A refinement of post-contact Choctaw ceramic chronology

ABSTRACT

Over the course of the eighteenth century, the Choctaws of present-day east-central Mississippi and west Alabama experienced widespread changes in trade relations and alliances, subsistence practices, and sociopolitical arrangements as a result of intensifying European colonization of their homeland. Our ability to study these changes across the homeland requires accurate and detailed ceramic chronologies. Recent excavations of ten features at two eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Choctaw house sites produced artifacts suitable for seriation and samples for Bayesian analysis of radiometric dates. The results are compared with Choctaw ceramics excavated from secure contexts at Fort Tombecbé to refine our baseline understanding of Choctaw ceramic chronology.

KEYWORDS:

• Choctaw
• ceramic chronology
• seriation
• Bayesian
• Fort Tombecbé

Acknowledgments

The authors wish to acknowledge the significant role of the Choctaw people in Southeastern history and culture. We also are deeply appreciative of the attentions of Tony Boudreaux and two anonymous reviewers, whose comments improved the article in numerous ways.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The authors confirm that the data supporting the findings of this study are available within the article.

Note on the contributors

Keith J. Little is a senior archaeologist at Tennessee Valley Archaeological Research. His primary research interests are in southeastern North America where he studies the consequences of early European interactions with Native Americans and the impacts of climate change on precontact populations.

Ashley A. Dumas is an associate professor of anthropology at the University of West Alabama. She conducts research at Fort Tombecbé and Alabama salt springs.

Hunter B. Johnson is president of Tennessee Valley Archaeological Research. He has worked extensively in Alabama, Mississippi, and Tennessee, and his research interests include Middle Woodland, Mississippian, and postcontact Indians in the Southeast.

Travis Rael serves as an archaeologist at Tennessee Valley Archaeological Research. His research interests include precontact ceramic technologies, quaternary landscape use and modification, and applications of remote sensing methods.

Notes

1 Descriptions and defining attributes of the ceramic types and varieties are presented in Little et al. (2016:269–303).

2 Glass bead type numbers are based on Kidd and Kidd’s (1970) typology.

3 Alabama River Appliqué is not a typical type found at Choctaw sites. According to Blitz (1985), only one Alabama River Appliqué sherd was included in the collections he examined from multiple Choctaw sites in east-central Mississippi.

4 The authors acknowledge that there may have been other reasons for the increased number of blue beads in Feature 464, but availability certainly cannot be discounted as one of them.

5 Notably, Fatherland Incised var. Okatibbee displays the same design that prevails in Kemper Combed specimens.