Understanding Multi-sited Woodland Communities of the American Southeast through Categorical Identities and Relational Connections

Summary

This is an abstract from the "People and Space: Defining Communities and Neighborhoods with Social Network Analysis" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

While communities are often considered to be isomorphic with settlements, this equivalency is ill-suited to understanding contexts in which the structure of settlement and social organization was cyclical and nested at multiple spatial and temporal scales. In the coastal plain of the American Southeast, most Middle Woodland (ca. 500 CE) settlements comprised only a few households, but they were integrated by interactions and institutions that spanned many localities and included large civic-ceremonial centers. Overlapping communities included kin-based segments, non-kin institutions such as sodalities, and various regional affiliations. These communities were constituted by shared identities, interconnected economies, integrative practices such as mound building and feasting, networks of regular social interaction, and associations with particular places. We investigate the intersections of communities at various scales by comparing categorical identities—affiliations proxied by the relative frequency of pottery surface treatments—with relational connections defined by face-to-face interactions between sites. The latter are evidenced by sourcing data and paddle matches on complicated stamped pottery that reveal earthenware vessels or carved wooden paddles were carried between sites. Using social network analysis we explore the spatial boundaries of distinctive categorical identities among sites and evaluate their correlation with the frequency and distance of evident relational connections.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)   •
• People and Space: Defining Communities and Neighborhoods with Social Network Analysis

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 32453