WILLIAMSBURG — Approximately 225 artifacts from The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation’s renowned archaeology collection will soon go on view in a new exhibition to be seen at the Art Museums of Colonial Williamsburg.
“When Worlds Collide: Archaeology and Global Trade in Williamsburg” opens on Sept. 7 in the DeWitt Wallace Decorative Arts Museum’s Margaret Moore Hall gallery.
The exhibition will remain on view through Jan. 2, 2027.
Through a wide range of 18th-century objects representing the themes of material goods, food, ideas, landscapes and people, almost all of which were excavated in Williamsburg, visitors will learn what a global urban center the colonial city truly was, The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation (CWF) said.
“Written documents, works of art, and other sources of information about the past invariably carry the biases of their creators,” said Ron Hurst, the foundation’s chief mission officer, “but archaeological deposits offer a largely unbiased view of past civilizations. This exhibition illustrates clearly that worldwide commerce is nothing new and touched most parts of the north Atlantic world in the eighteenth century, even in a place as small as Williamsburg, Virginia.”
Cities such as Williamsburg were hubs where the numerous customs, styles and tastes of its inhabitants clashed, melded, and evolved through daily interactions, according to The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation.
The foundation notes that eighteenth-century Williamsburg was home to people representing a broad mix of economic status, genders and ages. In addition to Indigenous people and those of European descent, more than half of the town’s population was African or African American, the majority of which was enslaved.
The objects seen in Worlds Collide reflect just as much the daily lives of these men, women and children as they do the individuals who enslaved them, CWF explains. To illuminate the diversity of these facets of everyday life, the exhibition is organized around five main themes: material goods, food, ideas, landscapes and people.
When visitors walk through the galleries, they may be surprised to recognize themselves in aspects of the colonial capitol, it said.
“Archaeology provides a tangible connection to the past through the materials we find,” said Jack Gary, Colonial Williamsburg’s executive director of archaeology. “These aren’t abstract ideas but materials that we can all look at together and that can spark discussions about our shared past. Guests will likely see themselves and the modern world in many of these themes.”
Among the highlighted objects in Worlds Collide are cowrie shells recovered from Wetherburn’s Tavern.
Cowries are the small shells of marine gastropods that make their homes in shallow reef lagoons within the Indian and Pacific Oceans. Harvested in these regions, the shells of these creatures were used as currency throughout the Indo-Pacific and portions of sub Saharan Africa for centuries, traveling from as far east as the Maldives to the Bight of Benin in western Africa.
The value of these shells as money, however, led to their exploitation in the transatlantic slave trade, CWF explains.
Purchased and processed in the Pacific, these shells were imported to West Africa by European traders extensively as goods of exchange to fund the forced migration of millions of Africans to the Americas.
While these objects played a role in this story of human bondage and suffering, they may also speak to the power of memory and the resilient identity of those who were enslaved, according to CWF. Often recovered from archaeological sites once occupied by enslaved men, women and children, these shells were also used as items of adornment or keepsakes.
This kind of usage may speak to individuals’ attempts to draw on transatlantic memories and traditions to reclaim their identity in the face of the dehumanizing system of enslavement in the 18th century in places such as Williamsburg, it added.
“Whether in the eighteenth century or today, the objects we use in our daily lives make statements about who we are, what we value, and the connections between ourselves and others in the world. It is exciting to bring so many artifacts that represent a truly diverse set of eighteenth-century Williamsburg’s population into the public eye,” said Sean Devlin, senior curator of archaeological collections at Colonial Williamsburg.
Excavation at Wetherburn’s Tavern also produced a glass decanter for Madeira wine. In the 18th century, Virginians preferred to drink European wines at home and in taverns, and wines from Spain and Portugal were more prevalent than those from France, the foundation explains.
Among the favorites of Colonials was Madeira, a sweet, fortified wine produced on the Atlantic Island of the same name that was controlled by Portugal.
Most of these wines were shipped in barrels or storage jars, and often needed to be decanted into individual bottles or vessels for serving.
In this instance, not only did the contents of the decanter cross the world’s oceans but so did the vessel. Made of leaded glass, the decanter almost certainly was imported to Williamsburg upon a merchant ship from Britain and was of a very fashionable type in the mid-1700s, according to the foundation.
The body is engraved with a chain on which hangs a label bearing the engraved word “MADEIRA” and surrounded by appropriate decoration, such as grapes, grape leaves, tendrils and possibly grape flowers, it added.
These objects are but a sampling of those that will be on display in Worlds Collide. The exhibition is funded by Jacomien Mars.
Additional information about the Art Museums and Colonial Williamsburg as well as tickets are available online by calling 855-296-6627.
