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

在Shannon Lee Dawdy博士的指导下，Lauren Zych女士将分析从阿拉巴马州、密西西比州和路易斯安那州的殖民遗址收集的手工陶瓷。在18世纪，这些遗址是路易斯安那州殖民地的一部分，包括密西西比河及其从加拿大南部到墨西哥湾的支流。1682年，这个殖民地被英格兰和西班牙瓜分，后来在1803年路易斯安那州的购买中被美国收购。研究中的陶瓷很重要，因为与大多数殖民遗址的陶瓷不同，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--联系在一起，他们的经历和观点在殖民时代的历史记载中严重不足，如果不是完全没有的话。由于这些陶器是在殖民背景下发现的，而不是印第安人村庄或奴隶小屋，它们揭示了美洲原住民、非洲人和欧洲殖民者之间复杂和多方面的关系，值得进一步研究。Zych女士的研究将把考古证据与历史和民族历史记录中的数据结合起来，以探索殖民时期文化间关系的性质和范围。欧洲对美洲的殖民对土著部落以及数千名被强迫奴役并被运送到大西洋彼岸的非洲人造成了戏剧性的、往往是不可预见的后果。他们故事的大致笔触可能是熟悉的--身体和文化的混乱、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历中相当大的差异。这个项目将使用物质文化，主要是手工陶瓷的形式，以揭示18世纪路易斯安那州殖民地时期的群体互动。该项目将结合传统和实验考古技术，分析殖民背景下手工陶瓷的生产、消费、意义和使用。描述性、类型学和比较分析将揭示最常与手工陶瓷联系在一起的社会、物质和政治背景。先进的化学分析方法，包括中子活化分析(NAA)和激光烧蚀-电感耦合等离子体质谱(LA-ICP-MS)，将被用来识别非本地血管的地理来源。结合从关键历史文献中收集的洞察力，这些分析将揭示出在一个生活方式和政治制度都发生根本性变化的世纪里殖民者、美洲原住民和非洲人之间关系的复杂性。这项研究的构思和设计是为了对多个受众具有重要意义。它将突出各国人民在社会、文化和历史上的贡献，他们在美国形成过程中的作用鲜为人知，而且往往被低估。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出版物的组合向学术和普通受众展示。完成的论文将通过订阅数据库获得，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公开论坛上在线提供。

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.