ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This research endeavor would not have been possible without the assistance of a number of people to whom I am indebted. I would like to thank my thesis advisor, Dr. M. Kathryn Brown, for allowing me to use the data from Nance Farm for this project, but most of all for her direction of this research. Not to be overlooked, of course, are her assurances that the higher the level of frustration over one’s subject, the closer one is to completing the task at hand. I would also like to thank Dr. Karl Petruso for his guidance not only during the writing phase of this thesis, but also during my coursework at the University of Texas at Arlington. Thank you, Dr. Joseph Bastien, as well, for your instruction in ethnohistoric research during my coursework and for adding that component to this final project. I would like to acknowledge Ms. Sherry Duffy for her faunal analysis and for generally keeping me sane, Vive la Angola Rodeo! Without the support of my family, this project could never have been completed. I would like to thank my husband, Christopher, for his patience and support during this endeavor. I thank my mother for not only babysitting my son during the field session and numerous hours of writing, but for her encouragement as well. I am grateful to my son, Jean-Luc, for his patience when instead of bedtime stories he heard artifact analyses and theory. Also, a very special thanks to the many baristas who kept me caffeinated enough to see this project to fruition