Materialized Landscapes of Practice: Exploring Native American Ceramic Variability in the Historic-Era Southeastern United States

Summary

Despite the fact that archaeological ceramics have long been viewed as a proxy for ethno-political identity, recent research exploring the precise relationship between ceramics and identity during the historic-era southeastern United States provides increasing support for the conclusion that geographic variability in archaeological ceramics is best viewed through the lens of practice, and that archaeological phases correspond better to communities of practice than communities of identity. When viewed through the lens of practice theory and social learning theory, it becomes clear that the coexistence of both communities of practice and communities of identity within the same social landscape does not guarantee automatic correspondence between the two realms, nor even does any demonstrated correspondence necessarily prove a causal link between a community of practice and a community of identity that happen to be coterminous. Each type of community must be studied independently using appropriate and available data, and only by first disentangling the two can any demonstrable connection between communities of practice (such as archaeological phases) and communities of identity (such as historically-documented polities or ethnies) be established empirically. Only then can the exact reasons for any congruence (or lack thereof) be explored in a systematic and rigorous manner.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage