▪ Abstract Historical archaeologists have given relatively scant attention to the study of Native Americans. Despite the potential to contribute to new understandings about Native peoples during and after European contact, the research commitment has been ambivalent at best. In this review, I ground this relationship in early debates about the field's subject matter and concurrent discussions in anthropology about direct-historical and acculturation models. In addition, I highlight currents in research that have refined these approaches as well as those that have charted new directions. The latter are notable for helping comprehend the role of place and tradition in Native peoples' lives, but also for reminding us of the complexities of identity construction in America after European contact. I reason that historical archaeology's use of multiple sources, if linked creatively, can be crucial in producing knowledge about the past that illuminates the rich diversity of experiences among Native Americans. “D...

The Historical Archaeology of Native Americans

During the seventeenth century, the Spanish colonists and Indians of northern Florida engaged in a substantial trade for deerskins and other products obtained from interior southeastern tribes, which received brass ornaments, glass beads, iron hoes, guns, and other trade goods in exchange. For eastern Muskogeans, this was a period of cultural reorganization and experimentation following the drastic population losses and sociopolitical devolution of the midto-late sixteenth century.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/info/40712908

Seventeenth-Century Trade in the Colonial Southeast

In this article, I consider the effects of Spanish missionization on indigenous identity and biological interaction patterns. Odontometric data were recorded for 26 skeletal samples dating to three time periods: precontact (C.E. 1200–1400), early mission (C.E. 1600–1650), and late mission (C.E. 1650–1700). Population genetic analyses generated estimates of regional genetic variation (FST) and intersample genetic distances. Genetic variation during the precontact period was limited despite documented linguistic and cultural variation. Variation increased during the early mission period, indicating a decline in between-group interaction despite inclusion within a single colonial sociopolitical framework. During the late mission period, variation declined significantly, indicating a dramatic reduction in between-group variability consistent with genetic drift and gene flow between communities. I discuss these results in terms of archaeological and historical models of postcolonial transformation and suggest an emerging polyethnic community was resident in La Florida preceding the subsequent diaspora caused by burgeoning European military conflict in eastern North America.

The Bioarchaeology of Identity in Spanish Colonial Florida: Social and Evolutionary Transformation before, during, and after Demographic Collapse

Drawing on archaeological evidence and often-neglected Spanish source material, The Invention of the Creek Nation, 1670-1763 explores the political history of the Creek Indians of Georgia and Alabama and the emergence of the Creek Nation during the colonial era in the American Southeast. In part a study of Creek foreign relations, this book examines the creation and application of the "neutrality" policy-defined here as the Coweta Resolution of 1718-for which the Creeks have long been famous, in an era marked by the imperial struggle for the American South. Also a study of the culture of internal Creek politics, this work shows the persistence of a "traditional" kinship-based political system in which town and clan affiliation remained supremely important. These traditions, coupled with political intrusions by the region's three European powers, promoted the spread of Creek factionalism and mitigated the development of a regional Creek Confederacy. But while traditions endured, the struggle to maintain territorial integrity against Britain also promoted political innovation. In this context the territorially defined Creek Nation emerged as a legal concept in the era of the French and Indian War, as imperial policies of an earlier era gave way to the territorial politics that marked the beginning of a new one.

The Invention of the Creek Nation, 1670-1763

The authors of this paper met at Harvard University in July, 1955, to discuss the theoretical problems which arise in the study of culture contact situations in archaeology. The subject of contacts between cultures is one in which ethnologists have long been interested, and there is a substantial body of literature, both descriptive and theoretical, on contemporary and recent historic situations of this kind. Archaeological interest in the subject is somewhat more recent, but a few excellent reports on specific examples have appeared which we could use as a basis for our discussions. We believe that this paper is only the second attempt to contribute something to this field by generalization from archaeological data (Willeyl953).

Mark F. Boyd

Papers

Here They Once Stood: The Tragic End of the Apalachee Missions

Here They Once Stood

Further Consideration of the Apalachee Missions

Here Once They Stood: The Tragic End of the Apalachee Missions