Archaeological Review from Cambridge

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Archaeology and
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About ARC Contents
The Archaeological Review from Cambridge is a bi-annual journal of archaeology.
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University of Cambridge.
W. Paul van Pelt
Although primarily rooted in archaeological theory and practice, ARC increasingly invites From Hybridity to Entanglement, from Essentialism to Practice 11
a range of perspectives with the aim of establishing a strong, interdisciplinary journal Philipp W. Stockhammer
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Archaeological Review from Cambridge Bottle and Where to Go from There
Division of Archaeology Eleftheria Pappa
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Volume 28.1 Archaeology and Cultural Mixture Problematizing Typology and Discarding the Colonialist Legacy: 95
Approaches to Hybridity in the Terracotta Figurines of Hellenistic Babylonia
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Production W. Paul van Pelt Signal and Noise: Digging up the Dead in Archaeology and Afro-Cuban Palo 115
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Hybridity at the Contact Zone: Ethnoarchaeological Perspectives from 133
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Marcus Brittain, Timothy Clack and Juan Salazar Bonet
Published in April 2013. Copyright remains with the authors. Opinions expressed in con-
tributions do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the editors. Considering Mimicry and Hybridity in Early Colonial New England: 151
Health, Sin and the Body "Behung with Beades"
All images are the authors' own except where otherwise stated. Diana D. Loren
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Our Children Might be Strangers: Frontier Migration and the Meeting of Cultures 169
Committee, Archaeological Review from Cambridge across Generations
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General Editors Editors Publicity and Events Ethnogenesis and Hybridity in Proto-Historic Period Nicaragua 191
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Treasurer Book Reviews Back Issue Sales Origins of the Samaritans: Colonialism and Hybridity
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Networking the Middle Ground? The Greek Diaspora, Tenth to Fifth Century BC 241
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Cultural Mixing in Egyptian Archaeology: The 'Hyksos' as a Case Study 257
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Mixing Food, Mixing Cultures: Archaeological Perspectives 287

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Hybridity, Creolization, Mestizaje: A Comment 301

Parker VanValkenburgh

Book Reviews—Edited by Penny Jones Considering Mimicry and Hybridity in Early

Colonial New England: Health, Sin and the
The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology of Ritual and Religion edited by 323 Body "Behung with Beades"
Timothy Insoll
—Reviewed by Pamela J. Cross Diana D. Loren
Peabody Museum, Harvard University
The Idea of Order: The Circular Archetype in Prehistoric Europa by Richard 331 dloren@fas.harvard.edu
Bradley
—Reviewed by John Manley

The Funerary Kit: Mortuary Practices in the Archaeological Record by Jill L. Baker 335
—Reviewed by Van Pigtain

The Ten Thousand Year Fever: Rethinking Human and Wild-Primate Malaria by 341
Loretta A. Cormier
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Human Adaptation in the Asian Palaeolithic: Hominin Dispersal and Behaviour 346
during the Late Quaternary by Ryan J. Rabett Introduction
—Reviewed by Patrick J. Roberts

Ethnozooarchaeology: The Present and Past of Human-Animal Relationships

edited by Umberto Albarella and Angela Trentacoste
—Reviewed by Jane Sanford
352
H ybridity, as defined by Bhabha (2004), is a term and a concept that
pervades the theoretical landscape of archaeology, despite critiques
about the relevance and applicability of the term to ancient and colonial
communities (van Dommelen 2005, 2006; Fahlander 2007; Stahl 2010;
Archaeological Theory in Practice by Patricia Urban and Edward Schortman 356
—Reviewed by Valeria Riedemann L. Tronchetti and van Dommelen 2005). Hybridity acknowledges social and
material exchange and transformations between different social groups
Ancient Egyptian Technology and Innovation: Transformations in Pharaonic 360
Material Culture by Ian Shaw while simultaneously attending to issues of voice, power, identity and
—Reviewed by Kimberley Watt ambivalence. When applied generally and broadly, hybridity provides
Forthcoming Issues 364
no further illumination of cultural change than previous theoretical
viewpoints such as assimilation. The more productive theories of
Subscription Information 366 hybridity are those that problematize the term and seek to investigate
Available Back Issues 367 the nuances and details in the entanglement of people and objects in

Archa e o l o gic al R ev iew f ro m C amb r i d g e - 28 .1 - 2013

152 Considering Mimicry and Hybridity in Early Colonial New England
specific historical contexts. It provides theoretical latitude to describe the
nuances of colonialism in space and time, moving past binary oppositions
of colonized and colonizer towards more subtle understandings of the
small differences of lived experiences of colonialism, changing social
identities and material transformations and innovations. Here, I suggest
that when hybrid processes are viewed through the lens of mimicry
and mockery, archaeologists gain better insights into the complexity of
colonial entanglements (see van Dommelen 2006; Fahlander 2007).
My interest in hybridity and mimicry intersects with my interest in
understanding changing understandings of bodily self and material
embodiments in New World colonial contexts (Loren 2001, 2007, 2009,
2010). The European colonization of the New World is known to have
brought a renewed sense of bodily awareness and, by extension,
health and well-being to Europeans and Native Americans. For English
Puritans in southern New England, dress and adornment materialized
one's relationship with God and bodily health and any deviation from
sartorial expectations compromised the Puritan soul. For example, in the
1622 Mourt's Relation, Edward Winslow described a missing Puritan boy
who was returned to them by the Wampanoag "behung with beades"
(Bradford 1963 [1622]: 71). Winslow and other English Puritans viewed such
attire as threatening to soul and health because it simultaneously signified
belonging and not belonging: being neither Puritan nor Native American,
but ambiguous. Once colonized, Native Americans were to mimic
English in clothing, mannerisms and dress, but when misunderstood or
misinterpreted through material culture as a hybrid form, mimicry was
potentially dangerous to colonial hierarchies. Native New Englanders—
both Christian and non-Christian—understood clothing and adornment
differently as honouring and healing both body and spirit.
To highlight these interstices of colonial understandings and
misunderstandings, I draw on Bhabha's (1994) conceptualizations of
hybridity and mimicry to interpret the material and textual record of
Puritanism and conversion in colonial New England (see also Crossland
2010; Ingold 2007; Loren 2010; Stahl 2010; White and Beaudry 2009). My
Archaeological Review from Cambridge 28.1: 151–168
Diana D. Loren 153
focus is on seventeenth-century glass, shell and copper beads and how
they were integrated into bodily experience in colonial New England. In
this paper I explore how native New Englanders incorporated European-
manufactured glass beads into their lives and material understandings
of the colonial world and how the incorporation of beads, in sartorial
and bodily practice, were viewed and understood by English
Puritans who settled in New England. These material embodiments
resulted in a language of dress that was transformative, creative and
expressive of changing social identities as Puritan and Native American
conceptualizations of a properly-dressed, healthy body intersected.
Hybridity and Mimicry in the New World and the Expectation of
Dress
For Puritans in seventeenth-century New England, the moral soul
and physical body were inseparable (Godbeer 1992; St. George 1998).
Godliness, as manifested by the body, was the sign of election and the
body, with its material demands and metaphorical significance, became
the axis upon which all colonial activity and religious meaning turned
(Finch 2010: 29). Divine grace entered a person's soul through the physical
senses and inner grace motivated one's actions in the world. The body
was the site of conflict between godliness and worldly desires. Outward
plainness indicated inward godliness. Sombre dress avoided the "wily
beguiles" of high fashion, which bespoke of a proud heart (Finch 2001:
108). Moreover, the boundaries between body and soul were permeable
and thus susceptible to the devil and temptation (Finch 2001, 2010).
Physical illness was linked to a soul's corruptions (Godbeer 1992). When
exposed to sin, both body and soul would suffer ill health. Spiritual state
meant nothing unless it was visibly manifested in dress, speech, sexual
activities and comportment (Finch 2010: 1). These fundamental beliefs
generated expectations and anxieties of what it meant to act and dress
as a true Puritan.
The goals of Puritan conversion in New England implied that Native
Americans and English alike associated the wearing of European clothes
Archaeological Review from Cambridge 28.1: 151–168
154 Considering Mimicry and Hybridity in Early Colonial New England
with Christianity; one moved closer to being a Christian by dressing
as one (Calloway 1997: 74–77). Daniel Gookin, Superintendent of the
Massachusetts Praying Towns (Puritan-established communities for
converted Native Americans) in the seventeenth century, articulated the
common view of Native American bodies as 'mirrors' reflecting colonists'
views of themselves if they abandoned 'civilized' and 'moral' practice
(Finch 2001, 2010). Puritan visions of a properly converted Native American
included the adoption of English cultural, material and spiritual practices
and the abandonment of long-standing Native American practices, such
as wearing beads on exposed skin.
But embodying Puritan identity through English dress was not to
be a complete transformation; rather a Native American copy of Puritan
identity was always to be distinguished as different. As Bhabha (1994)
argues, there had to remain a difference between the colonizer and
the colonized's mimicked performance of him. The colonizer's desire,
therefore, was "for a reformed, recognizable Other, as a subject of difference
that is almost the same, but not quite" (Bhabha 1994: 122, italics in original).
Perfect copies, even in Puritan-established Praying Towns, would simply
be too threatening to imperial hierarchy.
Bhabha's articulation of colonial mimicry and hybridity is relevant
to this discussion. Hybridity, as defined by Bhabha (1994), should not
be misunderstood as a simple fusion of new and old elements into a
crossbreed of ideology or practice, but rather as a continuous process
that acknowledges inequalities of power and subverts the narratives of
colonial power and dominant cultures (cf. Young 1995; Troncetti and van
Dommelen 2005: 193). Archaeologists have found theoretical grounding
in Bhabha's conceptualization of hybridity, providing a way to think
creatively about cultural interactions, counteract simplified views of
colonization and embrace material and social constructs that do not
fit neatly into historical categories and archaeological typologies. Yet
Bhabha's conceptualization of hybridity and its application in archaeology
are not without critique. Several authors have noted that Bhabha
overlooks physical space and the intersection of space, things and bodies
Archaeological Review from Cambridge 28.1: 151–168
Diana D. Loren 155
that are necessarily part of colonial discourses (van Dommelen 2006: 112;
Fahlander 2007). When hybridity is a general and amorphous concept,
rather than referring to specific objects and bodies in space, it lapses into
the same essentialist framework it works to refute.
However, Bhabha's discussion of mimicry and by extension mockery,
may provide a more fruitful avenue for interpreting colonial materialities
(Fahlander 2007). At its broadest definition, mimicry is the desire for the
colonized to adopt—either forcefully or intentionally—the colonizer's
material and cultural habits and values. Bhabha (1994) describes mimicry
as discourse that (almost the same but not quite) is generated out of
ambivalence but is potentially subversive. When colonial discourse
encourages the colonial subject to 'mimic' the colonizer, the result
is never a simple reproduction of those traits. Rather, the result is a
blurred and therefore threatening copy of the colonizer. Mimicry is at
once resemblance and menace. The desire for the colonized to imitate
the colonizer also erodes and mocks colonial authority as it continually
suggests differences in social and material colonial identities (Bhabha
1994: 123). It amplifies the ruptures and limitations of colonial authority and
oversight—what can and is manipulated—as well as colonial anxieties
regarding boundaries of inclusion and exclusion.
My discussion of mimicry here aims to better understand the
materiality of colonial entanglements: how new goods were used and
embodied by colonial peoples and how social identities transformed
through these embodiments and materialities (see Crossland 2010;
Crossley 2001; Gosden 2005; Ingold 2007; Thomas 1991). As noted by Stahl
(2010: 157), it is not enough to say that colonial peoples merely assimilated
the unfamiliar to the familiar, but rather that new goods remake the
contexts of human actors and impact lived experience. Lived experience
is constituted with and through material culture and the residues of
those embodiments and lived experiences are found in texts, objects and
space (Crossland 2010; Fisher and Loren 2003; Gosden and Knowles 2001;
Joyce 2005; Miller 2005; Stahl 2010; White and Beaudry 2009). Material
engagements during periods of colonization carry the stamp of imperial
Archaeological Review from Cambridge 28.1: 151–168
156 Considering Mimicry and Hybridity in Early Colonial New England
desires and imaginations of how colonized and colonizers were to live in
relation to the politics of inclusion and exclusion: sumptuary laws, imperial
rules and expectations. The lived experiences of colonial subjects—how
they lived or were forced to live in their material worlds and how material
worlds shaped people—redrew the contours of colonialism (Gosden
2005). Thus, the difference lies in performance: the embodiment of
identity through the small things that comprise the material culture of
daily life.
Following this logic, a simple item such as a colonial glass bead can
be interpreted in a variety of ways. In the case of colonial New England,
glass beads were not for trade with the converted, as new Christians had
given up these fashions to conform to their faith by embracing sombre
dress. Nor were beads to be worn by the unconverted, against exposed
flesh. Rather, glass beads were meant to facilitate social interactions
that would, as Puritans hoped, lead Native Americans to salvation. What
was unexpected in these interactions was that the trade of material
goods would lead to a dangerous blurring of social distinctions where
objects were not used as they were intended—as baubles to promote
conversion—but rather used by Native Americans to embody new
identities (Kupperman 1997; Loren 2010; Thomas 1991). In southern New
England, the Wampanoag and other Native Americans wore glass beads
with copper and shell beads, as well as wampum (purple and white shell
beads used for ceremonies, money and adornment), to embody allegiance,
wealth, gender and status: to honour the living and the dead (Karklins
1992; Turgeon 2001, 2004). Glass beads were also worn to promote health
and cure sicknesses, an aspect of beads that was particularly important
in the seventeenth century as diseases were decimating Native American
communities (Turgeon 2004).
Mourt's Relation
Written by Puritan leader William Bradford between 1620 and 1621,
Mourt's Relation is a firsthand account of the landing of the Mayflower
and the settlement of Plymouth Colony and, in particular, Bradford's
Archaeological Review from Cambridge 28.1: 151–168
Diana D. Loren 157
interactions with Massasoit, a Pokanoket chief in the Wampanoag Nation
(Bradford 1963 [1622]). Published in London in 1622 as a promotional tract,
the goal of the account was to paint the new Puritan settlement in the
most favourable light. The account reads as an ethnographic document,
providing rich detail on Wampanoag life and material culture. Despite
its optimistic goals, the overall tone of Mourt's Relation is cautious about
the physical and spiritual challenges of settling in New England. In
particular, the account reveals Puritan anxieties about interactions with
Wampanoag and other groups, the tenuous nature of amicable relations,
the need for treaties to cement alliances and the sinful allure of exposed
Native American bodies. One section of this short narrative recounts an
expedition seeking a lost boy—ten-year-old John Billington—who had
strayed from the settlement. The young boy was found among the Nauset,
a group neighbouring the Wampanoag, who although "ill disposed to the
English" returned John Billington to them. The account reads, "[t]here he
delivered us the boy, behung with beads, and made peace with us, we
bestowing a knife on him, and likewise on another that first entertained
the boy and brought him thither" (Bradford 1963 [1622]: 71).
Beads were part of the material language of Puritans in their
interactions with Native Americans. In these communications, however,
beads were understood as an item of trade with and adornment for Native
American bodies, not the bodies of Puritans. Bradford (1963 [1622]: 29)
states as much in his discussion of an interaction with the Wampanoag:
"[s]o it is growing towards night, and the tide almost spent, we hasted
with our things down to the shallop, and got aboard that night, intending
to have brought some beads and other things to have left in the houses,
in sign of peace and that we meant to truck with them". That is, beads are
for a Native American 'them', not the Puritan 'us'.
This understanding of beads being used by Native American
adornment in life and death is also amplified in the discussion of the
Puritan's discovery of a burial at Cape Cod (the famously referenced first
'archaeological' excavation of a Native American burial in the New World):
Archaeological Review from Cambridge 28.1: 151–168
158 Considering Mimicry and Hybridity in Early Colonial New England
…[W]e came into the plain ground we found a place
like a grave…The skull had fine yellow hair still on it…It
was bound up in a sailor's canvas cassock, and a pair of
cloth breeches…About the legs and other parts of it was
bound strings and bracelets of fine white beads; there
was also by it a little bow, about three quarters long, and
some other odd knacks (Bradford 1963 [1622]: 27–28).
Bradford questioned the ethnicity of the individual, pondering
the occurrence of an individual with blond hair being buried with cloth
breeches as well as beads and other European-manufactured items. He
then suggested that the interred individual was either Native American or
"a Christian of some special note, which had died among them, and thus
they buried him to honor him" (Bradford 1963 [1622]: 28). Meaning, to be
dressed in this fashion, the individual was either Native American (possibly
a convert) or a European prepared for burial by a Native American. Native
Americans could adopt English dress through conversion to Puritanism,
but not in the piecemeal fashion described in Mourt's Relation.
The fear that this individual was a Puritan who chose to dress like
a Native American is not vocalized in this account. However, in other
accounts, Puritan leaders and missionaries fretted over the physical and
spiritual state of the colony: souls that would be lost when colonists
would 'turn native', as well as the interethnic relations that disrupted
ordered colonial hierarchies and threatened imperial loyalties (Lindman
and Tartar 2001; Loren 2007; Stoler 2009). In fact, some were horrified to
realize that fashionable men and women from the Old World were, in the
New World, actually consuming indigenous cultures in their search for
the new and the exotic (see examples in Wood 1634; see also Kupperman
1997: 197). Bodily presentation indicated one's relationship with God and
by extension a healthy and devout body. Anything else would simply be
a mockery of Puritanism and its God.
Archaeological Review from Cambridge 28.1: 151–168
Diana D. Loren 159
Beyond Trade: Beads in Life and Death
The majority of archaeologically recovered colonial beads have been
excavated from burial contexts. In my use of burial data I seek to consider
object biographies and how they intersect with human lives, recognizing
that the beads I discuss here were placed alongside loved ones by family
and community members in death. Glass beads from archaeological
contexts have been examined, defined, categorized and interpreted as
indicators of status, ethnicity, age, gender, ideology and identity (Ceci 1989;
Karklins 1992; Kidd and Kidd 1980; Malischke 2009; Nassaney 2008; Turgeon
2001, 2004). Despite decades of research, the definition of glass beads as
a trade good—a material good that facilitated economic relationships—
is a colonial category constructed by the English that still persists today.
Of course glass beads were traded, but it was their lives beyond that
moment of exchange that provides deeper insights into lived experience,
how they became part of the lives and dress of Native Americans and
their meaning and resonance for Native Americans and the English. The
embodiment of beads by colonial Native Americans represents an active
relationship between body and object in performances of mimicry and
mockery.
The village of Sowams (Burr's Hill site)
The Burr's Hill site, located in present-day Warren, Rhode Island, is believed
to be Sowams, a seventeenth century Wampanoag village under the rule of
Massasoit (fig. 1; Gibson 1980). Excavated in the early twentieth century, the
only comprehensive publication of the excavation was published several
decades later by the Haffereffer Museum at Brown University (Gibson
1980). Forty-two Wampanoag individuals and numerous funerary objects
of Native American and European manufacture were excavated from the
site, including artefacts such as wool textile fragments, glass wine bottles,
European ceramics such as tin-glazed earthenware, bone combs and, of
course, beads. Most of the individuals were buried in flexed positions
covered by textiles or wood and recovered from multiple interments,
suggesting non-Christian burial practices were followed at the village
(Gibson 1980: 13–15). The diversity of Native- and European-manufactured
Archaeological Review from Cambridge 28.1: 151–168
160 Considering Mimicry and Hybridity in Early Colonial New England Diana D. Loren 161

objects found in excavations Burial Shell Glass Copper Wampum Other

is not unique to early colonial
7 white beads blanket fragment
New England sites. As Hodge
(2005: 66) notes, Native American white beads blue and yellow
cemeteries in southeastern New 8 (discoidal and 3 rings, 2 bells
round and tubular
tubular)
England are characterized by blue/white bead belt, 3 glass buttons, 2
hundreds of blue
unequal distributions of objects 10 and white beads, bells, 3 metal breast
ornaments, medallion
of Native American and European tubular oval round

beads (discoidal thousands of blue

manufacture that suggest at 11 white and mul-
and tubular)
least a partial retention of other ticolor beads

traditional burial practices while 14 beads (discoidal beads

and tubular)
also indicating some shifts towards
belt
hybrid material practice (see also 16 white beads blue and white beads beads fragment
Nassaney 2004). Fig. 1. Location of Sowams (Burr's Hill site) in present day Rhode
Island. blue, white, and
18 beads green beads
The kinds and combinations of beads recovered from the Wampanoag beads (discoidal
22 beads
burials at Sowans deserve further consideration with regard to notions of and tubular)

hybridity and mimicry. Numerous beads were recovered from Burr's Hill: 25 blue and blue/white beads
spherical beads
Native American-manufactured shell and copper beads and wampum
(distinguished from shell beads in shape and colour), as well as numerous 30 white beads wampum
colours and sizes of European-manufactured glass beads. At Burr's Hill, 16
burials (less than 50 per cent) contained beads (table 1). In nine of those 32 beads

interments, individuals were buried with a combination of glass, shell

33 beads
and copper beads. Six burials contained only shell beads, while only one
burial contained solely glass beads. Wampum, either in the form of single 35 white beads wool blanket frag-
ment, hide clothing,
beads or fragments of belts, was recovered only from burials that also
contained shell beads. Burials containing solely shell beads contained numerous brass finger
beads belt
38 beads beads rings, sword, fine wool
(about neck) fragment
few other objects of clothing and adornment. However, the burials with cloth fragments

glass beads contained a greater variety of Native-manufactured and 39 beads, beads in beads matchlock gun
pattern of belt,
European-manufactured artefacts of clothing and adornment including
brass rings, wool cloth fragments (either from blankets or clothing) and 1870 shell finger rings, cloth
excavation fragments
glass buttons.
1913
excavation beads black and white beads blanket fragments
Glass beads were intended by the Europeans to initiate an interaction
that would lead to conversion. Yet Native Americans embodied these Table 1. Beads from Burr's Hill, compiled from Gibson (1980).
Archaeological Review from Cambridge 28.1: 151–168 Archaeological Review from Cambridge 28.1: 151–168
162 Considering Mimicry and Hybridity in Early Colonial New England
same objects in ways not imagined by Puritans. When combined with
articles of European- and Native-manufactured clothing, glass beads
joined shell, copper and wampum as part of the Wampanoag colonial
wardrobe, rich with meaning rather than a haphazard collection of 'trade
goods'. Although poorly detailed in seventeenth-century historical and
pictorial sources, archaeological evidence suggests that Wampanoag
people living at Sowams under the guidance of Massasoit dressed and
cared for their community in specific, meaningful ways indicative of
their lived experiences, in distinction to and perhaps in mockery of
expectations of English Puritans. Some wore only shell beads, embodying
their Wampanoag identity in the face of conversion efforts. Others wore a
more varied wardrobe that included glass, shell and copper beads along
with European clothing to embody community status and allegiance.
Beads placed with an individual in death honoured their lives and when
worn in life beads promoted health. Similar patterns of the incorporation
of glass beads with other articles of European- and Native American-
manufactured clothing and adornment have been recovered elsewhere
in New England. Even at Praying Towns where some individuals received
a Christian burial, others were interred as non-Christianized Native
American burials with wampum, beads and other material objects
(Calloway 1998: 76).
These practices of dress were confusing and threatening to Puritans.
For example, in Mary Rowlandson's 1682 autobiographical account of
her captivity during Metacom's Rebellion, she describes the dress of
Weetamoo, a female Wampanoag sachem, and Weetamoo's husband
Quanopen. As leaders within Wampanoag communities, both wore
English-style coats, linen shirts, white stockings and powdered wigs
along with numerous strands of wampum and body paint (Rowlandson
1828: 63–64). For Rowlandson, Weetamoo's dress signified sinful pride, a
trait that was intolerable to Puritan ideologies. Rowlandson's perspective
as the wife of a Puritan minister did not allow her to see beyond what
she considered to be a sloppy and haphazard wardrobe. From a Native
American perspective, however, the varied and diverse clothing and
adornment worn by Weetamoo and Quanopen embodied their status
Archaeological Review from Cambridge 28.1: 151–168
Diana D. Loren 163
and power. Weetamoo, as a Wampanoag leader, and Quanopen, as a
warrior, were fighting to maintain and protect their communities and
traditions (Arnold 1997).
Conclusions
Manipulating dress not only confused Puritans whose idea of proper
clothing was influenced by sumptuary laws and social protocol,
but brought about fear as the distinction between converted and
unconverted, ally or not, was more malleable than initially imagined.
It also brought about the anxiety that some English settlers might 'go
native', thus placing their body and soul in peril. To dress in such a way
was to mock and malign Puritan ideologies. Native uses of glass beads
were far from Puritan expectations, jeopardizing the wearer's health and
corrupting their soul, which is how young John Billington was viewed
when he was returned to the Plymouth colonists "behung with beades".
The knowledge that donning a certain kind of dress could affect
status and stance in distinct communities translated into a strategy of
social performance for many Native New Englanders. Wampanoag leader
Massasoit, well-versed in the language of English clothing, was aware of
how this dress was viewed and feared by English Puritans. The trade of
glass beads signalled alliance, the beginning of a relationship that, in the
minds of Puritans, would lead to Wampanoag conversion and Puritan
rule in southern New England. Yet, wearing glass beads on exposed skin
and in combination with other items of clothing and adornment in a
distinctively non-English fashion indicated a rejection and a mockery of
Puritan ideologies.
Massasoit never permitted the Pokanoket to convert or Sowams to
become a Praying Town (Kupperman 1997). This rejection followed an
interaction in 1622, when Puritan leader Edward Winslow presumably
cured Massasoit of what the Wampanoag considered a fatal disease
(Cohen 2009: 66). Sickness and bodily health were spiritually and
culturally meaningful for both English and Wampanoag. By curing
Archaeological Review from Cambridge 28.1: 151–168
164 Considering Mimicry and Hybridity in Early Colonial New England
Massasoit, Winslow meant to demonstrate the superiority not only of
English medicine but also, because body and soul were so intimately tied,
of the superiority of the Puritan religion in maintaining bodily health. For
both communities, when one operated on the body, one operated on
the spirit.
Thus, the acceptance of glass beads as a gift of alliance and the
simultaneous rejection of religion and the embodiment of clothing,
which confused and at times mocked the English, resulted in an uneasy
relationship that would later culminate in armed conflicts between Native
Americans and the English, such as Metacom's Rebellion, the 1675–1678
war led by Chief Metacom (son of Massasoit) of the Wampanoags (Lepore
1998). For the Wampanoag, the incorporation of glass beads into their
lives and their material understandings of the colonial world enabled
them to honour leaders, manoeuver interactions with the English and
maintain bodily and spiritual health.
Soon, the Wampanoag people from Sowams who were excavated
at the Burr's Hill site will be reburied along with the glass beads and
other items of clothing and adornment through which they embodied
understandings of health and spirit. In 1999 and 2000, several Federal
Register notices were published regarding the repatriation of human
remains and funerary objects from Sowans to Wampanoag tribes.
After several years of discussion, the Warren Town Council agreed in
August 2011 to support the tribe's plan to erect a monument and rebury
the individuals and funerary objects at the location from which they
were excavated in the early twentieth century (Martel 2011). Now, the
individuals and objects that had been dispersed in several New England
museums for approximately 100 years can return home, welcomed and
commemorated by their community.
Archaeological Review from Cambridge 28.1: 151–168
Diana D. Loren 165
Acknowledgements
I extend heartfelt thanks to friends at the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head
and Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe for their support in writing this article.
I am also grateful for comments and support from Christina Hodge and
Patricia Capone, my colleagues at the Peabody Museum and collaborators
on archaeological investigations of the seventeenth century Harvard
Indian College. W. Paul van Pelt and several anonymous reviewers read
and commented on an earlier draft of this article, for which I am grateful.
Discussions with Matt Liebmann, Michael Nassaney and Stephen Silliman
have furthered my understandings of hybridity and creolization. I
appreciate their insight.
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