Accokeek Creek Site
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Accokeek Creek Site
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Location of the burial site of Turkey Tayac, in the Accokeek Creek Site
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| Nearest city | Accokeek, Maryland |
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| Coordinates | 38°41′45.7″N 77°03′06.6″W / 38.696028°N 77.051833°WCoordinates: 38°41′45.7″N 77°03′06.6″W / 38.696028°N 77.051833°W |
| NRHP Reference # | 66000909 |
| Significant dates | |
| Added to NRHP | October 15, 1966 |
| Designated NHL | July 19, 1964 |
Accokeek Creek Site, also known as Moyaone, is an archaeological site in Prince George's County, Maryland, located along the Potomac River across from Mount Vernon in today's Piscataway Park, which was inhabited intermittently since 2000 BC. Accokeek Creek Site was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1964.
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.
Moyaone ceramics are a Late Woodland ware and date from ca. AD 1300-AD 1650. They are found throughout the Western Shore Coastal Plain of Maryland. The ceramics are characterized by fine grained sand and mica temper, soft texture, compact paste, and smoothed interior and exterior surfaces. The paste is made of a fine-grained clay and has a texture that is soft, smooth, and compact. The temper is made from a fine-grained sand that has mica in it, which gives off a slight glitter appearance.
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