An established Native American settlement as early as 1200 CE, Werowocomoco--located in Gloucester County, Virginia, along the York River--was a secular and sacred seat of power of present-day Virginia's Algonquian people, whom the English would call the ""Powhatan."" It was to Werowocomoco that Jamestown councilor Captain John Smith was brought in December 1607 as a prisoner before paramount chief Powhatan, the leader of more than thirty tribes inhabiting the coastal and Tidewater regions of Virginia. At Werowocomoco, according to Smith, he also met Powhatan's young daughter Pocahontas. To distance themselves from the English, Powhatan's people moved on shortly thereafter, and for four hundred years Werowocomoco largely disappeared from history--until 2003, when archaeologists announced the rediscovery of the site. Today, only about 1 percent of the 50-acre site has been investigated; based on archaeological research conducted so far, however, it appears to be an unprecedented archaeological find for the eastern coastal region of the nation, and its significance to Virginia Indians today and our shared history is without parallel.

Generously illustrated and informed by scholarship, including two archaeological reports produced by the Werowocomoco Research Group based at the College of William and Mary, this latest addition to the National Park Service Handbook series is an engaging and concise history of the site, its rediscovery, and what recent archaeology tells us about Werowocomoco.