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When the seventeenth-century Narragansetts were told the biblical creation story involving Adam and Eve, they responded by offering their own account of human origins. They claimed “that Kautantowwit made one man and woman of a stone, which disliking, he broke them in pieces, and made another man and woman of a tree, which were the fountaines [sic] of all mankind” (Trumbull 1866:157–158). When Roger Williams recorded this account in the early– 1640s, stone tools were still practical and important in everyday native life, and stone as a raw material held a symbolic signi¤cance. While we may never know why stone was an inappropriate raw material for the ¤rst human models, southeastern New England natives employed it for a variety of tools well into the seventeenth century. Perhaps the substitution of wood ¤gures for stone in this account can serve as a metaphor for the widespread replacement of stone tools in post-Contact material assemblages. Beginning in the early seventeenth century, the Dutch and English introduced trade goods such as metal axes and knives that began to replace their lithic counterparts. However, in some cases suitable replacements were lacking or considered unacceptable substitutes for traditional forms in certain contexts, as we show in this study. Furthermore, innovations in stone tool forms were developed , and these were assigned new meanings in the post-Contact world. In this paper, we examine the stone tool technology of the Narragansetts and neighboring groups in southeastern New England immediately before and after contact (Figure 6.1). As in much of Native North America, metal was only used sparingly prior to the seventeenth century. Subsequent European trade relations involving metal tools had a profound impact on native lithic technology. Yet, in this complex process of intercultural exchange, native peoples were active agents in choosing the tools they made, acquired, and used in everyday life. Indeed, 6 Lithic Artifacts in Seventeenth-Century Native New England Michael S. Nassaney and Michael Volmar several classes of lithic artifacts persisted well into the seventeenth century, including pestles and pipes, and some new elaborated forms were made possible by European iron implements (e.g., Turnbaugh 1976, 1977). We also suggest that the retention and modi¤cation of stone pestle and smoking pipe technology were not merely by-products of European interaction or resistance to a foreign technology . Rather, pipes and pestles were employed in creating and reproducing new social roles that were being restructured in the turmoil brought about by European disease, land encroachment, and demands for commodity production (Nassaney 2002). Relationships along gender lines, in particular, were being rede¤ned, and lithic artifacts, we argue, were actively implicated in reinforcing the new roles enacted by men and women. THE GENDER-BASED DIVISION OF LABOR AND STONE TOOLS PRIOR TO CONTACT Recent archaeological interest in social relations and ideology has led practitioners to reconceptualize lithic artifacts and stone tool technology as more than mere clues about economy. They are now seen as potential entry points into the organization of production, the gender-based division of labor, and the belief systems of ancient societies (Cassell, chapter 10; Cobb 2000; Cross 1990; Nassaney 1996; Silliman 2001:201–204, chapter 9; Thomas 2000). The most convincing interpretations of stone tool form, function, and meaning combine insights gained from archaeology, experimentation, oral traditions, and documentary sources, using each as a crosscheck against the other. Ethnographic and ethnohistoric sources suggest that age and gender formed the basis for the division of labor among the natives of southeastern New England , not unlike most other North American Indian groups (Bragdon 1996a, 1996b; Shoemaker 1995; Simmons 1978; Williams and Bendremer 1997). Native women in southeastern New England planted, cultivated, and harvested the crops and gathered wild plant foods. These tasks would have required the use of stone, shell, or bone (deer scapula) hoes (see Hoffman [1991], Wilbur [1978], and Willoughby [1973] for illustrations of stone hoes and other lithic artifacts). The women also produced a variety of domestic objects including pottery, baskets , clothing, and textiles and were responsible for cooking, serving meals, and childcare. Bifacial knives, expedient ®ake tools, scrapers, and drills were common cutting and piercing implements used in processing food and raw materials for clothing, whereas mortars (often wooden) and stone pestles were essential for food preparation. The well-known soapstone bowls of the Late Archaic and Early Woodland periods had been abandoned long before Contact and replaced by the low-¤red earthenware vessels that women crafted (Johnson 2000; but see artifacts in native...

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