Accokeek Creek Site - Description

Description

The National Park Service describes the site as "remarkable for its variety and concentration of human occupation sites. Accokeek included a palisaded village that was occupied from ca. A.D. 1300 to ca. 1630. The site has been used by archeologists to define a culture-history sequence in prehistoric archaeology for the Mid-Atlantic region."

Moyaone, also named the Accokeek Creek site, is the sister site of Potomac Creek, 44ST2 and it is thought that they were settled around the same time. The site dates from the Late Archaic Period, ca. 3,000 BC, to the historic period. During the Middle Woodland Period, ca. AD 800, small horticultural villages were established. The village that appeared during the late-16th/early-17th centuries is where the reference to Moyaone is from. This village had many palisade lines and faced the Potomac. The formations of this site and Potomac Creek are similar in that the outermost system of the village is the only one to include an interior ditch or borrow pits. There are no bastions found at the Moyaone village. A maximum population for Moyaone is calculated to be 300-320 with the size of the village being 6,100 m². Archaeology has indicated numerous building periods which leads to believing these people had a long occupation at the site. Four ossuaries were found near the village and hold the remains of over 1,000 people. The village was abandoned before Contact. At the north end of the area near the Piscataway Creek there was a rectangular fort that was occupied by the Susquehannocks in 1674-75.

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