Using Diversity in Native American Pottery Assemblages to Document Population Movements in the early Carolina Indian Trade: A Preliminary View from Charleston

Summary

Past research has outlined the profound effects of the Carolina Indian trade on the cultural landscape of the late seventeenth-century Southeast. This work has identified a number of historical processes (e.g., population movements, disease, endemic violence, and economic transformation) stemming from the interaction of southeastern Indian and European Colonial worlds that together defined the chaotic nature of the period. Our understanding of the Indian trade is much improved, but the crucial perspective offered by Colonial sites around Charleston is lacking. An example of this lacuna can be seen in documenting the presence of Indians in the region. While historic accounts detail movements of Southeastern Indians to the Charleston area as trading partners and enslaved captives, archaeological evidence has been lacking or has gone unrecognized.In this paper, I address this deficit by analyzing diversity in the Indian-made pottery assemblages from recent excavations at the Lord Ashley site (St. Giles Kussoe) and other sites in the area. I use the results to explore the population movements that brought unprecedented numbers of non-local Southeastern Indians to the Lowcountry.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Rags to Riches: the Creation and Legacy of the Carolina Colony   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2014

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): SYM-63,03