people of coastal Virginia among the better-known tribal groups at European contact in eastern North America (Barbour 1986; Potter 1993; Rountree 1989; Turner 1985). The culture and history of native peoples of the interior, to the west of the fall line separating the piedmont from the coastal plain, is not nearly so well known, however. The same Jamestown colonists who created the rich ethnohistoric record of the Powhatans rarely ventured beyond the coastal plain prior to 1700. Thus, textual data are relatively sparse, and the interior cultures have remained largely in the historical shadows , although they were very much a part of the precontact and postcontact regional cultural matrix. As I have suggested elsewhere (Hantman 1990), understanding the interior cultures, particularly the Siouan-speaking Monacans of the VIrginia piedmont, is essential to a full appreciation of late prehistoric regional interaction systems in VIrginia and to understanding the uniqueness of the colonial encounter in the Chesapeake region and its effects on native history in the interior. In the absence of a rich documentary record, such an understanding must come largely from archaeological research and a careful reading of the historical sources. Further, such an understanding needs to move freely across the boundary typically established between history and prehistory. Here I summarize what is known of the archaeology and ethnohistory of the central Virginia interior for the period A.D. 1400-1700. I specifically address the area principally along and between the Rappahannock, James, and Appomattox Rivers of the piedmont, between the fall line and the Shenandoah Valley-Ridge and Valley province. This was the area identified on historic maps of the Jamestown era as the "territory" of the Monacans and Mannahoacs, who most scholars today agree can be referred to collectively as Monacans (Figs. 9.1, 9.2). After reviewing the history of research in the area, I address the definition of chronological and cultural complexes, settlement patterns, subsistence, social organization, exchange, warfare, and mortuary behavior. For each category, I will be attuned to changes that occurred with the establishment of a permanent European presence in Virginia in 1607. There had been earlier colonization attempts in VIrginia, such as the failed Spanish mission of 1570 (Lewis and Loornie 1953) and the failed Roanoke colony of 1585-1587 (Quinn 1984). Indirect effects probably were also felt from Spanish exploration to the southwest (Hudson 1990). As elsewhere, it is impossible to fix an absolute precontact-postcontact boundary after 1492, but the establishment of the Jamestown colony in 1607 clearly marks a fundamental change in the history of the region that demands particular attention. 107 108 JEFFREY L. HANTMAN Figure 9.1. The Virginia interior. The hatched area shows the approximate extent of Monacan territory. circa 1600. •· • • ~ ~ ________......l__ : T/JI"R. Archaeological Research in the Virginia Interior o o A N I Miles Archaeological research in the Virginia interior had an auspicious beginning. Sometime between 1760 and 1781 (the exact year is uncertain), ThomasJefferson excavated a burial mound in central Virginia (Hantman and Dunham 1993; Jefferson 1982 [1787]). The mound probably had been constructed by the recent ancestors of the Monacans and most likely was used well into the seventeenth century (Holland 1978). Introductory textbooks like to proclaim that it was at this mound that the first "scientific" archaeology was conducted in North America, and there that the principles of stratigraphy were first used. It was also toJefferson's credit that despite common speculation concerning the mounds as burial grounds for ancient warriors who had died at the battle site, he tested that assertion and found that the skeletal evidence did not support it. The mound,Jefferson wrote, was the burial ground for more than a thousand individuals who had lived in the region. Though Jefferson did not assign the name Monacan to those Indians, he did describe a 100 I 50··· •· • ~eR. • • •· • • local group's paying a somber and mournful visit to the mound years before his excavation. That mound appears in the first or second chapter of every "introduction to archaeology" or "history of archaeology " textbook published in recent years (e.g., Fagan 1991; Jennings 1974: 37; Thomas 1989: 27-31; Willey and Sabloff 1974: 28-29). Unfortunately, it is rarely mentioned again, even in discussions of Eastern Woodlands prehistory: This is not really surprising, since the...

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