Learning Landscapes within an Ancestral Wendat Village

Summary

This paper concerns my proposed doctoral research that focuses on learning environments within Ancestral Wendat potting communities, more specifically, the 15th Century AD Keffer village. My theoretical perspective is grounded in a framework of apprenticeship, and experiential philosophy that emphasizes the experience and interaction of an individual within the material world, interwoven with both social and body memory. My methodological approach consists of micro-variation analysis to identify the material traces of learning and skill acquisition, and distribution analyses to identify spatial patterns pertaining to learning frameworks. Traditional approaches to pottery in Ontario isolate "juvenile" vessels from "adult" vessels, however, this prevents learning biographies from being identified, and thus, limiting understanding of the learned experience. I focus on identifying the stages of learning required to build the skills and knowledge needed to both form and decorate pottery vessels, as ethnographic examples demonstrate that learning trajectories involve both an understanding of decoration, as well as forming techniques (see Crown 1999; 2001; Wallaert-Petre 2001; Wallaert 2012). I hope to demonstrate that my theoretical and methodological approaches will allow me to explore how knowledge, both practical and abstract, was transmitted, learned, and mastered.

SAA 2015 abstracts made available in tDAR courtesy of the Society for American Archaeology and Center for Digital Antiquity Collaborative Program to improve digital data in archaeology. If you are the author of this presentation you may upload your paper, poster, presentation, or associated data (up to 3 files/30MB) for free. Please visit http://www.tdar.org/SAA2015 for instructions and more information.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage