Centuries of Colonialism in Native New England: An Archaeological Study of Eastern Pequot Community and Identity

在美国国家科学基金会（National Science Foundation）的资助下，斯蒂芬·西利曼（Stephen Silliman）博士将开展一项为期多年的考古项目，重点了解长期殖民主义背景下新英格兰南部的美国原住民保留地社区。该项目位于康涅狄格州东南部的一个225英亩的保留区，由东部佩科特部落国家拥有，最初于1683年授予其祖先。在前几季对这个大部分未开发的保留区进行实地考察的基础上，我们的目标是使用一套从文物、动物骨骼和贝类、植物遗骸、建筑和景观特征中提取的考古数据集，来研究这个土著社区如何在1680年至1880年间应对欧洲人和欧美人施加在他们身上的复杂的经济、政治和社会压力。这个社区今天的存在证明了他们在过去近325年里的生存，但我们还不清楚的是，他们的物质、社会和生活方式的变化是如何产生这种连续性的。最终目标是利用研究结果来完善对抵抗和认同等概念的一般人类学理解，因为它们通过殖民主义折射出来。书面文件阐明了东部佩科特人生活的一些参数，并对这一过程的各个方面提供了深入的了解，但要想了解家庭和整个保留区的实际生活经历，考古研究是必要的。因此，考古研究的主要目标是发现和测试多个家庭和相关特征，这些家庭和特征跨越了保留区建立后的两个世纪。为了实现这一目标，研究设计包括对可见地表遗址进行密集的测绘，对新英格兰森林环境中隐藏地点进行彻底的地下调查策略，对相关建筑和活动区域进行适度到全面的挖掘，以及在研究实验室中使用一系列分析技术，从物质文化、动物骨骼、植物遗骸和化学残留物中提取更具体的信息。除了对人类学理论和新世界殖民主义的实证研究作出贡献外，该项目还将对科学教育和合作产生广泛影响。该项目在很大程度上取决于学生参与实地学习、实验室项目、研究职位和硕士论文。这次合作与东部佩科特部落国家建立了伙伴关系，有利于他们社区的长期教育，研究和文化/历史保护目标，同时为学生提供了参与考古发现和分析的机会，批判性地思考考古方法和理论，并探索与美洲原住民后裔社区的合作。此外，该资助项目还向历史上代表性不足的群体（例如印第安人）提供科学考古研究方面的培训，因为它还确保考古项目始终立足于当今社区生活的复杂现实。该项目在合作领域寻求实质性的创新，因为北美考古学的未来很可能取决于发展这些关系。

With National Science Foundation funding, Dr. Stephen Silliman will conduct a multi-year archaeological project focused on understanding Native American reservation communities in southern New England in the context of long-term colonialism. The project centers on a 225-acre reservation in southeastern Connecticut possessed by the Eastern Pequot Tribal Nation and originally granted to their ancestors in 1683. Building on previous seasons of fieldwork on this mostly undeveloped reservation, the goals are to use a suite of archaeological datasets drawn from artifacts, animal bones and shellfish, plant remains, architecture, and landscape features to examine how this indigenous community maneuvered the complex economic, political, and social pressures placed on them by Europeans and Euroamericans between 1680 and 1880. That the community exists today is testament to their survival over the last almost 325 years, but what is not at all clear yet is the process by which their material, social, and lifestyle changes actually produced this kind of continuity. An ultimate goal is to use the research results to refine general anthropological understandings of such concepts as resistance and identity as they refract through colonialism.Written documents illuminate some parameters of Eastern Pequot life and offer insight into aspects of that process, but archaeological research is necessary to access the actual lived experiences in the home and across the reservation. Therefore, a primary objective for the archaeological research is to discover and test multiple households and associated features that span the two centuries following the establishment of the reservation. To accomplish this, the research design involves intensive mapping of visible surface sites, thorough subsurface survey strategies to detect hidden sites in a forested New England environment, moderate to full-scale excavation of relevant architectural and activity areas, and an array of analytical techniques in the research laboratory to extract more specific information from material culture, animal bones, plant remains, and chemical residues.In addition to its contributions to anthropological theory and empirical studies of New World colonialism, the project will have broad impacts in science education and collaboration. The project hinges strongly on student participation in field schools, laboratory projects, research positions, and master's theses. The collaboration creates a partnership with the Eastern Pequot Tribal Nation that benefits long-term educational, research, and cultural/historic preservation goals for their community, while it simultaneously offers students the opportunity to participate in archaeological discovery and analysis, to think critically about archaeological methods and theories, and to explore collaboration with a Native American descendent community. In addition, the funded project offers training to historically under-represented groups (e.g., Native Americans) in scientific, archaeological research as it also insures that the archaeological project remains grounded in the complex realities of community life today. The project seeks substantial innovation in the collaborative realm because the future of North American archaeology may well depend on developing these relationships.