Learning from Each Other: a Communities of Practice Approach to Decorative Traditions of Northern Iroquoian Communities in the Late Woodland

Abstract

In this paper, we employ a communities of practice approach to investigate precontact childhood social learning and pottery production in the Lower Great Lakes. Until recently, there has been an implicit assumption that childhood learning involved primarily parent-child interactions. Building on current research that has begun to improve understanding of Indigenous socialization strategies, we apply a multi-scalar decorative analysis to investigate traditions of learning among potting communities in Southern Ontario and upstate New York, from ca. 900–1650 CE. Through a series of statistical analyses, we demonstrate a remarkable continuity in motif practices by child potters that is not evident among skilled potters, who were more impacted by social, demographic, and economic changes in their communities. The multi-generational tradition spanning at least 750 years leads us to suggest that child potters learned primarily in child groups through peer-to-peer learning. Although peer-to-peer learning has been observed ethnographically, this practice has often been overlooked in archaeology and warrants further inquiry.