Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Award: Cultural Interaction in Frontier Situations

University Of Georgia Research Foundation Inc, Athens GA

Investigators

Abstract

Researchers across the social sciences seek to understand how processes of colonialism and world-system expansion helped to create today's increasingly globalized world. Because of its focus on material remains and long-term continuity and change, archaeology is uniquely suited to provide insight into the processes that brought societies with different political, economic, and social systems into contact and the outcomes of those interactions. First contact between Indigenous North Americans and European settlers occurred in the context of this global colonial world, but Indigenous peoples in North America were not simply passive or marginal actors within it. By focusing on the community level, this research emphasizes the decisions and agency of Indigenous people, allowing for variation in Indigenous reactions to colonization beyond simple acceptance or rejection. The social phenomenon explored here also occurred around the world in other colonized areas and along the edges of world-systems, so the conclusions and methods advance understanding of processes which are of broad, global interest. This project advances societal outcomes by training one graduate student in STEM methods (the co-PI), and one undergraduate in archaeological research and data management methods. It involves no excavation and uses data from existing archaeological collections, increasing the value of publicly-held resources while maintaining an ethic of preservation. Many of these collections are held by cultural resource management companies and universities, creating infrastructure for future collaboration between academic and industry researchers. In this project the investigators use radiocarbon dating and analysis of European trade goods (such as metal objects and glass beads) to investigate how three different Indigenous communities participated in world-system expansion. The researchers examine when and how different Indigenous communities in what is today southern Ontario, Canada first interacted with European settlers by asking: Did all Indigenous groups in the study region initially engage with Europeans at the same time? Were they all interacting in the same way and accepting the same kinds of goods? Or did some people avoid, refuse, or delay interaction with Europeans? These research questions will be answered by: (1) Establishing, empirically, when different sites were occupied through Bayesian chronological modeling of high-precision AMS radiocarbon dates, and (2) Establishing the local and regional distribution of objects of European manufacture, including metal tools and glass beads. The radiocarbon dates will establish which sites in each community were being used at the same time, and the trade good distributions will establish how those communities were interacting with European settlers. This project will result in the creation of 57 new AMS radiocarbon dates from Wendat, Tionontate, and Attiwandaron sites dated to ca. AD 1550-1650, as well as the a novel comprehensive database of European-manufactured trade goods on indigenous sites in Ontario and Quebec, Canada. 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.