A Quantitative Dwelling-Scale Approach to the Social Implications of Maize Horticulture in New England

2019 ◽  
Vol 84 (2) ◽  
pp. 274-291
Author(s):  
William A. Farley ◽  
Amy N. Fox ◽  
M. Gabriel Hrynick

We compare domestic architectural features in New England and the Maritime Peninsula to investigate the relationship between the adoption of horticulture and its relationship to social and settlement change during the Woodland Period. Horticulture was not practiced on the Maritime Peninsula until after European contact, despite cultural and environmental similarity to New England. In New England, horticulture has been implicated in profound social and settlement changes. However, aggregated villages, a unit typically investigated for evidence of social change, have proven elusive in the archaeological record. We compiled and analyzed a dataset of dwelling features instead of relying on identifiable villages. This novel quantitative approach uses dwelling feature shape and size as a proxy for social and settlement change, considering these changes at the scale of the house. We find that, during the Woodland Period, dwelling size was overall slightly larger in New England than on the Maritime Peninsula, but ranges heavily overlapped. After the introduction of horticulture, however, dwellings in New England grew in size overall and assumed bimodally distinct larger and smaller forms, which likely necessitated a restructuring of social and economic behavior. This pattern correlates maize horticulture with changes in social and economic lifestyle in Late Woodland New England.

2000 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 139-153 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph N. Waller

Archaeological investigations at Woodland sites in the Narragansett Bay drainage have aided in a refinement of Late Woodland settlement and subsistence models. Popular theory holds that intensive maize horticulture and the formation of tribal villages occurred relatively late in the prehistoric period or possibly were the result of European Contact. Archaeological investigations in coastal sections of Rhode Island indicate that village settlements and likely intensive maize horticulture were elements of Late Woodland settlement and subsistence behavior in and around Narragansett Bay and not Contact period phenomena.


2012 ◽  
Vol 77 (4) ◽  
pp. 621-645 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew W. Betts ◽  
Susan E. Blair ◽  
David W. Black

AbstractShark teeth are commonly found in mortuary and ritual contexts throughout the Northeast. On the Maritime Peninsula, shark teeth have been identified in mortuary assemblages spanning the Late Archaic through to the Late Woodland periods (ca. 5000 B.P. to 950 B.P.). Beyond the Maritime Peninsula, shark teeth have been recovered from Woodland period contexts ranging from Chesapeake Bay to the Ohio River. Amerindian perspectivism, or cosmológical deixis, provides a framework for understanding the relationship between humans and animals in hunter-gatherer societies. To explore this relationship, we examine engagements between sharks and humans over a period of 5,000 years, within a socioeconomic perspective. We postulate that shark teeth in mortuary contexts were complex, entangled objects that were both mnemonics and instruments. All at the same time, shark teeth were (1) an emblem of a real creature with spectacular predatory abilities, (2) an icon of transformational and spiritual power, (3) a symbol of a society’s maritime way of life, and (4) a tool–a conduit through which a person could gain access to supernatural abilities. When shark teeth were exchanged, all of these properties may have been transferred, suggesting that reinforcing relationships between societies conducting the exchange was as important as gaining access to the supernatural powers of the teeth.


1995 ◽  
Vol 60 (3) ◽  
pp. 515-530 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan M. Lizee ◽  
Hector Neff ◽  
Michael D. Glascock

In southern New England, typological distinctions between Niantic, Hackney Pond, and Shantok ceramics have been used to describe changing settlement patterns for the Late Woodland (500- 350 Years B.P.) and contact (post-A.D. 1600) periods. Based on the initial typologies developed by Rouse (1947) the Shantok ceramic tradition was also considered an ethnic marker of the Mohegan and Pequot tribes based on material recovered from Fort Shantok. Reexamination of stylistic data have suggested that levels of stylistic similarity between late ceramic types actually limit their use as ethnic markers in reconstructing contact period settlement patterns (Lizee 1994; McBride 1990). In this study, neutron activation analysis is employed to determine if compositional profiles correspond with identified stylistic types. The distribution of compositional groups within the region proves to be useful in describing changes in settlement during the Late Woodland and contact periods for southeastern Connecticut. Results of this study suggest that cultural factors underlying the evolution of the historic Pequot and Mohegan tribes, and locations of focal village sites, also had an impact on access to clay resource zones at the time of European contact.


Author(s):  
Ruha Benjamin

In this response to Terence Keel and John Hartigan’s debate over the social construction of race, I aim to push the discussion beyond the terrain of epistemology and ideology to examine the contested value of racial science in a broader political economy. I build upon Keel’s concern that even science motivated by progressive aims may reproduce racist thinking and Hartigan’s proposition that a critique of racial science cannot rest on the beliefs and intentions of scientists. In examining the value of racial-ethnic classifications in pharmacogenomics and precision medicine, I propose that analysts should attend to the relationship between prophets of racial science (those who produce forecasts about inherent group differences) and profits of racial science (the material-semiotic benefits of such forecasts). Throughout, I draw upon the idiom of speculation—as a narrative, predictive, and financial practice—to explain how the fiction of race is made factual, again and again. 


Author(s):  
Solomon A. Keelson ◽  
Thomas Cudjoe ◽  
Manteaw Joy Tenkoran

The present study investigates diffusion and adoption of corruption and factors that influence the rate of adoption of corruption in Ghana. In the current study, the diffusion and adoption of corruption and the factors that influence the speed with which corruption spreads in society is examined within Ghana as a developing economy. Data from public sector workers in Ghana are used to conduct the study. Our findings based on the results from One Sample T-Test suggest that corruption is perceived to be high in Ghana and diffusion and adoption of corruption has witnessed appreciative increases. Social and institutional factors seem to have a larger influence on the rate of corruption adoption than other factors. These findings indicate the need for theoretical underpinning in policy formulation to face corruption by incorporating the relationship between the social values and institutional failure, as represented by the rate of corruption adoption in developing economies.


Author(s):  
Oleksii Chepov ◽  

The qualitative and clear definition of the legal regime of the capital of Ukraine, the hero city of Kyiv, is influenced by its legislative enshrinement, however, it should be noted that discussions are ongoing and one of the reasons for the unclear legal status of the capital is the ambiguity of current legislation in this area. Separation of the functions of the city of Kyiv, which are carried out to ensure the rights of citizens of Ukraine and the functions that guarantee the rights of the territorial community of the city of Kyiv. In the modern world, in legal doctrine and practice, the capital is understood as the capital of the country, which at the legislative level received this status and, accordingly, is the administrative and political center of the state, which houses the main state bodies and diplomatic missions of other states. It is the identification of the boundaries of the relationship between the competencies of state administrations and local self-government, in practice, often raises questions about their delimitation and ways of regulatory solution. Peculiarities of local self-government in Kyiv city districts are defined in the provisions of the Law on the Capital, which reveal the norms of the Constitution in these legal relations, according to which the issue of organizing district management in cities belongs to city councils. Likewise, it is unregulated by law to lose the particularity of the legal status of the territory of the city. It should be emphasized that the subject of administrative-legal relations is not a certain administrative-territorial entity, but the social group is designated - the territorial community of the city of Kiev, kiyani. Thus, the provisions on the city of Kyiv partially ignore the potential of the territorial community.


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