| In the Woodland period, between A.D. 600 and 800, a new group of people, the Alachua, appeared in the archaeological record of north-central Florida. These people were probably the first horticulturists to use the rich soils of the region. However, based on distinct differences in ceramic assemblages, it appeared that the Alachua did not evolve out of the Cades Pond culture that preceded them in the area. The question of their origin has been discussed in Southeastern archaeology for over 50 years with several hypotheses having been proposed. This project addressed the issue again by evaluating the previously proposed hypotheses using an alternate data set: cordage attributes from cord-marked ceramics. The materials analyzed consisted of extant museum collections of cord-marked potsherds from the Alachua and potentially antecedent cultures in the Southeast. Cordage attribute distributions were compared with each other and also with cord-marked ceramic type distributions.; Ethnological research among peoples still manufacturing cordage and basketry has supported the use of the distribution of cordage attributes as a means of identifying cultural groups (Petersen 1998). Also, in other archaeological regions where preservation is better, cordage attributes have been used as cultural markers (Adovasio 1986) much as ceramics have been in other areas. Ethnoarchaeological research with modern spinners was used in this project to evaluate the causal factors for the production of specific cordage attributes to aid in the interpretation of their distribution. The survey data combined with learning theory, demonstrated that final twist direction, an automatic motor-skill dependent attribute, was extremely culturally conservative producing distributions closely linked to communities-of-practice or learning networks.; In terms of fundamental theoretical and methodological assumptions in the issue of identifying and defining prehistoric cultural entities this research suggested that different attributes will distribute differently in time and space depending on how they are learned and whether they are learned to the level of automatic function. For any attribute, all pressures to conserve or to change whether in the teaching/learning process, the technological, functional, stylistic, ideological constraints, provide tools for elucidating details of culture historical sequences. |
