Identity Formation at the Keffer Iroquoian Village: A Relational Network Approach to Communities of Practice

This thesis employs settlement pattern studies and social network analysis of ceramics to present a history of the Keffer village and its multiple ceramic practice communities. Keffer is a fifteenth-century Iroquoian site on the north shore of Lake Ontario. Temporally and spatially patterned variability in the diverse local tradition and nonlocal ceramics materialized the fluid, multivalent, and contingent identity of the Keffer potters at the household level. Nonlocal ceramics, particularly locally produced “emergent” ceramics, expressed unique yet shared identities with others within the village. These same analyses produce a nuanced series of development plans that trace the initial settlement, the growth, and the initial steps in the abandonment of the village. Distinct ceramic practices indicate that, contrary to what has been argued in some of the literature, the longhouse clusters that form the initial village occupation may not reflect kin-based social groups. However, longhouses added independently after this first settlement may reflect the arrival of small, related, kin-based groups. Village growth appears to have occurred at the level of the individual household and was likely unplanned. Village abandonment occurred on the same scale, at the individual household level. This study also shows that social network analysis of ceramic types is an appropriate mechanism for the exploration of multiscalar group identity. Analysis at the pan-Iroquoian, regional, and village levels demonstrates Keffer’s central position in the highly connected north shore interaction network and its distant relations with St. Lawrence and Eastern Iroquoian groups. Social relations and the identities they sustained, from the most intimate level of the household to the pan-cultural interaction sphere, can be successfully revealed and explored through the application of combined social network, community of practice, and agency approaches.Ph.D