Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant: Hybrid Objects and Intercultural Assemblages in Colonial Louisiana

博士论文改进补助金：路易斯安那殖民地的混合物体和跨文化组合

• 批准号: 1309751
• 负责人: Shannon Dawdy
• 金额: $ 2.2万
• 依托单位: University of Chicago
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2013
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2013-04-01 至 2015-03-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1309751&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Improvement; Grant; Hybrid

Under the guidance of Dr. Shannon Lee Dawdy, Ms. Lauren Zych will analyze handmade ceramics collected from colonial sites in Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana. During the eighteenth century these sites were part of the Louisiana colony, which encompassed the Mississippi river and its tributaries from Canada south to the Gulf of Mexico. Claimed for the French crown in 1682, the colony was eventually divided between England and Spain, and subsequently acquired by the United States in the Louisiana Purchase of 1803. The ceramics under investigation are important because, unlike the majority of ceramics from colonial sites, they are coarse and handmade rather than mass-produced. They are also associated with two groups of people - Native Americans and enslaved Africans - whose experiences and perspectives are severely underrepresented, if not completely absent, from historic accounts of the colonial era. Because these ceramics were recovered from colonial contexts, rather than Indian villages or slave cabins, they reveal complex and multi-faceted relationships between Native Americans, Africans, and European colonists that deserve further investigation. Ms. Zych's research will combine archaeological evidence with data from historic and ethnohistoric records in order to explore the nature and extent of intercultural relations during the colonial period. The European colonization of the Americas had dramatic, and often unforeseen, consequences for indigenous tribes, as well as for thousands of African people forcibly enslaved and transported across the Atlantic. The broad strokes of their stories may be familiar - physical and cultural dislocation, enslavement, extreme poverty, starvation, and death - but scholars agree that this singular vision, glosses over considerable variation in the African and Indian experience of colonization. This project will use material culture, primarily in the form of handmade ceramics, to shed new light on group interaction in colonial Louisiana during the eighteenth century. Using a combination of traditional and experimental archaeological techniques, this project will analyze the production, consumption, meaning and use of handmade ceramics in colonial contexts. Descriptive, typological, and comparative analysis will reveal the social, material and political contexts most often associated with handmade ceramics. Advanced forms of chemical analysis, including neutron activation analysis (NAA) and laser ablated-inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS), will be used to identify the geographic origins of non-local vessels. Combined with insights gleaned from critical use of historic documents, these analyses will reveal the complex nature of the relations between colonists, Native Americans, and African people in a century characterized by radical transformations in both lifeways and political regimes. This research is broadly conceived and designed to hold significance for multiple audiences. It will highlight the social, cultural and historical contributions of peoples whose role in the formation of America is poorly understood and frequently undervalued. To insure that this research makes an impact outside the discipline, the results will be presented to both academic and general audiences through a combination of public lectures, professional presentations, and peer-reviewed publications. The completed dissertation will be available through a subscription-based database, while raw data generated through this research will be available online in an open forum expressly designed for data-sharing.

在Shannon Lee Dawdy博士的指导下，Lauren Zych女士将分析从亚拉巴马、密西西比和路易斯安那殖民地收集的手工陶瓷。在18世纪，这些遗址是路易斯安那殖民地的一部分，该殖民地包括密西西比河及其从加拿大向南到墨西哥湾的支流。1682年，法国宣称拥有这片殖民地，但最终被英国和西班牙瓜分，随后在1803年的路易斯安那购买案中被美国收购。研究中的陶瓷很重要，因为与殖民地遗址的大多数陶瓷不同，它们是粗糙的手工制作的，而不是大规模生产的。他们还与两个群体-美洲原住民和被奴役的非洲人-有关殖民时代的历史记载中，他们的经历和观点即使不是完全没有，也是严重不足。由于这些陶瓷是从殖民地环境中恢复的，而不是印第安村庄或奴隶小屋，它们揭示了美洲原住民，非洲人和欧洲殖民者之间复杂而多方面的关系，值得进一步研究。Zych女士的研究将把联合收割机考古证据与历史和民族历史记录的数据结合起来，以探讨殖民时期文化间关系的性质和程度。 欧洲人对美洲的殖民化给土著部落以及成千上万被强迫奴役和被运送到大西洋彼岸的非洲人带来了戏剧性的、往往是不可预见的后果。他们的故事的大致轮廓可能是熟悉的-物理和文化的错位，奴役，极端贫困，饥饿和死亡-但学者们一致认为，这种独特的愿景掩盖了非洲和印度殖民经验的巨大差异。这个项目将使用物质文化，主要是手工陶瓷的形式，揭示在殖民地路易斯安那州在十八世纪的群体互动的新的光。使用传统和实验考古技术相结合，该项目将分析手工陶瓷的生产，消费，意义和使用在殖民地背景下。描述性，类型学和比较分析将揭示最常与手工陶瓷相关的社会，物质和政治背景。先进的化学分析方法，包括中子活化分析和激光烧蚀电感耦合等离子体质谱法，将用于确定非本地船只的地理来源。结合从历史文献的批判性使用中收集的见解，这些分析将揭示殖民者，美洲原住民和非洲人民之间的关系的复杂性，在一个世纪的特点是在生活方式和政治制度的根本转变。这项研究是广泛的构思和设计，以保持多个观众的意义。它将突出人民的社会，文化和历史贡献，他们在美国的形成中的作用很少被理解，经常被低估。为了确保这项研究在学科之外产生影响，研究结果将通过公开讲座，专业演讲和同行评议的出版物相结合的方式向学术和普通观众展示。完成的论文将通过一个基于订阅的数据库提供，而通过这项研究产生的原始数据将在一个专门为数据共享而设计的开放论坛上在线提供。