Savannah Valley Frontier Project

在国家科学基金会的支持下，查尔斯·科布博士将对美国南卡罗来纳州和格鲁吉亚州萨凡纳河沿着的殖民时代美洲原住民城镇进行考古研究。他的团队将专注于土著移民到萨凡纳排水（这成为卡罗莱纳殖民地南部边境的一部分，在17世纪后期）和由此产生的材料杂交模式，因为土著群体开始纳入和修改欧洲的做法和物质文化。1670年查尔斯顿的建立引发了美洲原住民大规模的人口流动，因为一些群体试图通过与英国人建立利润丰厚的贸易伙伴关系来利用自己的身体。这一运动导致了沿着萨凡纳河在查尔斯顿以南建立了一系列定居点，在那里，大量的鹿皮被用来与英国商人交换各种各样的欧洲商品。移民的一个重要方面是所涉及的美洲原住民家园的多样性。沿着萨凡纳河的城镇是由来自密西西比的契卡索人、来自亚拉巴马和格鲁吉亚的克里克人以及来自田纳西州的尉迟人建立的，这里仅举几例。此外，英国的贸易前哨也随着这些城镇的发展而发展。结果，萨凡纳河地区演变成了一个以种族多样性为特征的边疆地区，在许多方面，它是我们今天与美国联系在一起的熔炉隐喻的舞台。这项研究将涉及两个季节的考古实地考察，在一个由从格鲁吉亚南部迁移来的阿巴拉契科拉美洲土著人居住的城镇进行;实地调查，以确定萨凡纳河沿着的其他城镇;并重新分析两个城镇早期挖掘的藏品。民族历史研究将补充考古调查，因为科布和他的合作者将使用殖民文献和地图来确定城镇位置，并重建欧洲人对这些城镇中美洲原住民生活方式的描述。研究问题的目的是评估（1）生态和生计的调整涉及从一个位置到另一个迁移到卡罗莱纳边境的群体，以及（2）美洲原住民如何选择性地将欧洲的物质文化和实践的元素融入他们的文化。该项目的学术价值是基于它对移民到边疆如何导致物质文化杂交模式的形成的研究，因为群体学会了适应与自己截然不同的世界观。北美边疆的传统观点将其解释为一波前进，土著移民包括从欧洲殖民定居点撤退。萨凡纳山谷边境项目促进了对这些过程的更细致的看法，这符合当前的人类学理论，即土著群体通过移民和由他们自己的意志强烈塑造的活动促进了边境地区的形成，这项研究的更广泛影响建立在南卡罗来纳州大学进行的殖民主义考古学的相当长的历史基础上。这项研究将积极整合本科生的参与和推广到美洲原住民社区通过考古实地学校通过南加州大学兰开斯特美洲原住民研究计划。研究生将直接参与研究生研究助理，他们和其他研究生和本科生将被鼓励采用论文和论文研究项目的各个方面。

With National Science Foundation support, Dr. Charles Cobb will conduct archaeological research on colonial-era Native American towns along the Savannah River in South Carolina and Georgia, USA. His team will focus on indigenous migration to the Savannah drainage (which became part of the southern frontier of the Carolina colony in the late 1600s) and resulting patterns of material hybridity as Native groups began to incorporate and modify European practices and material culture. The establishment of Charleston in AD 1670 spawned a massive wave of Native American population movement, as groups attempted to physically situate themselves to take advantage of highly lucrative trade partnerships with the English. This movement led to a string of settlements along the Savannah River south of Charleston, where large numbers of deerskins were bartered to English traders in exchange for a wide range of European goods. An important dimension of the migration was the variety of Native American homelands involved. Towns along the Savannah River were founded by the Chickasaw from Mississippi, Creek groups from Alabama and Georgia, and the Yuchi from Tennessee, to name just a few. In addition, English trading outposts grew alongside these towns. As a result, the Savannah River region evolved into a frontier characterized by considerable ethnic diversity, and in many respects was a staging ground for the melting-pot metaphor we associate with the United States today. The research will involve two seasons of archaeological fieldwork at a town occupied by Apalachicola Native Americans who migrated from southern Georgia; field survey to identify additional towns along the Savannah River; and re-analyses of collections made from earlier excavations at two towns. Ethnohistorical research will complement the archaeological investigations as Cobb and his collaborators will use colonial documents and maps to identify town locations and reconstruct European descriptions of Native American lifeways in those towns. The research questions are directed at evaluating (1) the ecological and subsistence adjustments involved in the uprooting from one location to another as groups migrated to the Carolina frontier, and (2) how Native Americans selectively incorporated elements of European material culture and practices into their cultures. The project's intellectual merit is based on its examination of how migration into frontiers led to the formation of hybridized patterns of material culture as groups learned to accommodate to very distinct worldviews from their own. Traditional views of the North American frontier have construed it as a wave of advance, where indigenous migration consisted of a retreat from European colonial settlements. The Savannah Valley Frontier Project promotes a more nuanced view of these processes that is in line with current anthropological theory, where indigenous groups contributed to the formation of borderlands through migrations and activities strongly shaped by their own volition.The broader impacts of the study build on the considerable history of the archaeology of colonialism that has been conducted at the University of South Carolina. The research will actively integrate undergraduate participation and outreach to Native American communities through an archaeological field school operated through the USC Lancaster Native American Studies Program. Graduate students will be directly involved as graduate research assistants, and they and other graduate and undergraduate students will be encouraged to adopt aspects of the project for thesis and dissertation research.