Interactions Between Jefferson County Iroquoian Women and Men as Explored Through Social Network Analysis of Pottery and Pipe Decorative Motif Traits

Pottery and pipe decorative motifs are generally thought to change across time, space, and group affiliation. While pipes and pottery have been extensively study using various methods, they have only recently been studied in present-day New York, southern Ontario, and Quebec (Northern Iroquoia) using social network analysis. Analyses to date have primarily focused on Pan-Iroquoian networks rather than on regions within Northern Iroquoia. To better understand the Jefferson County Iroquoians living in and around present-day Jefferson County, New York, social network analysis methods have begun to be utilized to analyze pottery and pipe decorative motifs to elucidate village interactions within this geographically restricted region, and to determine if the roles of individual villages differed in intra- and extra-regional networks. This dissertation seeks to identify possible differences between male and female interaction spheres among Jefferson County Iroquoian as well as between Jefferson County Iroquoian sites and the greater Pan-Iroquoian network. The primary research questions that motivated this research were: 1) Did male and female interactions differ between Jefferson County Iroquoian villages? Was one village more influential in both the male sphere and the female sphere, or were there different foci? 2) Did male and female interactions differ between villages within/between cluster groups? 3) Did one village seem to be more influential in each village cluster? 4) Do the cluster/villages that is/are most influential also hold that role when looked at in the larger network of New York, portions of Quebec, and portions of Ontario? To address these research questions, I gathered pottery and pipe design trait data from known Jefferson County Iroquoian sites, as well as data-mined trait data from previously conducted Pan-Iroquoian pottery and pipe studies and compiled them into a binarized presence/absence trait-based system. Social network procedures such as Freeman’s degree centrality, flow betweenness centrality, edge betweenness centrality, closeness centrality, density, cluster coefficient, brokerage, and E-I measures were employed to address these questions. Testing parameters varied between collections depending on the quality and quantity of the data belonging to each. Results suggest that male and female interactions do not greatly differ within Jefferson County nor within Pan-Iroquoian networks. Minor differences occur between the networks, but the overall analysis suggests that these differences are not enough to be of any significance