Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Award: The Effect Of Culture Contact On Household And Community Organization

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Under the guidance of Dr. Robin Beck, Ashley Schubert will investigate the influence of cultural interaction on ancestral Cherokee communities in the Appalachian Summit of North Carolina. It takes advantage of long term archaeological data to examine a process of interactional caused change which continues today in many parts of the world. The project will examine Native American life during the late prehistoric period when some Appalachian communities underwent a process of cultural transformation identified by archaeologists as Mississippianization. The long process of Mississippianization (AD 900-1500) that unfolded in many Native American communities across the midwestern and southeastern United States is identified archaeologically by similarities in artifact styles and community practices. How, then, did mountain communities respond to Mississippian practices that they encountered? How does the process of social integration or resistance play out in household activities and in public contexts? Is change expressed differently at sites that experience differing degrees of contact? Using recent excavations at a Pisgah village site (the Cane River site) and analysis of previously excavated collections from this site and from a mound and village center (the Garden Creek site), this research will compare the archaeological assemblages and spatial organization of both household and community activities across the central Appalachian Summit during a time of major cultural transformation. The goals of this project are (1) to investigate the extent to which Mississippian contact and exchange influenced major Pisgah settlements and (2) to evaluate how these changes affected community practice within the ecology of the Appalachian Summit. This research has the potential to generate a more comprehensive picture of early Mississippian emergence and interaction across a peripheral geopolitical region. This will inform Mississippian studies across the Eastern Woodlands, as well as provide greater insights into early complex pre-state formations at multiple scales of social interaction.This research on Pisgah communities will have broader impacts on local community education, broader collaboration among regional archaeologists, and participation and involvement with descendant communities. Excavations behind a local middle school facilitated an investment of the project into community education and stewardship. By utilizing educational opportunities during excavation and making use of existing archaeological collections, this project preserves the in situ archaeological record while simultaneously acknowledging the collections curated in nearby universities. This project has engaged other stakeholders, including archaeologists from the Pisgah National Forest and the Eastern Band of the Cherokee Indians, and facilitates a more robust understanding of the archaeological record in western North Carolina while ensuring that results and findings are shared with descendent communities. Results and data will be shared through peer-reviewed publications and the online digital archive for archaeological data, the Digital Archaeological Record (tDAR). Public outreach will include instillation of a local museum exhibit and lectures given at local museums and conferences.