Dashing Dishes Author(s): Yvonne Marshall and Alexandra Maas Source: World Archaeology, Vol. 28, No. 3, Culture Contact and Colonialism (Feb., 1997), pp. 275-290 Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/125019 Accessed: 15-08-2017 05:03 UTC JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://about.jstor.org/terms Taylor & Francis, Ltd. is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to World Archaeology This content downloaded from 128.227.133.130 on Tue, 15 Aug 2017 05:03:15 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Dashing dishes Yvonne Marshall and Alexandra Maas Abstract This paper explores the way European pottery was adopted by non-agricultural groups. It reports two case studies from the Northwest Coast of Canada: Bella Bella and Nootka Sound, then com- pares them with two further examples: the Southwestern Alaska Eskimo and the Canadian Metis. In all four cases, European pottery was first adopted to enhance the display of food consumed during ritual and ceremonial social gatherings. Three main conclusions are reached. First, that the contact period in the New World has enormous untapped potential for enriching our understanding of how material culture participates in processes of cultural change. Second, it argues that adoption of pottery in general may have been spurred as much by its potential for use in social mediation as by its practical functions as a container. Third, the paper suggests that in some circumstance ceremo- nial contexts may be more open to change than everyday practice. Keywords Northwest Coast; European ceramics; contact period; adoption of pottery; potlatch; cultural change. Introduction In 1778 Captain James Cook anchored his ships in Nootka Sound on Vancouver Island. He stayed for a month, making repairs and taking on food and water obtained in trade. At first the sailors offered the local Mowachaht mirrors, beads and other trinkets, but these were disdainfully refused. Only metal, preferably iron could purchase the necessary pro- visions (Beaglehole 1967; Fisher 1979). As Cook's men quickly learned, adoption of new items of material culture obtained from newcomers is never a simple case of once seen instantly desired. Any decision to incorporate a new item into an existing repertoire of material culture is socially mediated and no matter how unequal the relative power of two contacting groups, each will select and reject items according to their own logic. This point is explored through an examination of the adoption of European ceramics during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in two places on the Canadian North- west Coast; Nootka Sound on Vancouver Island and Old Bella Bella on the central coast (Fig. 1). The Pacific Northwest Coast holds a special place in anthropology because it so commonly serves as the definitive exception to general anthropological models. In World Archaeology Vol. 28(3): 275-290 Culture Contact and Colonialism ? Routledge 1997 0043-8243 This content downloaded from 128.227.133.130 on Tue, 15 Aug 2017 05:03:15 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 276 Yvonne Marshall and Alexandra Maas Figure 1 Locations of the four case study areas. keeping with this reputation, Northwest Coast people resisted the adoption of pottery despite their sedentary lifestyles and extensive repertoires of elaborate material culture. Along with the East Polynesians, who gave up bothering with pottery after a long and dis- tinguished heritage of ceramic production, the recalcitrant Northwest Coast peoples did not take up ceramics in a manner consistent with anthropological models of the adoption of pottery (Brown 1989:204; Longarce 1995: 279). Why they eventually began to use Euro- pean ceramics is therefore of considerable interest. When European ceramics first became available in Nootka Sound they were of little interest. Only later were they adopted as dishes for serving food on ceremonial occasions such as potlatches. In Bella Bella, however, hand wash basins were purchased as early as 1789, probably for use as communal food serving dishes (Maas 1994: 51). In both Nootka Sound and Bella Bella the use of European ceramics for everyday food storage, This content downloaded from 128.227.133.130 on Tue, 15 Aug 2017 05:03:15 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Dashing dishes 277 preparation and consumption seems to have followed from their ceremonial use in pot- latches. A similar sort of pattern was identified in two earlier studies, one among Eskimo groups in Southwestern Alaska (Jackson 1991), and the other among the Canadian Metis (Burley 1989; Burley et al. 1992). In these two cases initial adoption of European ceram- ics was primarily for the ceremonial serving of food, particularly tea. Conventional wisdom has held that material culture used in everyday tasks is open to change because it needs to remain responsive to functional practicalities. In comparison, ceremonial and ritual contexts are more divorced from the practicalities of everyday sur- vival and can therefore afford to be resistant to change (e.g. Arnold 1985; Rogers 1990: 222). However, functionality and practical usefulness are not intrinsic to an artefact. They are culturally defined, and this study establishes that the reverse pattern can prevail. On the Northwest Coast, change, in the form of the adoption of pottery, occurs first in ritual contexts for reasons only tangentially concerned with practical function. As Hoopes and Barnett (1995: 3) comment in relation to a similar pattern of ceramic change among the Barra in Mesoamerica, adoption was of 'a new type of valued prestige item that also happened to be a container'. On the Northwest Coast this change paved the way for the incorporation of ceramics into the more conservative context of everyday life. The Northwest Coast potlatch Potlatch ceremonies were a feature of all Northwest Coast societies but their content and frequency varied greatly from one place to another. Within this diversity some features were universal. Potlatches took place in conjunction with ritual ceremonies performed to mark changes in the social status of the host or the host's family. Guests witnessed these rituals and thereby validated the host's new status. They were thanked for this service through a distribution of gifts which always included the display and consumption of large amounts of food. Commonly, even the dishes and ladles used to serve and eat the food were later included among the gifts distributed to guests (Rosman and Rubel 1971:179). During the nineteenth century the potlatch expanded. Population decline increased both the number of occasions on which there was no clear successor to a name or posi- tion and the number of potential contenders for such titles. At the same time, new sources of wealth such as waged labour placed potlatching within the means of a wider range of people. In addition, the influx of mass produced European goods expanded the repertoire of items both available and suitable for distribution as gifts at potlatches. As a result, the potlatch flourished. However, by the late nineteenth century missionary pressure, com- bined with the passing of the potlatch prohibition law in 1884, was bringing gradual but widespread decline, although the Kwakwaka'wakw transformed their potlatch into a highly articulate site of resistance to colonial power (Cole and Chaikin 1990). The consumption of large quantities of food and the distribution of wealth were central to a potlatch. But to have the desired effect, these activities had to be conducted in a manner which created a visual impression. Displays of food and wealth needed to have aesthetic impact. In this respect, goods which were 'easily countable, storable, trans- portable and relatively undifferentiated' (Blackman 1976: 407) had immediate appeal. Nineteenth-century photographs of goods laid out for distribution at potlatches show This content downloaded from 128.227.133.130 on Tue, 15 Aug 2017 05:03:15 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 278 Yvonne Marshall and Alexandra Maas items such as blankets, sacks of flour, and silver bracelets displayed in visually quantifi- able piles, stacks and rows. Potlatches were above all about making power visible through performance and display (Wilson 1988:132). Ceramics were therefore doubly suited for incorporation into the potlatch because they had all the characteristics desired in potlatch wealth and could also serve to enhance the sumptuous appearance of food displayed for feasting at a potlatch. Bella Bella The site of Old Bella Bella-Fort McLoughlin was occupied during the nineteenth century. In 1833, Fort McLoughlin, a Hudson's Bay trading post was established at the site and a Heiltsuk native settlement known as Old Bella Bella grew up around it. The fort was aban- doned ten years later but the Heiltsuk community stayed on. A small trading post was re- established on the fort site in 1866 and a mission followed in 1880 precipitating numerous changes within the Heiltsuk community. One was a move from large traditional houses occupied by several families to single family, frame dwellings. By the late 1890s the com- munity had outgrown the site and a new settlement with more room for housing was estab- lished at nearby Waglisla. In 1982 excavations were carried out at Old Bella Bella (Hobler et al. 1983). Each of the main settlement components were tested: the fort site, an area where the traditional houses were located, and an area where the later single family frame houses stood.