Conflict in the Archaeology of Living Traditions

R. Layton

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2005
• Print ISBN: 9780415095594
• eBook ISBN: 9781134866212
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Archaeology
• Index: Social Sciences

The first text to address the contentious issues raised by the pursuit of anthropology and archaeology in the world today. Calls into question the traditional, sometimes difficult relationship between western scholars and the contemporary cultures and peoples they study and can easily disturb.

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Relations of production and exchange in 17th-century New England: interpretive contexts for the archaeology of culture contact

ALAN D.BEAUREGARD

This chapter develops a form of enquiry into the archaeology of culture contact by examining the utility of the concepts of mode of production and the articulation of modes of production as a means of identifying and coming to terms with the variability and discontinuity engendered by culture-contact relationships. For illustrative purposes, the presentation examines relationships between English settlers and Native American groups in southern New England during the years of early contact between AD 1620 and AD 1676.

Present issues and past paradigms

The kind of enquiry proposed here is appropriate in the light of challenges to paradigms which have traditionally sought to organize empirical social science research within broad, generalizing frameworks. Such challenges, collectively characterized by Marcus & Fischer (1986) as a ‘crisis of representation in the human sciences’, have included critiques of logical positivism in both the social sciences and economics, and have called for an epistemological shift of attention away from grand theorizing and towards more particularistic explanations of social change at more circumscribed levels of analysis.

Archaeologists who have participated in the crisis of representation have expressed similar uncertainty about the appropriateness of those bodies of theory which have guided research over the past generation. Trigger (1984) has related this criticism to what he perceives as the changing relationship between archaeology and sociocultural anthropology, specifically calling attention to approaches derived from sociocultural anthropology which have treated archaeological cultures and culture areas as closed systems. Trigger’s critique of the New Archaeology called for the abandonment of such an approach in favour of the study of how relationships between social groups serve as mechanisms for social change. Explanations of social change advanced from this kind of perspective, argues Trigger, will benefit by moving away from abstract general models towards more realistic modelling of specific social forms, constructed in the context of religion or area intergroup relations.

Archaeological and ethnohistorical studies focused on southern New England Native cultures have until recently been influenced both implicitly and overtly by the concept of the culture area, and scholars working there have historically worked from a cultural landscape which represents the distribution of its indigenous populations as a mosaic of bounded spatial units, each internally homogeneous but at the same time qualitatively distinct from other units. Trigger (1980) has discussed the development of the culture area concept and its conflation with the concept of the tribe during the early history of American anthropological research. Specifically, he has demonstrated how Boas’ late 19th-century critiques of cultural evolutionary sequences promoted the association of the concept of the tribe with the concept of the culture area.

This tradition of research in southern New England archaeology and ethnology was firmly established with Speck’s 1928 monograph, Territorial Subdivisions and Boundaries of the Wampanoag, Massachusett, and Nauset Indians, produced for the Heye Foundation’s Museum of the American Indian. The intent of Speck’s monograph, as can be gleaned from its title, was to establish unambiguously both the nature of tribal identity in the region and to delineate clearly the extent of tribal boundaries; these issues were viewed as a necessary and crucial prerequisite for resolving a number of then-important research questions, including the distribution of culture traits, the compilation of trait lists for culture areas, and the use of such lists in addressing hypotheses about the timing and impact of migration into the area.

Studies of historic contact in southern New England since then have represented social change in Native cultures as homogeneous transformations of the social systems conceptually located within culture-area boundaries. Scholars currently working on the archaeology and ethnohistory of southern New England’s period of historic contact now recognize the need for a new research agenda (Rubertone 1986), and have begun to address such issues as variability of social forms within traditionally recognized culture areas (LaFantasie 1986); social relations between distinct indigenous groups (Salisbury 1986, Starna 1986); relations between various segments of the Native and European populations (Bourque 1986, Malone 1986, Salisbury 1986, Snow 1986); and the necessity of pursuing all of these research goals in historical contexts (McBride 1986, Rubertone 1986).

Although the reassessment of culture-area formulations has invited debate on the nature of cultural diversity in native southern New England, few have challenged assumptions about temporal continuity which have traditionally influenced the interpretation of archaeological data in the region (Juli & Lavin 1986, Salwen 1986). Syntheses of prehistoric and protohistoric culture history have recognized the impact of 16th- and 17th-century contact on native groups throughout New England, but have not always confronted the ramifications of such contact. Rather it has been conventional to model the results of direct European contact on Native society as an orderly transformation of Late Woodland Native social forms. In so doing, however, southern New England scholars have assumed that changes in Native social forms and cultural institutions can be attributed to continuous contact with English colonies, and that events prior to the establishment of the colonies there were relatively unimportant. These assumptions must now be re-evaluated as archaeological and ethnohistorical research continues to investigate the nature, extent, and consequences of contact prior to colonization.

The period of early contact in southern New England began with Verrazzano’s initial exploration of the eastern seaboard in 1524 (Wroth 1970, Brasser 1978). The years following Verrazzano’s 1524 encounter were marked by sporadic exploration, trade, and offshore fishing, with contacts increasing in frequency from approximately 1580 onwards, when the English and French crowns began a spirited competition for the resources of this region (Brasser 1978, p. 80). Following the death of Philip II of Spain in 1603 and coincident with the decline of Spain’s sea power, the number of colonies placed in the New World increased markedly as European powers sought to take advantage of new opportunities to exploit the periphery of their expanding world-system (Bergesen 1979). Southern New England was visited less frequently by Dutch explorers and Spanish slave traders, and the presence of Basque fishing fleets in waters to the north was no doubt felt indirectly. During this phase of early contact, coastal aboriginal groups had steady access to a broad range of European material culture, including metal tools and cauldrons, items of clothing, foods and manufactured goods, and in one instance, even a small English shallop [a light boat] (Brasser 1978). Some native groups were regularly employed as fishermen by French fishing fleets (Cartier 1924), and numerous individuals had learned to speak European languages with varying degrees of fluency (Brasser 1978).

On the basis of these documented events, it is clear that the establishment of trading relationships with European merchants and fishermen, even in the absence of permanent European settlements, initiated demonstrable changes in aboriginal material culture and, to some degree, linguistic conventions and world view. Recent research has begun to demonstrate that Native groups were by no means passive recipients of European trade goods, and that the movement of such goods need not have been directly mediated by European traders. Knight (1985), working from an archaeological and ethnohistorical data base in the American South-east, has demonstrated how Native groups were able to control and exploit trade relationships for their own benefit, and has discussed the implications of such action for the transformation of the social structures of individual Native groups. Bourque & Whitehead (1986), working on data from northern New England and the Great Lakes region, have considered similar issues in the Native exploitation of early contact trade relations, with implications for the study of transformations of relationships between Native groups on a regional scale. Leacock (1954) and Snow (1968) have discussed the implications of these transformed relationships on local Native economic strategies and land tenure.

In addition to Native manipulation of the influx of trade goods, warfare and disease vectors represent additional forces which altered the distribution and character of Native groups prior to permanent European settlement. Evidence for the institution of warfare has been associated with the introduction of maize horticulture in the Late Woodland period; Snow cites the occurrence of palisaded villages, particularly near the frost line in northern Massachusetts and southern New Hampshire, as one line of evidence in support of this inference, along with the occurrence of projectile points lodged in articulated skeletons there (Snow 1980, pp. 88, 134). The ethnohistorical record (see especially Mourt 1963) is replete with evidence for the continuance of such internecine conflicts into the period of early contact, and a comprehensive study of the ramifications of European presence on these conflicts, both prior to and after the onset of permanent settlement, has yet to be conducted.

Disease vectors which have disrupted the lives of southern New England groups have been most recently described and summarized by Dobyns (1983, Ch. 1, but cf. Kelley 1986). Besides listing the well-documented outbreak of bubonic plague which affected the area from 1617 to 1619, Dobyns has also compiled evidence to suggest that the area was subjected to a far-ranging pandemic of smallpox introduced by the Spanish in 1519. In addition to this possible initial pandemic, Dobyns presents evidence for an outbreak of smallpox in New England during 1592 and 1593, and an unidentified but severe epidemic from 1564 to 1570.

It therefore seems appropriate to regard the history of contact between Europeans and Natives in the New World as a time of disorder and discontinuity marked by increasing variability in native social organization. European presence profoundly disrupted aboriginal lifeways even before the establishment of permanent colonies, and native settlement and subsistence patterns were radically different and diverse by the clòse of early contact. Such changes cannot be satisfactorily explained within a paradigm which models diachronic change as a continuum.

The need for new analytical tools

The concepts of mode of production and the articulation of modes of production present us with necessary analytical tools for further understanding the diversity of relationships among the various European and Indian groups in southern New England, and should enable us to use archaeological data from the contact period to contribute to that understanding.

Wolf’s definition of a mode of production as ‘a specific, historically occurring set of social relations’ (Wolf 1982, p. 75) allows us to move farther away from the culture area concept by focusing enquiry on variation in the social relations of production within any study area. Wolpe’s definition of the articulation of modes of production presents the idea of social formations as a satisfying alternative to the culture area: ‘The social formation is not given a necessary structure. It is conceived of as a complex…object of investigation which may be structured by a single mode, or by a combination of modes none of which is dominant, or by a combination of modes one of which is dominant’ (Wolpe 1980, p. 34).

This characterization of social transformation seems well suited to a region and time period in which social change was sudden, intense, and widespread. The flexibility afforded by this formulation is useful in analysing culture change in this region because it seems that modes of production articulated there in a number of different ways, even within circumscribed areas. A reading of ethnohistorical primary sources on colonial southern New England suggests some dimensions of variation in the articulation of modes of production there.

Plymouth as a case study: transformations in relations of production and exchange

The relationship between English colonists and Native groups can be represented as a dialectic which was transformed at least twice during the period between the initial settlement of the region in 1620 and the beginning of King Philip’s War in 1675. In overview, this period can be conceptualized as a threestage process consisting of early dependency on Native horticulture from 1620 to about 1625; trade partnerships between colonial and Native groups, lasting from 1625 to about mid-century; and a final period of English dominance which culminated in 1675 with the onset of war. My dating of these periods is based on a reading of ethnohistorical sources pertinent to the early history of the Plymouth colony (Bradford 1970, Mourt 1963), and the actual timing of the stages can differ in other areas of southern New England; as we will in fact see, the timing is quite different in the Connecticut River Valley.

The period of dependency began with the arrival of the first English colonists on the southern New England mainland. Had the Plymouth Company’s ship Mayflower reached its intended destination in Virginia, the Plymouth colonists would have debarked into a considerably milder environment which would have become part of a larger settlement system of Middle Atlantic English colonies (Ver Steeg 1979, p. 27). Their actual landfall at Cape Cod, however, placed the Mayflower party in a setting where their prospects for survival were considerably diminished. Their arrival in December of 1620 precluded planting crops for the duration of the winter, forcing them to rely on the ship’s stores and on the largess of the Natives. The grains which the settlers had hoped to plant were unsuited to the acid soils of New England, forcing them to examine other options for subsistence and survival. Maize quickly became the staple food, and the Native settlements in the vicinity of the colony became an essential source of supply. Maize was appropriated from storage caches at villages abandoned either because of inland seasonal migration or because of the plague which ravaged the area from 1617 to 1619. As contact between the colonists and local Native groups became regular and cordial, maize was obtained in trade (Bradford 1970, pp. 111–15, 122).

For the next few years, the Plymouth settlers depended on the Natives’ surplus maize and on the sporadic arrival of goods shipped from London, and became involved in dialectical relationships with both the neighbouring Native groups and with the London merchants. The Plymouth colony bartered manufactured goods and imported foods for maize, in the process becoming indebted to the London merchants whom they could not immediately repay. The nearby Wampanoags recognized the potential of Puritan armaments in altering the balance of power in their conflicts with other Native groups, and had struck an alliance with Plymouth almost immediately after the Mayflower’s landfall (Mourt 1963, pp. 56–7). In return for their military assistance, the Plymouth colonists benefited by gaining a working knowledge of the Wampanoags’ horticultural techniques and of their specialized knowledge of the environment.

The colony was simultaneously involved in a contradictory relationship with the London merchants who had financed their settlement. In order for the Company to realize a return on the Puritans’ labour, it was necessary for them to provide their colonists with material support in the form of needed supplies and manufactured goods for themselves, and with the important trade goods which drove the entire set of relationships. The Plymouth colonists could not at that time have maintained their tenuous hold in the New World without maintaining both sets of relationships, and the production and shipment of trade goods from London to the New World was crucial.

These contradictions were resolved with the establishment of a self-sufficient agrarian economy in Plymouth before the close of the first decade of settlement. Once this necessary condition was achieved, the directors of the colony were free to initiate an extensive fur trading network, initially with the Wampanoags and later with Native groups farther north. When the problem of dependence on Native surplus was solved, the colonists were able to trade more extensively for beaver pelts. The labour of the Puritan colonists, invested in agricultural self-sufficiency, supported the fur trade by making available trade goods which had heretofore been exchanged for Native crops. Thus, the Plymouth Company profited indirectly from the agricultural labour of its shareholders insofar as it permitted a steady and substantial supply of beaver pelts which could be sold at a profit in Europe. At the same time, the Company continued to keep its colony in debt by charging its colonists for supplies and trade goods.

During this period the Native economy was transformed as Natives became alienated from the products of their labour. To obtain English trade goods and wampum [strings of shell beads (see Rubertone, ch. 2, this volume)], which entered the trade network after 1628 (Bradford 1970, pp. 203–4), fur trapping became the dominant activity of Native hunters, and the Native economy was reoriented from production for use to production for exchange (Leacock 1954, Snow 1968).

Thus, the London merchants, the colonists and the Natives engaged in an interlocking set of exchange relationships. For the colonists, particularly those who tilled the colony’s fields, the fur trade was a means of paying debts and fulfilling obligations to the Plymouth Company; for the Natives, it was a means of obtaining preciosities which could be used to enhance prestige and social standing; and for the trading company, it was a source of commodities which could be sold at a profit in Europe.

The most telling contradiction of this system lay in the intensity with which the beaver population was exploited to drive these relationships. By mid-century, the system no longer generated the volume of beaver hides produced in earlier years (Moloney 1931). As the beaver trade began to wind down, the relationships of the English colonies to their sponsoring trading companies were redefined or terminated altogether. The colonies reoriented their economies by instituting an agra...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• List of contributors
• Foreword
• Preface
• Introduction: conflict in the archaeology of living traditions
• 1
• 2
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