The Archaeology of Magunkaquog

2020 ◽  
pp. 49-73
Author(s):  
Stephen A. Mrozowski
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
New England ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Cultural Changes ◽  
Southern New England ◽  
Town Meeting ◽  
John Eliot ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
History Of ◽  
Praying Town

Chapter 3 details the history of the Magunkaquog site from the features and material culture recovered through archaeological investigations in the late 1990s, combined with information from documentary records. With this site, the location of a seventeenth-century praying town meeting house, collaboration began between the archaeologists and the Nipmuc Nation. Certain practices revealed through archaeology conducted at this site provide clear evidence of a continuum between the post-contact inhabitants at Magunkaquog and their pre-contact cultural practices. Connections to other Native sites in southern New England also exist. Analyses of soils, ceramics, metals, glass, pipes, lithics, buttons and other artifacts provide a glimpse into the everyday lives of the site’s inhabitants 350 years ago as they encountered intense cultural changes with the arrival of John Eliot and other European settlers coupled with the adoption of European products into their lives.

Threads of Continuity

2020 ◽  
pp. 27-48
Author(s):  
D. Rae Gould ◽  
Holly Herbster ◽  
Stephen A. Mrozowski
Keyword(s):  
New England ◽  
Native People ◽  
Contact Period ◽  
King Philip's War ◽  
Southern New England ◽  
John Eliot ◽  
European Colonization ◽  
History Of ◽  
Praying Town ◽  
Over Time

This chapter explores the long presence of Nipmuc people such as the Wabbaquasset tribe in southern New England for millenia. It reaches back into the pre-contact period and acknowledges the culture change of Native people in this region over time and up to the present. A central topic is the memorialization of places connected to historic figures such as John Eliot, combined with the erasure of Native people who have had connections to this landscape deep into the past, long before European colonization. The history of the praying town period and Christianization of Nipmuc Indians through the efforts of John Eliot in the 17th century and of the seminal King Philip’s War (or Metacom’s Rebellion), and its aftermath on Nipmuc people, are summarized.

Metal burial: Understanding caching behaviour and contact material culture in Australia's NE Kimberley

2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 28-52
Author(s):  
Sam Harper ◽  
Ian Waina ◽  
Ambrose Chalarimeri ◽  
Sven Ouzman ◽  
Martin Porr ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Raw Materials ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Contact Material ◽  
Northern Australia ◽  
Assemblage Theory ◽  
Close Proximity ◽  
History Of ◽  
Human Burials

This paper explores identity and the recursive impacts of cross-cultural colonial encounters on individuals, cultural materials, and cultural practices in 20th-century northern Australia. We focus on an assemblage of cached metal objects and associated cultural materials that embody both Aboriginal tradition and innovation. These cultural materials were wrapped in paperbark and placed within a ring of stones, a bundling practice also seen in human burials in this region. This ‘cache' is located in close proximity to rockshelters with rich, superimposed Aboriginal rock art compositions. However, the cache shelter has no visible art, despite available wall space. The site shows the utilisation of metal objects as new raw materials that use traditional techniques to manufacture a ground edge metal axe and to sharpen metal rods into spears. We contextualise these objects and their hypothesised owner(s) within narratives of invasion/contact and the ensuing pastoral history of this region. Assemblage theory affords us an appropriate theoretical lens through which to bring people, places, objects, and time into conversation.

Change and Continuity, Practice and Memory: Native American Persistence in Colonial New England

2009 ◽  
Vol 74 (2) ◽  
pp. 211-230 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen W. Silliman
Keyword(s):  
Native American ◽  
Native Americans ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
New England ◽  
Cultural Change ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Community Members ◽  
Cultural Persistence ◽  
Colonial New England ◽  
Eastern Pequot

The archaeological study of Native Americans during colonial periods in North America has centered largely on assessing the nature of cultural change and continuity through material culture. Although a valuable approach, it has been hindered by focusing too much on the dichotomies of change and continuity, rather than on their interrelationship, by relying on uncritical cultural categories of artifacts and by not recognizing the role of practice and memory in identity and cultural persistence. Ongoing archaeological research on the Eastern Pequot reservation in Connecticut, which was created in 1683 and has been inhabited continuously since then by Eastern Pequot community members, permits a different view of the nature of change and continuity. Three reservation sites spanning the period between ca. 1740 and 1840 accentuate the scale and temporality of social memory and the relationships between practice and materiality. Although the reservation sites show change when compared to the "precontact baseline," they show remarkable continuity during the reservation period. The resulting interpretation provides not only more grounded and appropriately scaled renderings of past cultural practices but also critical engagements with analytical categories that carry significant political weight well outside of archaeological circles.

Large Town Officeholding in Eighteenth-Century Connecticut: The Growth of Oligarchy

1975 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bruce C. Daniels
Keyword(s):  
New England ◽  
The United States ◽  
Local History ◽  
Constitutional History ◽  
Local Study ◽  
Town Meeting ◽  
Time Period ◽  
Large Town ◽  
History Of ◽  
Colonial New England

The Colonial New England town has always intrigued American historians but, paradoxically, few historians until recently have placed the colonial town under a microscope and studied it in detail. Most, instead, like George Bancroft and Herbert Baxter Adams, simply heaped accolades upon it. Even the Progressive historians, writing in an age of scientific history and seeking to debunk the myth of town meeting democracy, still did not apply a close scrutiny to the actual sources but instead also talked in generalities. The only real exceptions to this pattern and the only persons to delve deeply into local sources were Charles Andrews in his River Towns of Connecticut and G. E. Howard in his Introduction to the Local Constitutional History of the United States, both published in 1889. The next serious professional local study did not appear until 1961. In the intervening seventy-two years hundreds of local histories were written, but by antiquarians who frequently wrote with intelligence and felicity but seldom asked the significant questions that a professional historian would. Indeed, to be involved in local history implied, to people living in this time period, that a person was an antiquarian and not a true historian. However, since 1961 a number of historians have attempted to put the New England town under a microscope and ascertain some specifics to replace the generalities.

A record of late-Holocene environmental change from southern New England, USA

2011 ◽  
Vol 76 (3) ◽  
pp. 314-318 ◽  
Author(s):  
W. Wyatt Oswald ◽  
David R. Foster
Keyword(s):  
New England ◽  
Late Holocene ◽  
Climatic Variability ◽  
Organic Content ◽  
Pollen Record ◽  
Southern New England ◽  
Ecological Changes ◽  
Dry Conditions ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Town

AbstractAnalyses of a sediment core from Little Pond, located in the town of Bolton, Massachusetts, provide new insights into the history of environmental and ecological changes in southern New England during the late Holocene. Declines in organic content and peaks in the abundance of Isoetes spores indicate reduced water depth at 2900–2600, 2200–1800, and 1200–800 calibrated years before present (cal yr BP), generally consistent with the timing of dry conditions in records from elsewhere in the northeastern United States. The Little Pond pollen record features little change over the last 3000 yr, indicating that the surrounding vegetation was relatively insensitive to these periods of drought. The 1200–800 cal yr BP dry interval, however, coincides with increased abundance of Castanea pollen, suggesting that the expansion of Castanea in southern New England may have been influenced by late-Holocene climatic variability.

A Blurring Frontier: The Territory of Caere in the Fourth and Third Centuries B. C. E.

2020 ◽  
Vol 23 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 107-129
Author(s):  
Fabio Colivicchi
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Complex Dynamics ◽  
The Political ◽  
Cultural Changes ◽  
The Third ◽  
Two Cities ◽  
Challenges And Opportunities ◽  
Institutional Aspect ◽  
History Of ◽  
New Situation

AbstractAt the end of a long history of increasingly close relationships with its neighbor, the Etruscan city of Caere became a sort of “satellite state” of Rome and was eventually transformed into a praefectura in 273 B. C. E. Historians have focused on the institutional aspect of the process, with its progressive “softening” of the political frontier between the two cities through the ciuitas sine suffragio, which paved the way for eventual assimilation. This paper examines the archeological record of the territory of Caere in the period between the late fourth and the third centuries B. C. E., tracking the development of settlement patterns and the cultural changes revealed by the material culture. Complex dynamics developed in the territory of Caere during this crucial period, with different groups adopting diverging strategies to adapt to the challenges and opportunities of the new situation.

scholarly journals Uncovering Indigenous Worlds and Histories on a Bend of a New England River before the 1650s: Problematizing Nomenclature and Settler Colonial History, Deep History, and Early Colonization Narratives

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christoph Strobel ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Native American ◽  
Native Americans ◽  
New England ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Primary Sources ◽  
Massachusetts Bay ◽  
Colonial History ◽  
Early Colonial ◽  
History Of ◽  
Praying Town

The essay explores the often-ignored histories of the indigenous people who resided on the confluence of the Merrimack and the Concord rivers up to the 1650s. This place is characterized by a significant bend in the Merrimack River as it changes its southerly flow into an easterly direction. Today, the area includes the modern city of Lowell, Massachusetts, and its surroundings. While the 1650s saw the creation of a Native American “praying town” and the incorporation of the Massachusetts Bay Colony’s towns of Chelmsford and Billerica, it is the diverse and complex indigenous past before this decade which North American and global historians tend to neglect. The pre-colonial and early colonial eras, and how observers have described these periods, have shaped the way we understand history today. This essay problematizes terminology, looks at how amateur historians of the 19th and early 20th centuries have shaped popular perceptions of Native Americans, and explores how researchers have told the history before the 1650s. The materials available to reconstruct the history of the region’s Native Americans are often hard to find, a common issue for researchers who attempt to study the history of indigenous peoples before 1500. Thus, the essay pays special attention to how incomplete primary sources as well as archeological and ethnohistorical evidence have shaped interpretations of this history and how these intellectual processes have aided in the construction of this past.

scholarly journals A materialidade de uma cultura imaterial: aspectos da cultura material da Capoeira no Rio de Janeiro no século XIX

Horizontes ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ricardo Martins Porto Lussac
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Rio De Janeiro ◽  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Play Fighting ◽  
Educational Processes ◽  
Culture History ◽  
History Of ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
Determining Factor

ResumoA História da Educação cada vez mais debruça seu olhar sobre práticas não escolares da educação, entendendo que esta é realizada dentro de um mosaico de interações sociais. Compreender as utilidades e os significados dos aspectos materiais envolvidos na transmissão de práticas culturais é um fator fundamental e determinante para se conhecer os processos educativos envolvidos em qualquer fenômeno sociocultural em que habite uma relação de ensino-aprendizagem. Este artigo objetivou investigar a cultura material do patrimônio cultural imaterial que é a Capoeira, e seus processos pedagógicos no Rio de Janeiro no século XIX. Este estudo ilumina parcialmente acomplexa relação dos sujeitos que desenvolveram o modo de fazer a Capoeira – cultura imaterial – com os objetos, materiais e ambientes que compuseram a cultura material do jogo-luta, e suas respectivas simbologias, bem como o seu modo de transmissão e aprendizagem no período estudado.Palavras-chave: Capoeira; Cultura Material; História. The materiality of an immaterial culture: aspects of material culture of Capoeira in Rio de Janeiro in the nineteenth centuryAbstractThe history of education increasingly focuses on non-school education practices, understanding that this is done within a mosaic of social interactions. Understanding the uses and meanings of the material aspects involved in the transmission of cultural practices is an essential and determining factor to know the educational processes involved in any sociocultural phenomenon that inhabits a relationship of teaching and learning. This article aimed to investigate the material culture of the intangible cultural heritage that is Capoeira, and its pedagogical processes in Rio de Janeiro in the nineteenth century. This study partially illuminates the complex relationship of individuals who developed the way of doing Capoeira - immaterial culture - with objects, materials and environments that formed the material culture of the play-fighting, its symbols, and its mode of transmission and learning during the studied time.Keywords: Capoeira; Material Culture; History. 

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