Kiskiak: The settlement history of a dispersed village in Tidewater Virginia

Abstract

Villages organized coastal Algonquian social life in the Chesapeake during the late precolonial and early colonial eras. Even so, archaeologists have only rarely attempted to interpret village or community organization in the region, relying instead on the assumption that communities overlapped closely with individual sites. This study challenges that assumption through a “non-site” assessment of survey and excavation data from Virginia's lower York River. This approach indicates that settlement along Indian Field Creek included spatially discrete but socially connected spaces that comprised the village of Kiskiak. With origins in the Mockley Phase (AD 200–900), this settlement form comes into clear view during the colonial era as a dispersed, creek-side village with domestic spaces around Indian Field Creek, community middens at its mouth, and a palisaded area overlooking the York. The dispersed village and its history in the region represent important dimensions of social life in the Native Chesapeake.