The University of Virginia is located in the heart of ancestral Monacan Indian territory.  The Monacan Indian Nation, one of eleven federally and/or state recognized tribes in Virginia, is based in Amherst County today, just sixty miles south of Charlottesville. In this talk Prof. Hantman will first briefly review the archaeological and historical data that describes ancestral Monacan territory, Monacan social and ritual organization, and relations with other Virginia Indian people and European colonists from A.D. 1000 to the mid-18^th century. He will then address postcolonial strategies of survivance, a term that links the Monacan past with the present and helps us grasp alternative choices of maintaining persistent ancient places in Virginia and short and long-distance migrations within Virginia and beyond.

Jeffrey L. Hantman

Professor Emeritus 

Department of Anthropology and Interdisciplinary Archaeology Program

University of Virginia