The emphasis on publication as a means of "disseminating knowledge" was expressed by the first secretary of the Smithsonian. Two burial pits (one outside the palisade and one extending into the outer palisade line) contained European trade items, indicating use of the site during post-Contact times, probably limited to a short time after the first European visit to the area by Captain John Smith in 1608. Coupled with evidence of long-term occupation of the site (e.g. six rebuildings of the palisade), there is evidence of evolving pottery types.
The earliest ware now equates to the Shepard Cord-marked type of the Piedmont Potomac Valley, and it evolves into the Potomac Creek Cord-impressed and Potomac Creek Plain ware typical of the early 17th century. From 1935 he headed a small group of local professional archaeologists, who thus became the first modern explorers of the site. The work of filling in the details of this approach to the site's history became the goal of the long writing period after 1940.
The location of Colonial Marlborough is on the right bend of the roadway that runs along the Neck, parallel to the river.
Dale Stewart
Other cultural aspects deal with community data and the basis of subsistence of the Patawomeke Indians at the time of contact.
Field Work
PRESENT
In addition, he mixed digging in the ossuary cave with work in other parts of the site. Almost all of the judge's statements about the position of the bones refer to articulated skeletons. The transfer of the lease from the judge to me was even more recent.
Thus 3R1 represents the first square to the right of the one in the axis row bearing the designation 3. The fence was cut down, and the field on the east side of the fence plowed up. Now the field on the west side of the site has been plowed over and planted with grass.
Next, trenches were laid out and dug through unexplored areas in the western and southwestern part of the site.
1&J33
In addition, vertical photographs of the exposed bones were taken from an elevated tripod to provide additional documentation (Figure 18, top). Figure 19, top, taken on September 2, shows that the bones exposed at the end of the 1939 season have been largely removed. In nine other cases of articulation of the upper half of the body, the position of the lower legs was uncertain.
One is Figure 7, an initial division of the site into a flexible system of 35-foot (10.5 m) squares or sections. The second map is Figure 9, showing the topography of the site and the location of the judge's trenches. For the relationship between the face of the skull and its respective bundle, see the accompanying text.
The exact location of Ossuary 1 was not verified beyond noting the location of the surface evidence. In the second type, posts of the same size were placed in small trenches between 15 cm and 30 cm wide and of the same depth. Post holes appeared in some of the trenches, but they were very shallow, rarely more than 10 cm in depth.
Some signs of a light filling by washing were found at the bottom of the trench. A smaller fortification element was found in the interior of the village, comprising two large ossuaries. Possibly the bastion-like elevation on the western side of the inner stockade represents such a feature.
If this circular pattern predates or postdates the site, it is possible that the center of the site was an open area. Because such features were often on top of the soil, it is likely that they were completely obliterated by plowing.
Cultural Remains
Dotted: Usually made with some tool, such as a hollow reed, which leaves a raised section in the center of the impression. Schmitt's description of the vessel types represented in the Potomac Creek Collection is consistent with the results of my investigation. Pottery from the Owasco aspect of New York (Ritchie, 1944) and the Lake Michigan phase (McKern, 1931), tempered ware from Fort Ancient sites in the central Ohio Valley (Griffin, 1943), and the Monongahela culture in southwestern Pennsylvania (Butler, 1939; Mayer- Oakes, 1955) are in the same tradition.
DISTRIBUTION.-This type is little known, but is expected to have a distribution similar to that of the Potomac Creek Cord-impressed type. The characteristics of this type merge with those of the Potomac Creek types, and it is considered by MacCord (1985) to be ancestral to. However, the pipes at the Shepard site differ from the Patawomeke specimens in having bowls that appear larger relative to the stem.
Some of the numerous pipes found in excavations at Jamestown resemble those found at Patawomeke (Harrington, 1951). Stems of blunt tubes are either indistinguishable from the stem or are visibly swollen or dilated. Locally, clay is part of the underlying geological formations and usable clay could have been taken from the eroding river bank.
These items had been researched by Karl Schmitt and most of what follows is from his M.A. These calders were made from the wing bone of the wild turkey, cut and polished. Two awls are made from deer ulnas and two from the tibia of the same animal.
Since most of the shells found in the excavations appear to be water-worn, they probably came from that beach. This does not mean that he did not examine many of the European artifacts. This suggests that the creators of the Cross reeds were contemporaneous with the creator of the Potomac Creek IS reed.
Also, the holes in the stem are only about 1 mm in diameter, whereas the hole in the stem of the Potomac Creek specimen is 3 mm in diameter.
3EOC
Because similar types of copper or copper objects were found by Judge Graham (1935) in the ossuaries on the Port Tobacco River, a tributary of the Potomac, and by Mrs. The only mentions of cylindrical beads in the judge's diary are related to his excavation of the multiple burial on 1,7 and 10 December 1935 (diary, pages 1, 2 and 7). You can't help but be amazed that so many clocks from the Graham collection, despite appearing to be of delicate construction, still look complete and attractive.
In the lower hemisphere a larger round hole was made on each side of the pole and connected by a narrow slit. The size of the holes and crack in the lower hemisphere tends to be proportional to the overall size of the bell (Figure 47). I arranged for one of the tear-damaged bells from lot USNM 379,007 to be spectroscopically analyzed by the FBI.
On many (coil) bells are four circumferential grooves, two on each side of the equatorial seam. He prefers France as the place of manufacture of the bells, although this is uncertain. In a survey of sixteenth-century Spanish trade goods in the southeastern United States, Jeffrey Brain (1979) identifies falcon bells as an important trade item.
Another site in Virginia—the Trigg site at Radford (Buchanan, 1984)—provided the loop half of a flushloop bell as part of the graveside accompaniment of a child burial. Although the shafts on the handle end of the smaller scissors appear to be parallel. Unlike the shafts of the smaller pair, the shafts of the larger pair are now parallel, meaning that the blades of the latter were closed when this instrument was included in the ossuary.
This figure supports my belief that in this case the missing points of the leaves did indeed come together in the usual manner of the closed instrument. One (his figure E-4) resembles the Potomac Creek example, and the other (his figure E-50) has a different handle arrangement.
Mortuary Complex and Anthropometrics
Most of the bodies were placed (in the flesh) in a crouched position at the base of the pit. A total of 135 individuals were recognized and 68 skulls and some postcranial bones were entered into the collections of the National Museum. POST-CRANIAL BONES.-Almost none of the bones of the skeleton below the skull and mandible were saved from any ossuary.
In particular, it would have been necessary to separate bones from the feet and individual vertebrae, which are usually held together by extra strong ligaments and tendons. The Patawomeke cranial indices, shown in Table 22, indicate that most of the population were long-headed (dolichocranial). The latter village may be culturally ancestral to the population of the Potomac Creek Focus (MacCord et al., 1957).
Among the Nanticokes of the Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake Bay, secondary burial was also a custom (Davidson, 1935 and Weslager, 1983). Also, in some cases, a part of the body, such as an arm or a foot, was still held together by ligaments, resulting in a limited articulation of a body part in the bundle. Sometimes these bone elements allow a tenuous identification of the individual's age group or sex.
Ferguson excavated an ossuary on Piscataway Creek, near the later, mid-seventeenth century, town of the Piscataway (Convoy) tribe. Wedel and I examined two ossuaries discovered under construction near Giesboro Point, the probable location of the village of Nacotchtank in the early seventeenth century. That ossuary was in the territory of the Pamunkey Indians during the early Historic period (Stewart and Wedel, 1940).
Other sites are known, and for several the tribal identities of the occupants are known. As archaeological attention is devoted to the other sites of the complex, it is certain that new and confirmatory data will become available.
Conclusions (A Look Back)
