Lindsay Bloch
As an archaeologist, I use artifacts, architecture, and documentary records to investigate human life in the past. Concentrating on mundane items, rather than luxury goods, I develop new techniques to unlock the interpretive potential of these challenging artifacts. Elemental analysis offers a way to resolve basic questions about these materials, which then transforms them from generic artifacts to temporally and geographically specific markers of trade and exchange. In addressing people- and narrative-oriented questions through methodologies based in chemistry, geology, and statistics, my work emphasizes the scientific basis of social science research.
Address: Gainesville, Florida, United States
Address: Gainesville, Florida, United States
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Papers by Lindsay Bloch
Variability across frontiers and boundaries challenges the resilience of expanding populations. Here, we contribute to a broader understanding of global patterns of island colonization and expose the diversity of lifeways experienced across the Taíno culture area by exploring Lucayan settlement of the small subtropical islands of the northern Bahama archipelago. The results of this first comprehensive investigation document the rapid expansion and early arrival of humans in the northern zone (ca. A.D. 900); deviations from traditional settlement patterns and dietary practices, which reflect responses to the unique local environment, including the association of humans with extirpated/extinct animals; sources for pottery imported from the Greater Antillean Taínos; and, a previously unrecognized local pottery variety attributable to the quality of local clay sources. The frontier provides a new perspective on the Taíno core area and raises additional questions concerning life along a historically progressing frontier.
Rather than relying upon visual characteristics for these generic wares, sherds from 37 historic earthenware production sites across the mid-Atlantic and in Great Britain were elementally analyzed via laser ablation-inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS) in order to establish geologically distinctive reference groups. Then, coarse earthenwares from domestic plantation contexts (ca. 1690-1830) representing varying social status were analyzed and assigned to production origins based on elemental composition. The results demonstrate the diversity of coarse earthenware sources that Chesapeake residents accessed. There are clear temporal shifts in the sources of coarse earthenware, and in particular a steady decrease in the use of imported wares in favor of domestically made products. All plantation households sampled used at least some locally made wares, and no sharp differences were seen among households of different status, suggesting that these quotidian wares were equally available to and utilized by all, perhaps via plantation provisioning strategies. These results challenge the idea that local products were inferior or low-class. Instead, their omnipresence is evidence for the pragmatic as well as political strengths of local production, from allowing for custom orders and local credit to promoting American self-sufficiency for the nascent revolution.