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·米切尔将利用手工艺品生产组织的数据，研究与欧洲皮毛贸易商的间接接触对17世纪和18世纪初曼丹经济实践的影响。当欧洲人在18世纪中叶第一次访问曼丹人时，他们是一个庞大的交换网络的主要参与者，该网络将欧洲贸易商品、当地手工艺品和食物分销到整个北美内陆，从格兰德河到哈德逊湾。大多数学者认为，正是欧洲大宗商品的可获得性，尤其是马匹和枪支，创造并随后扩大了这一网络。在这种观点下，毛皮贸易带来了一段前所未有的繁荣时期，对曼丹人来说，这段时期一直持续到18世纪80年代初毁灭性的天花疫情，戏剧性地重新改变了北部平原的政治格局。然而，这些想法在很大程度上是基于对欧洲商人和探险家撰写的叙事的研究，这些叙事是在曼丹人首次参与欧洲商品交换150到200年后撰写的。因此，人们对这个贸易网络的起源知之甚少。这个项目将通过使用考古数据来调查曼丹人开始参与殖民皮毛贸易之前和之后几个世纪的社会和经济变化，以填补这一空白。曼丹村庄位于今天北达科他州中部的哈特河和密苏里河的交汇处，是进行这项研究的理想背景。它们被占领了长达300年之久，无论是在欧洲贸易商品引入之前还是之后，它们都包含了各种形式的手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。这项研究将考察陶器、石器和其他手工艺品的生产方式随时间的变化，特别是生产的规模和专业化。然后，这些分析的结果将与曼丹人口、聚落模式和生存方式的现有数据相结合，以制定从殖民前到殖民早期的经济和社会变化的总体图景。这一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正在进行的研究。通过评估毛皮贸易对曼丹人的影响，它将能够对整个北美间接殖民接触的影响进行更广泛的区域和时间比较。在这样做的过程中，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过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互动的多层面特征。

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.