Archaeological studies of Native American societies in the Chesapeake have recently incorporated a broader range of interpretive frames, including those that emphasize historical contingency and social interaction rather than cultural ecology and cultural materialism. New evidence of Woodland-period population movements, persistent places, and cycles of social ranking has prompted historically oriented interpretations that foreground particular configurations of ideology, tradition, ritual, and agency. Contact-period studies have demonstrated that native strategies of the colonial period were rooted in precontact social landscapes. Contemporary American Indians are also reclaiming their pasts in ways that challenge archaeological practices and further broaden perspectives on the Chesapeake past.

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Archaeologists have long sought to understand the relationships between the quantity and diversity of material that accumulates at a site and the variables of community size and occupation duration. This paper examines these relationships through an analysis of mobility and settlement population in the late precontact and early colonial Chesapeake region of the eastern U.S. Drawing on previous accumulations research and two “strong” archaeological cases that provide critical values, the study develops measures of relative sedentariness and ceramic-discard behavior that can be used to model behavior at sites without stratified deposits or well-preserved architecture. Application of this model to the James River Valley of Virginia produces more reliable dates for the inception of village communities, several centuries following the adoption of maize-based horticulture in the region. The analysis also suggests that the fundamental nature of residential settlement changed dramatically in the study area after A.D. 1200 with the emergence of a settlement hierarchy including relatively large communities with lengthy occupation durations. The creation of a new cultural landscape containing substantial villages, combined with related changes in household and community organization, is central to the origins and development of the Powhatan paramountcy, one of North America's archetypal complex chiefdoms.