The Bioarchaeology of Virginia Burial Mounds

Introduction

Though its starting point is death, the real focus of this study is the life of late prehistoric Native American peoples of interior Virginia. This region was at the crossroads of some of the most fascinating cultural developments of late prehistoric North America. To the west and south were the centers of the Mississippian chiefdoms, with large earthen mounds, hierarchical settlement patterns, and plentiful, often exotic, material goods. The people of interior Virginia did not participate in the Mississippian phenomenon, at least not directly, but they were not far removed from it either. To the east, along Virginia’s Coastal Plain, lived the various societies that by the late sixteenth century comprised the Powhatan chiefdom. Understanding the lifeways of the late prehistoric native peoples of interior Virginia is an integral part of understanding eastern North America in the centuries before European contact. For a variety of reasons, European explorers and settlers largely ignored the mid-Atlantic coast in the ¤fteenth and sixteenth centuries. By 1607, when the English established the ¤rst tenuous settlement at what became known as Jamestown, the native peoples of coastal Virginia were loosely allied under the paramount chief Powhatan. Ethnohistoric documents chronicle many aspects of Powhatan life at the time of Jamestown, but we know little about the development of the Powhatan chiefdom, a subject of much debate (e.g., Barker 1992; Fausz 1986; Feest 1978; Potter 1993; Rountree 1989). Although Chief Powhatan’s power on the coast of Virginia was far from absolute, it was substantial. Like many leaders in the protohistoric Eastern Woodlands, Powhatan obtained and maintained his power through a combination of physical conquest, intimidation, and ongoing political negotiations. The Powhatans strongly discouraged the English colonists from traveling to Virginia’s interior, the territory of the Monacan peoples. The PowIntroduction hatans referred to the Monacans as their enemies, and the English had very little contact with these native peoples of Virginia’s interior regions until well into the seventeenth century. Until recently, much of what we thought we knew about the Monacans was shaped by the biases of the Powhatans and the ignorance of the English. Seen through Powhatan eyes, Monacan territory was the hinterlands and the territory of enemies. We now know that this was not the reality of sixteenth- and seventeenthcentury society. The Monacans are not just a “forgotten people” whose cultural history should be reconstructed for the sake of accuracy and completeness . Understanding them and their changing interactions with the world around them over hundreds of years is essential to understanding the larger context of late prehistoric societies in eastern North America. The Late Woodland period was a time of interesting and important changes throughout eastern North America, including Virginia. Prior to this time, native peoples of Virginia were primarily hunter-gatherers living in small, seasonally mobile populations with great similarities in lifeways throughout the region. By about a.d. 550 there is evidence for seasonal semipermanent settlements and increasing exchange of goods throughout the Middle Atlantic Region. After a.d. 900, there is evidence for loosely allied permanent settlements of small villages located alongside crop ¤elds on the ®oodplains. Site patterning and artifact analysis suggest the emergence of both spatial and cultural boundaries between the peoples of coastal Virginia and those living to the west in interior Virginia. Archaeological evidence suggests that a cultural boundary between what became the Powhatan and Monacan areas ¤rst developed sometime around or slightly before a.d. 900 and was maintained into the seventeenth century, spanning the entire Late Woodland period. These Late Woodland peoples were sedentary farmers, dispersed over a fairly large area but with a uni-¤ed identity expressed through material goods, settlement patterns, and mortuary ritual. Recent research has substantially increased our understanding of Monacan history, but many critical issues have remained unresolved , especially those relating to human demography, subsistence economy, health, and political organization that changed through the Late Woodland period. Accretional burial mounds are a de¤ning characteristic of Late Woodland interior Virginia. By late prehistory at least 13 of these sites were scattered through the Piedmont and Ridge-and-Valley provinces of central Virginia . The mounds were a substantial physical presence on the landscape. They were constructed of earth and stone, with diameters of 40 to 80 feet and heights of 12 to 15 feet. Their impressiveness was probably enhanced by the fact that they were built on the broad, ®at ®oodplains of Virginia’s major rivers and tributaries. Most of the burial mound sites seem to have...