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Professor King’s Archaeological Work with the Rappahannock Tribe Featured on Podcast

Professor of Anthropology Julia King took part in the pilot episode of “Tribal Truths,” a new podcast series from RadioIQ that aims to debunk myths and legends with facts, teaching about tribal cultures and current issues.

King says in the first episode titled  “Ancient cliffs are revealing lost tribal histories” that “there is so much that the land tries to tell us if we just listen to what it has to say.”

Featuring Rappahannock Tribe Chief Anne Richardson and narrated by tribal member Steven Nelson, the episode focuses on Fones Cliffs, a place along the Rappahannock river in eastern Virginia where the Rappahannock Tribe once lived. King and her team of archaeologists, in collaboration with the Virginia Department of Historic Resources, the US Fish and Wildlife Services, and the Federally-recognized Rappahannock Tribe, have been working to trace the history and development of the Rappahannock Tribe in early American history.

“[The archaeologists are] digging for traces of our towns and connecting them to our oral histories. And centuries after the Rappahannock Tribe’s removal from this area, they’re reconstructing our ties to Fones Cliffs, looking for three of our towns once located there. It’s a race against time, development and climate change,” Nelson said on the podcast.

The anthropology department at St. Mary’s College of Maryland first began studying the Rappahannock Tribe’s history in 2016 at the request of the National Park Service’s Chesapeake Bay Office, the Chesapeake Conservancy, and the Rappahannock Tribe. The work was undertaken to provide interpretive support for the Captain John Smith Chesapeake National Historic Trail. Following the NPS-funded project, the Tribe and King and her students have continued their collaboration. The survey of the greater river valley has been funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and the National Park Service’s Underrepresented Communities Program.

Photo credit: Pamela A. D’Angelo

Professor Julia King Receives Prestigious Fellowship in Landscape Studies from Dumbarton Oaks

Julia King, professor of anthropology and chair of that department at St. Mary’s College of Maryland, has been awarded a prestigious residential fellowship at the Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection in Washington, D.C.

Administered by the trustees for Harvard University, Dumbarton Oaks supports research and learning in Byzantine, Garden and Landscape, and Pre-Columbian studies through fellowships, internships, meetings, and exhibitions.

King will spend her fellowship researching the experiences of Indigenous communities in the Rappahannock River valley in eastern Virginia between 1500 and 1900, linking these experiences to the river valley’s Native landscape. Using the extensive archaeological database assembled during the College’s recently concluded NEH-funded project in the Rappahannock valley, King will draw on Dumbarton Oaks’ extensive library holdings to place the finds in their greater context. The fellowship will allow King time to prepare a book exploring how the Native Rappahannock communities negotiated settler colonialism over the course of four centuries.

“The Dumbarton Oaks Library holds one of the most extensive collections anywhere of published and unpublished materials on landscape, including Indigenous landscapes,” King noted. “The opportunity to have access to DO’s holdings for the fellowship period will enhance my understanding of the Native landscapes my students, staff, and I have been studying over the last decades.”

King is an anthropological archaeologist who has 30 years’ experience researching, studying, and teaching about the Chesapeake region’s rich past and its relationship to the present. She is a past president of the Society for Historical Archaeology and the recipient of the Society’s 2018 J. C. Harrington Award in recognition of her scholarship and contributions to the field of historical archaeology. Her work has also been recognized by the Archaeological Society of Virginia and the Register of Professional Archaeologists.

SMCM Archaeologists Featured in Archaeology Magazine

Professor of Anthropology Julia King and adjunct instructor of anthropology Scott Strickland ’08 are featured along with Chief Anne Richardson of the Rappahannock Tribe in the January/February edition of Archaeology Magazine. The article, “Return to the River,” focuses on their work tracing the history and development of the Rappahannock Indians in early American history. The anthropology department at St. Mary’s College first began studying the Rappahannock River valley’s history in 2016 at the request of the National Park Service Chesapeake Bay Office and the Chesapeake Conservancy. The work was undertaken to provide interpretive support for the Captain John Smith Chesapeake National Historic Trail and led to the Rappahannock Indians’ return to the river when former Senator John Warner and his daughter, Virginia Warner, donated land to the Rappahannock in their ancestral homeland. The survey of the greater river valley has been funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Professor Julia King Awarded Archeology Grant from National Park Service

Professor of Anthropology, Julia (Julie) King, was recently awarded a $110,000 grant from the National Park Service to fund a complete archeological overview and assessment of Piscataway Park in Prince George’s County, Maryland. This project will be conducted through a Cooperative Agreement under the Chesapeake Watershed Cooperative Ecosystems Study Unit. The Cooperative Agreement was signed August 14, 2020 and the project is expected to be completed by December 31, 2021.

Piscataway Park is a unit of the National Park Service administered by National Capital Parks—East. The park is located in Southern Maryland along the banks of the Potomac River. This park is significant because of the rich archeological resources located within the park and their impact on our modern understanding of Native American societies in the Eastern Middle Atlantic. Situated approximately 25 miles downriver from Washington D.C., lands within the park were home to the Potomac Valley’s indigenous inhabitants for thousands of years—dating as far back as 6,000 years ago and through the 1500s. Among the occupants were the Piscataway Indians of Southern Maryland whose ancestors still live nearby today.

Piscataway Park is the greatest resource of pre-contact and contact period American Indian archeological resources in the National Capital Region of the National Park Service. The park has been the subject of several archeological investigations, but there has never been a synthetic report of this work or a formal organization of this material for management needs. The scope and breadth of existing archeological collections also lend themselves to addressing future research questions related not only to the history of Piscataway Park, but also the Native American communities that once lived there.

The archeological overview and assessment will describe and assess the known and potential archeological resources at Piscataway Park. The overview reviews, summarizes and synthesizes existing archeological data in detail, assesses past work, identifies gaps in our understanding of the archeological data, and determines the need for and recommendations for future studies. The document will be a core baseline archeological resources management reference for the National Capital Parks—East unit. This project will also critically examine and evaluate museum collections from archeological sites in the park to assist in understanding the history of the park. Furthermore, this work will develop recommendations for future research for management of park resources and public education. Julie King is the Principal Investigator for the project, with Scott Strickland (’08) serving as Research and GIS Coordinator. The grant also includes funding for an assistant archaeologist, likely to be an SMCM alum, and two student assistants.

Pending available funding, King and NPS may continue the project into 2022 and beyond with a new cooperative agreement. Additional work will likely entail reviewing and assessing archaeological collections, completion of updating state site forms, and updating archeological site condition assessments for the National Park System’s online Cultural Resources Inventory System. Further work may also involve the production of a publicly accessible document (excluding sensitive archeological information) that will provide a detailed history of the Native American experience as linked to Piscataway Park, along with a Finding Aid/Collections Assessment document to complement the Archeological Overview and Assessment Document.

Professor of Anthropology Julia King and Collaborators Continue Archaeological Research Along Rappahannock River

Professor of Anthropology Julia King, Instructor of Anthropology Scott Strickland and SMCM students Caitlin Hall, Sarah Kifer and Danielle Harris-Burnett are featured in a July 25, 2020 Fredericksburg.com article focusing on their Rappahannock Tribe project called “Indigenous Borderlands of the Chesapeake.” The team is doing historical archaeology in Virginia to find spots where Native American villages existed along the Rappahannock River.

King and her crew have been working recently at a land tract above the Rappahannock River called Fones Cliffs. The site had been considered for development but was acquired instead in 2019 by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Rappahannock River Valley National Wildlife Refuge. Fones Cliffs has a rich cultural history, as well as important ecological habitat and a beautiful white cliff landscape.

The team of archaeologists has found clues of Native Americans at Fones Cliffs and King said the main objective will continue to be finding evidence of the three large villages that exist in both the Rappahannock Tribe’s oral histories and in Captain John Smith’s journals, describing his journey up the river in 1608. King notes that an earlier round of exploration on the Fones Cliffs site was funded by The Conservation Fund, while this year’s two weeks of digging and exploration were paid for by the refuge.

Documenting Chesapeake History

The region surrounding the Chesapeake Bay is rich in history. Originally settled by Native American tribes, the area is also home to the United States’ earliest English colonial settlements and the beginnings of American slavery. Since 2001, Julia King and a consortium of researchers have been advancing the archaeological study of the region through digital methods, collections-based research, and more traditional field excavations. Their work has made archaeological data more accessible to researchers and students and yielded new insights into colonial and pre-colonial history. It has also had an impact on Native American tribes who still live in the region.

As the first director of the Maryland Archaeological Conservation Laboratory, King was charged with organizing and relocating archaeological collections from across the state to one central location. NEH grants helped preserve and electronically catalog records documenting more than 1-million objects from archaeological sites located throughout the Chesapeake Bay region, making them more broadly accessible to researchers. NEH funding also supported two comparative studies of English, Indigenous, and African culture in the Chesapeake. A consortium of researchers from around the region worked on these projects, contributing and digitizing their archaeological catalogs.

Through this work, archaeologists came to see nuances in interactions between Native Americans and English settlers, as evidenced through objects found in excavated sites. For instance, between 1660 and 1680, the colorful beads Native Americans traded changed from blue and white to black and red, indicating a growing antipathy for the settlers: among Native people, the color black was often closely associated with death. Beyond these insights, the funding resulted in two websites: ChesapeakeArchaeology.org and ColonialEncounters.org. These continue to be used by students and researchers as they explore the region’s history.

Now a professor at St. Mary’s College of Maryland, King has continued her work in the region’s archeology and history through an NEH grant to excavate and analyze Indigenous sites along the lower Rappahannock River in Virginia. Throughout the project, King has worked closely with Rappahannock people who live in the area and whose ancestors settled the river valley. The excavations and GIS work associated with the project have proven crucial to helping the Rappahannock Tribe verify the accuracy of some of their oral traditions. More than subtle changes in historical interpretation and their echoes in museum exhibitions in classrooms, outcomes like these have been among the most significant in King’s career. All of this work, with its focus on Indigenous sites, has helped boost the efforts of Native tribes seeking recognition. As King states, “10 or 15 years ago, many people wouldn’t believe there were Native Americans here. They thought they were long gone, when in fact they are still here.”

This article first appeared on the National Humanties Alliance NEH for ALL webpage. This project has been made possible in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities: Exploring the human endeavor. Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this article do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

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SMCM Alumnus Continues Archaeological Collaborations

Scott Strickland in the field

Scott Strickland conducting archaeology in the field

An archaeologist and adjunct instructor, Scott Strickland is one of many successful alumni working to enrich the St. Mary’s College of Maryland (SMCM) community. A 2008 graduate, Strickland has worked on SMCM archaeological projects for almost a decade. Strickland began his archaeological career with Professor of Anthropology Julie King, finding and testing Moore’s Lodge, the first courthouse of Charles County, MD. He has since worked on a wide variety of projects, and was instrumental in the discovery of Zekiah Fort, a defensive fortification established in 1680 by Gov. Charles Calvert to protect Piscataway people from northern Native American raiders. Strickland received his Master of Science from the University of Southampton in the UK, specializing in archaeological computing. He also worked on the Colonial Encounters Project, an effort funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities focused on cataloging artifacts and analyzing historical maps for future use.

Scott Strickland in the field

Scott Strickland using a surveyor’s scope in the field

Currently, Strickland is working on a project funded by the National Park Service, entitled “An Ethnographic Overview and Assessment of Piscataway Park in Prince George’s County.” The grant funding this project was awarded to Dr. King in September, 2017. Strickland, along with SMCM staff member Travis Hanson, hopes to document changes to the Piscataway Park community in Prince George’s County by talking with local residents, gathering historical documents including land grants and tax forms, and recording alterations to the physical landscape. He also serves as an adjunct instructor at SMCM, teaching anthropological applications of Geographic Information Systems and computational methods in anthropology. Strickland is one of countless SMCM alumni that are giving back to the St. Mary’s community through his commitment to historic preservation and ability to teach.

The views and conclusions contained in this document are those of the authors and should not be interpreted as representing the opinions or policies of the U.S. Government. Mention of trade names or commercial products does not constitute their endorsement by the U.S. Government.

Assistant Professor of Anthropology Liza Gijanto Awarded Prestigious Howard Foundation Fellowship

Assistant Professor of Anthropology Liza Gijanto

Assistant Professor of Anthropology Liza Gijanto was awarded a highly-competitive Howard Foundation Fellowship in April 2017 for her project titled: Emancipation and Commerce: The Gambia Colony and American Plantations in the Age of British Abolition. The $33,000 fellowship for the 2017-2018 academic year will support Dr. Gijanto’s research which examines the nature of the impact of the Atlantic trade on the Gambia River. Dr. Gijanto was one of just eight nationwide 2017-2018 fellowship recipients and the only recipient in the field of archaeology. Other 2017-2018 fellowship recipients were selected from the fields of photography and anthropology and range from professors at large institutions such as UCLA to independent artists collaborating with organizations such as NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

This distinguished award will allow Dr. Gijanto to complete data-gathering for the Emancipation and Commerce project and begin writing a monograph describing the work. The project will advance understanding of the complex history of abolition in West Africa, a program that was ironically undermined by the continued consumption of goods produced by enslaved laborers in the Americas within an African colony founded to end the traffic of slaves. Dr. Gijanto will travel to two archives: the Peter Strickland Archive in Mystic, Connecticut and the British National Archives in Kew, London, during Fall 2017 and begin work on the monograph in Spring 2018.

The Howard Foundation is associated with Brown University and is one of few funders dedicated “to furthering the personal development of promising individuals at the crucial middle stages of their careers in the liberal and creative arts”. The Howard Foundation awards a limited number of fellowships each year for independent projects in selected fields, targeting its support specifically to early mid-career individuals and those who have achieved recognition for at least one major project.