Native American gender politics and material culture in seventeenth-century southeastern New England

Abstract

Scholars have long recognized that European contact had a profound impact on native peoples throughout the Americas. However, subaltern men and women are no longer seen as passive victims in their interactions with the dominant culture but rather as active agents who made their own histories, even as they confronted colonialism on a daily basis. In southeastern New England, population decline and increased commodity exchange created new social opportunities for native men and women by the mid-seventeenth century. These demographic, economic and social conditions contributed to ongoing transformations in gender roles and responsibilities, though they were not experienced uniformly throughout the region. Building on limited and ambiguous documentary and oral accounts, I use archaeological evidence of pipes, pestles, pots, and peage (wampum) to examine gender politics in native New England after European contact.

Sarah and the Puritans: Feminist Contributions to New England Historical Archaeology

“…Other researchers have examined the roles, responsibilities, and power relationships between Native American women and men using historical documents and material culture and concluded that social identity was strategically negotiated in the decades after colonization. In an argument that exemplifies Eleanor Leacock (1980) connections between economic contribution and social status, archaeologists argue that post-colonial changes in subsistence and settlement reduced Native American women's social status: to counter that loss, women appropriated male behavior and affirmed their power discursively, by manipulating symbols and images on ceramic vessels (Nassaney 2004). That study reveals the successful deployment of text and artifact to examine the consequence of colonization within the larger frame of gendered power struggles.…”

Colonial Encounters, European Kettles, and the Magic of Mimesis in the Late Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Century Indigenous Northeast and Great Lakes

“…Material dependency was seen as both a rapid and an inevitable outcome of European contact (Wagner 1998, p. 411;White 1991, p. 129). Years of scholarly research has slowly been deconstructing this onesided and linear story of colonial encounter (for a small sampling of such work, see Aswani and Sheppard 2003;Bradley 1987;Deagan 1998Deagan , 2004DuVal 2006;Ethridge 2003;Ethridge and Hudson 2002;Gassón 2000;Nassaney 2004;Nassaney and Johnson 2003;Rothschild 2006;Rubertone 1989;Silliman 2009;Spielmann et al 2009;Thomas 1991;Voss 2008;Wagner 1998;White 1991).…”

The Identity Division of Labor in Native Alaska

“…For example, cross‐culturally the makers of domestic ceramic wares are often elder women (Frink and Harry 2008; Nassaney 2004; Nassaney and Volmar 2003; Skibo and Schiffer 1995). This was true, too, among Arctic Alaskans, where Nelson observed “women are the only potters” in this once widespread practice (Lantis 1946:245; Lucier and VanStone 1992:6; Nelson 1983:201–202).…”