Abstract:
This thesis is a morphological and functional analysis of pottery that explores whether technological changes in pottery reflect the transition from hunter-gatherer societies to complex agricultural ones that occurred circa A.D. 1070 in the Black Warrior Valley of Alabama. During the West Jefferson phase (A.D. 1020-1120) of the Late Woodland period, indigenous hunter-gatherer groups lived contemporaneously with, yet peripheral to, the earliest Mississippian agriculturalists and were beginning to adopt some Mississippian traits, including shell-tempered vessels of a shape known as the “standard Mississippian jar.” Although it is well known that Mississippian lifeways gradually replaced those of hunter-gatherers, the processes by which this transition took place are largely unclear. By morphologically and functionally analyzing vessels of this transitional period, this study examines how, or if, technological changes in pottery reflect the adoption and intensification of agriculture by hunter-gatherers. Specifically, it examines whether West Jefferson pottery, the majority of which consists of cooking vessels, reflects a traditional nut-processing technology or if it instead indicates that indigenous groups were essentially copying Mississippian vessel forms and maize-processing technologies. The supplemental file includes all raw data collected during the study.
