No Experience, No Problem: Exploring the Role of Emulative Learning in Pipe Production

ABSTRACT

Building on recent work by Braun [2012. “Petrography as a Technique for Investigating Iroquoian Ceramic Production and Smoking Rituals.” Journal of Archaeological Science 39: 1–10, 2015. “Ritual, Materiality, and Memory in an Iroquoian Village.” PhD diss., University of Toronto] and Smith and Major [2010. Ceramic Smoking Pipes.” In Report on the Salvage Excavation of the Antrex Site (AjGv-38): City of Mississauga, Regional Municipality of Peel, Ontario, 78–91. Toronto: Archeological Services.], this investigation examines the potential for emulative learning in Late Woodland Iroquoian pipe manufacture. A comparative analysis of experimental data and pipe specimens recovered from the Antrex site highlights the considerable morphological variability in both assemblages, and suggests that pipe manufacture at Antrex may have been the product of emulative adoption guided by the visible aspects of ceramic convention.

KEYWORDS:

• Emulation learning
• Native American
• Iroquois
• archaeology
• smoking
• pipe production
• craft production
• Ontario
• Antrex

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Christopher Ball is a PhD candidate in archaeology at the University of Toronto focusing on Late Woodland Iroquoian life-ways in southern Ontario.

Daniel Howard Kwan is a PhD candidate at the University of Toronto studying ceramic petrography in China.

ORCID

Christopher Ball http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1867-3871

Additional information

Funding

This study was supported by grants from the University of Toronto School of Graduate Studies and Anthropology Department. The support and constructive suggestions raised by David G. Smith, Gregory Braun, and Sarah Williams were greatly appreciated. Space and technical support at the ROM were generously granted by Kiron C. Mukherjee and Sam Laforet.