When Clans Collide: The Germination of Adams Family Tree through Surname, Life Experience, and DNA tells the story of author Wayne Rudolph Davidsons surname and its ancestral connection to individuals and events that have shaped the world in which we live. When Davidson set out to discover the ancestral history of his surname, he had no idea what he would encounter. On his journey, he discovered that people with the surname of Davidson have contributed to government and politics, business and economics, social sciences, religion, education, science and technology, music and entertainment, sports and recreation, and military history. The research included here illustrates events ranging from the evolution of the English Crown and the building of North America to the American Revolution and the American Civil War. He also discovered quite a few events linked to African American history, including the period of Reconstruction, Buffalo Soldiers and the Great Plains, and the Great Migration. Davidsons have also contributed to the popularity of sports and entertainment, the growth of the office of the president of the United States, both World Wars, and the sacrifice of heroes. Interesting and informative, When Clans Collide explores the history of one surname and provides a foundation and plan for making the connection to your own ancestral heritage through your surname.

Tobacco, Pipes, and Race in Colonial Virginia investigates the economic and social power that surrounded the production and use of tobacco pipes in colonial Virginia and the difficulty of correlating objects with cultural identities. A common artifact in colonial period sites, previous publications on this subject have focused on the decorations on the pipes or which ethnic group produced and used the pipes, “European,” “African,” or “Indian.” This book weaves together new interpretations, analytical techniques, classification schemes, historical background, and archaeological methods and theory. Special attention is paid to the subfield of African diaspora research to display the complexities of understanding this class of material culture. This fascinating study is accessible to the undergraduate reader, as well as to graduate students and scholars.

In the late sixteenth century, the English started expanding westward, establishing control over parts of neighboring Ireland as well as exploring and later colonizing distant North America. Audrey Horning deftly examines the relationship between British colonization efforts in both locales, depicting their close interconnection as fields for colonial experimentation. Focusing on the Ulster Plantation in the north of Ireland and the Jamestown settlement in the Chesapeake, she challenges the notion that Ireland merely served as a testing ground for British expansion into North America. Horning instead analyzes the people, financial networks, and information that circulated through and connected English plantations on either side of the Atlantic. In addition, Horning explores English colonialism from the perspective of the Gaelic Irish and Algonquian societies and traces the political and material impact of contact. The focus on the material culture of both locales yields a textured specificity to the complex relationships between natives and newcomers while exposing the lack of a determining vision or organization in early English colonial projects.

Jennifer Potter explores the lives of the fifty-six women who volunteered to leave their lives in England and travel to the Jamestown colony in 1621.

This is the 2nd volume of the ten-volume Jamestown Archaeological Assessment (JAA) representing the culmination of six decades of archaeology conducted by the National Park Service on one of the most significant sites in North America.