From the Archives - History in a New Light
Channel: Plimoth Patuxet Museums
Date: 2022-03-22

Please enjoy this archival video. Join Dr. Jade Luiz, Curator of Collections for Plimoth Plantation (Plimoth Patuxet Museums), for a virtual tour of the Museum's newest exhibition, a forward-looking invitation to consider how the past serves as a foundation for the future.

History In A New Light: Illuminating the Archaeology of Historic Patuxet and Plymouth demonstrates how the modern town of Plymouth, Massachusetts has been shaped by the ways humans have lived along these shores for thousands of years, and how this land continues to reveal stories of a transcultural Indigenous-Colonial regional society. By using multiple lines of evidence, including archaeology, documentary research, oral history, and fine and decorative arts, the exhibition shows how each thread contributes something unique to Plimoth Plantation’s (Plimoth Patuxet Museums') understanding, re-creation, and interpretation of the past. 

This is the first major exhibit displaying artifacts from the Wampanoag village of Patuxet and the site of the original 1620 European settlement, which were discovered in 2016 by Project 400 archaeologists, an ongoing archaeological research initiative conducted in partnership with the Andrew Fiske Center for Archaeological Research at the University of Massachusetts - Boston, the Town of Plymouth, and Plimoth Plantation (Plimoth Patuxet Museums). In addition to finding the first evidence of these overlapping settlements, this research has forced scholars to reevaluate their understanding of daily life in early Plymouth and the nature of colonial and indigenous interactions.

Plimoth Plantation (Plimoth Patuxet Museums) is grateful to Mass Humanities, the Colonial Dames of America, Catherine and Robert Brawer, and Carlo and Kathryn Lamagna for their generous support of this exhibit, as well as to our partners at Project 400. 

Plimoth Plantation (Plimoth Patuxet Museums) maintains one of the most significant repositories of New England 17th-Century Archaeology in its collection. For more information about Plimoth's research archives, collections, and related initiatives, please visit plimoth.org/collections.