Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant: The Impact of the Colonial Economy on the Organization of Mandan Craft Production, A.D. 1600-1750

在道格拉斯·班福斯博士的指导下，马克·d·米切尔将使用手工艺生产组织的数据来研究17世纪和18世纪早期与欧洲毛皮贸易商的间接接触对曼丹经济实践的影响。当欧洲人在18世纪中叶第一次来到曼丹斯时，他们是一个庞大的贸易网络的主要参与者，这个网络将欧洲的贸易货物、本土工艺品和食品分销到整个北美内陆，从里约热内卢格兰德到哈德逊湾。大多数学者认为，正是欧洲商品，尤其是马匹和枪支的可用性，创造并随后扩大了这一网络。这种观点认为，毛皮贸易为曼丹人带来了前所未有的繁荣，这种繁荣一直持续到18世纪80年代早期毁灭性的天花疫情，极大地改变了北部平原的政治格局。然而，这些观点在很大程度上是基于对欧洲商人和探险家在曼丹人首次参与欧洲商品交换后150至200年所写的叙述的研究。因此，人们对这个贸易网络的起源知之甚少。该项目将利用考古数据来调查曼丹人开始参与殖民地皮毛贸易前后几个世纪的社会和经济变化，从而填补这一空白。位于心脏河和密苏里河的交汇处，在今天的北达科他州中部，曼丹村是这项研究的理想环境。在欧洲贸易商品引入之前和之后，它们被占领了长达300年，它们包含了各种形式的工艺生产的丰富证据。最近在心脏地区的四个定居点进行的最先进的挖掘工作首次为这类项目提供了必要的细粒度时间控制。这项研究将考察随着时间的推移，陶器、石器和其他工艺品的生产方式的变化，特别关注生产的规模和专业化。然后，这些分析的结果将与关于曼丹人口、定居模式和生存习惯的现有数据结合起来，形成从殖民前到殖民早期的经济和社会变化的全貌。这个项目将有助于历史学家、地理学家、经济学家、文化人类学家和其他对过去五个世纪欧洲殖民扩张的全球影响感兴趣的学者进行的研究。通过评估毛皮贸易对曼丹人的影响，它将能够对北美间接殖民接触的影响进行更广泛的区域和时间比较。在此过程中，它将加入越来越多的考古研究机构，研究欧洲殖民主义的各种政治和经济进程是如何被土著人民整合、适应和改造的。通过强调土著经济和社会制度的连续性和变化，这项研究有助于更广泛地了解殖民地相互作用的多维特征。

Under the direction of Dr. Douglas Bamforth, Mark D. Mitchell will use data on the organization of craft production to study the effects of indirect contact with European fur traders on Mandan economic practices during the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. When Europeans first visited the Mandans in middle of the eighteenth century, they were major players in a vast exchange network that distributed European trade goods, Native crafts, and food throughout interior North America, from the Rio Grande to Hudson's Bay. Most scholars have argued that it was the availability of European commodities, especially horses and guns, which created and subsequently expanded this network. In this view, the fur trade produced a period of unprecedented prosperity that, for the Mandans, lasted until the devastating smallpox epidemic of the early 1780s dramatically reconfigured the political landscape of the northern Plains. However, these ideas are based largely on the study of narratives written by European traders and explorers 150 to 200 years after the Mandans first became involved in the exchange of European goods. As a result, little is known about the origins of this trade network. This project will fill that gap by using archaeological data to investigate social and economic change during the centuries immediately before and after the Mandans first began to participate in the colonial fur trade.Located at the confluence of the Heart and Missouri rivers in present-day central North Dakota, the Mandan villages are an ideal context for this research. They were occupied for as long as 300 years, both before and after the introduction of European trade goods, and they contain abundant evidence of various forms of craft production. Recent state-of-the-art excavations conducted at four settlements in the Heart region provide, for the first time, the fine-grained temporal control necessary for a project of this type. This study will examine changes in the ways pottery, stone tools, and other crafts were produced over time, focusing especially on the scale and specialization of production. The results of these analyses will then be integrated with existing data on Mandan demography, settlement patterns, and subsistence practices to develop an overall picture of economic and social change from precolonial to early colonial times.This project will contribute to research currently being conducted by historians, geographers, economists, cultural anthropologists, and other scholars interested in the worldwide affects of European colonial expansion during the last five centuries. By assessing the impact of the fur trade on the Mandans, it will enable broader regional and temporal comparisons of the effects of indirect colonial contact across North America. In doing so, it will join a growing body of archaeological research on the ways in which the varied political and economic processes of European colonialism were integrated, accommodated, and transformed by Native peoples. By highlighting both continuity and change in indigenous economic and social systems, this study contributes to a broader understanding of the multidimensional character of colonial interaction.