Under the guidance of Dr. Margaret Beck, Sarah Trabert will analyze ceramics from Dismal River aspect sites in Colorado and Wyoming and submit ceramic sherds from Nebraska and Kansas for sourcing analyses. The Dismal River aspect dates to A.D. 1675-1725 and these people lived at an important crossroads between the Great Plains and the U.S. Southwest, where goods, technology, social practices, and people moved between Native American societies. Dismal River aspect groups also lived during a time of economic, political, and social instability following the European colonization of the Americas. It is well known that Native Americans in direct contact with Europeans experienced epidemic diseases, political and economic disruption, forced social change, and demographic expansion and collapse. What is less understood is how far the wave of these effects spread beyond the borders of European controlled colonies. To escape Spanish oppression, Puebloan people from Northern New Mexico moved out of their homelands and brought their own social practices and worldviews with them when they interacted with Great Plains peoples such as Dismal River aspect groups. The analysis of Dismal River aspect culinary technology and resource acquisition will reveal if and how Spanish colonization led to changes in ceramic production and foodways on the Great Plains. Thus, this research will contribute new and important knowledge on the indirect impact that colonization has on material culture and social identities.

This research addresses the worldwide effects of colonialism beyond the core colonized areas, the regional impact of Spanish colonialism in North America, methods of defining social identity archaeologically during the protohistoric and early historic periods, and details of Dismal River aspect foodways and adaptations. It also emphasizes the importance of the protohistoric period for studying the emergence of new social identities produced by Spanish activity and Puebloan population movement out of the Southwest. The archaeological record during this volatile period, although quite complicated and ephemeral, can inform researchers and descendant groups alike as to how Native peoples accepted, adapted to, and resisted the profound social, political, and economic changes associated with the colonization of the North American continent.

The effects of Spanish colonialism on Native American groups outside of the core area of contact is an understudied part of Native North American history. Information regarding the social identity and ancestry of Dismal River aspect groups may be of interest to descendent communities today who are striving to regain access to land and a voice in how Dismal River aspect mortuary remains are handled. The results of this study will be disseminated in a series of publications and will be available in detail through a digital archive for archaeological records, allowing scholars access to the final interpretations and raw data. These results will be shared with the public institutions where the collections are housed and with the individual state historical societies so that the information can be disseminated to the public through displays of Dismal River aspect material culture. Sharing ideas with museums, historical societies, local archaeologists, descendent groups, and the public will ensure that more is known about the emergence of new and resilient social identities among Native American groups, and how these people resisted colonial dominance and cultural extinction during the protohistoric period.

Project Report

The European colonization of North America profoundly altered the lives of Native peoples, both directly and indirectly. Some Puebloan people escaped Spanish control and military force in the 17th century by leaving their natal communities in northern New Mexico and joining other communities further from colonized areas. One small group of Puebloan migrants traveled as far as western Kansas, joined the Native Plains people already there, and built a pueblo (known as the Scott County Pueblo or 14SC1). This award funded research focused on how the lives of that Plains group, an ancestral Apachean population known to archaeologists as the Dismal River culture (AD 1600-1750), changed after they welcomed Puebloan migrants into their territory. The NSF funds made it possible for us to analyze the ceramics from 43 Dismal River sites curated in facilities in Kansas, Nebraska, Colorado, and Wyoming. This analysis also included sending ceramic samples to labs specializing in compositional analyses. These compositional analyses help describe what the ceramics looked like and how they may have been used. They also determine the mineral and chemical makeup of the ceramics, which provides more specific data on where they were made (such as in northern New Mexico or western Kansas). Pottery vessels provide insight into the identity of the people living at these sites (Dismal River or Puebloan), and illustrate how far Puebloan migrants or their practices and technology spread across the Great Plains. The macroscopic and compositional analysis of Dismal River ceramics indicates that within the study area, Puebloan migrants and their practices were confined to western Kansas. These western Kansas sites also produced a group of ceramics that appeared to be made in New Mexico, but their mineral composition indicate that they were actually made on the Central Plains. Evidence of Puebloan manufacturing practices, foodways, and locally made copies of Puebloan ceramics indicate that Puebloan potters were living at several sites in western Kansas, interacting with Dismal River people there, and significantly changing the nature, composition, and practices of this Plains community. The Scott County Pueblo (14SC1), one of the most important and well-known archaeological sites in the state of Kansas and arguably the entire region, was not an isolated site. This new research rewrites our understanding of the complex community that formed in western Kansas as Puebloan and Dismal River people came together to create a new community that was neither strictly Puebloan nor Dismal River, but a mixture of both. Puebloan potters, specifically Puebloan women, traveled over 400 miles to western Kansas to settle in an area where they could maintain and preserve culturally significant practices and beliefs. Our research indicates that these Puebloan women passed on important values and practices to their children surrounding how ceramic vessels should be made and how food should be prepared and consumed. This next generation, of mixed cultural heritage, then continued living in the area until the mid-18th century. These results contribute to broader archaeological understandings of the indirect effects of European colonialism on Native Americans, how Native peoples negotiated these effects, the construction of multicultural communities, and the nature of social change and identity during tumultuous periods. These results are also of significance to descendant communities, specifically Puebloan communities in New Mexico, because our research supports oral traditions and historical accounts of ties between their ancestors and sites in western Kansas. Issues related to migration and cultural affiliation are especially important to many Native American groups today and this new research complicates previous archaeological interpretations of these sites, giving new evidence to support some Puebloan oral histories regarding the migration of their ancestors. All of the data collected during this project have been made publically available through the online archaeology database known as "t-DAR" or The Digital Archaeological Record. All results are described in Trabert’s dissertation, and copies of this document are available through the University of Iowa and the ProQuest database. Copies were also sent to all state historical societies, institutions, and museums involved in the project. Publications in professional journals are forthcoming and these will be shared with descendant communities.

Project Start
Project End
Budget Start
2013-06-15
Budget End
2015-05-31
Support Year
Fiscal Year
2013
Total Cost
$21,830
Indirect Cost
Name
University of Iowa
Department
Type
DUNS #
City
Iowa City
State
IA
Country
United States
Zip Code
52242