Communities of Practice in the Early Pottery Traditions of the American Southeast

Constructing community at civic-ceremonial centers: pottery-making practices at Crystal River and Roberts Island

“…The pottery from midden assemblages suggest both a convergence toward locally-available limestone aplastics and a blending of ceramic-making practices as potters came into more sustained contact, a pattern similar to those observed in the ceramics from similar coalescent communities elsewhere (e.g., Eckert 2012;Garraty 2013;Lyons and Clark 2012;Roddick 2009;Sassaman and Rudolphi 2001).…”

Seeing What Smoking Pipes Signal(ed): An Examination of Late Woodland and Early Contact Period(A.D.900-1665) Native Social Dynamics in the Middle Atlantic

“…Although Sackett (1982Sackett ( , 1990 argued strongly that the social boundaries delineated by isochrestic variation were linked to ethnic groups, other researchers contended that the relationship between stylistic variation and social groups is highly contextualized (Barth 1969;Carr and Neitzel (ed.) 1995;Conkey 1990;Dietrich and Herbich 1998;Hodder 1982;Sassaman and Rudolphi 2001;Shennan 1989;Stark 1998;Wiessner 1985Wiessner , 1990. These researchers have shown that the behaviors governing object production and use are socially informed actions that reflect a shared understanding of how things are done and that the social groups that control these understandings can vary greatly depending on the object being produced or area being studied.…”

“…A more holistic consideration of stylistic variation is necessary because it acknowledges that the attributes on any single object or class of objects can result from a variety of social processes. For example, certain artistic practices used to create one set of attributes can be passed down through the generations within one community while other practices used to create different attributes on the same class of objects can be inspired by interactions with members of other nearby communities (Sassaman and Rudolphi 2001). Moreover, stylistic attributes that are used to actively convey information can have multiple meanings depending on the context of use or the audience (Carr 1995;Wiessner 1983;Wobst 1977).…”

“…Recent studies indicate the best way to deal with the multivalent nature of style is to be very explicit about the analytical units and methods used for analysis and to gather as much historical and cultural information about the production and use of the objects of inquiry (Carr and Neitzel (ed.) 1995;Conkey 1990: Hodder 1982Sassaman and Rudolphi 2001;Plog 1990;Stark (ed.) 1998;Wiessner 1990).…”

“…As Sackett (1982), Stark (1999), and others have shown, the technical choices made by artisans provide evidence of other forms of social processes or connections. Anthropologists of technology suggest that such attributes can be used to look at the mode of operation (Dietler and Hierbich 1998) in which a particular class or artifacts was produced, or allow researchers to identify different "communities of practice" (Sassaman and Rudolphi 2001), which helps archaeologists identify communities that used similar production techniques but provides a more detailed understanding that the concept of cultural areas or ethnic boundaries. Moreover, the inclusion of technical attributes in my project answers requests made by previous pipe researchers ( AgbeDavies 2004aAgbeDavies , 2004b to move the focus of investigations beyond decorated, whole specimens, because these specimens are generally not representative of the variation contained within the entire pipe assemblage (Agbe-Davies 2004a:113-114).…”