From: pat@mtl.mit.edu (Patricia E. Varley)
Subject: Re: Basic Concepts in Archaeology
Organization: MIT Microsystems Technology Laboratories
Date: Tue, 7 Apr 1992 18:32:51 GMT



To:kirk.hardesty@matrix.sbs.com
>I was not aware that any tribes remained intact in
>Massachusetts or anywhere in the NorthEast.

The Native Americans in Massachusetts are the Wampanoags.  They are
part of the Federated East Indian League.  They reside largly in
Watuppa lands-Fall River, Mashpee on the lower Cape Cod, Herring Pond
on the Cape Cod Canal, and Gay head, Martha's Vineyard.  (Remember
Jaws?  Part of it was shot in Menemsha Village--a Wampanoag fishing
village.)  They are the direct descendants of the Indians who met
the Pilgrims at Plymouth (Squanto--the interpreter).  It was thought 
that they were part of the Narragansett Nation, but they are, in
fact, a separate sachem.

The Wampanoags have a large reservation in Mashpee as well as the
enclave on Martha's Vineyard.  Some of their land is ocean front 
property but they had no access to it.  About ten years ago they
asked Jackie Kennedy Onassis if they could have right of passage
over her property.  She refused. So they took it to the MA SJC
and won!

Many still hunt and fish although they have restrictions that are
somewhat different than those for the rest of the population, but
nevertheless, restrictions.  Some are into the construction
projects in downtown Boston.  We also have large numbers of 
Micmacs from Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland coming
down for these projects.

They were pushed out of their lands (surprise! surprise!)
and onto the Cape during the Contact Period.  This was their
undoing at the time but may be their salvation now.  Although
they are as poverty stricken as their counterparts in the
rest of North America, their isolation in these areas of MA
have kept their culture alive and well.  I remember being
told as a child of the  mysterious Hobbamock--embodiment
of the dead souls--who could follow you in the forest.  Their
culture had found its way into mine.

The new generations have finally come to terms with their
ancestry.  They rebelled against it in the sixties but have come
full circle now.  It isn't uncommon to see posters around
their towns as well as in Boston about upcoming Indian Affairs
Meetings and other events.

Which brings me to another point that was put to me in an
earlier post.  How would you understand the Indians of North
America in the Middle Woodland Period.  How does studying 
society in the same place help you in a historic sense? 
Quite a number of anthropologists/archaeologists have lived
with modern societies for precisely this reason.  Lewis Binford
pioneered this by living with the Nunamiut in the 1970's.  He
collected an enormous amount of empirical dataa on human exploitation
of animals that is applicable to archaeological sites in places
other than Alaska.  They are:  continuing dynamics of local 
adaptations can result in considerable variation in sites; interregional 
variations are relected in different archaeological remains.  Yet
the people of one site are well aware of the differences of their 
neighbors; the adaptive strategies and the factors affecting decision
making may remain constant, even if the archaeological remains
show great variability; changes in stone tool frequencies or pottery
may reflect no great change in adaptation.  So it is impossible to
tell what the local adaptation through time is without understanding
the strategies.  This type of understanding can be gotten from sites 
where such data is still available.

My point is that you do not have to have a modern society using the
"old" techniques in place to understand general adaptive straegies.
Yes, these strategies vary, but they are  limited.  One thing
that has been looked at by Binford and others is the whole range of
possible adaptive strategies: climatic, topographic, etc.  The
following are articles just published in Current Anthropology
(a quarterly) in the past year:  Compositinal Analysis and "Sources"
of Pottery:  An Ethnoarchaeological Approach", Arnold, Neff, and
Bishop; "Archaeological and Historical Approaches to Complex Societies", 
Boone, Myers, and Redman; "The Razor's Edge:...Archaeological Inference",
Watson and Fotiadis.

I have trained here at MIT at the Center for Materials Research
in Archaeology and Ethnology.  This is a consortium of the
eight major anthropology/archaeology departments in this area:
Boston U., Brandeis U., Harvard U., MIT, Tufts, U. Mass.Amherst,
U.Mass, Boston, and Wellesley College. We use every type
of theoretical approach we can.   The faculty from these
schools teach here along with the Director and staff.  I have
contacted many of them and put the question to them:  Do you
use ethnographies, are they still of value to archaeological
sites?  There has not been one negative answer yet.  I intend
to get more than just a yes or no answer from them.  I'll let
people who are interested know what they have said (more than
just a yes).

Pat

Newsgroups: sci.archaeology