A refinement of post-contact Choctaw ceramic chronology

Abstract

ABSTRACT Over the course of the eighteenth century, the Choctaws of present-day east-central Mississippi and west Alabama experienced widespread changes in trade relations and alliances, subsistence practices, and sociopolitical arrangements as a result of intensifying European colonization of their homeland. Our ability to study these changes across the homeland requires accurate and detailed ceramic chronologies. Recent excavations of ten features at two eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Choctaw house sites produced artifacts suitable for seriation and samples for Bayesian analysis of radiometric dates. The results are compared with Choctaw ceramics excavated from secure contexts at Fort Tombecbé to refine our baseline understanding of Choctaw ceramic chronology.