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Access Type
Open Access
Degree Program
Anthropology
Degree Type
Master of Arts (M.A.)
Year Degree Awarded
2013
Month Degree Awarded
February
Keywords
Archaeology, Ceramics, Indigenous, Pocumtuck, Massachusetts, Colonization, Northeast
Abstract
Native Americans from the middle Connecticut River Valley of New England experienced massive social disruptions during the seventeenth century due to European settlement, but not much is known about their cultural continuities and/or discontinuities during this dynamic period. As an additive technology, ceramics embody the technical choices of potters made at the time of manufacture thus enabling the study of the effect, if any, of colonialism on indigenous material culture and practices in New England. This study examines ceramic assemblages from one Late Woodland period site and one seventeenth-century site in Deerfield, Massachusetts to explore the extent to which ceramics can demonstrate continuities and/or changes in traditional ceramic manufacturing practices in response and/or resistance to colonization.
First Advisor
H. Martin Wobst
Second Advisor
Elizabeth S. Chilton
Third Advisor
Oriol Pi-Sunyer