Shifting Contexts on the Economy of Pipestone

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Interactions across the North American Midcontinent" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Red pipestone artifacts often inspire archaeological investigations of craft production at the site level. Reconstructions of pipestone in the past center on the object itself as central to ritual paraphernalia. However, a regional perspective of pipestone’s role in the economies of indigenous and colonial communities are underexplored. This research takes previously recorded geological provenance studies with evidence of manufacture to hypothesize about the changing economic role of pipestone across the midcontinent. Data collected from over 1,000 pipestone artifacts and pipestone powder samples at seven curational facilities is applied in this study. Included in the data are mineralogical signatures collected from a nondestructive scan of an infrared reflectance spectrometer (ASD Terraspec) and qualitative documentation of manufacture processes. For the spatiotemporality of pipestone economy, artifacts from six midcontinental states dating from AD 1 to 1750 are included. This research attempts to situate the interpretation of pipestone within shifting contexts, from a ritual economy to a commodified good.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)   •
• Interactions across the North American Midcontinent

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 33022