John Henshaw, PhD
WRPO Archaeologist
Virginia Department of Historic Resources
Archaeological narratives often treat the Chesapeake Bay region as an outlier in the centuries preceding European colonialism, positioned alongside, but apart from, Eastern Woodlands histories of climate stress, migration, and political transformation. This talk argues otherwise. I reframe the Potomac–Shenandoah drainage (ca. AD 1400–1600) as a Native-made frontier: a shifting zone of interaction where communities negotiated identity, mobility, and intercultural tensions. I argue that migration amid late precolonial climate volatility contributed to new collective strategies, as people reconfigured exchange networks, redrew social boundaries, and created regional ties that crossed linguistic lines. Drawing on multiple lines of archaeological and climatic evidence, I show how Indigenous communities produced this riverine frontier on the eve of European colonization. This work places the Chesapeake squarely within comparative Eastern Woodlands narratives where it belongs.