My Interests
Here I list some of the principal areas of my current research interests.
For a broad view of my interests and past work, please see the detailed chronological listing of my publications and presentations here.
- Eastern Mississippian Period American Indian cultures (via studies of engraved marine shell gorgets and platform steatite pipes). Especially the Yuchi American Indian culture
- Spanish period Virginia history and the 1567 Hernando Moyano incursion into Holstonia, which came 40 years before the English settling of Jamestown
- Scotch-Irish pioneers in Virginia and particularly the roles played by James Patton and William Preston in the surveying and settling of Southwest Virginia in the decades after 1740
- The role of Southwest Virginia as the thoroughfare for the development of the Middle and Deep South during the eighteenth and early nineteenth century
- The roles of Western Virginians in the Revolutionary War, particularly in the Virginia riflemen and their officers who served in Lord Dunmore’s War and made the Fort Gower Resolves in the future state of Ohio on November 5, 1774
- The chemical industry of western Virginia, particularly the Soda Ash and Chlor-alkali plants that formerly operated at Saltville
- The early history of the Catholic Church in western Virginia
- James Branch Cabell and Virginia historiography
- Digital history