Is a Picture Worth 1000 Artifacts?: The Utility of White’s Imagery

Emeritus professors, Charles Ewen and Tom Shields will be giving a talk about English colonial governor, explorer, artist, and cartographer, John White. White’s sixteenth-century watercolors of coastal North Carolina are well known to scholars and the public alike. They have often been regarded as accurate depictions of Native life at the time of European contact. But how accurate are they? Can we reliably use these images to learn about Algonkian peoples—their possessions, activities, and behaviors? And does the archaeological research conducted by East Carolina University along the coast corroborate what John White depicted? This talk is in conjuction with the "The Art of John White, A Record of North Carolina Algonquins" exhibit on view in the Janice Hardison Faulkner Gallery from October 12th through December 11th.