John Henshaw, William & Mary
Indigenous ceramics tell an interesting story of the last few thousand years of North American
history prior to the arrival of Europeans on the continent. From the beginning of the discipline,
archaeologists have used the pottery of the past to understand who people were and their daily activities. From the food they ate, their belief systems, to the materials to which they had
access, ceramics can reveal a lot about Native American life.
One aspect of Indigenous ceramics that researchers have studied for decades focuses the impressions made on the surface of vessels by cord-wrapped paddles and dowels. Indigenous craftspeople produced twisted cords from plant or animal fibers, which were then wrapped around some kind of implement and used to create decoration on the exterior of pottery. This decoration technique was commonly used by people throughout the Potomac River drainage in Maryland and Virginia. During the Late Woodland period (AD 900 - 1600), many of the common types of pottery found by archaeologists were decorated in this way. While the cords themselves have long since decomposed, the impressions left on ceramics endure.
Cordage impressions are incredibly useful for archaeologists because they represent a very durable expression of how people were connected in the past. It has the added benefit of only existing in two variations: either twisted clockwise, known as s-twist, or counter- clockwise, known as z-twist (Figure 1). In much the same way that parents teach their children
a particular method for tying their shoes, which then gets passed along to subsequent generations, cordage is taught to apprentice potters and passed down through generations. Within a particular culture, most people will produce cordage twisted in the same direction and that practice will persist through time within the members of the culture. Given this consistency, cordage can then be used to see interaction in the past.
Around the year AD 1400, a group of people migrated into the Potomac River drainage and settled villages near local communities. This new group of people, known to archaeologists as the Keyser complex, also decorated their pottery with cordage impressions, but tempered their ceramics with freshwater mussel shell and they twisted their cordage in the opposite direction. However, by studying the cordage twist direction from ceramics at a number of sites throughout the Potomac drainage myself and several colleagues have identified an unusual pattern. Many sites associated with Keyser show mixed distributions of twist direction, sometimes with a near even split. This is atypical, considering that most types of pottery heavily favor one direction over the other. The unusual pattern occurs at many Keyser villages, as well as some contemporary non-Keyser villages. The reasons for this anomaly are intriguing and point to very complicated interactions.
This ceramic study revealed that communities along the Potomac River were building important relationships between different cultures. To build alliances and enduring relationships, people were choosing to marry into communities of the other culture, moving
into the new village and adopting the practices of their new home. The presence of these people is evident in the mixed twist directions. While these potters began to decorate and construct their pottery according to the traditions of their new community of potters, they continued to twist cords in the same direction due to muscle memory. These marriages connected the two towns and allowed for trade and other interactions to happen. Instead of fighting or isolating from one another, which can often happen when cultures meet during
uncertain times, ceramics show that these communities chose a more sustainable path forward when met with larger populations and the arrival of new settlements nearby.
The Potomac River between AD 1400 - 1600 became an eventful frontier. Ceramics can reveal a lot about what people did and were thinking during those centuries. Since ceramics can show patterns of both change and continuity, archaeologists can discover a lot about how people chose to interact with one another in the past through studying ancient pottery. In the case of the Potomac River, thousands of sherds of pottery reveal the threads that wove together a variety of cultures during a time of change and new circumstances.
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