archeological center
While much archeological work done in Virginia is on a narrow, focused
scale, the King William Reservoir Project, a large landscape, primarily
within King William County, will enable archeologists to study a
connected landscape and learn more about its historic context.
 The reservoir site has changed over thousands of years through hunting,
fishing, building, and farming. Fields were cleared for farming by Native
Americans, and later by Europeans. M uch
of the property has been logged,
sometimes several times over since the nineteenth century. Another example
of a major landscape change was a dam that once stood not far from where
the reservoir dam will be built.
From a research standpoint, this area is a dynamic, ever-changing cultural
laboratory. Thus far archeologists have identified over 150
 archeological
sites within the proposed flood pool for the reservoir. Roughly two-thirds
of those sites are directly related to Native American history - the rest
correspond with Euro-American settlement.
The Native American sites span
as far back as 10,000 years ago. European-American history stretches back
to the middle of the 17th century, roughly a generation after the first
colonists arrived at Jamestown in 1607. The Cohoke Creek drainage is like
an immense puzzle, and each archeology site is a small piece that fits
into the cultural mosaic of its history.
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