Indiana Jones: Myth, Reality And 21st Century Archaeology

Located between southeastern Virginia and northeastern North Carolina there is a swamp, The Great Dismal Swamp. This swath of land has a provocative social and economic history and Dr. Dan Sayers has spearheaded the ongoing research that takes place there. Dr. Sayers has conducted landscape studies exploring the history of communities that existed in the swamp interior. These people, also known as maroons, formed resistant and generally self-reliant communities in the swamp interior (primarily Indigenous Americans and African-Americans who permanently removed themselves from conditions of enslavement). A surfeit of information is buried in the Swamp’s interior. Today we invite this Swamp veteran to discuss what the landscape surveys have revealed about these maroon societies and the impacts of historical processes of colonialism, race-based enslavement , and profitable development of natural resources of the swamp.