Unearthing the Past: The Archaeology of Newman’s Neck and the World Eleanor Neale Knew

Written By Sammy Jo Hinnant

History isn’t always written in books. Sometimes, it’s buried in the ground.

When archaeologist Stephen R. Potter began excavating Newman’s Neck in 1978, he wasn’t searching for my 11th great-grandmother, Eleanor Neale. But what his team uncovered in the soil of Virginia’s Northern Neck brought me closer to understanding the world she lived in, one of resilience, routine, and quiet defiance.

A Colonial Landscape Revealed

The Newman’s Neck site (44NB180) sits along the southern shores of the Potomac River in Northumberland County, Virginia, nestled between Presley and Halls Creek. It occupies part of the land originally patented by Robert Newman in 1651, making it one of the earliest English settlements in the Northern Neck region.

This landscape, marshy, fertile, and rich with river access, was perfect for tobacco plantations and early colonial homesteads. Archaeological evidence tells us that by the late 1600s, this small peninsula was home to a thriving yet modest plantation economy built on the labor of both enslaved Africans and indentured English servants.

What Potter Discovered

Potter’s excavation revealed eight earthfast buildings, meaning structures built directly into the soil without stone foundations - a common method in early Virginia. These included:

  • A manor house

  • A kitchen

  • A quarter cellar building

  • Two barns

  • Two small outbuildings

The architecture suggested a working plantation rather than a grand estate. Potter and later researchers connected these remains to the Neale and Haynie families, who occupied the property between 1670 and 1740.

While the exact site of Robert Newman’s original 1650s dwelling has never been located, Newman’s Neck remains one of the most extensively excavated 17th-century plantation sites in Northumberland County, and one of only two for which archaeologists have documented a detailed domestic landscape, complete with household features, refuse pits, and yard boundaries.

These finds provided critical insight into the material life of Virginia’s “middling planters” , those who were not elite politicians or wealthy land barons, but still owned their land and maintained a small workforce of enslaved and indentured laborers.

The Survey That Started It All

Potter first identified the site during a 1978 pedestrian survey of the Potomac’s southern shoreline. At the time, he was conducting fieldwork for his dissertation on Chicacoan and colonial settlement patterns in the region. His sharp eye caught subtle clues in the soil:
fragments of ceramics, tobacco pipes, and traces of burned clay indicating posthole construction, signs that early colonial life had once thrived there.

Unfortunately, the site was already under threat. Modern residential development had begun encroaching on the land, prompting urgency to document what remained before it was lost forever.

In 1989, archaeologists with the Virginia Department of Historic Resources (VDHR) conducted additional shovel testing to verify Potter’s findings. Although the official results of that follow-up investigation have not survived in public archives, later reassessments confirm the presence of domestic features and structural remains consistent with Potter’s original reports.

Today, the excavation at Newman’s Neck is recognized as a benchmark for studying early plantation life in Virginia’s Potomac Valley -showing how colonial families adapted European building traditions to local conditions, resources, and labor systems.

Life Between Two Worlds

Potter’s analysis described the site’s occupants as “middling freeholders” a class of colonists who lived between privilege and poverty. They weren’t members of the colony’s ruling elite, like the neighboring Ball family, yet they weren’t struggling farmers either.

They were ordinary people carving out stability in an unpredictable world.
Families like the Neales worked their land, managed households, and relied on a small group of laborers. They weren’t celebrated in political records or history books, but they left their mark in clay pipes, broken glass, and hand-forged nails.

And those artifacts tell a story far beyond economics. They speak of survival, adaptability, and a quiet determination that mirrors Eleanor Neale’s own life — a woman who would later stand accused of witchcraft in the same county where these foundations once stood.

Why It Matters to Eleanor’s Story

When I read through Potter’s Archaeological Investigations at Newman’s Neck, I wasn’t expecting to find anything that directly tied to Eleanor herself. But what struck me was how much the world he unearthed mirrored hers.

The Neales lived in this same landscape - the same soil that Potter sifted through centuries later. They were people caught between order and uncertainty, between reputation and survival. And when you think of it that way, the excavation doesn’t just tell us about where Eleanor lived, it tells us why she mattered.

She was part of the invisible labor of early Virginia: women who managed homes, raised children, and endured the instability of a colony that depended on their silence yet survived because of their strength.

Want to Dig Deeper?

If you’d like to explore the archaeology of Newman’s Neck for yourself (and I encourage you to do so), here are direct links to Potter’s work and related studies:

Sources & Further Reading

  • Potter, Stephen R. (1978). Archaeological Investigations at Newman’s Neck, Virginia. Smithsonian Institution.

  • Potter, Stephen R. (1982). An Analysis of Chicacoan Settlement Patterns. University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

  • Fleet, Beverley. Virginia Colonial Abstracts, Vol. I & XXXI.

  • Library of Virginia, Northumberland County Record Books (1650–1675).

  • The Historical Archaeology of Virginia: From Initial Settlement to the Present. Virginia Department of Historic Resources (2020).

  • Noel Hume, Ivor. Here Lies Virginia: An Archaeologist’s View of Colonial Life and History.

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Sammy Jo Hinnant
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Legacy Lore: The Accused and The Land