Wampum’s Pre-Colonial Origins: An Indigenous Story

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Beyond Ornamentation: New Approaches to Adornment and Colonialism" , at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

Scholarly and popular discourse on the history of wampum emphasizes the influence and agency of Europeans – as suppliers of tools, traders, tribute-takers, and eventually as direct producers. Conceptually, many scholars view the wampum tradition as “complete” only when large numbers of white and purple marine shell beads were available for production of wampum belts, starting in the 1630s. In contrast, this paper emphasizes the period of Indigenous control over wampum production and distribution, before Europeans can be considered to have had significant sway over these processes. This period encompasses Indigenous production of short tubular shell beads using both stone and metal tools. We deploy radiograph images, Bayesian-modeled AMS dates, and metric information alongside text-based information on European incursions to make the case. Autonomous Indigenous wampum production and circulation took place for over a century prior to the point when European colonialism became a meaningful reality.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Beyond Ornamentation: New Approaches to Adornment and Colonialism   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2020

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 336