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Background
Flowerdew Hundred, on the south bank of the James River east of Hopewell Va., is a well-known landmark on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places . Its 1,400 (originally 1,000) acres constitute a rich and diachronically important cultural landscape. The farm encompasses the homonymous plantation, as well as 70 archaeological sites dating from 10,000 BCE through the early 20th cenury. Extensive archaeological finds substantiate the presence of Native Americans at Flowerdew from the Paleo-Indian era (10,000 BCE). In the 17th century, George Yeardley established the Flowerdew Hundred plantation, which continued to function as a plantation where Africans lived as early as 1628. In the 18th and 19th centuries, Flowerdew remained a strategic location along the James being near Petersburg and Richmond; as such, it has produced archaeological evidence relating to war events dating to those periods. Thus, the archaeology of Flowerdew Hundred can tell stories of a complex past, woven together through everyday material culture left on site by Native Americans, Africans, Europeans, and the armies of the American Revolutionary and Civil Wars. The present resource offers in-depth glimpses of this complex past by systematizing and showcasing archaeological evidence produced by excavations for the combined purpose of academic and K12 teaching and learning.