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

Abstract

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, subsistence 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.