Hello, all. Please find below the full text of the paper I recently presented at the Society for Historical Archaeology Conference in Baltimore, MD. I would love to hear comments, questions, and feedback, especially as this paper discusses initial results of my thesis research, which is still ongoing. In fact, I just added a new data set to my analysis, with some very interesting results! I will try to get pictures into this blog soon, and I will do my best to blog about my thesis research in the future.
These Pots Do Talk:
Seventeenth-Century Native American Women’s Influence
on
Creolization in the Chesapeake Region
Introduction
The archaeological record can often give insights into the past that are not realized in documentary evidence alone. This research proposes the cultural exchange between the Tidewater Indians and European colonists was mutual and critically important in the early colonies, but this exchange is masked or minimized in the historical record. Through a systematic analysis of Tidewater Native American pottery, my research examines how gender constructs and cultural practices of native women may have affected creolization in the early Chesapeake. I have undertaken a detailed examination of historic-period native-produced ceramics to gauge what changes, if any, occurred in the traditional practices of indigenous women potters in Maryland. Native-made ceramic objects contain a “private” unseen space of paste and temper and more “public” exterior of surface treatment and decoration. A subtypological analysis, aimed at identifying subtle changes in pottery creation and treatments, can identify tensions between the private interior attributes and more aesthetic public attributes. My preliminary research shows the exterior or “public” attributes might tend to echo European styles, while interior or “private” attributes maintain cultural traditions throughout the seventeenth century. (SLIDE 2 – John Smith map).
James Deetz offered one of the first explicit definitions of creolization, which he stated as “the interaction between two or more cultures to produce an integrated mix which is different from its antecedents.” Additionally, transculturation—a “concept of dynamic interaction, alteration, and reformulation”—has been suggested by Deagan to describe mutual cultural exchange. A great deal of recent scholarship has examined these processes of creolization and transculturation along the eastern coast of the United States, although much of the research has focused on exchanges between African and European cultures, leaving the contributions of the indigenous population largely absent from discussion of the resulting creolized society. Similarly, a focus on the archaeology of gender is lacking in most Chesapean scholars’ work detailing transculturation and creolization in the region. In my research, I have undertaken a detailed study of historic-period indigenous ceramic vessels, using subtypological attribute analysis to track changes in temper, surface treatment, and form throughout the 17th Century. I have observed a disconnect between the “public” and “private” attributes of native ceramics that may speak to the social negotiations women were enacting in their daily routines (SLIDE 3 – “Their sitting at meate”).
Gendering
Gender is a social construct negotiated and performed through routine practice. Like other aspects of performed identity, it is fluid and interactive within changing social contexts. Gender can be inferred archaeologically through artifacts associated with traditionally female or male activities, and ethnohistoric evidence shows that in the seventeenth-century Chesapeake, indigenous women were producing pottery, mats, and other items for trade with European settlers. Within this theoretical framework, a majority of the trade items used by European colonists in the early Tidewater can be identified as female-engendered (SLIDE 4 – Yeocomico pot).
If, as in language, cultural traditions follow structures and imbue material culture with implicit meaning, then the attributes of pottery can be “read” and analyzed for the negotiated meanings within. The form, temper, and surface treatment of a pottery vessel were dictated by tradition assumed by present-day researchers to be uniform within tribes; however, subtypological study reveals a large degree of variation below the level of type classifications. Ceramics can be viewed as bundles of social relationships, and any change in the creation of ceramics implies a change in social relationships.
This change potentially represents women’s agency in the creation of the vessels. (SLIDE 5 – Stig Sorensen quote). As Stig Sorensen has noted, material culture plays an interactive role in gender discourse, carrying various meanings within its social context for both the producers and the users of the artifacts. Women as the main producers of Indian pottery, crops, prepared foods, and other highly-valued trade goods likely were brokers of transculturation in their interactions with European settlers. Consumer preferences for native-produced goods on the part of European settlers could have shaped the changes in ceramic attributes that occurred throughout the seventeenth century, as Europeans increasingly settled along the shores of the Chesapeake Bay and traded with local Indians. A comparison between indigenous and European sites should reveal observably different attributes.
Chesapeake Aboriginal Pottery
Documentary and archaeological evidence indicates Indian-produced ceramics were a primary trade item to colonists, often as containers for maize and other provisions. Seventeenth-century public records in Maryland list several trade items identified with the qualifier “Indian,” including bowls, mats, baskets, beads, canoes, pipes, pans, trays, and trenchers. The presence of Indian-made wares on European sites, documented in the public record beginning in 1641, is evidence of interaction between indigenous women producers and European consumers of native ceramics, goods, and foodstuffs. These native-produced vessels became part of the settlers’ quotidian routines as evidenced by the frequency of the terms “Indian bowls” and “Indian pans” in both Maryland’s and Virginia’s colonial-era public records (SLIDE 6 – map of sites/ sites &dates ).
I’ve collected attribute data from 430 sherds from seven sites. The Cumberland site, which is dated to AD1575 +¬130 years, might pre-date John Smith’s arrival in the Patuxent River, or it may have been the site of the native town of Opament on his 1612 map. The Posey site is another indigenous site that was reserved for native groups during the last half of the 17th Century, as was Zekiah Fort. Old Chapel Field was a very early mission settlement established by Jesuit priests. Interesting variations in the data collected from the Old Chapel Field assemblage could be attributed to the all-male settlement; these variations will be investigated in more detail at a later date. Compton, Patuxent Point, and Mattapany were European settlements. Compton and Patuxent Point were occupied by families of somewhat modest means, while Mattapany was the home of Governor Charles Calvert for nearly two decades.
Information was collected predominantly from body sherds, and all sherds were selected from feature contexts with the notable exception of those from Zekiah Fort. The Zekiah Fort assemblage derives from plowzone contexts. Extensive testing has not yet occurred at the site, thus assessments of features is premature; however, the site was only occupied between 1680-1692.
Typological analysis revealed that most of the 430 sherds analyzed remained unidentified at the type level by previous researchers. On average, between 80-90% of sampled sherd assemblages from individual sites remained unidentified; the notable exceptions being the Compton site, where almost 90% of sherds sampled for this research were identified as Potomac Creek ware, and Zekiah Fort, where five different ware types—including Yeocomico, Potomac Creek, Camden, Moyaone, and possible Colonoware sherds—were identified. Typological analysis alone paints a single picture, but attribute analysis below the type-level allows the researcher to see finer grained associations of contrasts over very short spans of time. (SLIDE 7 – sherd photos).
Subtypological Analysis
Attribute analysis identifies characteristics that cross-cut types, and these widely-shared characteristics can show interactions not identifiable with typological analyses, such as temporal change or shared stylistic preferences. Subtle trends can be detected through nonparametric multivariate statistical analyses of the interactions of variables to identify variation patterns (or covariation patterns) in attributes. Attributes analyzed in my research include context, exterior surface treatment, interior surface treatment, temper, inclusions, paste texture including temper size and distribution, paste color, maximum thickness of the sherd, smudging, and sooting. Despite the relatively low number of sites and sherd sample size, a high degree of variability was apparent, with little obvious correlation or dissimilarity apparent among any of the various attributes. To better detect patterns in this complex dataset, I used the nonparametric analysis of Correspondence Analysis.
Correspondence analysis is an ordination technique used to restructure multivariate data by creating a two-dimensional graph plotting the relationships between individual data points. (SLIDE 8 - PAST graph) The graph shows paste color is an outlier, likely because of its high variability due to temperature fluctuations during firing. Exterior surface treatment, inclusions, smudging, and sooting were also outliers in this data set. For this presentation, I will concentrate on a few attributes included in the tight central cluster: interior surface treatment, temper, paste texture, and maximum thickness. Drawing convex hulls around the data sets shows that some chronological trend existed, but colonial sites were not distinct from indigenous ones.
(SLIDE 9 – [ext surf treatment by site]).
An analysis of exterior surface treatments across sites shows a high degree of variability. 21 different exterior surface treatments are represented across the seven sites; however, the smoothed surface treatment is the only category to be represented on every site. Interestingly, the percentage of sherds with smoothed exteriors more than doubles over time, from an average of approximately 30% on earlier sites to over 70% on the Mattapany and Zekiah Fort sites. The Indian town site of Cumberland has 11 surface treatments represented in a pre-contact environment, while the number of treatment variations drops to 9 at the Posey reservation site. Zekiah Fort, another reservation site established more than 20 years later, shows only 6 surface treatment variations, with smoothed exteriors representing over 80% of the sample. (SLIDE 10 – temper).
However, a detailed examination of “private” attributes including temper, paste texture, and inclusions shows increased variability during the course of the 17th-century. A grit- or a shell/grit-mixture appears to predominate temper on a few sites, although several tempering agents are used through the end of the seventeenth century. The variation in types of inclusions jumps from a maximum of four at earlier sites to seven different types at Zekiah Fort. This is perhaps indicative of the need to go further afield or trade for source material. These “private” attributes, hidden from the public eye, support the hypothesis that sub-surface attributes maintained inherent cultural qualities through the choices and creative practices of female potters.
In other words, even as indigenous women changed exterior or “public” attributes of their ceramics to more closely align with European ceramics, they privately maintained cultural practices including the selection and mixing of tempers. This implies the value the women potters placed on social relationships and the maintenance of cultural tradition in the face of European encroachment. Whether or not aesthetic changes were made to influence Anglo settlers’ choices in purchasing pottery or foodstuffs, the women’s adherence to cultural practices surely influenced interactions with the nearby settlers (SLIDE 11 – pot and sketch).
Discussion
It would appear that indigenous women, during a time of intense contact and interaction with European immigrants to Maryland, maintained key practices of cultural traditions throughout most of the 17th century. This resilience in traditional practices is evidenced by the high degree in variation of surface treatments which would have been passed from matrilineal kin to young potters. However, the frequency of smoothed exterior surfaces almost doubles by the end of the 17th century, which may indicate changing preferences among younger generations of potters who matured into a creolized society that included many European trade goods. Preliminary data from the Zekiah Fort excavations indicates that European ceramics made up approximately 20-30% of the ceramic assemblage, a strong contrast to the Posey site where European ceramics comprised approximately 3% of the ceramic assemblage.
It is also possible that changes in ceramic production techniques reflect the mixed heritage of the women creating the pottery. Documentary evidence suggests that European colonists at Jamestown began intermarrying with indigenous women before the highly-publicized union of Pocahontas with John Rolfe. Archaeological evidence indicates that Tidewater Indian women were likely living at Jamestown within the first five years of settlement, and public records in Maryland and Virginia show that Indian-European sexual relations and marriages were common throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. These inter-cultural liaisons produced children that likely combined aspects of both parents’ heritages in their routine practice. As Tidewater Indian societies were matrilineal, native women who married European settlers—whether they remained on indigenous sites or relocated to colonial sites—would have passed on their cultural traditions, including ceramic production techniques, to their daughters. These daughters likely incorporated both indigenous and European traditions in the material culture they produced, melding cultural practices in the creation of a new American society. (SLIDE 12 –future research).
My analysis is still in preliminary stages, but results so far would indicate multiple lines of investigation, including consideration of the role of gender in contact-period interactions, play a valuable role in interpreting the material culture of indigenous-Anglo relations in the Chesapeake region. Additionally, subtypological analysis has proven an important tool in the identification of tensions between “public” or overt attribute choices and more covert, “private” choices that would not have been evident at the ware-type level. I suggest future research employing both methodologies, coupled with a more extensive regional survey of historic-period native ceramics, to more fully understand the role indigenous women played in the formation of a creolized early-American society in the Chesapeake region.
(SLIDE 13 – acknowledgements).
