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Historically Speaking: Negotiating Changing Chesapeake Identities

About this event

Maryland’s indigenous population, especially Indian women, transformed Early British American society during the 17th century. Maryland Indian women provided sustenance and crafts and served as cultural brokers, providing colonists with food and native-made goods, including aboriginal ceramics. 

University of Maryland PhD candidate Valerie J. Hall has done extensive archeological in Southern Maryland and particularly in St. Mary's County to bring this here-to-fore under-explored topic to life. 

A tension between public and private attributes reflected societal tensions, as indigenous women, the creators of pottery vessels, struggled to negotiate cultural interactions brought on by English colonization.  At the same time, indigenous women were sharing aspects of native culture with English settlers as they traded pottery, agricultural produce, and other goods for cloth and other European-made objects.  These cultural contributions helped normalize a new Chesapean lifestyle for English immigrants, blending European material culture and foodways with American ones to create a new culture in seventeenth-century frontier society.

Valerie Hall is in the University of Maryland's PhD program in Anthropology. She was graduated with distinction with a BS and BEd from Pennsylvania State University and earned her Masters at Illinois State University in Anthropology and Archeology. She served as the principal investigator at the St. Francis Xavier Cemetery on Newtown Neck Road among other in-field research projects. 

Date and Time

Wednesday, August 20, 2025, 7:00 PM until 9:00 PM

Location

The Inn at Leonardtown
41655 Park Ave
Leonardtown, MD  20650
USA

Event Contact(s)

Peter LaPorte

Category

Historically Speaking

Registration Info

Registration is recommended

Number of People Who Will Attend

Everyone
(No Fee)
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