Essays

For thousands of years the only humans in North America were those who crossed the Bering Strait from Europe and Asia during the last Ice Age. When the Spanish and English began arriving in the 1600 and 1700s seeking gold and fortunes, they instead found Native Americans in this strange new land. This essay chronicles the groups who first settled along the James River and their interactions with each other during the first century.

Plantations only came to refer to a large area of land specifically cultivated for commercial sale and worked by resident labor after tobacco became the first cash crop in Virginia. The social, economic, and political importance of tobacco in the Virginia colony directly contributed to the creation of wealth and to the importation of African slaves over white indentured servants.

For the first hundred years civil unrest in the new colony was common. Constant wars with Native Americans, threats from the enslaved labor, starvation and disease, and the start of the American Revolution tested the willpower of the young colony.

By the 1850s, Virginia had become a slave society, rather than a society with slaves. Slavery influenced the state's social and political institutions, commerce, and industry. The Transportation Revolution in the late 1700s and early 1800s fundamentally changed the way goods and people were moved across the state. The debate over the future of slavery was ended with the civil war and the freedom of over 4 million African Americans.

One of the most enduring aspects of the plantation landscape are the grand homes and outbuildings. Plantations were complex spaces that consisted of fields, gardens, work and living spaces. They bear the distinctive signs of southern agriculture and a unique regional identity.

Understanding why certain objects are where they are is important to archeologists. It helps archaeologists reconstruct the past daily life experiences people had. This is why it is so important to not collect objects that are found near historic homes, on protected lands, or any other areas that are a part of our shared heritage. Help us protect the past for the future, by not looting or removing objects from historic sites.