Doctoral Dissertation Research: Inter Society Social Integration.

Regents Of The University Of Michigan - Ann Arbor, Ann Arbor MI

Investigators

Abstract

This doctoral dissertation project examines the mechanisms of sociopolitical formation among ancestrally diverse people in colonial contexts. Anthropologists have long been interested in the outcomes of group formation. Fundamentally, how do people negotiate differences to build new social and political communities? Recent research challenges how scholars delineate ethnic boundaries in the past and their political implications for Indigenous and diasporic communities today. Multidisciplinary scholarship has demonstrated that Indigenous societies frequently built their nations by expanding kin ties, thereby forming adaptable political institutions and societies; this framework contrasts with widely held expectations for race-based ancestry and bordered sovereignty. These dynamics also challenge archaeological studies of community coalescence, which frequently assume political economy is a key driver of social and material change. As such, this study uses archaeological evidence from households to investigate the role and material correlates of small-scale integrative strategies––specifically daily practice, kinship, and local interaction––in sociopolitical formation. The research focuses on Western frameworks of nationhood and citizenship that legally code Indigenous identity and political sovereignty today. By using multiple analytical methods, this project joins a community of practice framework (meaning people are connected through a shared way of doing) with a formal social network analysis. Social network analysis is a powerful tool for empirically evaluating and visualizing the social relationships that emerge from shared practice. This approach is applied to an investigation of the one Native American “nation” that coalesced from disparate communities in the early eighteenth century. To understand how individuals built a nation over a few decades, this dissertation project combines extant and new data from household contexts at six archaeologically identified towns. Analysis identifies patterns of social learning that underlaid ceramic production and foodways among women. From ceramics, researchers identify manufacture and decorative decisions through macro-, micro-, and chemical attribute techniques. From plant and animal remains, researchers identify species and processing techniques to understand how Y households managed food resources within a broader political-economic context. Household practices are then compared within and across towns through social network analysis to identify discrete communities of practice. 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.