Interactions with the Lower Creek: Historic Document Quantification

Summary

Historic documents are a useful tool in understanding post contact archaeological sites. Documents can show different forms of interaction between Europeans and Native Americans and chronicle events that are invisible in the archaeological record. Notations in archaeological reports often refer back to letters, journals, orders, laws, treaties, reports, newspaper articles and trade records, to support findings and give credence to interpretations of the past. However, use of historic documents has some troubling challenges, one of which, is the qualitative nature inherent in document use. Often a single document reference is used to support an interpretation. This paper offers a method by which historic documents can be quantified and seeks to create a more scientific approach to using documents to support archaeological conclusions. Using interactions between the Lower Creek and westerners as a case study, historic documents, written between 1620 and 1840, and containing information about events in North America’s colonial period and early American Republic were analyzed and quantified. Preliminary results indicate that this method of quantification reflects historic events seen both in the document and archaeological records.

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