Aboriginal intersite settlement system change in the northeastern North Carolina piedmont during the contact period [microform]
- Bib ID:
- 3283353
- Format:
- Book and Microform
- Author:
- Simpkins, Daniel L
- Description:
- 565 p.
- Summary:
-
Archaeological and ethnohistorical data have been examined to determine how Indian settlement locations in the northeastern North Carolina Piedmont adjusted to adapt to the disruptive arrival of Europeans. Archaeological site locations are examined in relation to environmental data, particularly stream drainage characteristics; and according to site size, period of occupation, and archaeological phase to characterize changing settlement systems. Indians of the area included both Siouan and Iroquoian groups. Under the pervasive influences of depopulation and ethnic amalgamation, Contact period settlements became concentrated in areas that had been favored for Late Prehistoric settlements. These locations included wide floodplains often associated with confluences of large tributaries.
Clustering of archaeological components misled previous researchers who designated the Late Prehistoric sites, located in the vicinity of smaller, less readily identified Contact period sites, as villages named in the ethnohistoric literature. The Eno, Shoccoree, Adshusheer, and Occaneechi were probably Iroquoian affiliated groups with cultural ties to the northeast rather than with Eastern Siouan tribes. The Sara, Saponi, Tutelo, and Keyauwee were Siouan groups with cultural affiliations to the north, in the case of the Saponi and Tutelo, and to the southwest in the case of the Keyauwee and probably the Sara. The Sissipahaw may represent a group resulting from amalgamation of Siouan and Iroquoian groups beginning in the Late Prehistoric period.
The southwestern movement of Iroquoian groups began prior to European contact induced by their marginal position among the emerging Powhatan Confederacy of Tidewater region Algonquians and the Iroquoian Tuscarora of the Interior Coastal Plain to the south. This migratory trend intensified with the settlement of Jamestown and growth of the Virginian colony. The traditional model, dating to the last century, of mass migration of Indian groups out of the region as corporate entities in the Late Contact period is supplemented with a model in which some groups dispersed into small kin groups throughout the region. These latter groups were of more complex racial ancestry and more acculturated than the Indian groups who migrated from the area. In recent years, many of these smaller groups have recovered in population and now claim Indian ancestry.
- Notes:
-
- (UnM)AAI9309948
- Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 53-11, Section: A, page: 3965.
- Directors: Richard A. Yarnell; H. Trawick Ward.
- Thesis (Ph.D.)--The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1992.
- Reproduction:
- Microfiche. Ann Arbor, Mich.: University Microfilms International.
- Subject:
- Other authors/contributors:
- The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
- Copyright:
-
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- Material type:
- Literary, dramatic or musical work
- Published status:
- Unpublished
- Creation date:
- 1992
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