Creating a Third Space: Reimagining Early Jamestown and the Transmission of Colonial Knowledge

Despite the extensive literature on the history of Indian-English interaction in early colonial Virginia, historians have largely confined their interpretations to the uni-direction transmission of knowledge. Early Jamestown narratives of exchange, violence, and control have dominated centuries of interpretation, leaving little room for indigenous muli-vocality and agency. These narratives mirror the larger debates of English global colonialism and the controversy surrounding the binary of colonizer-colonized. The archaeology of James Fort (ca. 1607 -1610) has uncovered numerous lines of material evidence antithetical to this perspective. Thousands of Virginia Indian artifacts have been recovered in the English wells, pits, and cellars, detailing a story of close interaction and exchange at a level that transcends notions of simple dominance and control. Hybrid objects produced within James Fort's walls – both Virginia Indian and English – define a third space where bi-direction transmission of knowledge and technology is "encoded" in material culture. The core of this paper is aimed at demonstrating the transmission of colonial information and knowledge involving a complex network of trans-Atlantic entanglement. This paper seeks to shift the balance in favor of the indigenous perspective through nuanced interpretations of the material culture, therebyrepositioning the narrative as a comment to the lasting legacy of English colonial rule.