Sarah and the Puritans: Feminist Contributions to New England Historical Archaeology

Abstract

________________________________________________________________This article analyzes a seventeenth-century adultery case from southern Massachusetts to examine the effects of Puritan colonization on Native American women. As a feminist analysis the article focuses on gendered access to power and considers Puritan strategies for transforming Native American gendered relations. This reading highlights Puritan use of physical punishment and public humiliation to shape gendered behavior. It exposes Puritan efforts to transform Native American men into Puritan patriarchs and to transform Native American women into submissive consorts. It concludes with a series of characteristics that will define archaeological sites that date to the period immediately after New England's colonization. Arguably, Sarah and the Puritans contributes to history more than it contributes to archaeology because the primary evidence is documentary, rather than archaeological. Nonetheless, this analysis informs archaeological interpretation by revealing the consequences of cultural change on the archaeological record. By demonstrating colonization's transformative power on southern New England Native American culture, Sarah and the Puritans identifies the context in which many historical period Native American sites were created. Ultimately, this affords an opportunity to gender New England colonization and to examine the archaeological record of that process. ________________________________________________________________Résumé: Sarah and the Puritans part d'un procès en adultère qui s'est tenu au dix-septième siècle afin d'examiner les stratégies adoptées par les puritains pour modifier les relations de genre des indiens d'Amérique dans la colonie de la baie du Massachusetts. Il s'agit du procès de Sarah Ahauton, une indienne d'Amérique que son mari, ministre du culte chrétien, accusait d'adultère avec un homme marié de leur village. La lecture de ce témoignage dans une perspective féministe révèle les efforts des puritains pour établir un type particulier d'ordre social dans les premières décennies de la colonie. Il suggère aussi que les puritains ont tenté de transformer les indiens en patriarches et les indiennes en conjointes soumises. Le procès met également en évidence le recours des puritains au châtiment corporel et à l'humiliation publique pour façonner le comportement des femmes, et il suggère la publication de textes visant à induire des conversions au christianisme. La lecture attentive du document du procès offre la possibilité de relire l'histoire coloniale de la Nouvelle Angleterre au prisme du genre, créant le contexte adéquat pour analyser les données archéologiques de cette procédure. ________________________________________________________________Resumen: Sarah and the Puritans, una historia basada en un juicio por adulterio que tuvo lugar en el siglo diecisiete, tiene como finalidad la de analizar las estrategias puritanas encaminadas a transformar las relaciones sexistas de los nativos americanos en la Colonia de la Ba...

Considering the wet homelands of indigenous Massachusetts

“…Figuring importantly into the wet homeland, as has been noted for the dry land, is the consideration of a gendering of spaces. As noted by Bragdon (1996) and Clements (2010), the conventional understanding of water and gender among Southern New England indigenous peoples, from the Late Woodland Period (approximately 1000 years before present) through the historical period indicates that the littoral zones were female spaces, for collecting of shellfish etc., versus the deep waters, reachable only with constructed watercraft, reserved for men's fishing and hunting activities. However, the multiple important female sachems of Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard in the historical period (e.g.…”