The Archaeology of a Secret World in the Great Dismal Swamp, a Dr. Dan Sayer Illustrated Presentation

For many millennia, the Great Dismal Swamp was an important part of the Indigenous people’s landscape in the Mid-Atlantic region. With the settling of Jamestown and the arrival of the first enslaved Africans to the region in 1619, the swamp became a place of defiance, resistance, and a new start to life for potentially tens of thousands of people of African and Native descent. In this presentation, Dr. Sayers will explore some of the results from archaeological work spanning over a decade long (2003-2017) in the Great Dismal Swamp National Wildlife Refuge, that sought to locate evidence of post-1607 resistance communities.