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The Swift Creek Gift

The Swift Creek Gift

Vessel Exchange on the Atlantic Coast

by Neill J. Wallis

264 Pages, 6.12 x 9.25 x 0.70 in, 44 Illustrations

Paperback
9780817356293
Published: February 2011

$29.95

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eBook
9780817384845
Published: March 2011

$29.95

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Description
Contents
Authors

Assesses Woodland Period interactions using technofunctional, mineralogical, and chemical data derived from Swift Creek Complicated Stamped sherds

A unique dataset for studying past social interactions comes from Swift Creek Complicated Stamped pottery that linked sites throughout much of the Eastern Woodlands but that was primarily distributed over the lower Southeast. Although connections have been demonstrated, their significance has remained enigmatic. How and why were apparently utilitarian vessels, or the wooden tools used to make them, distributed widely across the landscape?

This book assesses Woodland Period interactions using technofunctional, mineralogical, and chemical data derived from Swift Creek Complicated Stamped sherds whose provenience is fully documented from both mortuary mounds and village middens along the Atlantic coast. Together, these data demonstrate formal and functional differences between mortuary and village assemblages along with the nearly exclusive occurrence of foreign-made cooking pots in mortuary contexts. The Swift Creek Gift provides insight into the unique workings of gift exchanges to transform seemingly mundane materials like cooking pots into powerful tools of commemoration, affiliation, and ownership.

Contents

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1. What is a Gift?

2. The Swift Creek Cultures

3. Cultural History and Archaeological Overview

4. Instrumental Neutron Activation Analysis: Patterns of Swift Creek Interaction

5. Petrographic Analysis: Patterns of Swift Creek Interaction

6. The Form, Technology, and Function of Swift Creek Pottery

7. The Swift Creek Gift

References