Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Award: Investigation of Archaeological Communities of Practice

这一博士论文项目的目标是了解殖民主义对美洲原住民日常活动的影响，以及他们对欧洲接触后发生的快速变化的反应。由于大多数关于这一地区的历史文献都是由男性撰写的，美洲原住民妇女的经历被忽视了。该项目通过特别关注妇女日常活动的产品之一，以及围绕陶器生产实践在妇女中形成的学习网络的重要性和稳定性，解决了这一差距。该项目强调这些社区的稳定和女性陶工的选择，以证明这些妇女是变革的推动者，并反驳将美洲原住民描述为不可阻挡的殖民力量的被动受害者的主导叙事。从理论的角度来看，这项工作提高了研究人员对个人工作组--在这种情况下是传统陶工--如何在重大政治和社会变革面前保持下去的理解。这些问题将通过对佐治亚州和南卡罗来纳州沿海四个文化遗址的陶器进行分析来解决。博士生将利用肉眼观察陶器装饰和与生产相关的属性。这些特征的相似之处和不同之处将使她能够确定哪些地点被可能一起学习制作陶器的陶工占据，或者一起花费大量时间从事陶器生产。她还将利用岩相显微镜更详细地观察不同地点之间的生产过程是如何变化的。陶器样本的选择是专门为了让研究人员能够解决研究地点连接女性的网络是如何随着时间的推移而变化或保持的。放射性碳测年将被用来确保所观察到的任何变化都是盆栽群落差异的结果，而不是随着时间的变化。这项研究将提交给相关部落的最近后裔--马斯科吉(克里克)民族。这为部落成员提供了一个关于他们历史的考古学观点，并促进了学术考古学家和后代社区之间的积极关系。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The goal of this doctoral dissertation project is to understand the impact of colonialism on the daily activities of Native Americans and their response to the rapid changes that took place after European contact. Because most historical documents about this region were written by men, the experience of Native American women has been neglected. This project addresses this disparity by focusing specifically on one of the products of the everyday activities of women and the importance and stability of the networks of learning that developed among women around the practice of pottery production. This project emphasizes the stability of these communities and the choices made by female potters to demonstrate that these women were agents of change and to counter dominant narratives that depict Native Americans as passive victims of an unstoppable colonial force. From a theoretical perspective, this work improves researchers’ understandings of how working groups of individuals - in this case traditional potters - are maintained in the face of significant political and social change. These issues will be addressed through the analysis of pottery from four cultural sites located in coastal Georgia and South Carolina. The doctoral student will utilize visual inspection of pottery decoration and attributes related to production. Similarities and differences in these traits will allow her to identify sites that were occupied by potters who likely learned to produce pottery together or spent significant amounts of time engaged in pottery production together. She will also utilize petrographic microscopy for a more detailed look at how production processes vary between sites. The pottery samples have been selected specifically to allow researchers to address how the networks connecting women at the study sites changed or were maintained through time. Radiocarbon dating will be used to ensure that any variation that is observed is the result of differences in potting communities, rather than change through time. This research will be presented to the nearest descendants of the tribe in question, the Muskogee (Creek) Nation. This offers members of the tribe an archaeological perspective on their history and facilitate positive relationships between academic archaeologists and descendant communities.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.