Jon Bernard Marcoux is the director of the Research Laboratories of Archaeology and chair of the archaeology curriculum. His education includes degrees from Vanderbilt University (B.A. Anthropology and Economics), the University of Alabama (M.A. Anthropology), and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (Ph.D. Anthropology). He is trained as an anthropological archaeologist with a professional background in both applied preservation work and in academia. He has over 25 years of experience working in the academic and historic preservation fields - collaborating with architectural historians, public historians, museum professionals, government agencies, and local communities in projects involving archaeological sites, historic buildings, and cultural landscapes. His most recent preservation project, the Johns Island Preservation field school, teaches archival research and architectural documentation skills to members of historic Black communities along the Gullah Geechee cultural heritage corridor.
Marcoux’s academic research focuses on early colonial interactions between free and enslaved American Indians and Africans, and European settlers in the southeastern United States. He has published two books (and one coming out in April!) and numerous articles and book chapters exploring the ways that Cherokees, Savannahs, and other American Indian groups negotiated the social and political turmoil caused by European colonialism.
This volume explores culture change and persistence within a late seventeenth-century Cherokee co... more This volume explores culture change and persistence within a late seventeenth-century Cherokee community in eastern Tennessee. In this study, Marcoux and his colleagues utilize household-level data from the Townsend site, an archaeological site located within a mountainous refuge known as Tuckaleechee Cove. Through the analysis of multiple datasets, these researchers identify various ways that community members adapted to the challenges of life in a new colonial reality. This publication represents the first synthesis of archaeological data associated with late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century Cherokee lifeways, and is the first major work addressing Cherokee archaeology published in over twenty-five years. The reader will find a thorough discussion of the political, economic, and social landscape within which the Cherokees of Tuckaleechee Cove lived, as well as detailed descriptions and quantitative analyses of architecture, archaeological features, pottery, lithic artifacts, glass trade beads, ethnobotantical and faunal remains. These data are combined to construct the most complete picture we have of daily life in late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century Cherokee communities.
The late-seventeenth and early-eighteenth centuries were an extremely turbulent time for southeas... more The late-seventeenth and early-eighteenth centuries were an extremely turbulent time for southeastern American Indian groups. Indeed, between the founding of the Charles Town colony along the south Atlantic coast in 1670 and the outbreak of the Yamasee War in 1715, disease, warfare, and massive population displacements dramatically altered the social, political, and economic landscape of the entire region. This volume examines issues of culture contact and social identity by exploring how this chaotic period played out in the daily lives of Cherokee households, especially those excavated at the Townsend site in eastern Tennessee.
Marcoux studies the material remains of daily life in order to identify the strategies that households enacted while adapting to the social, political, and economic disruptions associated with European contact. The author focuses on households as the basic units of analysis because these represent the most fundamental and pervasive unit of economic and social production in the archaeological record. His investigations show how the daily lives of Cherokee households changed dramatically as they coped with the shifting social, political, and economic currents of the times. He demonstrates that the community excavated at the Townsend site was formed by immigrant households who came together from geographically disparate and ethnically distinct Cherokee settlements as a way to ameliorate population losses. He also explores changes in community and household patterning, showing how the spatial organization of the Townsend community became less formal and how households became more transient compared to communities predating contact with Europeans. From this evidence, Marcoux concludes that these changes reflect a broader strategic shift to a more flexible lifestyle that would have aided Cherokee households in negotiating the social, political, and economic uncertainty of the period.
The last decade has seen a relatively quiet
revolution happening within historic preservation.
Th... more The last decade has seen a relatively quiet revolution happening within historic preservation. The field experienced a steady increase in digital technologies to document the historic built environment. Many practitioners now have access to a suite of documentation methodologies that employ digital-based equipment and software (e.g., light detection and ranging [LiDAR], ground-penetrating radar [GPR], high-density laser scanning, digital photogrammetry). This access to new techniques has led to a shift in some of the research questions being investigated and the scale of the investigations. In this paper, we present case studies from our work in Charleston, SC, highlighting the application of digital technologies to the documentation of the historic built environment at two scales— the individual building and the landscape.
Colonoware—a low-fired earthenware pottery made by enslaved African and enslaved and free Indig... more Colonoware—a low-fired earthenware pottery made by enslaved African and enslaved and free Indigenous potters across the Lowcountry region of South Carolina—is a clear material consequence of colonial-identity formation. This process certainly involved African and Indigenous groups, but it also drew in English, French, and Spanish colonial powers, and the various economic, political, and social networks that bound them together. While scholars have recently offered nuanced and inclusive theoretical frameworks to help situate colonoware production within the process of colonial-identity formation, these studies thus far have lacked analytical methods that operationalize the link between potting practices and colonial-identity formation through the analysis of archaeological data. In this article, we present our attempt to forge the link between practice and data by analyzing a number of attributes that illustrate various choices potters made while constructing vessels. In particular, we are interested in comparing the methods of pottery manufacturing employed by local Indigenous potters in the “Low- country” region around Charleston, South Carolina, prior to European colonization to the methods used by resident potters at early colonial settlements in the late 17th and early 18th centuries.
Journal of African Diaspora Archaeology and Heritage, 2020
Colonoware, a low-fired earthenware made by enslaved Africans, African Americans, and Native Amer... more Colonoware, a low-fired earthenware made by enslaved Africans, African Americans, and Native Americans, is a crucial source for exploring the formation and materialization of colonial identities. Yet, the origins and ethnic associations of this enigmatic colonial potting tradition have long been debated. Recent ethnographic studies of African ceramic traditions have led to our reexamination of a surface treatment lately identified on colonoware vessels in South Carolina. Our analysis focuses on colonoware sherds from two eighteenth-century sites in Charleston as well as an additional unprovenienced vessel from the Horry County Museum. Through experimental replication and cross-regional comparison, this paper argues that the application of “folded strip rouletting” on colonoware in South Carolina is related to contemporaneous decorative techniques practiced in West and northern Central Africa. The sherds analyzed in this article thus represent the first clear published example of a decorative African potting technique identified in the colonial United States.
The post–Civil War decades of the 19th and early 20th centuries are the period most commonly asso... more The post–Civil War decades of the 19th and early 20th centuries are the period most commonly associated with the origins of industrialization in the southeastern United States. Recently, however, researchers working in Edgefield, South Carolina, have presented compelling archaeological evidence for the industrial production of stoneware, much of it made by enslaved laborers, as early as 1810. These findings require reconsideration of the widely shared historical narrative that portrays 19th-century stoneware potteries in Edgefield and across the region as small-scale family- owned craft enterprises, where industrialization did not occur until a decade or more after the Civil War as a response to competition from cheap Northern stoneware and metal and glass containers. Inspired by the new insights, this study traces stoneware production in the Edgefield area forward into the 20th century by examining the case of the Wood Pottery site in North Augusta, South Carolina. Based on archaeological and historical evidence, three significant changes to stoneware production methods are traced: (1) changes in firing technology; (2) a switch from alkaline glaze to Albany slip; and (3) morphological changes in the vessel assemblages marking the use of jigger arms and molds. Instead of a “vertical” historical trajectory that moves from a craft to an industrialized enterprise, we envision these changes as part of a “horizontal” shift in an already-industrialized enterprise, reflecting a reorganization of labor and technology aimed at coping with competition from alternative storage-vessel forms and the loss of an enslaved workforce.
A set of artifacts, apparently associated with human remains (one tooth), from Pine Island, Alaba... more A set of artifacts, apparently associated with human remains (one tooth), from Pine Island, Alabama, was donated to the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History in 1915. In preparation for repatriation, this collection was investigated extensively by a volunteer team. This paper reports the results of this analysis, focusing especially on a new type of trade gun and the glass beads. The goal of the research is to provide an accurate date for the collection to assist in identifying the Native American group represented.
Variation in the political economic organization of Mississippian
polities has long been recogniz... more Variation in the political economic organization of Mississippian polities has long been recognized. There have been few studies, however, that have examined these differences in any detail. We offer a comparison between Moundville and Cahokia, two of the largest and most complex Mississippian polities in the greater Southeast. Well-demarcated differences in settlement patterns, community patterns, and craft production reveal important organizational dissimilarities between Moundville and Cahokia during the early Mississippian period. By highlighting these differences we hope to problematize the overuse of societal types as a means of analyzing and comparing Mississippian polities.
The ‘‘Prestige Goods Economy’’ model was created to explain
the rise of political complexity as t... more The ‘‘Prestige Goods Economy’’ model was created to explain the rise of political complexity as the result of elite strategies to control access to exotic, finely crafted display goods. This concept is so ingrained in our current understandings of social, economic, and political life in Mississippian chiefdoms that it has become part of the very definition of ‘‘Mississippian.’’ The political economy of the Moundville chiefdom, in particular, has long been associated with the prestige goods concept and a highly centralized system of crafting and long distance exchange. In this paper, I bring together extant data from past excavations at Moundville and surrounding sites in order to test the current model of display goods production and circulation during the peak of the chiefdom’s power (ca. A.D. 1300–1450). I find that while the production and circulation of display goods is overwhelmingly associated with elites at the Moundville center, the scale of local display goods production and the quantity of nonlocal display goods relative to locally made display goods at the site does not match the expectations generated by the current model of Moundville’s political economy.
Documentation by historians and archaeologists has highlighted the pervasiveness of demographic, ... more Documentation by historians and archaeologists has highlighted the pervasiveness of demographic, economic, and social changes that racked communities along the central South Carolina coast during the decades bracketing the founding of Charles Town in 1670. While local groups were doubtless crucial players in the early history of the South Carolina colony, we know very little about who these folk were or what daily life was like in their communities. In this paper we begin to address this gap by presenting an analytical and chronological framework for studying the pottery made by local Contact-period Indian communities (i.e., the Ashley ceramic series). Focusing on the ceramic assemblage from 38BK1633, a site in the Charleston Harbor that contains a relatively brief household occupation, we offer a detailed description of Ashley-series surface treatments and vessel forms. We also suggest some temporal changes within the Ashley series that are derived from multivariate frequency seriation and are corroborated with multiple radiocarbon assays.
Two decades ago, Michael Trinkley (1992) addressed a growing consensus among southeastern archaeo... more Two decades ago, Michael Trinkley (1992) addressed a growing consensus among southeastern archaeologists that excavations at small coastal Woodland-period shell middens had reached the point of needless redundancy. Espenshade et al. (1994:181-185), for example, argued that the cost of excavating this type of archaeological site far outweighed any benefits in terms of generating new or improved understandings about past lifeways. Trinkley (1992:39-40) countered that the perceived redundancy identified by Espenshade and others more likely reflected the need for new research questions and perspectives rather than the need to forgo further excavation at these sites. In recent excavations at the Wando-Welch site (38CH351) in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, the authors followed Trinkley’s call by applying new analytical techniques and research perspectives to a site containing a palimpsest of small Woodland-period shell middens (Marcoux et al. 2011). A particularly interesting characteristic of this site is the dominant presence of limestone-tempered pottery (defined as the Wando series) – a phenomenon that appears to be concentrated at sites in the Wando River basin on the northeast side of Charleston Harbor. While very similar in vessel form and surface treatment to the sand-tempered Late Woodland Santee and McClellanville series, we still do not have a solid grasp on the temporal range of Wando-series pottery. Furthermore, little has been done to characterize the “place” of shell midden sites bearing Wando-series pottery with respect to the settlement and subsistence strategies.
In this paper, we employ data generated from excavations at the Wando-Welch site and other sites in the area to take on these two issues. We begin by addressing the distinctive Wando-series limestone-tempered pottery – employing ceramic seriation and radiocarbon dating to define the chronological position of this series within the cultural history of the region. Then we consider seasonality data from faunal and botanical materials and use a number of estimation techniques to assess group size and occupation duration at the site. Finally, we explore temporal variability in coastal hunting and gathering lifeways by comparing certain archaeological indicators of sedentariness for the Wando-Welch site and a number of other coastal South Carolina sites. We conclude that the Wando phenomenon is part of a large-scale regional process of cultural change, when groups began to form more localized identities in response to increasing sedentism in the Late Woodland period.
In this paper, we explore how Mississippian mortuary practices could be treated using an alternat... more In this paper, we explore how Mississippian mortuary practices could be treated using an alternative approach to categorical models. Our perspective is derived from Actor-Network Theory or the sociology of translation (Callon 1986; Latour 1991, 1992, 2005; Law 1992, 1997, 1999). This moniker and its acronym (ANT) refer to an extremely diverse and dynamic set of premises and approaches that have a common foundation in a post-structural rejection of essentialist divisions and a shared view that the social consists of performed networks of human and non-human "actors." The challenge laid out by ANT is to "reassemble the social" by tracing out the associations between these heterogeneous entities rather than making the social a taken-for-granted starting point of analysis. After outlining actor-network theory, we then briefly sketch out what an alternative ANT-like approach to Mississippian archaeological contexts might look like when applied to local mortuary practices at the Moundville site in west-central Alabama.
This paper addresses prehistoric mortuary practices by combining the perspectives of the classic ... more This paper addresses prehistoric mortuary practices by combining the perspectives of the classic Binford-Saxe research program with new analytical methods. Both individual-level analyses and spatial analyses are conducted on mortuary data recovered from the Koger’s Island site, a Mississippian cemetery located within the middle Tennessee River Valley in northern Alabama. These analyses are used to test an ethnohistorically and archaeologically derived model of status and social structure in Mississippian societies. The results raise the possibility that the cemetery was spatially segregated into areas reserved for two corporate kin-groups.
The material remains of daily subsistence within Cherokee communities reflect strategies that hou... more The material remains of daily subsistence within Cherokee communities reflect strategies that households enacted while adapting to disruptions associated with European colonialism. Plant subsistence remains dating from the late Pre-Contact period through the end of the Revolutionary War (A. D. 1300–1783) reveal how Cherokee food producers/collectors fed their families as they navigated an increasingly uncertain landscape. Framing our analysis in terms of risk mitigation and future-discounting concepts from human behavioraial ecology, we argue that Cherokee households responded to increasing risk and uncertainty by shifting towards subsistence strategies that had more immediate rewards. Although Cherokee plant subsistence remains exhibit continuity in how people farmed and foraged, our study shows that households made strategic decisions to alter their food production and collection with respect to looming uncertainty. Archaeobotanical analysis from multiple sites spanning the Colonial period (ca. A. D. 1670-–1783) reveal a stepwise process of declining maize production, increased foraging, and overall diversification of the plant diet. This case underscores the relevance of concepts from human behavioral ecology to complex colonial situations by demonstrating that strategies of risk prevention and mitigation have applicability beyond ecological factors.
The study of glass trade beads has contributed much to our chronological understanding of the col... more The study of glass trade beads has contributed much to our chronological understanding of the colonial period in the Eastern Woodlands of North America. Indeed, this class of artifact has allowed archaeologists to identify and conduct research at important archaeological sites that never appeared in the European historical record. In the Southeast, the best chronological resolution established by current bead chronologies relates either to sixteenth- to mid-seventeenth-century Spanish-traded bead assemblages or eighteenth-century French-traded bead assemblages. There is a conspicuous gap, however, in glass bead chronologies associated with the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century English-Indian trade in the Southeast. In this paper, I address this gap by characterizing a large sample of trade beads (n = 35,309) found in individual mortuary assemblages recovered from a number of Southeastern Indian sites. This is the first time a regional synthesis of this scale has been conducted for the English colonial period in the Southeast. In order to begin to refine the bead chronology of this period, I also present the results of a quantitative seriation (using a technique known as correspondence analysis) of the same mortuary assemblages. While the results of this exploratory technique represent a preliminary stage in this process, they nevertheless identify a number of temporal trends that can be used to derive occupation date estimates for sites spanning the English colonial period in the Southeast (ca. 1607–1783).
In this chapter we explore how Mississippian
mortuary practices could be treated using an altern... more In this chapter we explore how Mississippian
mortuary practices could be treated using an alternative
approach to societal categorical models. Our perspective is derived from actor-network theory, or the sociology of translation. This moniker and its acronym (ANT) refer to an extremely diverse and dynamic set of premises and approaches that have a common foundation in a post-structural rejection of essentialist divisions and a shared view that the social consists of performed networks of human and nonhuman “actors.” The challenge laid out by ANT is to “reassemble the social” by tracing the associations between these heterogeneous entities rather than make the social a taken-for-granted starting point of analysis. After outlining actor-network theory, we briefly sketch out what an alternative ANT-like approach to Mississippian archaeological contexts might look like when applied to local
mortuary practices at the Moundville site in west central Alabama.
This volume explores culture change and persistence within a late seventeenth-century Cherokee co... more This volume explores culture change and persistence within a late seventeenth-century Cherokee community in eastern Tennessee. In this study, Marcoux and his colleagues utilize household-level data from the Townsend site, an archaeological site located within a mountainous refuge known as Tuckaleechee Cove. Through the analysis of multiple datasets, these researchers identify various ways that community members adapted to the challenges of life in a new colonial reality. This publication represents the first synthesis of archaeological data associated with late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century Cherokee lifeways, and is the first major work addressing Cherokee archaeology published in over twenty-five years. The reader will find a thorough discussion of the political, economic, and social landscape within which the Cherokees of Tuckaleechee Cove lived, as well as detailed descriptions and quantitative analyses of architecture, archaeological features, pottery, lithic artifacts, glass trade beads, ethnobotantical and faunal remains. These data are combined to construct the most complete picture we have of daily life in late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century Cherokee communities.
The late-seventeenth and early-eighteenth centuries were an extremely turbulent time for southeas... more The late-seventeenth and early-eighteenth centuries were an extremely turbulent time for southeastern American Indian groups. Indeed, between the founding of the Charles Town colony along the south Atlantic coast in 1670 and the outbreak of the Yamasee War in 1715, disease, warfare, and massive population displacements dramatically altered the social, political, and economic landscape of the entire region. This volume examines issues of culture contact and social identity by exploring how this chaotic period played out in the daily lives of Cherokee households, especially those excavated at the Townsend site in eastern Tennessee.
Marcoux studies the material remains of daily life in order to identify the strategies that households enacted while adapting to the social, political, and economic disruptions associated with European contact. The author focuses on households as the basic units of analysis because these represent the most fundamental and pervasive unit of economic and social production in the archaeological record. His investigations show how the daily lives of Cherokee households changed dramatically as they coped with the shifting social, political, and economic currents of the times. He demonstrates that the community excavated at the Townsend site was formed by immigrant households who came together from geographically disparate and ethnically distinct Cherokee settlements as a way to ameliorate population losses. He also explores changes in community and household patterning, showing how the spatial organization of the Townsend community became less formal and how households became more transient compared to communities predating contact with Europeans. From this evidence, Marcoux concludes that these changes reflect a broader strategic shift to a more flexible lifestyle that would have aided Cherokee households in negotiating the social, political, and economic uncertainty of the period.
The last decade has seen a relatively quiet
revolution happening within historic preservation.
Th... more The last decade has seen a relatively quiet revolution happening within historic preservation. The field experienced a steady increase in digital technologies to document the historic built environment. Many practitioners now have access to a suite of documentation methodologies that employ digital-based equipment and software (e.g., light detection and ranging [LiDAR], ground-penetrating radar [GPR], high-density laser scanning, digital photogrammetry). This access to new techniques has led to a shift in some of the research questions being investigated and the scale of the investigations. In this paper, we present case studies from our work in Charleston, SC, highlighting the application of digital technologies to the documentation of the historic built environment at two scales— the individual building and the landscape.
Colonoware—a low-fired earthenware pottery made by enslaved African and enslaved and free Indig... more Colonoware—a low-fired earthenware pottery made by enslaved African and enslaved and free Indigenous potters across the Lowcountry region of South Carolina—is a clear material consequence of colonial-identity formation. This process certainly involved African and Indigenous groups, but it also drew in English, French, and Spanish colonial powers, and the various economic, political, and social networks that bound them together. While scholars have recently offered nuanced and inclusive theoretical frameworks to help situate colonoware production within the process of colonial-identity formation, these studies thus far have lacked analytical methods that operationalize the link between potting practices and colonial-identity formation through the analysis of archaeological data. In this article, we present our attempt to forge the link between practice and data by analyzing a number of attributes that illustrate various choices potters made while constructing vessels. In particular, we are interested in comparing the methods of pottery manufacturing employed by local Indigenous potters in the “Low- country” region around Charleston, South Carolina, prior to European colonization to the methods used by resident potters at early colonial settlements in the late 17th and early 18th centuries.
Journal of African Diaspora Archaeology and Heritage, 2020
Colonoware, a low-fired earthenware made by enslaved Africans, African Americans, and Native Amer... more Colonoware, a low-fired earthenware made by enslaved Africans, African Americans, and Native Americans, is a crucial source for exploring the formation and materialization of colonial identities. Yet, the origins and ethnic associations of this enigmatic colonial potting tradition have long been debated. Recent ethnographic studies of African ceramic traditions have led to our reexamination of a surface treatment lately identified on colonoware vessels in South Carolina. Our analysis focuses on colonoware sherds from two eighteenth-century sites in Charleston as well as an additional unprovenienced vessel from the Horry County Museum. Through experimental replication and cross-regional comparison, this paper argues that the application of “folded strip rouletting” on colonoware in South Carolina is related to contemporaneous decorative techniques practiced in West and northern Central Africa. The sherds analyzed in this article thus represent the first clear published example of a decorative African potting technique identified in the colonial United States.
The post–Civil War decades of the 19th and early 20th centuries are the period most commonly asso... more The post–Civil War decades of the 19th and early 20th centuries are the period most commonly associated with the origins of industrialization in the southeastern United States. Recently, however, researchers working in Edgefield, South Carolina, have presented compelling archaeological evidence for the industrial production of stoneware, much of it made by enslaved laborers, as early as 1810. These findings require reconsideration of the widely shared historical narrative that portrays 19th-century stoneware potteries in Edgefield and across the region as small-scale family- owned craft enterprises, where industrialization did not occur until a decade or more after the Civil War as a response to competition from cheap Northern stoneware and metal and glass containers. Inspired by the new insights, this study traces stoneware production in the Edgefield area forward into the 20th century by examining the case of the Wood Pottery site in North Augusta, South Carolina. Based on archaeological and historical evidence, three significant changes to stoneware production methods are traced: (1) changes in firing technology; (2) a switch from alkaline glaze to Albany slip; and (3) morphological changes in the vessel assemblages marking the use of jigger arms and molds. Instead of a “vertical” historical trajectory that moves from a craft to an industrialized enterprise, we envision these changes as part of a “horizontal” shift in an already-industrialized enterprise, reflecting a reorganization of labor and technology aimed at coping with competition from alternative storage-vessel forms and the loss of an enslaved workforce.
A set of artifacts, apparently associated with human remains (one tooth), from Pine Island, Alaba... more A set of artifacts, apparently associated with human remains (one tooth), from Pine Island, Alabama, was donated to the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History in 1915. In preparation for repatriation, this collection was investigated extensively by a volunteer team. This paper reports the results of this analysis, focusing especially on a new type of trade gun and the glass beads. The goal of the research is to provide an accurate date for the collection to assist in identifying the Native American group represented.
Variation in the political economic organization of Mississippian
polities has long been recogniz... more Variation in the political economic organization of Mississippian polities has long been recognized. There have been few studies, however, that have examined these differences in any detail. We offer a comparison between Moundville and Cahokia, two of the largest and most complex Mississippian polities in the greater Southeast. Well-demarcated differences in settlement patterns, community patterns, and craft production reveal important organizational dissimilarities between Moundville and Cahokia during the early Mississippian period. By highlighting these differences we hope to problematize the overuse of societal types as a means of analyzing and comparing Mississippian polities.
The ‘‘Prestige Goods Economy’’ model was created to explain
the rise of political complexity as t... more The ‘‘Prestige Goods Economy’’ model was created to explain the rise of political complexity as the result of elite strategies to control access to exotic, finely crafted display goods. This concept is so ingrained in our current understandings of social, economic, and political life in Mississippian chiefdoms that it has become part of the very definition of ‘‘Mississippian.’’ The political economy of the Moundville chiefdom, in particular, has long been associated with the prestige goods concept and a highly centralized system of crafting and long distance exchange. In this paper, I bring together extant data from past excavations at Moundville and surrounding sites in order to test the current model of display goods production and circulation during the peak of the chiefdom’s power (ca. A.D. 1300–1450). I find that while the production and circulation of display goods is overwhelmingly associated with elites at the Moundville center, the scale of local display goods production and the quantity of nonlocal display goods relative to locally made display goods at the site does not match the expectations generated by the current model of Moundville’s political economy.
Documentation by historians and archaeologists has highlighted the pervasiveness of demographic, ... more Documentation by historians and archaeologists has highlighted the pervasiveness of demographic, economic, and social changes that racked communities along the central South Carolina coast during the decades bracketing the founding of Charles Town in 1670. While local groups were doubtless crucial players in the early history of the South Carolina colony, we know very little about who these folk were or what daily life was like in their communities. In this paper we begin to address this gap by presenting an analytical and chronological framework for studying the pottery made by local Contact-period Indian communities (i.e., the Ashley ceramic series). Focusing on the ceramic assemblage from 38BK1633, a site in the Charleston Harbor that contains a relatively brief household occupation, we offer a detailed description of Ashley-series surface treatments and vessel forms. We also suggest some temporal changes within the Ashley series that are derived from multivariate frequency seriation and are corroborated with multiple radiocarbon assays.
Two decades ago, Michael Trinkley (1992) addressed a growing consensus among southeastern archaeo... more Two decades ago, Michael Trinkley (1992) addressed a growing consensus among southeastern archaeologists that excavations at small coastal Woodland-period shell middens had reached the point of needless redundancy. Espenshade et al. (1994:181-185), for example, argued that the cost of excavating this type of archaeological site far outweighed any benefits in terms of generating new or improved understandings about past lifeways. Trinkley (1992:39-40) countered that the perceived redundancy identified by Espenshade and others more likely reflected the need for new research questions and perspectives rather than the need to forgo further excavation at these sites. In recent excavations at the Wando-Welch site (38CH351) in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, the authors followed Trinkley’s call by applying new analytical techniques and research perspectives to a site containing a palimpsest of small Woodland-period shell middens (Marcoux et al. 2011). A particularly interesting characteristic of this site is the dominant presence of limestone-tempered pottery (defined as the Wando series) – a phenomenon that appears to be concentrated at sites in the Wando River basin on the northeast side of Charleston Harbor. While very similar in vessel form and surface treatment to the sand-tempered Late Woodland Santee and McClellanville series, we still do not have a solid grasp on the temporal range of Wando-series pottery. Furthermore, little has been done to characterize the “place” of shell midden sites bearing Wando-series pottery with respect to the settlement and subsistence strategies.
In this paper, we employ data generated from excavations at the Wando-Welch site and other sites in the area to take on these two issues. We begin by addressing the distinctive Wando-series limestone-tempered pottery – employing ceramic seriation and radiocarbon dating to define the chronological position of this series within the cultural history of the region. Then we consider seasonality data from faunal and botanical materials and use a number of estimation techniques to assess group size and occupation duration at the site. Finally, we explore temporal variability in coastal hunting and gathering lifeways by comparing certain archaeological indicators of sedentariness for the Wando-Welch site and a number of other coastal South Carolina sites. We conclude that the Wando phenomenon is part of a large-scale regional process of cultural change, when groups began to form more localized identities in response to increasing sedentism in the Late Woodland period.
In this paper, we explore how Mississippian mortuary practices could be treated using an alternat... more In this paper, we explore how Mississippian mortuary practices could be treated using an alternative approach to categorical models. Our perspective is derived from Actor-Network Theory or the sociology of translation (Callon 1986; Latour 1991, 1992, 2005; Law 1992, 1997, 1999). This moniker and its acronym (ANT) refer to an extremely diverse and dynamic set of premises and approaches that have a common foundation in a post-structural rejection of essentialist divisions and a shared view that the social consists of performed networks of human and non-human "actors." The challenge laid out by ANT is to "reassemble the social" by tracing out the associations between these heterogeneous entities rather than making the social a taken-for-granted starting point of analysis. After outlining actor-network theory, we then briefly sketch out what an alternative ANT-like approach to Mississippian archaeological contexts might look like when applied to local mortuary practices at the Moundville site in west-central Alabama.
This paper addresses prehistoric mortuary practices by combining the perspectives of the classic ... more This paper addresses prehistoric mortuary practices by combining the perspectives of the classic Binford-Saxe research program with new analytical methods. Both individual-level analyses and spatial analyses are conducted on mortuary data recovered from the Koger’s Island site, a Mississippian cemetery located within the middle Tennessee River Valley in northern Alabama. These analyses are used to test an ethnohistorically and archaeologically derived model of status and social structure in Mississippian societies. The results raise the possibility that the cemetery was spatially segregated into areas reserved for two corporate kin-groups.
The material remains of daily subsistence within Cherokee communities reflect strategies that hou... more The material remains of daily subsistence within Cherokee communities reflect strategies that households enacted while adapting to disruptions associated with European colonialism. Plant subsistence remains dating from the late Pre-Contact period through the end of the Revolutionary War (A. D. 1300–1783) reveal how Cherokee food producers/collectors fed their families as they navigated an increasingly uncertain landscape. Framing our analysis in terms of risk mitigation and future-discounting concepts from human behavioraial ecology, we argue that Cherokee households responded to increasing risk and uncertainty by shifting towards subsistence strategies that had more immediate rewards. Although Cherokee plant subsistence remains exhibit continuity in how people farmed and foraged, our study shows that households made strategic decisions to alter their food production and collection with respect to looming uncertainty. Archaeobotanical analysis from multiple sites spanning the Colonial period (ca. A. D. 1670-–1783) reveal a stepwise process of declining maize production, increased foraging, and overall diversification of the plant diet. This case underscores the relevance of concepts from human behavioral ecology to complex colonial situations by demonstrating that strategies of risk prevention and mitigation have applicability beyond ecological factors.
The study of glass trade beads has contributed much to our chronological understanding of the col... more The study of glass trade beads has contributed much to our chronological understanding of the colonial period in the Eastern Woodlands of North America. Indeed, this class of artifact has allowed archaeologists to identify and conduct research at important archaeological sites that never appeared in the European historical record. In the Southeast, the best chronological resolution established by current bead chronologies relates either to sixteenth- to mid-seventeenth-century Spanish-traded bead assemblages or eighteenth-century French-traded bead assemblages. There is a conspicuous gap, however, in glass bead chronologies associated with the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century English-Indian trade in the Southeast. In this paper, I address this gap by characterizing a large sample of trade beads (n = 35,309) found in individual mortuary assemblages recovered from a number of Southeastern Indian sites. This is the first time a regional synthesis of this scale has been conducted for the English colonial period in the Southeast. In order to begin to refine the bead chronology of this period, I also present the results of a quantitative seriation (using a technique known as correspondence analysis) of the same mortuary assemblages. While the results of this exploratory technique represent a preliminary stage in this process, they nevertheless identify a number of temporal trends that can be used to derive occupation date estimates for sites spanning the English colonial period in the Southeast (ca. 1607–1783).
In this chapter we explore how Mississippian
mortuary practices could be treated using an altern... more In this chapter we explore how Mississippian
mortuary practices could be treated using an alternative
approach to societal categorical models. Our perspective is derived from actor-network theory, or the sociology of translation. This moniker and its acronym (ANT) refer to an extremely diverse and dynamic set of premises and approaches that have a common foundation in a post-structural rejection of essentialist divisions and a shared view that the social consists of performed networks of human and nonhuman “actors.” The challenge laid out by ANT is to “reassemble the social” by tracing the associations between these heterogeneous entities rather than make the social a taken-for-granted starting point of analysis. After outlining actor-network theory, we briefly sketch out what an alternative ANT-like approach to Mississippian archaeological contexts might look like when applied to local
mortuary practices at the Moundville site in west central Alabama.
Past research has outlined the profound effects of the Carolina Indian deerskin and slave trade o... more Past research has outlined the profound effects of the Carolina Indian deerskin and slave trade on the cultural landscape of the Southeast during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. 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. Together, these processes forged a dynamic, even chaotic, landscape. In adapting to this new colonial landscape, many southeastern Indian groups employed social coalescence as a strategy to ameliorate population loss resulting from disease and slave raiding. In this paper, I compare the pottery assemblages from a number of contemporaneous Indian communities across the Southeast in order to explore how "improvised" communities were enacted by ethnically diverse remnant or refugee groups. I argue that patterns of diversity in these pottery assemblages reflect distinct potting traditions that can be used as material markers of this region-wide strategy of coalescence.
final report prepared for South Carolina Department of Transportation Columbia, South Carolina, Nov 2010
Between May 23 and June 3, 2005, Brockington and Associates, Inc., conducted archaeological data ... more Between May 23 and June 3, 2005, Brockington and Associates, Inc., conducted archaeological data recovery investigations at the Wood Pottery locus of site 38AK493/931 (Federal Aid Number: STP-UR02 [008], State File Number: 2.156B, PIN 30611) in Aiken County, South Carolina. These investigations were carried out
under the Treatment Plan approved by the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), the South Carolina Department of Transportation (SCDOT), and the South Carolina State Historic Preservation Office (SHPO) in fulfillment of the Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) among these parties. The two-part mitigation plan approved for 38AK493/931included (1) interpreting
and presenting historical information related to the
Thirteenth Street Industrial Complex in a series of
weatherproof signs placed along the nearby greenway
trail, and (2) undertaking data recovery excavations at
the Wood Pottery Company kiln locality.
The data recovery investigations carried out on
the Wood Pottery component of 38AK493/931 were
specifically aimed at recovering information related to
the production history of the Wood Pottery Company
and the technology employed in manufacturing. The
areas targeted for excavation totaled approximately 350
square meters (3,750 square feet) and corresponded
to the kilns and surrounding work space depicted on
the 1904 Sanborn map. The remnants of two kiln bases
and two subsurface pit features were encountered
during the project, and investigators recovered an
artifact sample totaling approximately 3,000 specimens.
The archaeological and archival research conducted
on the Wood Pottery Company indicated that it
was a very apt example of the changes associated
with the industrialization of southeastern stoneware
manufacturing. These changes included a shift to the use
of Albany slip instead of alkaline glaze, modifications to
basic vessel forms, and experimenting with new forms
of firing technology.
This study focuses on issues of culture contact and the materialization of identity through an ar... more This study focuses on issues of culture contact and the materialization of identity through an archaeological case study of a late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century Cherokee community located in eastern Tennessee. The English Contact period (ca. A.D. 1670-1740) was an extremely turbulent time for southeastern Indian groups marked by disease, warfare, and population movements. I examine how this chaotic period played out in the daily lives of Cherokee households. I use primary and secondary sources to develop an historical context for the English Contact period in the southeastern United States. I introduce a reliable way to identify English Contact period Cherokee occupations using pottery and glass trade bead data. I also consult artifact data in order to identify patterns associated with change and stability in the activities of daily life within Cherokee households.
I find that daily life in Cherokee households changed dramatically as they coped with the shifting social, political, and economic currents of the English Contact period. Based on variability in household pottery assemblages, I argue that this particular Cherokee community included households that migrated from geographically disparate Cherokee settlements. This type of social coalescence is documented among other Indian groups as a strategy employed to ameliorate population loss resulting from European contact. I also find that the architecture and spatial organization of Cherokee communities changed dramatically during the English Contact period. Specifically, the later communities lacked the highly structured spatial organization and long-lived residential areas that typified earlier Mississippian period communities. Ultimately, I argue that these changes too were strategic adaptations to the flexible and transient lifestyle required during the period.
Each fall, we teach a required seminar course for seniors. The two-fold goals of the course are t... more Each fall, we teach a required seminar course for seniors. The two-fold goals of the course are to have students engage with scholarly literature in a chosen area and to develop research skills for tracking down literature relevant to their thesis topics.` This fall, Dr. Marcoux designed the seminar around a relatively understudied topic - the archaeology of slavery in New England. He and seniors Ross Burr and McKenzie Johns began by watching a documentary called Traces of the Trade, which focuses on the descendants of the most prolific slave-trading family in U.S. history - the DeWolfs of Bristol, RI. The movie dealt with the difficult issue of confronting slavery as part of our shared past. Inspired by the movie, the class decided to build upon that work by synthesizing information about the role played by Rhode Islanders in the 18th century slave trade. After coming across an incredible online resource called The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database (http://www.slavevoyages.org/), Dr. Marcoux decided to use the project to also show how researchers can distill large amounts of information through compelling data visualizations (i.e., charts, plots, and maps). The preliminary results of the class's synthesis of data are presented in the visualizations attached to this post. At an annual research fair this spring, the students will present these results along with additional insights addressing the continued legacy of slavery in Rhode Island. Our hope is that in some small way our work will help to begin a much-needed conversation about this very difficult historical fact. Last week's call by Delaware Governor Jack Markell for an official apology for slavery highlights the timeliness of this issue. In a column that ran yesterday, The Boston Globe (https://goo.gl/NIwZKX) quotes Governor Markell as saying, “It’s essential, that we publicly and candidly and wholly recognize the everlasting damage of those sins.” We think our work will help to add context to a similar reckoning of Rhode Island's past.
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Books by Jon Marcoux
Marcoux studies the material remains of daily life in order to identify the strategies that households enacted while adapting to the social, political, and economic disruptions associated with European contact. The author focuses on households as the basic units of analysis because these represent the most fundamental and pervasive unit of economic and social production in the archaeological record. His investigations show how the daily lives of Cherokee households changed dramatically as they coped with the shifting social, political, and economic currents of the times. He demonstrates that the community excavated at the Townsend site was formed by immigrant households who came together from geographically disparate and ethnically distinct Cherokee settlements as a way to ameliorate population losses. He also explores changes in community and household patterning, showing how the spatial organization of the Townsend community became less formal and how households became more transient compared to communities predating contact with Europeans. From this evidence, Marcoux concludes that these changes reflect a broader strategic shift to a more flexible lifestyle that would have aided Cherokee households in negotiating the social, political, and economic uncertainty of the period.
Journal Articles & Book Chapters by Jon Marcoux
revolution happening within historic preservation.
The field experienced a steady increase
in digital technologies to document the
historic built environment. Many practitioners
now have access to a suite of documentation
methodologies that employ digital-based
equipment and software (e.g., light detection
and ranging [LiDAR], ground-penetrating
radar [GPR], high-density laser scanning,
digital photogrammetry). This access to new
techniques has led to a shift in some of the
research questions being investigated and
the scale of the investigations. In this paper,
we present case studies from our work in
Charleston, SC, highlighting the application of
digital technologies to the documentation of
the historic built environment at two scales—
the individual building and the landscape.
polities has long been recognized. There have been few studies, however, that have examined these differences in any detail. We offer a comparison between Moundville and Cahokia, two of the largest and most complex Mississippian polities in the greater Southeast. Well-demarcated differences in settlement patterns, community patterns, and craft production reveal important organizational dissimilarities between Moundville and Cahokia during the early Mississippian period. By highlighting these differences we hope to problematize the overuse of societal types as a means of analyzing and comparing Mississippian polities.
the rise of political complexity as the result of elite strategies
to control access to exotic, finely crafted display goods. This
concept is so ingrained in our current understandings of
social, economic, and political life in Mississippian chiefdoms
that it has become part of the very definition of ‘‘Mississippian.’’
The political economy of the Moundville chiefdom, in
particular, has long been associated with the prestige goods
concept and a highly centralized system of crafting and long distance exchange. In this paper, I bring together extant data
from past excavations at Moundville and surrounding sites
in order to test the current model of display goods production
and circulation during the peak of the chiefdom’s power (ca.
A.D. 1300–1450). I find that while the production and
circulation of display goods is overwhelmingly associated
with elites at the Moundville center, the scale of local display
goods production and the quantity of nonlocal display goods
relative to locally made display goods at the site does not
match the expectations generated by the current model of Moundville’s political economy.
In this paper, we employ data generated from excavations at the Wando-Welch site and other sites in the area to take on these two issues. We begin by addressing the distinctive Wando-series limestone-tempered pottery – employing ceramic seriation and radiocarbon dating to define the chronological position of this series within the cultural history of the region. Then we consider seasonality data from faunal and botanical materials and use a number of estimation techniques to assess group size and occupation duration at the site. Finally, we explore temporal variability in coastal hunting and gathering lifeways by comparing certain archaeological indicators of sedentariness for the Wando-Welch site and a number of other coastal South Carolina sites. We conclude that the Wando phenomenon is part of a large-scale regional process of cultural change, when groups began to form more localized identities in response to increasing sedentism in the Late Woodland period.
mortuary practices could be treated using an alternative
approach to societal categorical models. Our perspective is derived from actor-network theory, or the sociology of translation. This moniker and its acronym (ANT) refer to an extremely diverse and dynamic set of premises and approaches that have a common foundation in a post-structural rejection of essentialist divisions and a shared view that the social consists of performed networks of human and nonhuman “actors.” The challenge laid out by ANT is to “reassemble the social” by tracing the associations between these heterogeneous entities rather than make the social a taken-for-granted starting point of analysis. After outlining actor-network theory, we briefly sketch out what an alternative ANT-like approach to Mississippian archaeological contexts might look like when applied to local
mortuary practices at the Moundville site in west central Alabama.
Papers by Jon Marcoux
Marcoux studies the material remains of daily life in order to identify the strategies that households enacted while adapting to the social, political, and economic disruptions associated with European contact. The author focuses on households as the basic units of analysis because these represent the most fundamental and pervasive unit of economic and social production in the archaeological record. His investigations show how the daily lives of Cherokee households changed dramatically as they coped with the shifting social, political, and economic currents of the times. He demonstrates that the community excavated at the Townsend site was formed by immigrant households who came together from geographically disparate and ethnically distinct Cherokee settlements as a way to ameliorate population losses. He also explores changes in community and household patterning, showing how the spatial organization of the Townsend community became less formal and how households became more transient compared to communities predating contact with Europeans. From this evidence, Marcoux concludes that these changes reflect a broader strategic shift to a more flexible lifestyle that would have aided Cherokee households in negotiating the social, political, and economic uncertainty of the period.
revolution happening within historic preservation.
The field experienced a steady increase
in digital technologies to document the
historic built environment. Many practitioners
now have access to a suite of documentation
methodologies that employ digital-based
equipment and software (e.g., light detection
and ranging [LiDAR], ground-penetrating
radar [GPR], high-density laser scanning,
digital photogrammetry). This access to new
techniques has led to a shift in some of the
research questions being investigated and
the scale of the investigations. In this paper,
we present case studies from our work in
Charleston, SC, highlighting the application of
digital technologies to the documentation of
the historic built environment at two scales—
the individual building and the landscape.
polities has long been recognized. There have been few studies, however, that have examined these differences in any detail. We offer a comparison between Moundville and Cahokia, two of the largest and most complex Mississippian polities in the greater Southeast. Well-demarcated differences in settlement patterns, community patterns, and craft production reveal important organizational dissimilarities between Moundville and Cahokia during the early Mississippian period. By highlighting these differences we hope to problematize the overuse of societal types as a means of analyzing and comparing Mississippian polities.
the rise of political complexity as the result of elite strategies
to control access to exotic, finely crafted display goods. This
concept is so ingrained in our current understandings of
social, economic, and political life in Mississippian chiefdoms
that it has become part of the very definition of ‘‘Mississippian.’’
The political economy of the Moundville chiefdom, in
particular, has long been associated with the prestige goods
concept and a highly centralized system of crafting and long distance exchange. In this paper, I bring together extant data
from past excavations at Moundville and surrounding sites
in order to test the current model of display goods production
and circulation during the peak of the chiefdom’s power (ca.
A.D. 1300–1450). I find that while the production and
circulation of display goods is overwhelmingly associated
with elites at the Moundville center, the scale of local display
goods production and the quantity of nonlocal display goods
relative to locally made display goods at the site does not
match the expectations generated by the current model of Moundville’s political economy.
In this paper, we employ data generated from excavations at the Wando-Welch site and other sites in the area to take on these two issues. We begin by addressing the distinctive Wando-series limestone-tempered pottery – employing ceramic seriation and radiocarbon dating to define the chronological position of this series within the cultural history of the region. Then we consider seasonality data from faunal and botanical materials and use a number of estimation techniques to assess group size and occupation duration at the site. Finally, we explore temporal variability in coastal hunting and gathering lifeways by comparing certain archaeological indicators of sedentariness for the Wando-Welch site and a number of other coastal South Carolina sites. We conclude that the Wando phenomenon is part of a large-scale regional process of cultural change, when groups began to form more localized identities in response to increasing sedentism in the Late Woodland period.
mortuary practices could be treated using an alternative
approach to societal categorical models. Our perspective is derived from actor-network theory, or the sociology of translation. This moniker and its acronym (ANT) refer to an extremely diverse and dynamic set of premises and approaches that have a common foundation in a post-structural rejection of essentialist divisions and a shared view that the social consists of performed networks of human and nonhuman “actors.” The challenge laid out by ANT is to “reassemble the social” by tracing the associations between these heterogeneous entities rather than make the social a taken-for-granted starting point of analysis. After outlining actor-network theory, we briefly sketch out what an alternative ANT-like approach to Mississippian archaeological contexts might look like when applied to local
mortuary practices at the Moundville site in west central Alabama.
under the Treatment Plan approved by the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), the South Carolina Department of Transportation (SCDOT), and the South Carolina State Historic Preservation Office (SHPO) in fulfillment of the Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) among these parties. The two-part mitigation plan approved for 38AK493/931included (1) interpreting
and presenting historical information related to the
Thirteenth Street Industrial Complex in a series of
weatherproof signs placed along the nearby greenway
trail, and (2) undertaking data recovery excavations at
the Wood Pottery Company kiln locality.
The data recovery investigations carried out on
the Wood Pottery component of 38AK493/931 were
specifically aimed at recovering information related to
the production history of the Wood Pottery Company
and the technology employed in manufacturing. The
areas targeted for excavation totaled approximately 350
square meters (3,750 square feet) and corresponded
to the kilns and surrounding work space depicted on
the 1904 Sanborn map. The remnants of two kiln bases
and two subsurface pit features were encountered
during the project, and investigators recovered an
artifact sample totaling approximately 3,000 specimens.
The archaeological and archival research conducted
on the Wood Pottery Company indicated that it
was a very apt example of the changes associated
with the industrialization of southeastern stoneware
manufacturing. These changes included a shift to the use
of Albany slip instead of alkaline glaze, modifications to
basic vessel forms, and experimenting with new forms
of firing technology.
out in the daily lives of Cherokee households. I use primary and secondary sources to develop an historical context for the English Contact period in the southeastern United
States. I introduce a reliable way to identify English Contact period Cherokee occupations using pottery and glass trade bead data. I also consult artifact data in order
to identify patterns associated with change and stability in the activities of daily life
within Cherokee households.
I find that daily life in Cherokee households changed dramatically as they coped with the shifting social, political, and economic currents of the English Contact period. Based on variability in household pottery assemblages, I argue that this particular
Cherokee community included households that migrated from geographically disparate Cherokee settlements. This type of social coalescence is documented among other Indian
groups as a strategy employed to ameliorate population loss resulting from European contact. I also find that the architecture and spatial organization of Cherokee communities changed dramatically during the English Contact period. Specifically, the
later communities lacked the highly structured spatial organization and long-lived residential areas that typified earlier Mississippian period communities. Ultimately, I argue that these changes too were strategic adaptations to the flexible and transient lifestyle required during the period.
This fall, Dr. Marcoux designed the seminar around a relatively understudied topic - the archaeology of slavery in New England. He and seniors Ross Burr and McKenzie Johns began by watching a documentary called Traces of the Trade, which focuses on the descendants of the most prolific slave-trading family in U.S. history - the DeWolfs of Bristol, RI. The movie dealt with the difficult issue of confronting slavery as part of our shared past. Inspired by the movie, the class decided to build upon that work by synthesizing information about the role played by Rhode Islanders in the 18th century slave trade.
After coming across an incredible online resource called The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database (http://www.slavevoyages.org/), Dr. Marcoux decided to use the project to also show how researchers can distill large amounts of information through compelling data visualizations (i.e., charts, plots, and maps). The preliminary results of the class's synthesis of data are presented in the visualizations attached to this post.
At an annual research fair this spring, the students will present these results along with additional insights addressing the continued legacy of slavery in Rhode Island.
Our hope is that in some small way our work will help to begin a much-needed conversation about this very difficult historical fact. Last week's call by Delaware Governor Jack Markell for an official apology for slavery highlights the timeliness of this issue. In a column that ran yesterday, The Boston Globe (https://goo.gl/NIwZKX) quotes Governor Markell as saying, “It’s essential, that we publicly and candidly and wholly recognize the everlasting damage of those sins.” We think our work will help to add context to a similar reckoning of Rhode Island's past.