Entangled Things and Deposits in Early Colonial Native New England

Abstract

We consider the entanglement of objects and deposits at an early colonial-period Native American site in New England’s middle Connecticut River valley. We examine the acquisition, circulation, and deposition of archaeological materials and consider the obligations, reciprocities, and networks maintained and reworked by Pocumtuck people and their native and nonnative neighbors. The archaeological evidence indicates increasingly circumscribed networks as stone, copper, clay, shell, and glass created debts, obligations, and duties between individuals and communities. The Pocumtuck, along with their kin and allies, were entangled in colonialism as active co-producers of social transformation.