Jamestown at 400: New Words for an Old Monument

Professor Hantman will highlight the ongoing commemoration of the 400th
anniversary of the settling of the Jamestown colony from some different
historical, geographic and cultural perspectives. The extraordinary and
exciting new data and ideas coming from recent archaeological excavations
at Jamestown and at contemporary Native American sites will be discussed.
Some new ideas currently being debated concerning how and why Jamestown
'survived' after earlier European colonies in the Chesapeake had failed
will be evaluated. Finally, the manner by which Virginians have marked
Jamestown anniversaries every fifty years since 1807 will be compared to
the events and ideas defining the current 2007 commemoration. While many of
the larger commemorative themes have been surprisingly unchanging over two
hundred years, new and important interpretations mark the current year's
events and emphases.

March 29, 2007
7:00 - 8:30 p.m.
Old Town Event Center
403 S. Loudoun Street
Winchester, VA
Directions

Jamestown Anniversary Focus of Winchester Lecture
Shenandoah.com, March 2007

About the Speaker

Jeff Hantman
Associate Professor of Anthropology
Director of the Archaeology Interdisciplinary Program at the University of Virginia

Professor Hantman's research focuses on relations between Europeans and Indians in early colonial Virginia, placing that cultural exchange into a long-term Native precolonial context through the interpretation of archaeological data. He is also interested in how history generally is presented in museums, monuments and commemorative events. Presently he is writing a long-term history of the Monacan Indian people of central and western Virginia and their role in the Jamestown event. A former member of the Governor's Commission on Historic Preservation and the Virginia Historic Landmarks Board, he has worked closely with the Monacan Indian Tribal Association on collaborative research and the repatriation of human remains and museum collections.

Author of more than 50 journal and book articles, he recently published two co-edited books, ACROSS THE CONTINENT: JEFFERSON, LEWIS AND CLARK, AND THE MAKING OF AMERICA (2004, University of Virginia Press) and MANAGING ARCHAEOLOGICAL DATA (2006, Arizona State University).