Enacting Gender and Kinship around a Large Outdoor Firepit at the Seneca Iroquois Townley-Read Site,...

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Kurt A. Jordan

Enacting Gender and Kinship around a Large Outdoor Fire Pit at the Seneca Iroquois Townley-Read Site, 1715–1754ABSTRACT

This article examines a single large outdoor fire pit (Feature 5) from the ca. 1715–1754 Seneca Iroquois Townley-Read site, exploring the untidy intersection of contemporary gender theory, archaeological remains (encompassing artifacts, subsis-tence remains, features, spatial relations, and contemporaneous mortuary data from the region), and normative conceptions of Iroquois gender roles. While many social categories of people presumably circulated through the feature area, women were consistently present and likely controlled most of the work that took place. The Feature 5 assemblage suggests that Seneca women smoked pipes and worked brass, were involved in complex sets of tasks and “changes of hands” that contributed to subsistence and trade, and labored and demonstrated control over resources and personnel in a way that was not in any sense “private.” The spatial separation of gendered areas of control was one way in which both Seneca kinship and gender identities were performed and reproduced.

Introduction

Recent studies in Iroquoian1 archaeology have routinely and effectively used gender as a major vector of analysis (Prezzano 1997; Scott 2003; Bursey 2004; Clark 2004; Williams-Shuker 2005; Jordan 2008; Allen 2009, 2010; Knapp 2009; Perrelli 2009; Braun 2011). However, many of these works treat gender categories as unproblematic, stable, and realized relatively easily, and also remain centered on what archae-ologist Rosemary Joyce (2008:78) terms a “two-sex/two-gender” model. As a consequence, the Iroquoian archaeological literature remains quite disconnected from contemporary gender theory, which understands gender as a social process produced through individual performances, interactions, and negotiations with others (Butler 1990, 1993); for archaeological applications, see Joyce (2000, 2004, 2008), Meskell (2002), and Voss (2005, 2008a). This theoretical orientation stresses that socially conceived gender has a

complex relation to biological sex, that this relationship differs across cultures and through time, and that biological sex may not have been as fundamental a structuring principle in past societies as it is among modern groups. Joyce (2008:45) notes that “we cannot start out with an assumption that people in the past placed the same emphases on certain biological experiences as [present-day] people”; to do so runs the risk of presentism and ethnocentrism.

Connecting Iroquoian archaeology and contem-porary gender theory is a worthy, if analytically difficult, endeavor. I envision three main ways to make the connection. The first mode, based primarily on textual and oral history research, would attempt to deepen understanding of Iro-quoian gender concepts on their own terms and complicate too-quick equations of Iroquoian and modern Western gender categories and modes of relating. Feminist scholar María Lugones (2010:758 n11) notes that even the simple trans-lation of indigenous terms into “women” and “men” strips away local understandings in favor of a dichotomous Western model, embedding discussion in what she terms the “coloniality of gender.” Detailed scholarship on Iroquoian gender concepts (building on, for example, Mann [2000] and Venables [2010]) will reveal alternative ways to conceive of gender and gender relations that will improve scholarly interpretations and critique contemporary ste-reotypes. Ideally, studies in this vein should acknowledge the fact that indigenous systems manifest gender ideologies of their own.2

A second approach would use textual and archaeological records to search for alterna-tive Iroquois genders. At present, there is scant ethnographic evidence for formalized third or other genders (sometimes referred to in North American contexts as “two-spirits” or berdaches) among the Iroquois. Callender and Kochems’s (1983:446) review of American Indian third gen-ders concludes that it would be “improbable ... that reports as detailed as those for the Iroquois and covering so long a period would never have mentioned berdaches if these had existed.” However, scattered references in textual sources suggest that the issue of alternative Iroquois

Historical Archaeology, 2014, 48(2):61–90.Permission to reprint required.Accepted for publication 11 August 2013.

62 HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY 48(2)

genders deserves further concentrated study. For example, the Jesuit Joseph François Lafitau noted in 1724 that Iroquois women “have their orators who speak for them in public councils. Sometimes also they choose an orator among the men who speaks as if he were a woman and sustains that role” (Lafitau 1974:298–299). A French captive also noted the presence of “women in men’s dress” within a 1,400-person Iroquois military force on its way to attack French settlements on the St. Lawrence River in summer 1689 (Parmenter 2010:206).

Archaeologically, one of the best ways to examine alternative genders and other social categories is through thorough analysis of mor-tuary practices (Whelan 1991; Hollimon 2000; Prine 2000; Loren 2001; Rubertone 2001). At first glance, Iroquoian mortuary evidence reveals few examples of human burials with cloth-ing or grave goods that seem to contradict or render ambiguous their biological sex. When I queried Lorraine Saunders, a bioarchaeologist with substantial experience in Iroquoian mortu-ary archaeology, she was only able to name a single example, a female skeleton with an unborn fetus, buried with a native-made ceramic smoking pipe (typically viewed as a “man’s” artifact) at the ca. 1696–1720 Onondaga Pen site (Lorraine Saunders 2011, elec. comm.). The Pen site also contained the grave of two adult males, buried with their hands touching (Weiskotten 2000). However, thorough work on the archaeology of gender requires a concentrated analytical vantage on social categories, and although there have been numerous studies of Iroquoian mortuary behavior, social categorization has not been their focus. Expanded research along these lines cer-tainly would be possible; for example, the fairly complete sets of field notes from thousands of Seneca graves, most excavated by avocational archaeologists prior to 1985, could provide the database for study of Seneca social categories over time. On the other hand, a mortuary-based research program could prove politically conten-tious in an era when the archaeology of indig-enous pasts relies heavily on consultation and cooperation with descendant communities (many of whom, including the Senecas, are strongly opposed to burial excavations), and when much mortuary material has been repatriated.

In this article I contribute to a third approach that complicates categories through detailed

consideration of the dynamics of daily practice in particular locations. The approach is moti-vated by archaeologist Susan Prezzano’s (1997) critique of the state of archaeological study of Iroquoian gender relations. She notes that scholars commonly reproduced depictions of aggressive Iroquois men and socially powerful Iroquois women, but rarely assessed their claims through microscale analyses of domestic life. In particular, Prezzano (1997:95–96) stresses that scholars treated Iroquois women’s roles as timeless and subordinate:

[T]he consequences of women’s actions are never explored, but are presented as a cultural given. What women do forms the background for the actions of men. ... Ironically, it is women in their role as pot-ters and as captives, not as economic providers or maintainers of the lineage, who are most visible to Iroquois archaeologists.

Prezzano (1997:97) calls for additional research on the historical dynamics of domestic life, noting that the “acknowledged women’s arena of hearth, house, village, and fields was not characterized by stasis, but ... was the center of fundamental transformations.”

In American Indian contexts in particular, uncritical reproduction of timeless “two-sex/two-gender” models for social life appear to be closely tied to the normative conceptions of gender roles presented in ethnographic and ethnohistorical writing. In Iroquois contexts, anthropological emphasis on normative gender roles originates with Lewis Henry Morgan’s pio-neering early ethnography League of the Ho-de-no-sau-nee, or Iroquois (1851), written through collaboration with and observation of residents of the Seneca reservation at Tonawanda. In his writing, Morgan erased temporal specificity by collapsing his direct observations of reserva-tion lifeways, readings of historical documents, and accounts elicited from elders about pre-reservation practices into a single, normative description of Iroquois life. This synthetic mode of description was replicated by later scholars using the “culture patterns” mode typical of 20th-century anthropological writing on Ameri-can Indians, which used accumulations of 17th- to 19th-century primary sources to associate different tasks and spaces hegemonically with Iroquoian women or men. In these culture-patterns accounts (Wallace 1969; Fenton 1978,

63KURT A. JORDAN—Enacting Gender and Kinship around a Large Outdoor Fire Pit

1998:19–33), Iroquoian women’s work was said to have normatively included cooking, childcare, plant gathering, firewood and water hauling, hide processing and clothing manufacture, pot-tery production, and all agricultural tasks except field clearance. Men’s tasks normatively included hunting, warfare, diplomacy, trade, clearing of new agricultural fields, palisade construction, and smoking-pipe manufacture. Spatially, the village area of multifamily longhouse residential structures (occupied by core groups of matri-lineally related women) and surrounding fields were considered the “women’s domain,” whereas the surrounding forest was considered the “men’s.” This mode of exposition is relatively insensitive to historical changes, treats gender roles as stable and unproblematically realized, and reinforces stereotyped characterizations of the “separate spheres” of women and men.

To work at the third approach in this article, I move away from such stable conceptions of Iroquois gender categories and roles by address-ing the historical and performative context of a single precise location: the immediate vicin-ity around Feature 5, a large, well-preserved outdoor fire pit at the ca. 1715–1754 Seneca Iroquois Townley-Read site near present-day Geneva, New York. I use this single feature to explore the untidy intersection of three analyti-cal domains: (1) contemporary gender theory; (2) archaeological remains, encompassing arti-facts, subsistence remains, features, spatial rela-tions, and contemporaneous mortuary data from the region; and (3) normative conceptions of Iroquois gender roles. I use detailed attention to contextualized archaeological materials to combat overgeneralizations about gendered labor, space, and social relations in a methodology that may translate to other analytical contexts.

While in theory any Iroquoian domestic site could be analyzed for these purposes, the Townley-Read site is a particularly good venue for this type of study. As a post-Columbian site, analysis can be aided by numerous textual sources. Iroquois ethnographic data are copious, including direct historical connections between the Eastern Seneca site sequence (of which Townley-Read is a part) and the Tonawanda Senecas studied by Morgan in the 1840s.3 A rich documentary and cartographic record for the Six Nations Iroquois was composed during the period in which the site was occupied,

although few documents can be linked to the Eastern Seneca community specifically (Jordan 2008:98–109). These primary sources also allow relatively precise reconstruction of the regional and local politicoeconomic context. Archaeo-logically, the site is tightly dated, occupied only for approximately 40 years due to the Senecas’ practice of periodic community relocation due to local resource depletion (Jordan 2008:154–162). There is a large set of preexisting mortuary data for Townley-Read and other Seneca settlements from this era that allows cautious examination of the correlations between certain artifact types and particular age and sex categories.4 As out-lined below, Townley-Read was the location of major transformations in settlement structure and economy, providing exactly the sort of temporal contrast Prezzano (1997) requested.

Engendered Labor at the Townley-ReadSite: A Macroscale Perspective

By the early 18th century, the Iroquois were a confederacy of six nations—the Senecas, Cayugas, Onondagas, Oneidas, Mohawks, and Tuscaroras—whose homelands were centered in what is now upstate New York (Figure 1). Six Nations people, then and now, call themselves Haudenosaunee, or “people of the extended house.” During the 1715–1754 period, Iroquois people interacted with European colonies on their borders, particularly New France and New York, but maintained considerable political and economic autonomy within their own territories (Jordan 2013). In most parts of the Iroquois Confederacy outside the Mohawk Valley, few Europeans were present on a year-round basis (Jordan 2009). The Senecas were the western-most Iroquois nation; from 1550 to the Ameri-can Revolution, the bulk of the Seneca popu-lation was concentrated between the Genesee River and Seneca Lake.

From approximately 1550 to 1715, post-Columbian Iroquois sites typically consisted of nucleated longhouse villages placed on defen-sible hilltops and often surrounded by palisades. During this period, Iroquois articulation with Europeans centered on the fur trade, and on beaver pelts in particular. As beaver populations within Iroquois territory and adjoining areas declined, Iroquois hunters traveled increasingly greater distances from their homeland to secure


pelts. Relations between the Iroquois and their neighbors were frequently hostile: Iroquois raids opened up hunting territories and gener-ated captives and plunder that, on occasion, included peltry. Iroquois daily life was colored by concern for defense; the mobilization and provisioning of long-distance trapping, raiding, and trading expeditions; and the processing and distribution of the pelts and goods acquired by these expeditions. It also necessitated a great deal of movement––both locally, from defensible settlements to field locations and water sources, and over long distances, for warring, trapping, and trading.

Excavations at the Townley-Read site revealed the traces of a community strikingly different from its predecessors (Jordan 2008). Fieldwork by crews from Columbia University and Hobart and William Smith colleges took place in domestic areas of the site from 1998 to 2000. The project was codirected by Dr. Nan Roths-child of Columbia University and myself, and advised by Seneca faithkeeper Peter Jemison. A combination of surface survey and excavation in areas with clustered domestic refuse revealed that in about 1715, Eastern Senecas rejected the nucleated, hilltop model that they and their Seneca ancestors had used for over 150 years. Instead, they constructed at least six spatially

separated neighborhoods (including the Townley-Read site), known archaeologically as the New Ganechstage Site Complex (Figure 2) (Jordan 2008:178–180). Examination of the plowed surface of a portion of the Townley-Read neighborhood revealed four concentrations of domestic refuse within the dark oval represent-ing the site in Figure 2. The excavation results from these domestic refuse clusters suggest that Senecas erected two-family dwellings instead of larger longhouses, with individual residences built 60–80 m apart from one another in a line along Burrell Creek.

Based on the faunal assemblage from the site and New York trade records (Cutcliffe 1981), Townley-Read Senecas appear to have newly concentrated on deer-hide acquisition and pro-cessing for trade with Europeans, with only minor efforts in primary beaver-pelt production. Rapprochement with formerly hostile western Indian groups facilitated the development of local peace (Jordan 2008:303–309). Western Indians needed Seneca cooperation to travel safely to British trading centers at Albany and, after 1724, Oswego; Senecas gained political and economic advantage from this process by form-ing alliances with western groups and acting as “geographic middlemen” (Aquila 1984). Most of these innovations in Seneca practices appear to

FIGURE 1. Map of 18th-century Iroquois (Haudenosaunee) territory showing locations of the archaeological sites mentioned in the text. Albany is provided as reference point. (Base map from Premier USA Map Collection, Map Resources, Lambertville, New Jersey, 2002 edition; adapted by author, 2013.)


FIGURE 2. The New Ganechstage Site Complex: the dark oval encompasses the four domestic refuse clusters located by fieldwork at the Townley-Read site; adapted from Jordan (2008:figure 6.6).


have been opportunistic, made possible by the solidification of relative peace in the region after 1713. They suggest that basic aspects of daily life changed for Senecas in all social categories.

My initial analysis used labor-based analysis and a “two-sex/two-gender” model for under-standing social life at the site. I treated artifacts as signifiers of past labor processes, conceiving of labor in the Marxian (Wolf 1997:xi) sense, as suspended in a network of social relations. Labor-based analysis encompasses material, social, and ideological concerns, and considers immediate production and circulation, as well as reproduction over time (Cobb 1993; Wolf 1997; Silliman 2001). Labor patterns can be recon-structed using the tangible clues provided by material culture. Individual artifacts and features evidence the labor devoted to their production, use, maintenance, and abandonment; further information on labor processes can be derived through consideration of the raw-material inputs and operational sequences needed to produce particular artifacts and features––see Bernbeck (1995) for an effective use of this method. The overall body of information on labor processes was then combined to produce a model of the seasonality and scheduling of labor across the landscape and through the seasons. The depiction was engendered through application of the standard model of the Iroquois gender-based division of labor, gleaned from “culture patterns”–type and more temporally specific sources. Finally, this reconstruction was con-trasted to a model of gendered Iroquois labor at the nucleated, palisaded villages that predomi-nated prior to 1715.

The linear placement of dwellings along Burrell Creek significantly decreased the transit time among houses, fields, and water sources compared to that required in a nucleated hilltop village. Since field tending and household-water carrying were considered, normatively, to have been “women’s work” among the Iroquois, settlement dispersal may have freed up a con-siderable amount of time for many women. Additionally, a switch from a beaver- to a deer-based articulation with the fur trade likely had major impacts on Seneca women’s labor, due to differing task sequences, inputs needed for processing, and seasonal patterns of peak production. After viewing the aggregate patterns of tasks normatively considered to be “women’s

work” at the site, I concluded that the net effect of settlement dispersal was to open up blocks of women’s time that allowed for intensified production in new areas, including extraction of bone grease (Jordan and Watson 2005) and embroidered glass-bead work (Herlich 2008). These developments, in turn, had ripple effects throughout other aspects of Seneca daily life.

Feature 5: Description and Labor Processes

To deepen the gendered analysis of Seneca daily life at the Townley-Read site, I revisit one particular context––a large outdoor fire pit—in significantly greater detail. The most intensive archaeological work at Townley-Read took place in Domestic Refuse Cluster (DRC) 1, where the project recovered the full floor plan of a two-family “short longhouse” dwell-ing and a variety of outdoor features and post-molds surrounding the house (Figure 3) (Jordan 2008:127–146, 265–269). The remnants of a large fire pit, termed Feature 5, were discovered 21.5 m east of the short longhouse (Jordan 2008:138–143). A 30 cm thick layer of plow-disturbed (plowzone) soil covered the feature; below the plowzone, the intact portion of the feature was 3.5 m in length and 1.7 m across at its widest point, and it extended to a depth of 43 cm below subsoil surface. Feature 5 was completely excavated, and a total of 10 m2 was dug to subsoil in the feature area. Plowzone soil and subsoil were screened with 6 mm (0.25 in.) mesh hardware cloth; feature soil was screened with 3 mm (0.125 in.) mesh, supplemented by the taking of nine flotation samples, totaling 60 L of soil, which were processed using 1 mm mesh to extract light and heavy fractions for analysis. There appears to have been little mixing between the plowzone and underlying feature soil; while post-1800 European American materials were relatively common in the plow-zone, only a single intrusive post-1800 artifact (a piece of aqua flat glass) was found in feature soil. This suggests that materials from the fea-ture itself can be confidently attributed to the 18th-century Seneca occupation of the site, as can those artifacts found in the mixed plowzone layer that are characteristic of Iroquois, but not post-1800 European American, assemblages.

The fire pit contained four main sub-plowzone stratigraphic zones (Figure 4). The analysis


FIGURE 3. Plan view of 18th-century cultural features in Domestic Refuse Cluster 1, Townley-Read Site. Shows sub-plowzone plan of Feature 5, the Structure 1 short longhouse, and other houselot features; adapted from Jordan (2008:figure 5.3).

FIGURE 4. Profile of Feature 5 at the Townley-Read Site. Includes only the in situ portions of the feature recovered below the plowzone; adapted from Jordan (2008:figure 5.6).


presented here is based on 5,765 faunal remains (Stephen Cox Thomas 2012, elec. comm.; Adam S. Watson 2012, elec. comm.; Watson and Thomas 2013), botanical data from the flotation samples (Rossen 2006, 2008, elec. comm.), and a small but interesting sample of 76 artifacts, consisting of ceramic, copper-alloy (presumably brass), glass, lithic, iron, lead, and marine-shell objects (Tables 1–5).5

The bottom layer, Stratum IV, represents the earliest preserved cultural use of the feature. No artifacts were recovered, the 95 faunal specimens could not be identified as to genus or species, and the botanical sample contained only wood charcoal and burned fungus. This minimal information is not presented in a table, and little can be said about this layer, other than it does not reflect concentrated processing of any sort. The overlying, lighter-colored Stratum III had a very low concentration of artifacts and animal bones, but included a wide variety of domesticated and wild plant remains (Table 1). The upper two strata (I and II), plowzone soil above the feature, and soil from mixed contexts within or below the feature contained copious traces of Seneca cultural activity (Tables 2–5), suggesting that the fire pit was originally larger

TABLE 1CONTENTS OF FEATURE 5, STRATUM III

Faunal Remains: 330 specimens, 0.3% identified to genus or species level

1 hairy-tailed mole

Botanical Remains: 2,257 specimens

2,080 wood charcoal (unidentified, includes hardwood branches) 73 fungus 51 maize cupule 10 gourd rind 9 grass seed 7 cherry pit 6 blackberry/raspberry seed 6 sumac seed 2 squash seed 13 seed fragments, unidentified

Artifacts: 1 possible cultural item

1 possible red slate fragment, small

and deeper, and that its uppermost portions were destroyed by plowing.

Stratum II, 19 cm thick, consisted of an inten-tionally created platform of thermally altered rock, intermixed with black soil and charcoal. The uppermost preserved layer, Stratum I, was 8 cm thick at maximum. It consisted of several circular concentrations and lenses of ash about 75 cm in diameter (Figure 5) and is represented by two different soil-color and

TABLE 2CONTENTS OF FEATURE 5, STRATUM II

Faunal Remains: 1,755 specimens, 2.7% identified to genus or species level

32 white-tailed deer 4 raccoon 3 beaver 3 black bear 1 American marten 1 marten species 1 domestic cattle 1 domestic dog 1 grey fox 1 ruffed grouse


2,193 wood charcoal (ca. 53% maple, 10% ash, 7% sycamore, 7% red oak group, 3% American chestnut, 20% unidentified) 43 maize cupule 23 blackberry/raspberry seed 20 grass seed 5 butternut shell 4 gourd rind 4 hackberry seed 3 maize kernel 3 cherry pit 2 sumac seed 1 grape seed 1 hawthorn seed 1 hazelnut? shell 13 seed fragments, unidentified

Artifacts: 7 cultural items 1 ceramic pipe bowl fragment, undecorated white ball clay 1 ceramic potsherd, indigenous 2 glass bead (1 very large round amber, wire- wound; 1 small circular white, drawn) 2 lithic debitage (1 flake, 1 flake fragment) 1 shell bead, long tubular (108.2 mm long, 5.3 mm diameter)


TABLE 3CONTENTS OF FEATURE 5, STRATUM I

Faunal Remains: 2,421 specimens, 3.9% identified to genus or species level

48 yellow perch (small, presumably gut contents) 22 white-tailed deer 7 passenger pigeon 4 American eel 3 raccoon 2 black bear 2 golden shiner 1 grey fox 1 northern pike or muskellunge 1 pumpkinseed 1 sucker/redhorse family 1 walleye 1 white or long-nosed sucker


2,096 wood charcoal (approx. 33% maple, 14% ash, 5% pine, 5% cedar, 44% unidentified) 1,246 maize cupule 171 blackberry/raspberry seed 39 maize kernel 29 butternut shell 10 grape seed 9 sumac seed 6 gourd rind 3 small-seeded nightshade seed 2 hickory nutshell 2 squash seed 1 squash peduncle 1 hawthorn seed 1 morning glory seed 9 seed fragments, unidentified

Artifacts: 15 cultural items

5 sheet brass scrap fragment 1 ceramic pipe-bowl fragment, undecorated white ball clay 3 glass bead (3 small circular white, drawn) 2 iron fragment, unidentifable 1 flat-glass fragment, aqua (likely intrusive) 1 glass vessel fragment, clear? patinated 1 lithic debitage (broken flake) 1 shell bead, long tubular (49.1 mm long, 6.0 mm diameter)

texture classifications (A and B) in Figure 4. The rock layer in Stratum II likely acted as a platform supporting the several small fires that made up Stratum I. Both levels also were used

TABLE 4CONTENTS OF PLOWZONE SOIL OVERLYING

FEATURE 5


87 white-tailed deer 3 beaver 2 black bear 2 raccoon 1 fisher 1 pig 1 passenger pigeon

Botanical Remains: 4 specimens

3 wood charcoal (unidentified) 1 maize cupule


5 sheet brass scrap fragment 2 sheet brass projectile point 1 brass ring face, Jesuit-style heart-shaped plaque 1 brass mouth-harp fragment 1 brass ornament, very thin wire bent into spiral 1 brass object, elongated and tightly wound

1 ceramic pipe-stem fragment, indigenous 11 ceramic pipe-bowl fragment, undecorated white ball clay 1 ceramic pipe-bowl fragment, maker’s mark: R/TIPP/ET, white ball clay 3 ceramic pipe-stem, 5/64” bore, white ball clay

3 glass bead (1 very large oval white, drawn; 1 very large round black with wavy white stripes, drawn; 1 large round redwood with green core, drawn) 1 bottle-glass fragment, olive 1 flat-glass fragment, aqua, crown glass

7 iron nail, hand wrought 3 iron nail, hand wrought/cut (possibly intrusive) 1 iron nail? fragment (possibly intrusive) 1 iron object, indeterminate (possibly intrusive)

1 lead shot, with dimple

6 lithic debitage (1 flake, 2 broken flake, 1 flake fragment, 2 chunk)

for refuse disposal, primarily for the discard of bone remains and plant-processing byproducts. The upper two strata are likely to have been created fairly close together in time. Faunal


TABLE 5CONTENTS OF SOIL FROM MIXED CONTEXTS

WITHIN OR BELOW FEATURE 5


9 white-tailed deer 1 raccoon 1 weasel species

Botanical Remains: 11 specimens

11 wood charcoal (unidentified)


1 ceramic pipe-bowl fragment, undecorated white ball clay 1 ceramic pipe stem, 5/64 in. bore, white ball clay

analyst Adam Watson (2000) determined that a black bear maxilla fragment from Stratum I mended with a zygomatic fragment from Stra-tum II; the complete, long, tubular shell beads found in each of the upper two strata may also link the levels.

There is strong evidence that Feature 5 was used predominantly for bulk fur and skin processing and bone-grease rendering, with a secondary focus on the preparation of plant and animal foods and medicines (Rossen 2006; Jordan 2008:138–143; Watson and Thomas 2013). In comparison to other deposits at the site, Feature 5 appears to represent a specialized task area (Chilton 1994), rather than the product of a full range of household activities. Although the archaeological materials from the feature are predominantly refuse, they still define a special-ized activity zone, because they appear to be the primary byproducts of tasks that took place in the immediate vicinity of the fire pit.

Based on the species range and body-part distribution of the faunal assemblage, process-ing of hides and skins for exchange was a key task undertaken at Feature 5. Only 20% of the deer specimens identified as to body part that were recovered within or above the feature are axial bones (27 of 135), and 53% (72 of 135) are cranial bones, foot bones, or teeth. This pattern suggests that deer axial bones, such as vertebrae, rib fragments (usually overrepresented

due to their breakability), and pelvic bones were disposed of elsewhere, while cranial and foot bones were introduced into the Feature 5 area attached to skins and removed during hide dressing (Watson 2000). Although the sample size is much smaller, black bear, gray fox, cattle, domestic dog, weasel, and marten/fisher are represented only by cranial or foot bones, tentatively pointing toward hide or pelt process-ing. The range of beaver and raccoon skeletal elements is broader, but the pelts of these animals almost certainly were used. Therefore, processing efforts focused on deer, but also encompassed a wide range of other furbearers.

Butchering marks and the recovery of limb, vertebra, rib, and/or pelvis fragments indicate that at least some of the white-tailed deer, beaver, and raccoon remains from the feature were processed for meat (Watson 2000). The bird, fish, and amphibian remains found in the upper portion of the feature probably also represent food remains. Plant-food processing is represented by almost 1,300 maize cupules and 42 maize kernels, squash remains, a small amount of nutshells, and grape, sumac, cherry, hackberry, and blackberry or raspberry (Rubus sp.) seeds or pits. Ethnographic sources indicate that Iroquois peoples used the plant species recovered from Feature 5 to treat a variety of diseases, conditions, and injuries. Herrick’s ethnography Iroquois Medical Botany (Herrick 1995) lists well over 50 separate uses for these plants; sumac and cherry had particularly broad applications (Herrick 1995:165–166,187–189).

The vast majority of the bone material pre-served in situ in the upper layers of Feature 5 was highly fragmented (Figure 6), and no bone tools were recovered. Average bone weights from the flotation samples ranged from 0.09 to 0.81 g per piece. Weathering and fragmentation patterns show that the bones were broken up shortly before burial in the feature; little carni-vore gnawing or digestion is evident. The high degree of predepositional fragmentation of both compact and cancellous bone is consistent with bone-grease rendering (Watson 2000). Although the majority of the literature on the Northeast treats bone-grease production as an ad hoc reac-tion to nutritional stress, Adam Watson and I have argued that Seneca grease production was a premeditated buffering strategy that created a storable resource for use in the late winter and


FIGURE 5. A section of the preserved sub-plowzone portion of Feature 5, Townley-Read site, shows the traces of a small fire, represented by a circle of ash. The arrow points to an in situ tubular shell bead; the photo board misidentifies the bead as a “pipe.” (Photo by author, 1999.)


FIGURE 6. Artifacts and faunal remains from the Feature 5 area, Townley-Read site, include two long tubular shell beads; four glass beads; and a selection of fragmented compact and cancellous mammal bones that reflect bone-grease production. (Photo by author, 2009.)

early spring, when few other food resources (plant or animal) were available (Jordan and Watson 2005). In addition, bone grease also had more general use as a cooking oil and flavor-ing for stews. Grease may very well have been stored within gourds, represented by rind frag-ments within the feature, and could have been traded within or beyond the community.

The Feature 5 data suggest that hide work-ing, itself “a complex set of skillful processes” (Spencer-Wood 2005:201), was combined with other tasks in efficient and ingenious ways. Ethnographic accounts indicate there is signifi-cant overlap in the raw materials and conditions needed for hide processing and grease rendering (Jordan 2008:300–303). Complementary lulls in


the two processes (particularly when waiting for grease to boil or deerskins to dry, smoke, or soak in a solution of animal brains and water) would have allowed Senecas to interdigitate the necessary steps and undertake both tasks simul-taneously. The evidence for multiple small fires in Stratum I supports this view. Hide working, grease rendering, and cooking each involved heating brass kettles6 over low-temperature fires, meaning that any fires generated could do double or triple duty, saving firewood in the process. Each 18th-century excavation locus at Townley-Read exhibited a high frequency of deer remains and significant bone fragmentation, suggesting that the ingenuity and efficiency of the combined bone-grease-production and deerskin-processing pattern extended across the entire site.

The Problems of Task Differentiation and Gendered “Spheres”

The preceding section describes the feature and labor processes likely to have taken place around it using only general, ungendered eth-nographic analogies. It is possible to push analysis further because each of the major tasks identified as taking place around Fea-ture 5—fur and skin processing, plant- and animal-food preparation, and gathering and application of plant medicines—is labeled, in standard sources, as work undertaken by the social category “women.”7 While identifying Feature 5 as a locus of women’s work and interpreting its contents accordingly might seem to be a straightforward strategy, there are two significant “epistemological pitfalls” (Dobres 1995:59) associated with this analytical move. The first centers on myriad critiques that have been made of the “task differentiation approach” that typified early stages of engendered research in archaeology. The second is that designating a single-gender zone results in uncomfortable—and unjustified—parallels to the European American “separation of the spheres.”

Task Differentiation, Critiques, and Modifications

In a seminal 1983 article, archaeologist Janet Spector explicitly formulated the task-differen-tiation approach as a way to “retrieve informa-tion about gender from archaeological sites and

assemblages” (Spector 1983:77). Scholars using this method search through ethnographic and historical texts for information on “the organi-zation of males and females in the execution of tasks and the spatial, temporal, and material dimensions of those tasks” (Spector 1983:78), with the goal of producing a series of “activity maps” showing where and when women’s and men’s productive labors took place. Spector provided a trial analysis of the subset of 19th-century Hidatsa activities related to cultigens, compiling substantial information on task loca-tion, seasonality, and associated forms of mate-rial culture.

This method sparked intense debate, includ-ing critiques by Spector (1991, 1993) herself. Scholars have identified several limitations to this approach, including that available ethno-graphic sources often provide a poor basis for making gendered task attributions and describing change over time, and that source documents may not be applicable to a wide range of politi-coeconomic settings (Spector 1983:80; Conkey and Gero 1991; Hill 1998; Pyburn 2004). Any activities that are not described by ethnographic or historical sources become invisible, provid-ing yet another example of the “tyranny of the ethnographic record” (Wobst 1978). Most source texts typically treat gender roles as unproblematically realized, and downplay or ignore heterodox or atypical social behavior. Lastly, the overwhelming emphasis on gender in this method may obscure crucial roles of other social categories—as Joyce (2008:40) notes: “[S]uch things as age, social group, ethnicity, race, status, or skill could [have been] more sig-nificant than sex for the identification of people with each other.” Most of these critiques paral-lel larger archaeological debates about the use and abuse of analogy (Wylie 1985; Stahl 1993), which will no doubt continue, as archaeological interpretation rarely, if ever, offers complete certainty.

While the critiques of task attribution are significant, it would be shortsighted to com-pletely discount the method in the interpretation of archaeological settings, particularly at sites where a corpus of historical and ethnographic evidence is available. In numerous recent contexts (including the Townley-Read site), scholars have many more than a handful of textual sources, including individual primary


source documents that provide contemporaneous descriptions of the groups being investigated archaeologically, or accounts only a short dis-tance removed in time and space. When the information is more spatially, temporally, or culturally distant from the site in question, one must evaluate primary sources individually, situ-ating them in space, time, and politicoeconomic context (Jordan 2008:31–34); it is also vital to chase down the component sources that inform “culture patterns” accounts and individually evaluate their fit to the case one is consider-ing. Descriptions over a range of time may be available, allowing researchers to determine which tasks were usually and durably performed by individuals in particular social categories. Similar to what Christopher Fennell (2003:12) notes of West African research, cases for conti-nuity cannot be “based on mere assumptions of constancy,” but instead on “the critical reading of numerous ethnohistorical accounts that span that [specific] time period.”

Moreover, archaeological evidence can act as an independent check or complication to models established using textual sources. For example, the interpretation of Feature 5 as a setting for the labor of Seneca women moves beyond transplanting isolated ethnographic accounts to the archaeological record because it is based on a cluster of activities identified with women, rather than a single task or artifact. Mortuary evidence from 18th-century Seneca sites can be used as another way to link artifacts with social categories. Using these methods, certain tasks and clusters of artifacts can be associated more solidly with particular social categories, and others can be brought into the fold based on spatial proximity. As the subsequent analysis proves, yet other tasks and artifacts may remain ambiguous throughout the research process, or become ambiguous during analysis.

The Problem of the “Spheres”

Spector’s pioneering task-differentiation study concluded that “the lives of Hidatsa men and women during the mid-19th century were impres-sively separate and distinct” (Spector 1983:93). Similar conclusions about indigenous gender interaction have been made by other scholars who have used “culture patterns” data to recon-struct the lives of native men and women, such

as Salisbury (1982:40) and Rountree (1998:21–22). These interpretations are problematic, not least because they ignore copious ethnographic evidence for connections, rather than separations, among gendered individuals. Further, the spatial division between men and women clearly reso-nates with the ideology of the “separate spheres” of men and women in European American culture (Wall 1994; Norton 2011). An uncriti-cal engendered analysis of Iroquois life could ideologically reproduce some of the associations present in the “separate spheres” concept.

The “separate spheres” model rigidly engen-ders space by associating women with privacy, domestic space, cooking, food, and passivity, and men with the public realm, spaces distant from the home, and social agency. Scholars have shown the “separate spheres” and related models to have repercussions, both for the analysis of the past and gender relations in the present––see critiques by Wurst (2003), Rotman (2006), and Voss (2008b). These simplistic idealizations of European American gendered space bolster patriarchal ideologies that restrict women’s involvement in public affairs, discour-age women’s use of public spaces, and ignore or devalue domestic labor. Such overgeneraliza-tions also obscure the actual use of space by people of different genders and ages, and mask women’s public roles and essential economic contributions. In reality, the European American “spheres” were inextricably linked by people and goods that moved across the public/private conceptual boundary.

Since American Indian societies potentially offer a model of gender and social relations that is quite different from that of the “separate spheres,” it is important not to pour indigenous evidence straight back into a European American mold. In Iroquoian settings, the main concept that threatens to do so is the canonical distinc-tion between the village and surrounding fields as the “women’s domain” and the forest as the “men’s domain”––for examples, see Wallace (1969:24) and Richter (1992:23). This accurately describes where most adult northern Iroquoians spent the majority of their time and may even outline an indigenous gender ideology. However, the village and the forest were not by any means exclusive “spheres.”

Perrelli (2009:23–27) effectively uses pri-mary texts to demonstrate how the Iroquoian


“women’s domain” of village and fields was not only routinely shared by adult men during certain seasons, but also essentially co-inhabited by children, male and female captives, and elderly men. Further, Perrelli outlines how Iroquois women frequently accompanied their families into the “men’s domain” of the forest, traveling to camps used for gathering, fishing, or hunting. Even this position may not adequately address copious historical evidence that Iro-quoian women traveled great distances to gather, trade, hunt, and participate in military expedi-tions, with some women’s travel done in single-gender or non-family groups––see Parmenter (2010) and also Drake (1855:178–264), Fenton and Deardorff (1943), Thwaites (1959[51]:129, [54]:117), Pilkington (1980:31–37), Gehring and Starna (1988:6,36 n48), Seaver (1824), Brandão (2003:71,103), and Waterman (2008).

Perelli’s blurring of the spheres raises signifi-cant complications for engendering an archaeo-logical interpretation. Given this evidence, who is to say whether archaeological evidence for a task that documentary sources attribute to women was actually performed by women, chil-dren, captives, or elderly men? This issue must be accounted for to avoid overly stereotyped (and “sphered”) depictions of gender roles in the past.

Changes of Hands, Women’s Control, and the Production of Seneca Identity

I respond to these critiques of gendered task differentiation and “separate spheres” of gen-dered action by applying additional bodies of theory from economic anthropology and the study of the social production of identity.

Changes of Hands, Changes of Place, and Control

Marxist-feminist approaches encourage inquiry into gendered control over processes of produc-tion, distribution, and consumption across the lifecycle of goods (see Frink and Weedman [2005] for examples in the context of hide work-ing). It is important to move from associating certain artifacts with certain gendered actors to a perspective that examines social processes. Wurst (2003:231) notes that objects are “defined by social relations and cannot be understood outside

of that totality.” Anthropologist Rhoda Halperin (1994) provides a useful tool for this endeavor.

Halperin divides economic processes into two categories, appropriational movements, or changes in control over resources or production (glossed as “changes of hands”), and locational movements, or physical movements of goods, people, or productive resources from one space to another (glossed as “changes of place”). For Halperin (1994:57), “changes of hands” are key, since they represent transformations in social control. She admits that, in some instances, it is difficult to make “clear analytic distinctions” between these categories, and that certain eco-nomic activities (such as physical alterations to goods and the selection of priorities among alternative paths of action) do not fit neatly into either category. Nonetheless, her conceptions are useful to the archaeological interpretation of past social life. Halperin’s attention to the detailed histories of object handling parallels Silliman’s (2010) consideration of “indigenous traces in colonial spaces,” where he argues that many forms of material culture that analysts typically consider to be “colonial” would have been used extensively, and perhaps even exclusively, by non-settler laborers. Such minute attention to the social lives of things results in more nuanced histories that can change the understanding of past social dynamics.

Halperin’s approach underscores that the lives of Iroquois women and men were “separate and distinct” (Spector 1983:93) temporarily, if at all; women, men, and individuals from other social categories were fundamentally interconnected by the goods that passed among them. The Iroquois gender-based division of labor was structured in many domains so that women and men each performed separate, complementary tasks in processes vital to the community. For example, men initially cleared trees and brush from new agricultural fields, while women did the planting and harvesting. Men built houses, but women controlled them. Men served in most (but not all) community leadership positions, but offi-cers were chosen by and could be deposed by women. Belts of marine-shell wampum beads, primarily used by men in diplomatic and ritual settings, were woven by women. In each of these situations, materials or authority passed from one gender group to the other, providing each with a vested interest in the process (Friedl


1978). While many of the activities that took place around Feature 5 shared this structure, not all divisions of gendered control were entirely equal. It is essential to take a detailed look at the production, distribution, and consumption of individual goods on their own merits; some con-trol sequences were more balanced than others.

In addition, one can assess control over per-sonnel, which also has its “changes of hands” and “changes of place.” Iroquois adults, and women in particular, generally maintained control over children and adolescents, and women had important roles in the supervision and socialization of captives. Perrelli’s (2009) work suggests that all these classes of people may have been present around Feature 5, but the material and textual evidence suggests that females (both children and adults) were likely to have been the most regular and recurrent participants in the activities around the fire pit. Women were likely to have directed activities around the feature, even if they did not perform each and every task themselves. For this reason, I define Feature 5 not solely as a locus of women’s work, but, as a locus of activities led, directed, or primarily undertaken by women—a locus of women’s control. This control was pub-licly expressed over particular goods and tasks, and the personnel that undertook them. The products made under the direction of women did not necessarily remain in women’s control, although some likely did.

The Production and Reproduction of Identity

A performative model of gender suggests that gender roles are not automatic byproducts of physical sex or enduring dispositions, but instead are an ongoing social process requiring (but never fully realizing) proper performance and citation of normative precedents. Gender is thus processual, where “action produces a sense of being, rather than simply reflecting something already there” (Joyce 2008:93). As such, there is a poor fit between processual/performative and normative models of gender. Rosemary Joyce (2000) suggests that one key to putting gender into motion is to look at the lifecycle, the cultural processes of “girling the girl and boying the boy”––see also Rubertone (2001:132–164)––and reminds archaeologists that

social action may not always have been primar-ily “about” gender, but may have concentrated on other vectors of social inclusion and exclu-sion (Joyce 2008).

One must cast the net rather broadly to find textual information on northern Iroquoian child socialization. The Jesuit Lafitau noted in the early 1700s that the youngest Iroquois children “follow their mothers and work for the family ... they are trained to go fetch water from the river, to bring in little loads of wood as heavy as they can carry” (Lafitau 1974:358). How-ever, older children and adults spent significant time in single-gender groups. This started at a relatively early age; even when adult men were in distant locations hunting, trapping, raid-ing, or trading, boys went off by themselves to practice gendered activities. Ethnohistorian Elisabeth Tooker (1964:124), summarizing Jesuit observations of older Huron boys in the 1600s, observes that their

usual and daily practice ... was to shoot their bows and arrows. ... They learned to throw the prong with which fish are speared and practiced other sports and exercises. They returned to the house at meal times or when they felt hungry. If a mother asked her son to go for water or wood or do similar household work, he replied that this was girl’s work and did none of it.

Huron girls also practiced gendered tasks, such as corn pounding, and were “trained qui-etly to perform small household duties” (Tooker 1964:124–125).

The cultural and spatial separation of gen-dered groups extended into Iroquoian adulthood. Women participated in many single-gender groups that farmed, harvested, and collected firewood (Seaver 1824:161; Tooker 1964:58 n88; Lafitau 1977:54–56; Fenton 1978:299–300). In 1750 (during the occupation of the Townley-Read site), Moravian missionary Johann Cam-merhoff observed a “large company of 33 women, who were hoeing corn” at an Onondaga Iroquois village (Beauchamp 1916:46). Textual sources note that many of these work parties were led by a head matron (Seaver 1824:160–161; Parker 1910:29–31; Lafitau 1977:55). Men also engaged in single-gender groups for hunt-ing, war, trade, and diplomacy.

At the same time, Senecas of all ages were united by a series of nested matrilineal kin-ship groupings, including moieties at the most


inclusive level. Historically and currently, each Seneca moiety was composed of several clans; each clan was composed of a disparate number of lineages; and each lineage a disparate number of households, nuclear families, and individu-als. Kin ties were passed down from mother to child; kinship groups at all levels centered on groups of matrilineally related women. Mar-riages took place between members of different clans; married men moved from the households of their mothers to the households of their wives. While women’s loyalties were relatively undivided, as they remained in the same house-hold and were surrounded by members of the same clan throughout their lives, men’s loyalties and labor were split between the households of their spouses and demands made by their clan––see O’Gorman (2010:576–577). Matrilin-eal ties were crucial to 18th-century Iroquois people (Jordan 2008:323–324) and remain so to contemporary members of the Six Nations. The proper production of socialized Seneca individuals, therefore, also required the ongo-ing performance and citation of kinship. I will argue that activities around Feature 5 enacted both gender and kin roles.

Interpreting Feature 5

By considering the concepts of “changes of hands” and women’s control, the presence of multiple age and gender categories, and the dynamics of identity production, one can move beyond simple normative interpretations and some of the pitfalls of task differentiation. This starts with observation of the dimensions of Feature 5: given its large size, it is quite rea-sonable to posit that four or more people could have worked around it in most wind conditions. It is therefore appropriate to think of the fea-ture as a site of interaction among all sorts of social groups—regular participants, occasional participants, those who visited to drop off or pick up goods, and those who visited to social-ize. In light of the textual information supplied earlier, the most regular participants at Feature 5 were likely to have been Seneca women and girls being trained in women’s roles. Over the approximate 40-year occupation of the site, many of the younger individuals who first vis-ited this or similar fire pits as girls would have joined the ranks of adults directing labor at the

feature. Boys would have been routine partici-pants while young, but would have disassociated themselves both spatially and conceptually over time. Adult men would have entered the area primarily to exchange goods and visit; elderly men whose mobility had decreased might have been more regular participants.

Male and female captives tended to spend most of their time in settings controlled by women for a probationary period while they learned the norms of Iroquois culture; after that, female captives remained with women’s groups, while male captives joined men of their same age. The numbers of individual captives incorporated into Iroquois society peaked during periods of active warfare. Few captives were likely to have been present at Townley-Read, since the site was occupied during a largely peaceful time. Iroquois incorporation efforts in the early 18th century centered on convincing larger groups of outsiders to establish semiau-tonomous satellite communities within Iroquois territory (Jordan 2013). Other temporary visitors to the site, who may have come to Feature 5, minimally included European smiths, traders, and diplomats, and western Indians on their way to and from Albany or Oswego.

It seems safe to say that Seneca girls and women were the most regular participants around Feature 5, and that women controlled the flow of work, goods, and personnel in this space. If one accepts that Seneca women at Townley-Read directed and controlled the pro-cessing of skins and pelts, preparation of plant and animal foods (including bone grease), and production of medicines, it follows that Seneca women’s labor provided key contributions to subsistence, trade, and health. These processes were undertaken outdoors, in full view of other members of the community, in a setting where Seneca women’s productive accomplishments and control over other personnel (such as youth and captives) would have been quite visible. Feature 5 was certainly no “private sphere.”

But to take the matter further, what if the rest of the archaeological materials recovered from the Feature 5 area were engendered? What might they suggest about the sorts of tasks Seneca women engaged in or controlled? I now extend and complicate the picture of Seneca daily life through consideration of wood charcoal, brass and lead items, shell and glass


beads, smoking-pipe fragments, lithic debitage, and iron artifacts. Sample size certainly affects the surety of the observations that follow, and since only one feature is considered, the assem-blage is quite small to begin with. I adopt the position that there is a more likely association between artifacts and women when the number of artifacts in a given category is large; a smaller sample increases the likelihood that the artifacts could have been introduced into the Feature 5 area by chance, through the agency of children, captives, elderly men, or visitors. This part of the analysis draws on three sources: normative accounts of gender and age roles; the spatial clustering of archaeological remains in Feature 5; and age and sex associations derived from the Seneca mortuary record.

Mortuary deposits represent a highly symbolic domain of social action distinct from domestic spaces, and their analytical use in indigenous contexts remains controversial. However, they represent a standard starting point for the gendered analysis of domestic-context artifacts whose age and sex associations are unclear. This study draws on field notes and artifacts from 76 Seneca burials containing grave goods that are preserved by the Rock Foundation at the Rochester Museum and Science Center in Rochester, New York. The graves were exca-vated by avocational archaeologists—primarily Charles F. Wray, Harry L. Schoff, and Donald G. Cameron—between ca. 1921 and 1982 at the Seneca Snyder-McClure (ca. 1688–1715), White Springs (1688–1715), Kendaia (1704–1779), Huntoon (1715–1742), Zindall-Wheadon (1715–1754, another part of the New Ganechstage Site Complex), and Townley-Read sites. Data from field notes and artifact collections is compiled in Jordan (1996). Excavation notes provided information on the age and/or biological sex of interred individuals in 64 instances. Thirty-three of the burials in question, and twenty-six of the burials with age and/or sex identifications, are from Townley-Read. The expansion of the data-set to other sites is necessary in order to obtain reasonable representation of different age and sex classes; the other sites are closely related to Townley-Read in space and time (Figure 1) (Jordan 2008:172–184).

While age and sex determinations were made in the field by avocationals, rather than through close examinations by physical anthropologists,

demographic information gathered by the same excavators has been used cautiously, without modification, in earlier studies––such as Sem-powski and Saunders (2001)––and I continue this practice. I adopt the demographic catego-ries used in studies of Seneca archaeology by researchers based at the Rochester Museum and Science Center, as in Sempowski and Saun-ders (2001), with the exception of substituting “elder” for “senile” in the classification of individuals over the age of 55. Burial data is described in terms of biological sex, rather than gender; gender analysis—such as the contention that adult females represent “women”—is an interpretation of the social categories associated with sex data, rather than something that can be taken for granted.

Analysis of Artifact Categories

“Culture patterns” and more specific accounts assert that Iroquois women spent most of their lives in the village precinct and the agricultural fields that surrounded it. Many of the wild plant species women exploited were “edge-dwellers” that could be harvested without fully leaving the cleared area. However, women also were normatively in charge of collecting firewood that had been cut by men (a “change of hands”) or had been knocked down by storms, and “changing its place” by hauling it back to their homes (Seaver 1824:161; Tooker 1964:58 n88). The large wood-charcoal sample from Feature 5 provides a firm reminder that women routinely spent significant time in the forest, blurring the conventional description of the woods as the men’s domain (even though by the logic of this paper the woods may have served as a locus of men’s control). Additionally, the species recov-ered grow in different ecological conditions. While maples and oaks grow in a wide variety of settings, sycamores tend to colonize upland slopes, ashes prefer well-drained soils, pines acidic soils, and American chestnuts moister locales (Rossen 2006:3). This information places Seneca women not only in the forest, but in multiple ecological settings around the site, some of which were likely to have been at some distance from their houselots.

Although several of the brass artifacts from Feature 5—such as a Jesuit-style ring face and spiral wire ornament—might stereotypically


be defined as “women’s artifacts,” analysis of mortuary associations complicates this picture. Finger rings were buried with individuals in a broad array of age and sex categories, includ-ing immatures (aged 0–12 years), adolescents (12–18), male and female young adults (ages 18–28), adult males (ages 28–55), and adults of unknown sex. Spiral wire ornaments are associ-ated with an even wider range of age and sex categories, including immatures, adolescents, male and female young adults, male and female adults, elder males (aged over 55), and adults of unknown sex. The brass mouth-harp fragment adds sound to this reconstruction, but the single occurrence and the rarity of mouth harps in the mortuary record (found only in the grave of a male adolescent and the multiple burial of a child and adult of unknown sex) provide scant clues to the identity of its user. It, therefore, would be a mistake to attribute any of these artifact types to a particular category of person that visited or worked around Feature 5.

The recovery of 10 fragments of scrap sheet brass—a decent sample from a feature of this size—may indicate that women were involved in the manufacture of sheet-brass items. Two sheet-brass fragments are partly ripped or cracked, sug-gesting that unrepairable kettles may have been used as raw material. The intensity of kettle-related work that took place around Feature 5 likely produced a steady supply of broken kettles. Mortuary associations are complicated because items identified as brass “scrap” in field notes may represent fragments of whole kettles or artifacts that were crushed by gravity or broken by plow action. Probable scrap brass was found in six graves, including the interments of a male adolescent, male young adult, adult male, elder male, and elder female. While these mortuary associations indicate that brass working tended to be done by males, the brass sample from Feature 5 suggests that Seneca women also undertook a substantial amount of brass working. They may have engaged in many or all of the tasks his-torically used to modify sheet brass, including “hammering/flattening, chiseling, scoring, bending, rolling, twisting, folding, cutting using snips or scissors, sawing with a jeweler’s saw, melting, perforating, and grinding” (Anselmi 2004:162).

Two sheet-brass projectile points and one piece of lead shot occupy an interesting place in the gendered analysis. While one might

claim that Feature 5 workers themselves used these items for hunting (particularly since both brass points are bent, possibly from impact), textual accounts of Iroquois women hunt-ing are exceedingly rare. The only account I located was from the Tonawanda Reservation, transcribed by Arthur C. Parker in the early 20th century. Laura Parker Doctor notes that her grandmother, Elizabeth Johnson Parker (who lived ca. 1787–1862), “had an axe and was a very good shot with either a gun or a bow. She always had both with her, and would shoot rabbits, coons, big birds and other game as well as any man” (Parker 1919:233). Archae-ologist Lynn Clark (2004:373–374) suggests that Iroquois women, children, and elders procured animals, such as woodchucks, chipmunks, frogs, toads, domesticated dogs, and tamed juvenile bears, “within the village limits” (for more on Iroquoian women’s “garden hunting,” see Scott [2003]). Raccoon, dog, and bear have been identified in Feature 5; a rabbit bone was found in Post Mold 14, 17 m to the west of Feature 5 (Figure 3).

Alternately, women may have produced projectile points around Feature 5 that were destined for use by others, or the bent points may have been brought to the area embedded in prey, killed by male hunters, that was passed to Feature 5 workers, in what Halperin (1994) would consider a “change of hands.” There are documented instances of young Iroquoian boys using bows and arrows (cited earlier), and a 1750 account by the Moravian Cammerhoff of “several Indians who had been hunting with bows and arrows” within 10 km of the Town-ley-Read site during its occupation (Beauchamp 1916:82). While Cammerhoff does not provide the age and gender of these “Indians,” the fact that he does not consider it necessary suggests that the hunters were adult males. The only brass point in the mortuary sample was buried with an adult male at the White Springs site; the sole lithic points were recovered from the grave of a young adult male at Huntoon.

The one piece of lead shot found in the plow-zone above the feature (and, thus, not certain to date to the Seneca period) appears to have been made using the Rupert method, based on the “dimple” visible at one end. This method involved “dropping lead through a heated col-ander into a pan of water immediately below”


(Faulkner 1986:84). This artifact potentially signals even greater involvement in metalwork by women, but weakly; it is equally reasonable that the shot arrived at Feature 5 embedded in an animal. Lead musket balls were found in five graves, including those of a male adolescent, two adults of unknown sex, and two multiple burials (the first containing two infants and the second an elder male and a child).

Two complete examples of rare and hard-to-make long tubular shell beads were found in the Feature 5 assemblage (Figures 5–6). Long tubular shell beads are quite uncommon in the mortuary record, being found in only two graves in the sample (that of an adult of unknown sex and a double burial for which no age and sex information is available), but marine-shell items, overall, are overwhelmingly found in the burials of subadults (presumably both male and female) and females over the age of 18. A total of eight glass beads was recovered from the Feature 5 area, identified as five separate varieties using the Kidd and Kidd (1970) classification system (Figure 6). Herlich’s (2008) analysis of glass beads from the Townley-Read site found that no glass beads were buried with biological males age 18 and over, although glass beads and a broad array of other adornment items were found with adolescents of both sexes. Beads of the same varieties found in the Feature 5 assem-blage were buried with immatures, adolescents, young adult females, adult females, and from contexts for which there was no demographic information. The brass ring face and spiral wire ornament from Feature 5 also may have been necklace components; mortuary data suggest that many finger rings were strung on necklaces, rather than being worn on the hands.

The presence of these adornment items in a feature that, otherwise, contained the byprod-ucts of utilitarian activities, has consistently puzzled me. Initially I adopted the rather pro-saic conclusion that someone’s necklace broke, but it seems that the person would have gone to greater efforts to recover the undamaged and valuable shell beads. However, a (male-cen-tered) 17th-century account written by a French prisoner among the Oneida Iroquois contains the statement that “the grief of he who has lost his father or wife is expressed by casting off all the adornments that he has around his neck, his earrings, and his bracelets” (Brandão

2003:97). The Feature 5 evidence, while far from conclusive, does raise the possibility that most or all of the adornment items recovered could have been part of a single necklace cast off during an episode of intense mourning. In this scenario, the grave-good associations for the accumulated adornment items point toward an adolescent (of either sex) or young adult female as the most likely wearer, and deposi-tor, of the necklace. Some versions of this interpretation would require expansion of the ethnographic example to assume that Seneca women also cast off adornments while grieving.

In the Iroquoianist literature, smoking pipes are overwhelmingly associated with men and diplomatic negotiations between men (Kuhn 2004; Wonderley 2005). Kapches (2003) even concludes that pipes with female and childbirth imagery from Ontario were smoked by male shamans assisting with births. In addition to the ethnographic ascription of smoking to men, manufacture of pipes from local clays is also considered among the Iroquois to have been “men’s work.” The association between native-made pipes and adult men appears to hold in the mortuary sample considered here, where 8 of 11 burials in the sample with native pipes were men aged 18 or over, one was with an adult of unknown sex, and two were in multiple burials (1 consisting of an elder male and child, and 1 of an adult of unknown sex and child). Only one European-made pipe was found among the 76 graves, buried at the Snyder-McClure site with an adult of unknown sex.

The 15 pipe-bowl and 5 pipe-stem fragments in the Feature 5 assemblage—as with the scrap sheet brass, a good sample for a single feature—suggest a major contrast with the normative account. This evidence suggests that women also smoked, and that they did so casu-ally while engaged in daily productive tasks. It is noteworthy that 19 of 20 pipe fragments from Feature 5 are of European-manufactured white ball clay, which slightly exceeds the ratio of European to Native American pipe stems in other parts of the site. In the nearby Structure 1 short longhouse (where at least some Feature 5 users likely lived), 14 white ball-clay and 1 native-made pipe fragments were recovered, and in Domestic Refuse Clus-ter (DRC) 2 (a spatially separate houselot), the ratio was 13 European to 1 native-made


fragment. The midden or houselot area termed DRC 3 demonstrated a very different pattern, as 9 native-made and 30 European-made pipe fragments were found––see Krohn (2010:42–43) for the case that DRC 3 is a dwelling, rather than a midden area.

The overwhelming percentage of European-manufactured pipe fragments from Feature 5 may further reflect that women lacked access to the native-made pipes produced and used by Seneca men. Nassaney (2004) makes a similar argument for New England groups, although his interpretation that smoking “led to social tensions between men and women” (Nassaney 2004:356) may not apply in the Seneca context. Alternately, it is possible that native-made pipes were used by men on symbolically important occasions, but that both men and women, or strictly men, used European-made pipes for everyday smoking. The presence in Feature 5 of one sherd from a locally made indigenous pot, typically thought to be produced by women, may indicate that Seneca women continued to engage in non-pipe ceramic production, although at low levels, as native-made potsherds are recovered quite rarely across the Townley-Read site.

While I agree with Krohn (2010:55) that “we should not assume that men alone” produced stone tools at Townley-Read, the nine pieces of chert debitage found in or above the fea-ture weigh less than 4 g in total and provide little support for the idea that Seneca women engaged in sustained lithic-tool production at Feature 5. The evidence from the feature is consistent with the rest of the site in that lithic use appears to have been relatively slight and quite informal (Krohn 2010). Senecas used small pieces of field chert or cobbles found in local streams expediently; no formal lithic tools other than gunflints were found in the entire area of 18th-century Seneca occupation. Three antler-flaking tools recovered from the mortuary record were all buried with males over the age of 18. Gunflints, many of which were imported from Europe, were buried with people in almost all age categories, male and female. In 12 of the 17 instances, iron strike-a-lights or smoker’s companions were also present in the grave assemblage, while there was only one instance of a gunflint being buried with a gun part (an iron butt plate), and only three instances of

gunflints being buried with lead musket balls. This evidence suggests that gunflints often were associated with fire starting and may have been acquired from European traders specifically for that role, as opposed to being repurposed for fire starting after initial use in weapons.

Instead of lithic or bone tools, Senecas likely used iron and brass implements for hidework. Materials surface collected from Townley-Read now held at the Rochester Museum and Sci-ence Center include several tubular iron pieces (probably scrap gun barrels) crushed at one end that likely functioned as scrapers. Project excavations in the DRC 1 houselot recovered a similar tool made from a semi-octagonal pistol barrel. Although it is unclear whether Seneca women were involved in the production of these iron scrapers, there is no obvious reason to rule out their participation. No clear-cut hide-working tools were found in or above Feature 5, but since both brass and iron were recyclable, the lack of obvious tools does not invalidate the contention that hide working took place around the feature.

The iron artifacts from Feature 5 are pre-dominantly nails, which likely were produced by European blacksmiths who occasionally resided at the site on commissions from New France and New York (Jordan 2001). The presence of nails in and around Feature 5 is best explained as a consequence of the use of structural debris for fuel, either due to the dismantling of an abandoned house (based on the amount of refuse found in some post molds, the short longhouse to the west appears to have been par-tially dismantled [Jordan 2008:136–137]) or use of remodeling or repair debris as firewood. This raises the possibility that women maintained dwellings themselves (Chilton 1994:12).

In sum, the artifactual evidence from Feature 5 analyzed in this section most strongly sug-gests that women or people under their direction collected firewood from varied sources, smoked, and produced sheet-brass items. There is equivo-cal evidence for stone-tool production and house maintenance. Alternative explanations for the presence of brass projectile points and lead shot make the case for Seneca women hunting and casting unconvincing, at least based on the evidence from Feature 5. The age and gender associations of the recovered adornment items are also equivocal.


Changes of Hands, Changes of Place, and Control at Feature 5

Historical and ethnographic evidence suggest that the various items produced and used at Feature 5 were likely to have been embedded in processes with quite distinct control histo-ries. Analysis of the “changes of hands” and “changes of place” involved in the production, distribution, and consumption of various goods provides an interesting window on the mic-ropolitics of Seneca daily life, as well as on relationships between women and men.

Seneca men presumably did the bulk of the hunting of animals that provided the hides, pelts, meat, and bone grease women processed at the feature. Men also had an initial role in clearing the fields women used to grow domesticates and possibly in cutting firewood from standing trees. Although there is documentation that Seneca women traveled as far as Albany to trade in the early 18th century (Waterman 2008), Iroquois men did much of the trading with Europeans. Many imported goods, such as brass kettles, white ball-clay pipes, glass beads, and textiles, therefore, were obtained by men and subsequently transferred to (and remained in) women’s con-trol. Some goods, such as sheet-brass projectile points, may have returned to male control after female manufacture. Notably, the hides and pelts processed at Feature 5 likely were transferred back into Seneca men’s hands, with uncertain implications for women’s status.

Seneca women at Townley-Read may have been able to exchange directly with visitors who sojourned at or near the site, including western Indians on their way to Oswego or Albany, and European blacksmiths and diplomats. Although there are no documents outlining what goods and services Seneca women may have provided to them, archaeological evidence indicates that items embroidered with glass beads (Herlich 2008) and perhaps bone grease—cited as a pos-sible “fur trade commodity” at the 1691–1781 French Fort St. Joseph in present-day Michigan (Nassaney et al. 2007:14)—are strong candi-dates. On present evidence it appears that both goods were produced in quantity at the Town-ley-Read site. Preliminary analysis of contrasts between Townley-Read and the preceding White Springs site, where ongoing Cornell University excavations began in 2007 (Gerard-Little et al.

2012), suggests that production of both bead-work and bone grease intensified at Townley-Read. At White Springs, small glass “seed” beads are extremely rare, whereas they make up over 93% of the almost 23,000 glass beads from Townley-Read analyzed by Herlich (2008). Faunal materials are generally less broken up at White Springs than they are at Townley-Read, suggesting that more fragmentation and grease production took place at Townley-Read.

It seems logical that Seneca women exerted significant control over products that moved from Feature 5 to female-controlled dwellings without a “change of hands,” including bone grease and plant and animal foods. Women may have had near complete control over gathered plant foods and medicines throughout their use lives (except for the moment of consumption), since men’s input was not needed to obtain or process them. Ethnographic descriptions of the uses of the plant medicines found in Feature 5 provide an intriguing window into past “changes of hands.” Herrick notes that hackberry, haw-thorn, sumac, and blackberry or raspberry were used by menstruating Iroquois women; hawthorn also was used as a component of both a poison used “to kill a woman who is using you badly” and its antidote (Herrick 1995:143,161–162). Interestingly in this context, morning glory was said to make hunters strong enough to carry two deer carcasses at a time (Herrick 1995:202). Other medicines made from the Feature 5 plants were administered to pregnant women, children, and newborn babies.

This preliminary description of the locational and appropriational movements of the goods present around Feature 5 shows many cross-cutting pathways with few overriding regulari-ties. Some “changes of hands” placed ultimate control in men’s hands, while women controlled others. This analysis suggests a social setting much more complex than those models in which the fur trade resulted in a straightforward decline in native women’s status, as in Habicht-Mauche (2005). Short-term local and regional changes in political, economic, and ecological conditions were also likely to have had signifi-cant effects on the quality of Seneca women’s lives, and a contextualized understanding of local fluctuations in women’s status is likely to be far more accurate than blanket assertions of post-Columbian decline. The intersections


of control, local and regional politicoeconomic influences, and Iroquois women’s status are deserving of further research and analysis.

Politicoeconomic conditions during the period 1715–1754 were largely positive for Seneca people, and Seneca women appear to have taken advantage of the opportunities local peace presented. It is interesting to note that the women’s activities intensified at Townley-Read concentrated on goods that likely remained in women’s control after initial male procurement, such as bone grease and glass beadwork. Dis-persed settlement likely facilitated the alloca-tion of women’s labor and time that allowed these status-enhancing tasks to be performed, which suggests that Seneca women would have been particularly interested in maintaining dispersed spatial organization. These concerns could be reflected in a 1741 document record-ing a meeting between officials from the New York Colony and Senecas that may have taken place at the Townley-Read site. During the meeting New York officials demanded that the Senecas “gather” into nucleated settlements; Seneca negotiators said they could not reply until they had consulted with the women, who have “so much to say in that affair” (Minutes of the Albany Commissioners for Indian Affairs 1722–1748[1,820]:218a). The archaeological record indicates that Senecas did not ever fully re-nucleate, and only partially gathered together in about 1754 in a context of renewed regional hostilities (Jordan 2008:196). The Seneca men quoted in the 1741 document appear to have been well apprised of women’s opinions and unwilling to act without their consent. This exchange may demonstrate the degree of power Seneca women had over the organization of their communities and their own daily lives.

Feature 5 and the Production and Reproduction of Seneca Identity

How would Feature 5 have functioned in the “social construction of adults” (Joyce 2000:473)? First, it likely produced associations of certain spaces and task stages with control by particu-lar genders. Based on the textual accounts of socialization, it is easy to envision that smaller children and older girls accompanied women to Feature 5 and participated in task stages asso-ciated with women’s control. As young boys

were taught to assert their own sorts of control, they moved away from spaces like Feature 5. The intermittent presence and/or assistance of elderly men, adult male captives, or older boys at Feature 5 likely would not have disrupted this fundamental dynamic.

Furthermore, a large feature like the Townley-Read fire pit would have facilitated gendered connections between residential groups and, probably, among clan members. The short longhouse dwelling associated with DRC 1 likely housed only about 10 people, meaning that a Feature 5 workgroup of 4 adults could have drawn on the labor of persons from other dwellings. Since Seneca men often were away from the village hunting, trading, or warring, I suggest that the work groups at Feature 5 routinely included residents of other house-holds. The relatively close 60–80 m spacing between houses at the site facilitated connec-tions between households, and neighborhoods within the New Ganechstage Site Complex likely were structured, at least in part, based on clan ties. Feature 5 may therefore have func-tioned as a “bridge” (Battle 2004:48) connecting spatially separate domestic groups, reproducing matrilineal clan ties that continue to be of vital importance to Iroquois peoples today (Jordan 2008:273–275,323–325).

It is striking how the composition of the work groups at Feature 5 and peoples’ movement in and out of the group over time mirrored the overall construction of kin group membership, essentially making the feature a scale model of Iroquois social organization. In the Iro-quois system, a group of matrilineally related women—mothers and daughters—served as the enduring center of the household. Husbands were drawn from other kin groups and balanced obligations to their nuclear families with those to their own clans. Most sons eventually left to join the households of their wives and returned only intermittently to engage in clan affairs. Captives, regardless of their age at capture, assumed fictive roles in kin groups, and their socialization mirrored that of children emerging into adulthood—women joined the core group, while men eventually departed. Local work groups were primarily composed of women from the same kin group.

Therefore, while Feature 5 may have provided an important stage for Seneca people to learn


and reproduce gender roles—girling the girl and boying the boy (Joyce 2000)—its role in helping people learn and enact their roles as kin may have been even more vital. It made the “imag-ined community” of the extended kin group a visible reality (O’Gorman 2010).

Conclusions

I have employed a strategy of assessing the full assemblage of archaeological materials from a possible locus of women’s control in light of historical, ethnographic, and burial data, to obtain a fuller-fledged picture of the activities at the feature and the personnel who undertook them. Viewing the Feature 5 evidence from this perspective provides a provocative, textured, and processual view of 18th-century Seneca daily life. Even so, the shortcomings of textual evi-dence and comparative archaeological data, and persistent problems with analogy mean that the interpretations presented here are far from defini-tive and unlikely to be accepted by all readers.

This approach suggests that Seneca women participated in tasks that the current literature either codes exclusively as male (such as pipe smoking) or assigns to what Tringham (1991:94) famously termed “faceless blobs,” who remain entirely unaged and ungendered (such as sheet-brass working). The point is not to claim that women did all of the smoking, sheet-brass working, and so forth, but to raise the distinct possibility that women, on occasion and even regularly, did these tasks or controlled those people who undertook them. It is hoped that these methods and conclusions will impact subsequent interpretations of Iroquoian artifact assemblages and gendered activity patterns.

Despite the assertion of women’s control, the space around Feature 5 or the artifacts from the fire pit cannot be thought of as strictly women’s. Children, male and female captives, and elders also habitually lived and worked in cleared areas around houses and agricultural fields. Seneca men surely were present, probably as elders and possibly as captives, at least to engage in the “changes of hands” through which most of the goods in circulation around the fea-ture went. Visitors, perhaps including amorously inclined individuals from within or beyond the community (whose advances may or may not have been well received),8 also passed by the

feature. Nonetheless, as a locus of women’s control, Feature 5 served to enculturate Seneca youth, reproduce gender relations, and facilitate ties between matrilineal clan members located in different households.

It also is important not to view the products in circulation around Feature 5 as being securely in women’s control. Instead, most goods spent only a portion of their use lives in women’s hands or under their supervision. Feature 5 represents a cluster of activities, a spatial aggre-gation of discrete stages from many processes where women’s control was likely to have been expressed. Identification of differences in control sequences for various products may provide an excellent key to interpretation of the social power and status of Seneca women.

In sum, Feature 5 was domestic space, but certainly not “private”; it involved produc-tion for the household, but also production for trade. The activities and uses of space around the feature linked people of different ages and genders, members of different households, and domestic and global economies. This interpreta-tion of Feature 5 provides an example of Iro-quois women’s roles that does not simply restate and reinforce the biases of European observers, but instead uses independent archaeological evi-dence to provide a model that contrasts greatly with the European American “separation of the spheres.” Although the evidence and analogies upon which this interpretation is based are imperfect and both can and should be ques-tioned, it is hoped that the results of this study will encourage scholars to continue to negotiate the “pitfalls” of gendered analysis.

Acknowledgments

An initial version of this article was presented at the 2007 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology in Williamsburg, Virginia. Charles Burgess, Claire Christensen, Shannon Dawdy, Adam Dewbury, Bill Engelbrecht, Jes-sica Herlich, Joe Joseph, Magdaline Lawhorn, Jeff Leon, Jon Parmenter, Nan Rothschild, Beth Ryan, Lorraine Saunders, Suzanne Spencer-Wood, Jeanne Taradena, Barb Voss, and several anony-mous reviewers provided insightful comments and guidance that greatly improved the value of this article. Archaeological fieldwork at the Townley-Read site was undertaken in consultation with


representatives of the Seneca Nation of Indians and was sponsored by Columbia University, Hobart and William Smith colleges, and grants from the National Science Foundation (BCS-9908795) and the Early American Industries Association. Special thanks go to 1999 season crew chief Liz Dysert, who ably supervised the excavation of Feature 5. Study of field records and artifacts at the Rochester Museum and Sci-ence Center was supported by an Arthur C. Parker Graduate Student Fellowship from the Rock Foundation. Subsequent research has been conducted using funds provided by the Cornell University Department of Anthropology, American Indian Studies Program, and the Hirsch Fund for Archaeological Research. Specialist analyses of the Townley-Read materials have been pro-vided by Mike Carmody (lithics), Jessica Herlich (copper-alloy materials, glass beads), Matthew Krohn (lithics), Kevin McGowan (avian remains), Jack Rossen (botanicals), Nerissa Russell (fauna), Scott Stull (ceramics), Stephen Cox Thomas (fauna), Adam Watson (fauna), and Michael West (fauna). I am grateful to Magdaline Lawhorn for alerting me to the placement of hide-working descriptions within Lafitau’s works. Finally, I thank Nan Rothschild for her suggestion many years ago that white ball-clay pipes might be “women’s pipes.”

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Endnotes

1Iroquois refers to the political confederacy of the Six Nations (Senecas, Cayugas, Onondagas, Oneidas, Mohawks, and Tuscaroras), whereas Northern Iroquoian is a linguistic classification referring to the many northeastern groups, such as the Huron-Wendats, who spoke related languages and shared many cultural and economic practices.

2I am grateful to Beth Ryan for this insight.

3The Seneca leader Kaienkwaahton, or Old Smoke, lived in the New Ganechstage Site Complex in 1750 (Beauchamp 1916:82; Jordan 2008:106,117). Several of his 19th-century descendants lived on the Tonawanda Reservation (Parker 1919:19–23).

4My use of mortuary data in this paper runs the risk of ethical and theoretical controversy. Ethically, I justify my choice to make use of this preexisting data by stating


that the new domestic-context excavations I conduct in collaboration with members of the Seneca Nation seek to avoid burial areas (Jordan 2008:123–131); that all possible vectors of existing evidence should be used to interpret archaeological sites; and that mortuary data are used here to illuminate domestic activities, rather than being analyzed in their own right. Theoretically, I recognize that mortuary deposits are not a direct reflection of social roles and statuses, but intentional depositions made by the living for their own purposes (conscious or unconscious).

5Sources for Tables 1–5 include Rossen (2006, 2008, elec. comm.) for botanical remains; Watson and Thomas for faunal remains (Stephen Cox Thomas 2012, elec. comm.; Adam S. Watson 2012, elec. comm.; Watson and Thomas 2013); and artifactual data compiled by the author. Materials recovered from Feature 5 and the surrounding contexts, that are excluded from Tables 1–5 and the analysis, consist of thermally altered rocks and very small chert fragments (approximately 600 pieces, weighing slightly over 5 g), which may or may not reflect human activity, recovered via flotation. Additionally, 15 artifacts from the plowzone above the feature, likely to derive from post-1788 European American occupations at the site, also were excluded. They consist of one Albany slip-glaze, one pearlware, and four whiteware ceramic sherds; four pieces of brick or drainage tile which Stull (2006) estimates to postdate 1790; three pieces of flat glass; and two pieces of clear bottle glass. With the exception of the four analyzed botanical specimens from the plowzone, botanical materials recovered by dry screening were excluded.

6Brass kettles appear to have made up the overwhelming majority of cooking vessels at the site. There is very little evidence for use of native-made or imported ceramic vessels at Townley-Read (Stull 2006) and contemporaneous Iroquois sites.

7While secondary sources are quick to label hide working, food preparation, and medicinal practices as Iroquoian “women’s work” (Wallace 1969:24; Fenton 1978:298–300; Trigger 1990:34,40; Richter 1992:19–24), recourse to historical sources and Morgan’s early ethnography reveals that these attributions are not as solid as later scholars want them to be, particularly regarding hide work. Morgan’s (1851:361) detailed description of Seneca deer-hide processing is entirely ungendered, and often rendered in the passive voice; he states, for example, “they still tan them [deer hides] after the ancient method. ... When the deer-skin is fresh, the hair, and also the grain of the skin are taken off ... a solution is then made by boiling a cake of the brain in water.” Jesuit missionary Joseph-François Lafitau’s early-18th-century account of Iroquois life at the Kahnawake mission actually includes the description of hide processing in a chapter titled “Occupations of the Men” (Lafitau 1977:30–31)! However, Lafitau was not strict about the gendered organization of his writing, as he also, for example, included a section on women’s clothing in the same chapter (Lafitau 1977:28–29). Lafitau’s description of the hide-processing task sequence also is not gendered. While one can rely on cross-cultural regularities in the gender of hide workers among American Indian groups (Frink and Weedman 2005), this analogy is weaker than one rooted in contemporaneous descriptions or direct historical ties. I can offer no ready solution to the imprecision of these ethnographic sources; the issue certainly reduces the surety of the interpretation offered here.

8I am grateful to Charles Burgess for providing this image, and to Chris Matthews for complicating it.

Kurt A. JordAndepArtMent of AnthropoloGy And AMericAn indiAn proGrAMcornell univerSity210 McGrAW hAllithAcA, ny 14853-4601

Enacting Gender and Kinship around a Large Outdoor Firepit at the Seneca Iroquois Townley-Read Site,...

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