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Material Worlds

Material Worlds examines consumerism from an archaeological perspective,

exploring the intersection of social relations and artifacts through the pro-
cesses of production, distribution, use, and discard. Interrogating individual
objects, landscapes, and archaeological assemblages within the contexts in
which acts of consumption take place, a range of case studies present the
intertwined issues of power, inequality, identity, and community as medi-
ated through access, choice, and use of consumer goods. Key themes of this
innovative volume include the relationship between colonial political and
economic structures and the practices of consumption, the use of consumer
goods in the construction and negotiation of identity, and the dialectic
between strategies of consumption and individual or community choices.
Situating studies of consumerism within the field of historical archaeol-
ogy, this exciting collection examines the material and ideological entangle-
ments of culture through pioneering empirical and interpretive approaches.
With a focus on North America from the seventeenth through the early
twentieth centuries, Material Worlds is an important examination of con-
sumerism which will appeal to scholars with interests in colonialism, gender
and race, as well as those engaged with the study of materiality in the emer-
gent modern world.

Barbara J. Heath is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University

of Tennessee, Knoxville, USA

Eleanor Breen is an archaeologist for the City of Alexandria, Virginia, USA.

Lori A. Lee is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the Department of

Social and Behavioral Sciences of Flagler College, USA.
Routledge Studies in Archaeology

18 Debating Archaeological Empiricism

The Ambiguity of Material Evidence
Edited by Charlotta Hillerdal and Johannes Siapkas

19 Archaeology’s Visual Culture

Digging and Desire
Roger Balm

20 Marking the Land

Hunter-Gatherer Creation of Meaning in their Environment
Edited by William A Lovis and Robert Whallon

21 The Archaeology of Human-Environment Interactions

Strategies for Investigating Anthropogenic Landscapes, Dynamic
Environments, and Climate Change in the Human Past
Edited by Daniel Contreras

22 Life of the Trade

Events and Happenings in Niumi’s Atlantic Center
By Liza Gijanto

23 Exploring the Materiality of Food ‘Stuffs’

Transformations, Symbolic Consumption and Embodiment(s)
Edited by Louise Steel and Katharina Zinn

24 Archaeologies of “Us” and “Them”

Debating History, Heritage and Indigeneity
Edited by Charlotta Hillerdal, Anna Karlström and Carl-Gösta Ojala

25 Balkan Dialogues
Negotiating Identity Between Prehistory And The Present
Edited by Maja Gori and Maria Ivanova

26 Material Worlds
Archaeology, Consumption, and the Road to Modernity
Edited by Barbara J. Heath, Eleanor Breen, and Lori A. Lee
Material Worlds
Archaeology, Consumption, and
the Road to Modernity

Edited by
Barbara J. Heath, Eleanor E. Breen, and
Lori A. Lee
First published 2017
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group,
an informa business
© 2017 Barbara J. Heath, Eleanor Breen, and Lori A. Lee
The right of the editor to be identified as the author of the editorial
material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been
asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted
or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented,
including photocopying and recording, or in any information
storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the
publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks
or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British
Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Heath, Barbara J., 1960– editor of compilation. | Breen,
Eleanor E., editor of compilation. | Lee, Lori A., editor of
compilation.
Title: Material worlds : archaeology, consumption, and the road
to modernity / edited by Barbara J. Heath, Eleanor E. Breen,
and Lori A. Lee.
Description: Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon ; New York,
NY : Routledge, 2017. | Series: Routledge studies in archaeology ;
26 | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016037047 | ISBN 9781138101142 (hardback :
alkaline paper)
Subjects: LCSH: North America—Antiquities. | Social archaeology—
North America. | Archaeology and history—North America. |
Historic sites—North America. | Material culture—
North America—History. | Consumption (Economics)—
North America—History. | Social change—North America—
History. | North America—Economic conditions.
Classification: LCC E43 .M38 2017 | DDC 970.01—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016037047
ISBN: 978-1-138-10114-2 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-65718-9 (ebk)

Typeset in Sabon
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
Contents

List of figures vii

List of tables ix
List of maps x
Notes on contributors xi

1 An historical archaeology of consumerism: Re-centering

objects, re-engaging with data 1
B A R B A R A J . H E ATH

2 Modeling consumption: A social network analysis of

mission Santa Catalina de Guale 9
E L L I O T H . B L AIR

3 “The blood and life of a Commonwealth”: Illicit trade,

identity formation, and imported clay tobacco pipes in
the 17th-century Potomac River Valley 35
L A U R E N K . M CMIL L AN

4 Commoditization, consumption, and interpretive

complexity: The contingent role of cowries in
the early modern world 56
B A R B A R A J . H E ATH

5 Underpinning a plantation: A material culture approach

to consumerism at George Washington’s Mount Vernon 77
ELEANOR BREEN

6 Acquiring transfer-printed ceramics for the Jefferson

household at Poplar Forest 98
J A C K G A RY
vi Contents
7 “With sundry other sorts of small ware too tedious to
mention”: Petty consumerism on U.S. plantations 119
L I N D S AY B LO CH AN D A N N A S. AGB E - DAVIES

8 Health consumerism among enslaved Virginians 141

LORI A. LEE

9 The Abundance Index: Measuring variation in consumer

behavior in the early modern Atlantic World 162
J I L L I A N E . GAL L E

10 Exploring enslaved laborers’ ceramic investment and

market access in Jamaica 192
LY N S E Y A . B ATE S

11 Cotton estates and cotton craft production in

the colonial-era Caribbean 214
A L A N D . A R MSTRO N G A N D MA RK W. H A US ER

12 Identity, choice, and the meaning of material culture:

Two distinct villages on one Danish West Indies
sugar estate 234
E L I Z A B E TH J. KE L L A R

13 “Ambitious to be conventional”: African American

expressive culture and consumer imagination 256
PA U L R . M U L L IN S

14 All-consuming modernity 273

C H A R L E S R. CO B B

15 “Open the mind and close the sale”: Consumerism and

the archaeological record 282
A N N S M A RT MA RTIN

Index 291
Figures

2.1 Selected beads recovered from the Mission

Santa Catalina cemetery. 17
2.2 Unimodal social network visualization of bead communities
of consumption at Mission Santa Catalina plotted on top
of the mission cemetery plan map. 19
2.3 Unimodal social network visualization of bead communities of
consumption at Mission Santa Catalina. 21
2.4 Bimodal social network visualization of beads and individuals
within the Mission Santa Catalina cemetery. 23
2.5 Bimodal social network visualization of beads and individuals
within the Mission Santa Catalina cemetery. 25
3.1 Combined data set from all 16 sites used by phase. 43
3.2 Comparison of data sets from sites in Maryland and Virginia. 45
3.3 Comparison of urban and rural Sites in Maryland. 47
4.1 Modified M. annulus shells, Saclo, Benin. 63
4.2 Modified M. annulus shells, Virginia. 66
4.3 Modified M. moneta shells, Leavenworth Site, South Dakota. 68
5.1 18th-century denier gauge excavated from the
South Grove Midden (44FX762/17) made of
copper alloy and glass with two iron pins. 79
5.2 Scatterplot of straight pin measurements from the
South Grove Midden. 87
5.3 Distribution of straight pin lengths from the South Grove
Midden, House for Families, Fairfield, and Mount Pleasant. 88
5.4 Buttons, thread, thimbles, and straight pins excavated from
the South Grove Midden. 91
6.1 The Poplar Forest retreat house. 100
6.2 The excavated Wing of Offices prior to restoration. 108
6.3 Quantities of transfer-printed patterns by site. 109
6.4 Radcliffe Library, the Oxford and Cambridge College series. 111
6.5 A fragment of Colossal Sarcophagus pattern from
the Wing of Offices. 112
viii Figures
7.1 Change in the proportional discard of utilitarian ceramic
forms to tableware ceramic forms in assemblages, based on
sherd counts. 124
7.2 Credits to purchasers of ceramics, by source and cash
value (7.2a); credits to purchasers of ceramics by source
and number of transactions (7.2b). 129
7.3 Discard of utilitarian ceramics in post-1820 assemblages (7.3a).
Discard of container glass in post-1820 assemblages (7.3b). 130
8.1 Pierced 1847 Large Cent and pierced 1780s Spanish Real
from the Site A cabin. 148
8.2 Bedford Alum Springs water bottle from the Site A cabin. 153
9.1 Relative frequencies of refined wares by region in
North American slave site assemblages (9.1a) and in
Jamaican slave assemblages (9.1b). 178
9.2 Relative frequencies of coarseware by region in
North American slave site assemblages (9.2a) and in
Jamaican slave assemblages (9.2b). 179
9.3 Relative frequencies of colonoware by region in North
American slave site assemblages (9.3a) and handbuilt
Caribbean coarsewares in Jamaican slave assemblages (9.3b). 180
9.4 Abundance Index for refined wares from North American
and Jamaican slave sites. 181
9.5 Abundance Index for coarsewares from North American and
Jamaican slave sites. 182
9.6 Abundance Index for colonowares and handbuilt Caribbean
coarsewares from North American and Jamaican slave sites. 183
10.1 The Abundance Index for tablewares (10.1a) and teawares
(10.1b) through time. 203
10.2 The Abundance Index for edged wares (10.2a), hand-painted
wares (10.2b), factory-made slipwares (10.2c) and
transfer-printed wares (10.2d) through time. 205
10.3 Average price estimations based on the Staffordshire cost in
shillings per dozen. 206
11.1 Spindle whorl from Bois Cotlette Site, Dominica FS 2155. 215
11.2 Spindle whorl from Bois Cotlette Site, Dominica FS 2010. 215
11.3 Simple gin in the form of a flat stone metate located on
a house platform in the enslaved laborer quarters at
Estate Bellevue, St. John. 218
11.4 Picking, ginning, and packing cotton in cloth bags. 219
11.5 Locally made, own-account metal oil lamp recovered at
Morn Patate, Dominica. 226
12.1 British versus Dutch pipes in overseer and early
village contexts. 244
15.1 Graphic from 1953 publication Open the Mind and Close
the Sale: The Key to Success in Selling! 284
Tables

4.1 Average length and width of all measurable cowries from

pre-1890 context at Saclo (modified and unmodified) and
lengths and widths of M. annulus by modification types. 64
4.2 Average length and width of all measurable cowries from
Yorktown sites (modified and unmodified) and lengths and
widths of M. annulus or unidentified species by
modification types. 66
5.1 K-means cluster analysis on the South Grove Midden
pin assemblage. 87
7.1 Summary of Plantation Ceramic Assemblages. 123
7.2 Results of Elemental Analysis for Domestic Assemblages. 127
7.3 Ceramics Recorded in the “Slave Ledger.” 132
8.1 Herbs and Medicinal Plants from Site A Subfloor Pit. 146
9.1 Ceramic Groups and Ware Types. 168
9.2 Archaeological Sites and Occupational Phases. 169
12.1 Estate Ownership, Management, and Laborer Population. 239
12.2 European Ceramic Types and Counts in All Contexts. 245
12.3 Identifiable Glass Categories by Context. 250
Maps

2.1 17th-century coastal Atlantic mission provinces of La Florida. 10

2.2 Map of Mission Santa Catalina de Guale quadrangle,
oriented along the mission grid system, with “mission north”
at the top of the page. 15
2.3 Map showing the location of human remains in the Mission
Santa Catalina de Guale cemetery. 16
3.1 Location of the Potomac River within the Chesapeake
Bay region. 36
3.2 Locations of archaeological sites in this study within
the Potomac River Valley. 41
10.1 Location of plantations in this study. 193
12.1 Detail of 1800 Peter Oxholm Map of St. John, showing
Adrian Estate. 235
12.2 Detail of 1918 USGS map showing location of
the early and post-1800 villages. 242
Contributors

Alan D. Armstrong, Ph.D. student, Department of Anthropology, Northwestern

University.
Anna S. Agbe-Davies, Associate Professor of Anthropology, University of
North Carolina, Chapel Hill.
Lynsey A. Bates, Archaeological Analyst, Digital Archaeological Archive of
Comparative Slavery, Monticello.
Elliot H. Blair, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, University of Alabama.
Lindsay Bloch, Visiting Scholar with the Research Laboratories of Archaeol-
ogy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Eleanor E. Breen, Archaeologist, City of Alexandria, Virginia.
Charles R. Cobb, James E. Lockwood Jr. Professor and Curator of Histori-
cal Archaeology, University of Florida.
Jillian E. Galle, Project Manager, Digital Archaeological Archive of Com-
parative Slavery, Monticello.
Jack Gary, Director of Archaeology and Landscapes, Thomas Jefferson’s
Poplar Forest.
Barbara J. Heath, Associate Professor of Anthropology, University of Ten-
nessee, Knoxville.
Lori A. Lee, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, Department of Social and
Behavioral Sciences, Flagler College.
Mark W. Hauser, Associate Professor of Anthropology, Northwestern
University.
Elizabeth J. Kellar, Research Assistant Professor and former Associate Direc-
tor of the Archaeological Research Laboratory, University of Tennessee,
Knoxville.
xii Contributors
Lauren K. McMillan, Adjunct Professor in the Department of Historic Pres-
ervation, University of Mary Washington.
Ann Smart Martin, Stanley and Polly Stone Professor and Director of the
Material Culture Program, Department of Art History, University of
Wisconsin-Madison.
Paul R. Mullins, Professor of Anthropology, Indiana University-Purdue
University, Indianapolis.
1 An historical archaeology of
consumerism
Re-centering objects, re-engaging
with data
Barbara J. Heath

Our world is awash in consumer goods, yet Western views of consumerism

are ambivalent at best. Airport terminals funnel travelers through mazes of
duty-free and specialty shops that assault our senses and our pocketbooks.
Television shows like Whose Wedding is it Anyway?, Bridezillas, and My
Super Sweet 16 present celebrities and the nouveau riche overspending
beyond the bounds of common sense on events such as weddings and par-
ties. Bargain Hunt, Flog It!, Pawn Stars, and American Pickers portray
the “common man” competing to make lucrative deals buying and selling
goods ranging from yesterday’s fashions to the unknown contents of storage
lockers, whereas Antiques Roadshow rewards ordinary people with noto-
riety and respect for curating family heirlooms which are often deemed too
precious to sell because of their patina (McCracken 1988). Politicians and
economists exhort the masses to shop to ensure success in times of war and
for the common good, closely monitoring spending patterns to gauge the
health of the economy (CNN 2012; Sussman 2016).
At the same time, pundits accuse us of being oblivious to the long-term
environmental impacts of our overproduction of goods and our wasteful
behavior in discarding them, and point to the divisiveness that consumer
branding creates along lines of race, class, and gender (Linn 2004; Cole
2010; Parker 2015). Trends like the tiny house movement, the celebration of
Buy Nothing Day, and the push to “declutter” our domestic environments –
and therefore our minds and spirits – clash with the competing vision of
modern Western culture that encourages us to acquire and collect (Walker
1987; Susanka and Obolensky 1998; Adbusters Media Foundation 2015;
Graff 2016; Kondo 2016). Yet in a counterargument to both its over-the-
top celebration and the dire characterizations promoted by the media, some
scholars assert that consumerism at its most mundane is crucial to modern
households, relationships, and identity (Miller 2010, 2012) and argue that
consumption can provide pathways that are both humanitarian and eman-
cipatory (Banet-Weiser 2012; Mukherjee and Banet-Weiser 2012). In sum,
contemporary consumers are at once frivolous and canny, destructive and
creative, divisive and unifying. Our engagement with the modern material
world is personal and political, and often fraught with contradiction.
2 Barbara J. Heath
While consumerism is an essentially modern phenomenon, the chapters
in this volume demonstrate that it is not a recent one. Modernity has its
roots in the 15th century, and its emergence is firmly entwined with the
development of capitalism and the corresponding demand for, and produc-
tion and distribution of, consumer goods. Our contributors explore diverse
cultural processes and uncover the situational meanings of consumer prac-
tices through time. Methods vary from close readings of individual artifacts
within specific historical contexts to multi-sited, empirical analyses, but all
authors share the goal of understanding the complex relationships between
people and objects and the interdependence between consumerism and
the rise of modernity. Much like we do today, people in the past brought
together material and social aspects of consumerism through participation
in individual, inward-looking acts, local and regional networks of exchange,
and the negotiation of policies and laws that united and divided across lines
of race, ethnicity, gender, and class.
Consumer behavior became an object of study more than 100 years
ago, when scholars recognized its significance in competitive social display
among the elite and those who sought to emulate them (Veblen 1899; Simmel
1904). Social scientists returned to it in the mid-20th century through the
lens of structuralism and semiotics, and again made it a focus of study at
the end of the century, when we turned our attention to the movement of
commodities across cultural boundaries and the role of consumption in
processes in interregional and global exchange (Miller 1995; Carroll 1999;
Stein 2002). Much of this more recent scholarship presents consumerism as
a purely contemporary phenomenon, and one which is curiously detached
from objects, using them as springboards for discussing economic, political,
or ideological aspects of culture rather than interrogating them as active
agents that shape and are shaped by consumers (Dietler 2010:210–213).
Archaeologists and other social scientists draw an important distinction
between consumerism and consumption. The organization of labor, the
development of technology for manufacturing and distributing goods, and
the acts of desiring or rejecting, shopping or choosing not to shop, saving
or discarding, are all parts of the ideology of consumerism that essentially
constitutes the bond between people and the objects that they produce,
use, and discard (Martin 1993:17–18; Majewski and Schiffer 2009). A
deep engagement with the breadth and diversity of consumer practices
recognizes them to be central, transformative acts of modern life through
which people communicate their social, political, and economic positions
in the world, their aspirations, and their connections with and distinctions
from others (Miller 1987, 2010, 2012; Douglas and Isherwood 2005;
Appadurai 2008). Indeed, Michael Nassaney has asserted that “all his-
torical archaeology is the archaeology of consumer culture” (Nassaney in
Mullins 2011:x).
Understanding the emergence of modern consumerism is of critical impor-
tance to historical archaeologists. Consumption, the acts through which
 Historical archaeology of consumerism 3
goods are taken in and used by individuals or groups, is an area of par-
ticular interest to archaeologists, who use artifacts – the material outcomes
of consumption – to infer the active processes of consumerism (Dietler
2010:209). Through the practice of consumption, people attempt to main-
tain or change physical and social conditions of their existence.
Situating studies of consumerism within the field of historical archaeology
requires a consideration of the interrelationship between the material and
ideological aspects of culture. Practitioners theorize that interrelationship
in different ways. Objects can be viewed as artifacts or as components of
broader material systems known as material culture or materiality. Artifacts
are portable objects that people consciously make or modify. While some
archaeologists use the term “material culture” as a synonym for things
(Cochran and Beaudry 2006; Galloway 2006), others conceptualize it more
broadly to include both tangible objects and “segments of the physical envi-
ronment” or “elements of human expression” that are created through, and
as expressions of, culture (Deetz 1977:24; Orser 2004:91). This broader
definition allows for the inclusion of such diverse cultural expressions as
language, kinesthesia, or landscapes which have been impacted in some way
by human actions. More recently, archaeologists have sought to elevate the
material world from a position subservient to culture and give it agentive
power. Theorizing human/thing relationships through the lens of materiality
has been championed by scholars such as Preucel and Meskell (2004:16),
who downplay the inherent physicality of objects in favor of their social use
through which modern actors construct themselves and their realities. Olsen
(2003, 2013), Ingold (2007), and Hodder (2012), however, argue that the
physical properties of objects – including such attributes as their size, lon-
gevity, or fragility – are embedded in reality independent of human concerns,
that in turn “shape[s] both our perception of them and our cohabitation
with them” (Olsen 2003:88). In this view, the material constitutes as well
as reflects a world in which humans and things are locked in mutual depen-
dence. This notion of reciprocity, both in the social role that objects play
in symbolic discourse and in their physical properties that limit or enable
action, is critical to understanding the important role of consumer goods
and consumer behavior in the development of the modern world.
Scholars of the recent past recognize that consumers participate in a sys-
tem which is part of a continuum of behavior stretching back hundreds of
years (McCracken 1988; Carson et al. 1994; Martin 2008; Mullins 2011;
Hodge 2014). By moving the study of consumerism out of the contemporary
realm and considering it as a complex set of interrelated practices with deep
historical roots and broad spatial reach, we are better able to understand the
variety of ways in which people and objects have been historically interde-
pendent and to examine the specific routes through which these dependences
and dependencies (Hodder 2012:17–18) have been created, maintained,
teased apart, and reconfigured over the course of the last 500 years. A focus
on the development and reach of consumerism also underscores the spatial,
4 Barbara J. Heath
temporal, and cultural contingency of this ideological system and the actions
and motivations that drove it.
Acts of consumption are at the core of what it means to be human. Con-
sumerism, however, is inextricably linked with the broader phenomenon
known as modernity. The modern world differs from the pre-modern due to
the spread of European civilization – characterized by rationalism, scientism,
the promotion of economic and environmental development, and a sense of
moral superiority – the development of capitalism, the rise of governmen-
tality, the entangled relationships that arose out of colonialism, and the
widespread phenomenon of social inequality (Giddens 1990; Dussel 1993;
Leone 1999; Hall 2000; Thomas 2004; Hall and Silliman 2006; Delle 2008).
Through their engagement with consumer goods, people in Asia, Europe,
Africa, and the Americas created and maintained complex connections that
influenced Western ideologies relating to individuality, community, and cos-
mology (Thomas 2004:5–6), and indigenous concepts of value, power, and
spirituality (Ogundiran 2002; Potter 2006). These changes were fundamen-
tal to the rise of modernity. The chapters here underscore the importance of
consumerism, not just as an outcome of the centralizing forces of production
and the development of an increasingly alienated workforce, but because of
the ways in which the myriad interactions between consumers and goods
shaped political, social, technological, and ideological spheres.
Understanding the relationship between consumerism and modernity
from the early 16th century to the present on a global scale is a vast under-
taking. In this volume, we seek to narrow the scope, following a trajectory
that spans the 17th to the 20th centuries, but examines the 100-year period
from the 1750s to the 1850s in most detail. Contributors work within
tighter geographic boundaries extending from Maryland to Georgia in the
United States to the Anglophone Caribbean. These interconnected regions
underwent similar historical processes – having been primarily agricul-
tural and rural rather than urban – tied closely with the political, social,
and economic networks of the Atlantic World, and linked by historical
forces of inequality that impacted material life. Heath and Mullins move
outside of this temporal and spatial context, but both studies have strong,
historical connections to colonial and post-colonial processes that shaped
these places.
The editors shared two goals for the volume at its inception: to fore-
ground materiality, in both its social-symbolic role and its physicality, in
interpreting the ways in which people in the New World engaged with
consumerism to create, navigate, or resist the emerging structures of
modernity; and to encourage experimentation with new ways of think-
ing about and analyzing the material world in order to recognize and
interpret the behavior of consumers and the broader processes of con-
sumerism. Key themes of the volume include processes of acquisition and
factors that shaped consumer access (Bates, Breen, Bloch and Agbe-Davies,
Galle, Gary); the relationship between colonialism and the practices of
 Historical archaeology of consumerism 5
consumption (Armstrong and Hauser, Bates, Blair, Breen, Heath, Kellar,
McMillan); the use of consumer goods in the construction and negotiation
of power and identity, particularly, but not exclusively from the perspec-
tive of race (Blair, Gary, Kellar, Lee, McMillan, Mullins); and the dialectic
between diverse strategies of consumption and individual and community
choices (all authors).
As the project developed and authors began to submit drafts, the editors
found ourselves encouraging changes in language or emphasis. Upon reflec-
tion, we realized that a third goal had emerged that we should embrace
rather than try to edit away; to present the epistemological tension within
contemporary historical archaeology that exists between the new empirical
turn and more humanistic, post-modern approaches grounded in interpre-
tive archaeology and agency theory that have dominated the field for the
last two decades (Cobb 2014:214). While each author brings his or her
own perspective and analytical toolkit to the table, the contributors to the
volume generally fall into one of these two camps. Practitioners of the for-
mer approach rely on multi-sited, comparative, data-driven analyses, often
grounded in statistical manipulation of large datasets, while also drawing
on primary and secondary historical sources and careful observation and
recording of archaeological and material evidence. Their goal is to eluci-
date social structure through the discernment of cultural patterns and the
consideration of human agents behind these patterns, while recognizing
the importance of situating their research within specific historic contexts
(Bates, Blair, Breen, Galle, this volume). Members of the latter group engage
intensively with textual evidence and place more emphasis on interpretive
rather than empirical approaches. Single artifacts or small assemblages merit
close attention as purveyors of ideological as well as material insights. Inter-
pretive archaeologists see value in a rich understanding of individual site
histories and individual stories on their own terms and often explore the past
through the lens of identity. Qualitative, humanistic post-processualists seek
evidence to answer questions often related to individual agency and power
structures through the active and symbolic nature of material culture and its
meaning (Armstrong and Hauser, Gary, Kellar, Lee, Mullins, this volume). It
is also clear from these articles that some studies fit midway on the interpre-
tive/empirical spectrum as opposed to being solidly entrenched in one camp
(Bloch and Agbe-Davies, Heath, McMillan, this volume). We contend that
both approaches yield useful, but fundamentally different, understandings
of consumerism through the different questions that they seek to address,
the different analytical scales that they consider, and the different methods
that they employ.
The volume is structured loosely following a chronological and geo-
graphic path, grouping chapters with shared thematic concerns but distinct
methodologies and sources. This structure not only follows traditional
temporal-spatial systems of organizing archaeological content, but high-
lights thematic areas of congruence and tension. For readers who come to this
6 Barbara J. Heath
collection as an e-book with the ability to explore alternate paths, we also
suggest reading these chapters together as thematic units: strong method-
ological foci (Bates, Blair, Bloch and Agbe-Davies, Breen, Galle); political
economy (Armstrong and Hauser, Cobb, Heath, McMillan, this volume); and
identity and social relationships (Gary, Kellar, Lee, Martin, Mullins, this
volume).
This volume’s strengths lie in the dialogue between scholars focusing on
the problems of consumerism and modernity within a bounded temporal
and geographic space that serves to highlight commonalities and distinctions
in colonial and post-colonial practice. They forecast future directions in the
study of consumerism – the application of new and rigorous methodolo-
gies (Bates, Blair, Bloch and Agbe-Davies, Breen, Galle), the introduction of
innovative theoretical frameworks (Bloch and Agbe-Davies, Lee, Mullins),
and the appreciation for the value of empirical and qualitative approaches
to anthropologically grounded studies.

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2 Modeling consumption
A social network analysis of
mission Santa Catalina de Guale
Elliot H. Blair

On May 15, 1670, the Englishman Maurice Mathews and his party anchored
at St. Catherines Island, Georgia, the location of 17th-century Mission Santa
Catalina de Guale (Map 2.1) and spent four days trading with the resident
Guale Indians before being driven away by Spanish soldiers. Mathews
reported that during this time:

The Indians very freely came aboard whom wee entertained from this
day to the 18, they traded with us for beads and old clothes, and gave
our people bread of Indian corne, peas, leakes, onyons, deare skins,
hens, earthen pots, etc. Upon the 16 day came aboard an Indian, semi-
Spaniard, wth a present of bread, etc., to our Master, and promised him
Porke for truck. Severall of our people had been just at theire houses and
told us of brave plantations with a 100 working Indians and that they
want nothing in the world. Our Master upon the 17 instant, about 8 in
the morning, with his mate and Mr. Rivers, three seamen and one man
servant which had been theire just before, went ashoare with truck to
buy porke for the sloupes use.
(Mathews 1911:114)

I highlight this passage due to its description of the exchange of trade

goods between Europeans and the Guale people, members of a complex
Native American chiefdom located on the Georgia coast. The goods that the
Guale received in this exchange – beads and clothing – are well documented
as some of the most important commodities desired by Native peoples in
Spanish Florida (Axtell 1992; Worth 1998, 1999, 2002, 2015; Blair et al.
2009; Hall 2009; Hally and Smith 2010; Francis and Kole 2011). Native
elites in the colonial Southeast actively sought to acquire European goods –
particularly cloth, glass beads, and metal tools (Francis and Kole 2011:29).
For example, during the 1597 Guale revolt, Guale elites held a friar captive
and demanded six knives with yellow handles, three bundles of beads, small
numbers of iron tools, and a single white blanket in ransom (Francis and
Kole 2011:100–101, table 6). Indeed, the entire Guale revolt has recently
been characterized as internecine warfare, predicated on the desire for
10 Elliot H. Blair

Map 2.1 17th-century coastal Atlantic mission provinces of La Florida.

enhanced political prestige and status provided by greater access to Euro-

pean goods (Blair and Thomas 2014). Evidence for such consumption of
European goods is clear, with excavation of the Santa Catalina cemetery
yielding almost 70,000 glass beads among the 431 individuals found buried
there, some likely derived from the episode of exchange with Mathews men-
tioned above (Blair et al. 2009).
To date, this extensive bead assemblage has been used to examine the
global manufacture and circulation of trade beads (Blair et al. 2009; Blair
2015a) and to address questions of social status and burial practices in
Spanish Florida (Blair 2009; Blair et al. 2009; Winkler et al. in press). In this
 Modeling consumption 11
chapter, however, I draw on this bead assemblage to present a methodologi-
cal approach for examining bead consumption among the population of
Mission Santa Catalina. While it is widely acknowledged that the consump-
tion of glass beads – through processes of exchange, gifting, and embodied
display – in colonial contexts was an important act by which individuals
embodied identities and forged relationships (Hamell 1983, 1987; Turgeon
2004; Loren 2009, 2010), robust methodologies are still needed to better
explore the micro-scale dynamics of consumption at the intimate scale of
lived experience.
Drawing on some of my previous work that has contextualized the pro-
duction, circulation, and exchange of glass beads in terms of the “object
itinerary” and “communities of practice” (Blair 2015a, 2015b, 2016), I
present a model of bead consumption among the individuals buried within
the Santa Catalina cemetery using the methods of Social Network Analysis
(SNA). Such a model provides the tools that allow the social relationships
of the individuals that lived at Mission Santa Catalina – relationships predi-
cated in this analysis on the consumption and exchange of glass beads – to
be analyzed.

Colonial consumption, object itineraries, and communities

of practice
Panich (2014:731) has recently pointed out that consumption has been
increasingly deployed as a productive framework for exploring the “inter-
sections between material culture, social networks, and identity,” particu-
larly in colonial contexts. Indeed, only ten years ago Voss (2005:465–466)
suggested that whereas “consumer choice” methodologies have often been
utilized to explore questions of identity in historic contexts (Spencer-Wood
1987), such methodologies may be of limited use in some colonial con-
texts in which the mechanisms of distribution are narrow or are not fully
understood. This is certainly true if consumption is understood – as Mullins
(2011:134) suggests many archaeologists do – as “simply a moment in the
flow of goods throughout the social world, a discrete instance in a good’s
life that is isolable from its manufacture, marketing, and discard.” Recent
approaches to consumption, however, have taken much broader perspec-
tives. For example, Dietler (2010a:57–58) has cautioned that we must take
care to avoid decoupling consumption practices from the domains of pro-
duction and exchange, and Panich (2014:731–732) argues that an approach
that also considers “how objects are acquired not only links consumption
with production and exchange, but also stimulates reflection on the social
relationships involved in the flow of goods and materials from one person
or group to another.”
Here I suggest three methodological approaches that together can be
used to take a broader, more holistic approach to consumption, draw-
ing on previous arguments concerning the manufacture, circulation, and
12 Elliot H. Blair
distribution of the glass beads recovered at Mission Santa Catalina de Guale
(Blair 2015a, 2016). These methods include adopting an “object itineraries”
approach for exploring the circulation of objects, using a “communities of
practice” framework to examine the specific details of shared practices of
production and consumption, and utilizing the methods of social network
analysis (SNA) to unpack the organizational structure of these shared prac-
tices. I argue that the integration of these methods provides a framework
to integrate what Mullins (2011:134) has categorized as the two distinct
strands in consumptions studies: “the structural, material, and ideological
processes that deliver goods to consumers” and the symbolic and agentive
aspects of material acquisition (see also Panich 2014:731).
The object itineraries approach that I adopt (Joyce 2012a, 2012b, 2015;
Hahn and Weiss 2013; Blair 2015a; Joyce and Gillespie 2015a, 2015b),
rather than considering a single point in an object’s life history (place of
manufacture or deposition), examines the movement of objects from the
acquisition of raw materials, through processes of manufacture and circu-
lation, including considering object afterlives in museum collections. Each
“place” along the itinerary can be conceptualized not as a place of rest,
but rather as a locus of concentrated interaction. In an earlier work (Blair
2015a), I suggested that such an itinerary can perhaps be best framed as a
meshwork, as conceptualized by Ingold (2007, 2009), with each “place”
along the object itinerary understood as a “tangled knot” of socio-material
interaction. For glass beads in the colonial trade, these tangled knots of the
meshwork are the locales of raw material procurement, manufacture (of
both glass and beads), distribution, exchange, and disposal. By “tangled
knot,” however, I do not intend to imply that these locales of action are
chaotic or disorderly, but, rather the opposite – that they are locations
of highly structured and patterned social practice that can be untangled
through material analysis, particularly through recourse to the concept of
the “community of practice.”
A community of practice, as originally defined by Lave and Wenger
(1991), is one of three interrelated concepts (with “legitimate peripheral
participation” and “situated learning”) that constitute a social theory of
learning. Together, the three concepts emphasize a process of learning in
which “newcomers,” through active social participation with “old-timers”
and one another, “move towards full participation in the sociocultural
practices of a community” (Lave and Wenger 1991:29). Wenger (1998:4–5,
72–73) emphasized that this process of learning links practice, meaning,
identity, and community through mutual engagement, joint enterprise, and a
shared repertoire. Communities of practice can often be identified archaeo-
logically through micro-scalar analyses of technological style and material
“micro-styles” (Herbich and Dietler 2008).
While the concept of a community of practice has most often been uti-
lized archaeologically in relation to craft production – particularly ceramic
manufacture (Minar 2001; Sassaman and Rudolphi 2001; Huntley 2006;
 Modeling consumption 13
Stark 2006; Roddick 2009; Peelo 2011; Cordell and Habicht-Mauche 2012;
Joyce 2012c) – it applies equally well to practices of consumption, where
individuals learn as part of a community the “proper” ways of acquiring
and utilizing objects in their daily lives (Fenn et al. 2006; Blair 2016; Mills
2016; Roddick and Stahl 2016). Using the metaphor of the meshwork, each
tangled knot is thus understood as a locus of social learning and the entan-
glement of people, places, and social action, constituted through multiple,
overlapping communities of practice. And, depending on location along the
object’s itinerary, such entangled social action can consist of either produc-
tion or consumption practices.
Finally, I want to suggest that the methods of SNA can be used to examine
the specific structures of the places of consumption embedded within the
meshwork. Social network analysis has emerged in archaeology as a pow-
erful means of exploring past socio-material relationships and interactions
across multiple scales of analysis (Brughmans 2010, 2013; Knappett 2011,
2013; Larson 2013; Mills, Clark et al. 2013a; Sosna et al. 2013; Pailes 2014;
Borck et al. 2015; Collar et al. 2015; Hill et al. 2015; Mills, Peeples et al.
2015). Derived from mathematical graph theory (Barnes and Harary 1983),
social network analysis is a means of “detecting and interpreting patterns of
relationships between subjects of research interest” (Brughmans 2010:277).
That is, SNA can be used to formally model the linkages (edges or vertices)
among research subjects (nodes) across both social and physical space.
Additionally, multi-modal (or bipartite) networks that include both people
and objects can be specifically used to examine the structure of consump-
tion, or how individuals, sites, and objects collectively interact.
While SNA is specifically a methodology that I use to explore what
Mullins (2011:134) has described as the consumer agency approach to
consumption, by envisioning it as merely one locus within the broader
meshwork of the object itinerary, it can also be situated within the broader
structural approach to consumption studies. Though Walsh (2013:72) has
criticized “the deployment of a network paradigm to understand trade and
encounters” as operating only descriptively and failing to account for how
and why networks formed and changed, it is unclear if what he objects to
are metaphorical invocations of “the network” or the more formal meth-
ods of SNA. I argue that formal network models – in addition to revealing
structure – provide powerful tools that can allow the specific dynamics of
consumption practices to be explored (Knappett 2011).

Glass beads at mission Santa Catalina de Guale

The Guale people of the northern Georgia coast had one of the earliest
and longest histories of sustained European contact of any native group
in North America. While this history included a series of early encounters
during the 16th century (Lyon 1976; Jones 1978; Hoffman 1990, 2002;
Worth 2009a, 2015), in 1587 the primary Franciscan Mission Period in
14 Elliot H. Blair
La Florida began. By 1595 two Franciscans were stationed on the island
of Guale (St. Catherines Island, Georgia) and additional missions were also
established throughout the province. Five of the six friars stationed in the
province were killed during the 1597 Guale rebellion and most of the coastal
missions were destroyed (Francis and Kole 2011). Following the resolution
of the revolt, friars were once again distributed among native villages of
the North Georgia coast beginning in 1605, initiating a sustained 75-year
period of missionization on St. Catherines Island that ended in 1680 fol-
lowing slave raids by the British-allied Westos (Worth 1995, 2009b; Bowne
2005). Prior to the 1680 raid, however, additional raids by the Westos
had resulted in considerable transformations and reconfigurations of the
social geography of the Georgia coast, as mainland communities seeking
protection fled to the barrier islands and ultimately southward towards
St. Augustine. Significantly, sometime between 1663 and 1666, the com-
munity of Mission San Diego de Satuache aggregated with Santa Catalina
on St. Catherines Island (Worth 1995, 2009a). As I discuss in this chapter, I
believe individuals from this community can be recognized as comprising a
distinct community of consumption at Mission Santa Catalina.
Since the mid-1970s, significant archaeological work has been conducted
at Mission Santa Catalina (Thomas 1987, 1988, 1993, 2009; Larsen 1990;
Blair et al. 2009, 2015b; Reitz et al. 2010). Most excavations have occurred
within the central compound of the mission, including the excavation of the
mission church, cemetery, friary, kitchen, and two wells, as well as more
limited excavations within the Native residential sector (Maps 2.2 and 2.3).
These excavations have been well described by Thomas (1987, 1988, 1993,
2009, 2010a, 2011), and further publications on this material are currently
in preparation at the American Museum of Natural History. Excavation of
the mission cemetery, located beneath the floor of the church and containing
a minimum of 431 individuals, has also provided considerable information
on the biocultural and bioarchaeological makeup of the mission population
(Larsen 1990; Schoeninger et al. 1990; Stojanowski 2005a; Winkler et al. in
press). Found with these individuals, in addition to the almost 70,000 glass
beads, were numerous additional grave goods including crosses, devotional
medals, religious medallions, majolica vessels, bells, mirrors, rings, stone
discoidals, and an engraved shell gorget with a coiled rattlesnake motif
(Thomas 1988; Blair et al. 2009). John Worth (1998:178–180) has argued
that this abundance of grave goods can be directly linked to a substantial
trade in maize between St. Augustine and outlying mission communities.
The glass beads recovered at Mission Santa Catalina (Figure 2.1) are
truly the product of a global network and followed complicated itinerar-
ies from their places of manufacture – Venice, Amsterdam, France, Spain,
Bohemia, China, India, and the Baltic – to the Santa Catalina cemetery. This
itinerary, from the glass manufacturing centers of Europe to the missions of
Spanish Florida, followed a complex journey. The first step in the itinerary
was obtaining raw materials and manufacturing the glass. Because there is
 Modeling consumption 15

Map 2.2 Map of Mission Santa Catalina de Guale quadrangle, oriented along the
mission grid system, with “mission north” at the top of the page (Blair
2013:378, fig. 14.2). Courtesy of the Division of Anthropology, American
Museum of Natural History.

patterning to the physical traces left in the glass by these intersecting com-
munities of practice, those communities producing the “raw” materials
and those forming the glass itself, chemical analysis can be used to reveal
both broad regional differences in glassmaking traditions as well as varia-
tions within regions determined by the specific choices made by individual
glassmakers and glass houses (Blair 2015b, 2016). For example, in my
examination of drawn opaque-white glass beads recovered at Mission Santa
Catalina, I identified the products of six distinct European glassmaking
communities of practice in the assemblage using x-ray fluorescence spec-
trometry to determine the distinctive recipes used in manufacturing the glass
(Blair 2015b, 2016).
Once the glass was formed and turned into cane for bead manufacture, the
next step in the process was for the actual beads to be formed. In Venice, for
16 Elliot H. Blair

Map 2.3 Map showing the location of human remains in the Mission Santa Catalina
de Guale cemetery (Blair 2009:135, fig. 15.9). Courtesy of the Division of
Anthropology, American Museum of Natural History.

example, this could be done by individuals from one of three bead-making

guilds: the Arte dei Margareteri, the Arte dei Paternostri, or the Arte dei Per-
lei e Suppialume. Each guild comprised a distinct bead manufacturing com-
munity of practice and utilized distinct manufacturing techniques that left
identifiable morphological characteristics on individual beads (Gasparetto
1958; Karklins 1993; Blair et al. 2009). The precise series of steps employed
in the manufacture of beads resulted in highly regular elemental and mor-
phological patterning. Despite assertions to the contrary and arguments
that the color and shape of beads was haphazard and that the recipes used
in their manufacture were poorly standardized (Noël Hume 2001:54), the
chemical and morphological patterning of glass beads recovered on archaeo-
logical sites can be identified and linked to distinct European glassmaking
and bead-making communities of practice (Blair 2015a, 2015b, 2016).
After the beads were manufactured, they were next sorted by size, pol-
ished, and strung into uniform, single-type strands by female bead string-
ers, often working out of their homes (Karklins and Adams 1990; Ninni
and Segatti 1991; Trivellato 1998). This specific order of operations has
 Modeling consumption 17

Figure 2.1 Selected beads recovered from the Mission Santa Catalina cemetery.
a. Type 54, 28.1/8197.0002; b. Type 55, 28.1/5011.0004; c. Type 56,
28.1/4452.0001; d. Type 57, 28.1/0925.0001; e. Type 58, 28.1/7796.0001;
f. Type 59, 28.1/6661.0001; g. Type 60, 28.1/6660.0001; h. Type 61,
28.1/0881.0001; i. Type 62, 28.1/7421.0018; j. Type 63, 28.3/2337.6438.
(Blair et al. 2009: plate 5). Courtesy of the Division of Anthropology,
American Museum of Natural History.

important implications, because presumably glass canes would be delivered

to the bead factories in batches from individual glass houses. The bead mak-
ers would then process the canes into beads utilizing the techniques of their
respective guilds, and the bead stringers would then string beads derived
from a common glass batch and finishing technique into lengths for distribu-
tion and sale. The chemical and morphological characteristics of those beads
composing a “finished” bead strand would therefore collectively index only
a single bead factory and (probably) a single glass factory.
Once the beads arrived in Florida there were several processes through
which they ended up in Native possession (Smith 1992; Hally and Smith
2010). A primary mechanism was through gifting. Beads were an essential
component of what have been referred to as “gift kits” (Brain 1975), and
they were usually among the gifts given to native leaders when they “ren-
dered obedience” to the Spanish crown in St. Augustine (Worth 1998; Hall
18 Elliot H. Blair
2009). Beads were also used as payment for individuals serving in the native
labor draft at St. Augustine and were used as payment for surplus maize sold
by the missions to St. Augustine (Bushnell 1994; Worth 1999). In each of
these situations, beads were primarily transferred from Europeans directly
to the native elites. They were then redistributed to their followers, likely as
a means of maintaining power and prestige (Worth 1998, 2002; Hall 2009).
Indeed, the ability to access, control, and distribute such goods was likely a
proximate cause of the1597 Guale revolt (Thomas 2010b; Francis and Kole
2011; Blair and Thomas 2014).
After the beads were distributed among the community, they were subse-
quently disarticulated and recombined into distinctively patterned strands.
After arriving in mission communities, our understanding of how they
were used is considerably murkier prior to their interment in the mission
cemetery. Almost none of the beads were used as rosaries and there is only
limited evidence of beadwork or embroidery. Burial patterning and limited
documentary evidence indicate that necklaces, wristlets, and anklets were
common (de San Miguel 2001; Blair et al. 2009), although we lack more
specific understandings of what meanings beads and beaded objects held in
these roles.
Though the daily use of beads is less clear, the bead patterning found in the
mission cemetery serves as a material trace of specific exchange events and
distinct communities of consumption at Mission Santa Catalina. That is, by
following these objects’ itineraries from the raw materials of manufacture,
through the diverse production communities of practice of European glass
houses and bead factories, and into Spanish Florida, the fine-grained mate-
rial characteristics of these objects that index specific production locales
can also be used to reconstruct networks of consumption within the Santa
Catalina community.

Social network analysis and bead consumption at

mission Santa Catalina
The methods of social network analysis provide a way to formally explore
the structure and relationship of the individuals and beads interacting in
overlapping communities of consumption at Mission Santa Catalina. Two
distinct network models based on similarities in the bead assemblages
found with individual burials are instructive. The first model is a single
mode network in which the nodes consist of individuals buried with
beads in the Santa Catalina mission cemetery. The second network model
is bimodal, where the nodes represent both beads and burials within the
mission cemetery. These two contrasting models proceed from two funda-
mentally different understandings of the networked relationships of bead
consumption.
The first model, a unimodal network visualization shown in Figure 2.2,
was constructed following methods similar to those employed by the
 Modeling consumption 19

Figure 2.2 Unimodal social network visualization of bead communities of consump-

tion at Mission Santa Catalina plotted on top of the mission cemetery
plan map. Node shape represents community, as identified by modularity
analysis, and node size is based on betweenness centrality of individuals
to the network. Nodes are labeled by individual number.

Southwest Social Networks Project (Mills, Clark et al. 2013a, Mills, Roberts
et al. 2013b; Peeples and Haas 2013; Mills, Peeples et al. 2015). First, I
generated a matrix of all individuals in the Santa Catalina cemetery and
the counts of beads types – modified by glass recipe and manufacturing
guild when possible. Then, using an R script developed by Peeples (2011),
I calculated a Brainerd-Robinson coefficient of similarity (Brainerd 1951;
Robinson 1951) between each bead burial assemblage scaled between 0
and 1, with 1 indicating identical bead burial assemblages (including type,
recipe, and count) and 0 indicating no similarity in burial assemblage. The
resulting similarity matrix was loaded into Gephi, an open-source network
20 Elliot H. Blair
visualization software (Bastian et al. 2009), the Brainerd-Robinson coef-
ficient of similarity values was used to establish and weight the “strength”
of the edges, or connections, between individuals (Peeples and Roberts
2013), and a series of network visualizations was produced. Additionally,
a modularity analysis – using the weighted values of node similarity – was
conducted in order to recognize community structure within the network
(Newman 2006; Noack 2009). This analysis identifies smaller sub-networks
within the entire network, revealing what I interpret to be the multiple bead
consumption communities present at Mission Santa Catalina.
Figure 2.2 shows the resulting network visualization of the mission cem-
etery, with nodes of different shapes representing different modules (differ-
ent bead consumption communities of practice), and node size based on
betweenness centrality, a measure for how central each node (individual) is
to the entire network. That is, larger nodes are more central to the network
than smaller nodes. This network is plotted on top of a plan view of the mis-
sion cemetery and nodes are labeled by individual number.
The most obvious, and surprising, result of this analysis was the rela-
tive lack of correspondence between burial location and bead community
of consumption. Recent biodistance analyses of the burial populations at
several other mission cemeteries in La Florida have shown that the loca-
tion of burial is often based on biological relationships, with specific areas
within mission cemeteries assigned to specific family groups (Stojanowski
2005b, 2013). Here, the general lack of correspondence between consump-
tion group and burial location suggests that the circulation and exchange
of beads corresponded either to a non-familial type of social relationship
or, possibly, that the spatial layout of the Santa Catalina cemetery was not
organized by family plot.
Figure 2.3 presents the same network as Figure 2.2 except that the layout
of the network has been transformed to represent social space – where the
proximity of nodes represents social distance, based on similarity of bead
burial assemblages – rather than physical proximity within the mission cem-
etery. This network plot was generated using the Force-Atlas 2 layout algo-
rithm (developed for Gephi) that was designed to use weighted connections
so that node proximity and network topology reflect community structure
(Jacomy et al. 2014). Here, distinct bead communities of consumption are
clearly evident through the correspondence of the modularity analysis (node
shape) with the clustered sub-networks evident in the network topology. The
use of two different methods for representing community structure within
the network – modularity analysis (represented by node shape) and the
layout algorithm (represented by node position) – helps highlight important
details about the structure of the network and perhaps the roles of individu-
als within the network: specifically, the tensions between the results of the
methods highlight specific individuals who may have operated as social
brokers and facilitated connections between multiple consumption commu-
nities (Individuals 90 and 93, for example).
Figure 2.3 Unimodal social network visualization of bead communities of consump-
tion at Mission Santa Catalina. Node shape is based on the results of a
modularity analysis and node size is based on betweenness centrality.
Nodes are labeled by burial number.
22 Elliot H. Blair
The second network visualization of bead consumption is a bimodal
network that includes both beads and individuals as nodes. Such a model
is ontologically interesting by situating beads and people together within
the network, as well as consistent with Actor-Network models that con-
sider both humans and objects to be actants – entities acting on each other
(Latour 2005). For my purposes here, it is of interest because of the funda-
mentally different assumptions it requires as a model of consumption. It is
also more consistent with Knappett’s (2011) call to better integrate network
models and network metaphors.
Borgatti and Halgin (2011) have suggested that the types of social ties
modeled in a social network generally consist of one of two types: state-type
ties and event-type ties (see also Mills 2016). While state-type ties consist of
a similarity of condition between nodes, event-type ties are based upon spe-
cific interactions or transactions between nodes. In the unimodal model just
presented – constructed using a similarity index – the relationship between
individuals is primarily one of condition, where individuals are linked
because their bead assemblages in their entirety are more or less similar.
However, when considering consumption, the second type of connection –
event-based – which links individuals based on the exchange and distribu-
tion of glass beads, is of particular importance.
The elemental and morphological similarities creating the connections
between individuals presented in the unimodal model also reflect event-type
(exchange) connections, yet this is almost certainly not the only type of
relationship that the data indicate. In some cases, the colors, sizes, and types
of beads that different individuals possessed in common reflect a similar
understanding about how beads should be consumed and do not index a
specific event of exchange. While this ambiguity is impossible to resolve, the
bimodal network presented below provides better modeling of event-type
connections. This model does not preclude the possibility of state-type ties
between individuals, but because specific bead types (with matching glass
compositions) now directly connect individuals within the network, event-
type (exchange-based) connections are now also explicitly modeled in the
visualization.
Figure 2.4 presents the bipartite network visualization of the mission
cemetery. An edge list consisting of individuals connected to beads, weighted
by artifact counts, was loaded into Gephi, and a modularity analysis was
conducted to recognize community structure (Newman 2006; Noack 2009).
The topology of the bimodal network was structured using the OpenOrd
layout algorithm, a force-directed algorithm that encourages graphical clus-
tering (Martin et al. 2011).
The network shown in Figure 2.4 has some distinct similarities to the
previous, unimodal version. Four primary communities of consumption
(as evidenced by the modularity analysis) are again evident. Though the
precise configuration is slightly different and some of the constituent mem-
bers of each sub-network have shifted, the shapes used to represent nodes
Figure 2.4 Bimodal social network visualization of beads and individuals within the
Mission Santa Catalina cemetery. Node shapes are based on a bimodal
modularity analysis. Node size represents betweenness centrality. Nodes
are labeled by burial number and bead type numbers
24 Elliot H. Blair
within each bead community of consumption largely correspond between
the unimodal and bimodal models. Like the unimodal model, most of
the network tightly clusters spatially, with two modules – represented by
circles and stars – complexly and densely intertwined, indicating a gener-
ally large degree of social integration. However, the spatial patterning of
the bimodal network also identifies two bead consumption communities
(diamonds and squares) that are now separated from the central network
cluster. For example, the group identified with squares is largely clustered
separately, along the exterior, of the main group, and can likely be identi-
fied as a distinct and somewhat separate consumption community. Besides
Burial B (which is well integrated into the central group), the characteristics
of several other burials support the reality of this distinction. For example,
Individuals 348, 349, and 350 are three subadults (two 2-year-old children
and one 3-year-old child) interred in the same grave pit. In addition to beads,
these individuals were found buried with an engraved shell Carters Quarter-
style rattlesnake gorget, a majolica pitcher, and a Busycon sp. (whelk shell)
dipper or cup. This assemblage of objects strongly hints at external connec-
tions between Mission Santa Catalina and parts of East Tennessee and West
Georgia (Blair et al. 2009:150–152; Blair 2015a:91–92). At the same time,
Individual 318, also found within this network cluster, is also distinguished
by a highly unusual burial assemblage, including the only two hawks bells
and the only Nueva Cadiz bead recovered at Mission Santa Catalina (Blair
et al. 2009:149, Blair 2015a), objects often associated with 16th-century
entradas, rather than 17th-century missions (Brain 1975; Smith 1992; Little
2008; Waselkov 2009). While impossible to confirm without additional bio-
archaeological analyses, the implications here are that the individuals found
in this group, because of the distinct spatial clustering in Figure 2.4 and the
hints toward external connections, likely consist of a distinct community
that may have aggregated to Mission Santa Catalina early in the mission era.
Figure 2.5 also shows the bimodal network visualization of the mission
cemetery, although in this version nodes are also coded based on burial
date – with dark black nodes representing individuals buried before ca.
A.D. 1640 and hollow nodes representing individuals buried after ca. A.D.
1640. Nodes in varying shades of gray represent beads and all individuals
for which I cannot provide more precise date estimates. Several important
observations can be made from this version of the social network. First,
within the module just discussed (square-shaped nodes), almost all indi-
viduals for which date estimates were possible fall within the early group
within the mission cemetery, consistent with my suggestion above that this
group could indicate an early episode of movement to and aggregation at
Mission Santa Catalina. Second, the dense, central portion of the network
is comprised of individuals spanning the entire mission occupation. This
long temporal span and the dense clustering of this portion of the network
suggests that these bead communities of consumption likely include indi-
viduals and their descendants from the original community of Guale living
Figure 2.5 Bimodal social network visualization of beads and individuals within the Mis-
sion Santa Catalina cemetery. Dark black nodes represent individuals buried
before ca. A.D. 1640. Hollow nodes represent individuals buried after ca. A.D.
1640. Gray nodes represent bead types and individuals without burial date
estimates. Nodes are labeled by burial number or bead type number.
26 Elliot H. Blair
on St. Catherines Island as missionization was first initiated. Finally, the last
module, diamond-shaped nodes, in addition to being characterized by its
distinct spatial positioning – strongly separated from the rest of the social
network – consists almost entirely of individuals buried during the latter
portion of the 17th century. This combination of relative network isolation –
as well as the late burial date – strongly suggests a correlation between this
network group and the San Diego de Satuache community that aggregated
to Mission Santa Catalina ca. A.D. 1663–1666 (discussed earlier). Indeed,
as I have discussed elsewhere (Blair and Thomas 2014), the history of fac-
tional conflict between these communities prior to aggregation is a likely
explanation for the relative segregation of this portion of the network.
Also, clearly evident in Figures 2.4 and 2.5 is the distinctive location of
Individual 238. This individual dates to the latter portion of the mission cem-
etery’s use and is located precisely between the consumption group I asso-
ciate with the Satuache community and the larger central network cluster.
Such an individual – situated between distinct consumption communities –
can likely be identified as a broker within the network (Peeples and Haas
2013). The identification of Individual 238 in this social role is particularly
intriguing when the network is examined in terms of physical space. Look-
ing at Map 2.3, Individual 238 is located directly in the center of the church
along the NE/SW axis and separated from the other clusters of burials (Blair
et al. 2009:143). Indeed, the “in-betweenness” of this individual as depicted
in social space is mirrored in the physical location of his or her cemetery
plot. This is also one of the few individuals in the mission cemetery buried
with a clearly identifiable rosary, again hinting at his or her distinct role
within the larger community (Blair et al. 2009).

Conclusions
Combining the concepts of object itineraries, communities of practice,
and the methods of social network analysis provides an approach that can
facilitate analyses of consumption in a broad sense, integrated into larger
patterns of manufacture, distribution, and disposal. By tracing the itinerary
of beads from manufacturing source to final archaeological provenience
at Mission Santa Catalina (Blair 2015a), the morphological and composi-
tional attributes of the beads could be used to identify both past production
communities of practice and reconstruct past social relationships, based
on both specific episodes of exchange as well as evidence for shared bead
consumption practices (Blair 2016). Two distinct social networks analyses –
one unimodal and one bimodal – present two distinct approaches to net-
worked relations, with the former based on state-like similarities and the
latter incorporating event-type connections. Importantly, the combination
of these two approaches allows the network to be analyzed as both a model
of consumption as action and a representation of shared consumption prac-
tices that reflect choices and agency, the latter being particularly important
 Modeling consumption 27
for “understanding the role of material culture in colonial strategies and
processes” (Dietler 2010b:216).
Additionally, whereas I only hint at the potential, the combined commu-
nity of practice and network approach I present also provides a framework
for examining social identities, with communities of consumption serving to
provide evidence for “groupness” without reifying any one distinct category
of identity (Meskell 2001; Latour 2005; Blair 2016). The network visual-
izations I present clearly depict distinct bead communities of consumption,
and close analysis shows that they articulate with both the documented
and undocumented history of the Mission Santa Catalina community (Blair
2015b). Additional close analysis shows that specific social roles of individu-
als can also be explored through network analysis, with network brokers
being particularly apparent. Unlike Walsh’s (2013) suggestion that a “net-
work paradigm” can only be descriptive, I argue that the methods of SNA,
when situated within broader contexts of production and distribution, pro-
vide a framework for conducting a close analysis of consumption practices
and social relationships, allowing the how and why questions for network
formation, persistence, and transformation to also be addressed.

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Title: Voyages

Author: Jean-François Regnard

Release date: July 28, 2022 [eBook #68618]

Language: French

Original publication: France: Librairie de la Bibliothèque nationale,

1887

Credits: Laurent Vogel and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team

at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK VOYAGES ***

 BIBLIOTHÈQUE NATIONALE
COLLECTION DES MEILLEURS AUTEURS ANCIENS ET
MODERNES

REGNARD

VOYAGES
VOYAGE DE LAPONIE
VOYAGE DE FLANDRE ET DE HOLLANDE
DU DANEMARK. — DE LA SUÈDE

PARIS
LIBRAIRIE DE LA BIBLIOTHÈQUE NATIONALE
RUE DE RICHELIEU, 8, PRÈS LE THÉATRE-FRANÇAIS
Ci-devant, rue de Valois, 2.

1887
Tous droits réservés
VOYAGES
 RÉFLEXIONS

Il est ordinaire aux voyageurs qui passent les mers de faire naître
des orages ; et tout ce qui n’est point calme est pour eux une
tempête continuelle qui brise leurs vaisseaux contre le firmament, et
tantôt les jette jusque dans les enfers : ce sont les manières de
parler de quelques-uns. Pour moi, sans amplifier les choses, je vous
dirai que la mer Baltique est célèbre en naufrages, et qu’il est rare
d’y passer pendant l’automne, car elle n’est point navigable l’hiver,
sans y être pris du mauvais temps. Nous avons été obligés de
relâcher en cinq ou six endroits ; et ce passage, qu’on fait
ordinairement en trois ou quatre jours, nous a retenus.
Ces disgrâces ont servi à quelque chose, et le temps que nous
sommes demeurés à l’ancre n’a pas été le plus mal employé de ma
vie. J’allais tous les jours passer quelques heures sur des rochers
escarpés, où la hauteur des précipices et la vue de la mer
n’entretenaient pas mal mes rêveries. Ce fut dans ces conversations
intérieures que je m’ouvris tout entier à moi-même, et que j’allais
chercher dans les replis de mon cœur les sentiments les plus
cachés et les déguisements les plus secrets, pour me mettre la
vérité devant les yeux, sans fard, telle qu’elle était en effet. Je jetai
d’abord la vue sur les agitations de ma vie passée, les desseins
sans exécution, les résolutions sans suite, et les entreprises sans
succès. Je considérai l’état de ma vie présente, les voyages
vagabonds, les changements de lieux, la diversité des objets, et les
mouvements continuels dont j’étais agité. Je me reconnus tout entier
dans l’un et dans l’autre de ces états, où l’inconstance avait plus de
part que toute autre chose, sans que l’amour-propre vînt flatter le
moindre trait qui empêchât de me reconnaître dans cette peinture.
Je jugeai sainement de toutes choses. Je conçus que tout cela était
directement opposé à la société de la vie, qui consiste uniquement
dans le repos ; et que cette tranquillité d’âme si heureuse se trouve
dans une douce profession, qui nous arrête comme l’ancre fait un
vaisseau retenu au milieu de la tempête. Tous ces desseins vagues,
ces vues qui s’étendent sur l’avenir, les chimères, les imaginations
de fortune, sont des fantômes qui nous abusent, que nous prenons
plaisir de nous former, et avec lesquels notre esprit nous joue. Tous
les obstacles que l’ambition fait naître, loin de nous arrêter, doivent
nous faire défier de nous-mêmes, et nous faire appréhender
davantage.
Vous savez, monsieur, comme moi, que le choix d’un état est ce
qu’il y a de plus difficile dans la vie : c’est ce qui fait qu’il y a tant de
gens qui n’en embrassent aucun, et qui, demeurant dans une
indolence continuelle, ne vivent pas comme ils voudraient, mais
comme ils ont commencé, soit par la crainte des fâcheux
événements, soit par l’amour de la mollesse et la fuite du travail, ou
par quelques autres raisons.
Il y en a d’autres qu’un échec ne fixe pas entièrement, et, se
laissant toujours emporter à cette légèreté qui leur est naturelle, pour
être dans le port, ils n’en sont pas plus en repos : ce sont de
nouveaux desseins qui les agitent, et de nouvelles idées de fortune
qui les tourmentent. Ces gens ne changent que pour le plaisir de
changer, et par une légèreté naturelle ; ce qu’ils ont quitté leur plaît
toujours infiniment davantage que ce qu’ils ont pris. Toute la vie de
ces personnes est une continuelle agitation ; et si on les voit
quelquefois se fixer sur la fin de leurs jours, ce n’est pas la haine du
changement qui les retient, mais la lenteur de la vieillesse, incapable
de mouvement, qui les empêche de rien entreprendre : semblables à
ces gens inquiets qui ne peuvent dormir, et qui, à force de se
tourner, trouvent enfin le repos que la lassitude leur procure.
 Je ne sais lequel de ces deux états est le plus à plaindre, mais je
sais qu’ils sont tous deux extrêmement fâcheux. De là viennent ces
dérèglements de l’âme, ces passions immodérées qui font qu’on
souhaite plus qu’on ne peut ou qu’on n’ose entreprendre ; qu’on
craint tout, qu’on espère tout et qu’on cherche ailleurs un bonheur
qu’on ne peut trouver que chez soi. De là viennent ces ennuis, ces
dégoûts de soi-même, ces impatiences de son oisiveté, ces plaintes
qu’on fait de ce qu’on n’a rien à faire. Tout déplaît, la compagnie est
à charge, la solitude est affreuse, la lumière fait peine, les ténèbres
affligent, l’agitation lasse, le repos endort, le monde est odieux ; et
l’on devient enfin insupportable à soi-même. Il n’y a rien que ces
sortes de personnes ne veuillent ; et la prévention qu’ils ont d’eux-
mêmes les pousse à tout entreprendre. L’ambition leur fait tout
trouver possible ; mais le courage leur manque et leur irrésolution les
arrête. L’élèvement des autres, qu’ils ont continuellement devant les
yeux, sert tantôt à entretenir leurs vagues desseins et à fomenter
leur ambition, et tantôt à les exposer en proie à la jalousie. Ils
souffrent impatiemment la fortune des autres ; ils souhaitent leur
abaissement parce qu’ils n’ont pu s’élever, et la destruction de leur
fortune parce qu’ils désespèrent d’en faire une pareille.
Ces gens accusent continuellement la cruauté de leur mauvaise
fortune, se plaignant toujours de la dureté du siècle et de la
dépravation du genre humain : ils entreprennent des voyages de
long cours ; ils s’arrachent de leur patrie, et cherchent des climats
qu’un autre soleil échauffe. Tantôt ils se commettent à l’inclémence
de la mer, et tantôt rebutés, ou de son calme ou de ses orages, ils
se remettent sur terre. Aujourd’hui la mollesse de l’Italie leur plaît, et
ils n’y sont pas plutôt qu’ils regrettent la France avec tous ses
plaisirs. Sortons de la ville dira l’un, la vertu y est opprimée, le vice et
le luxe y règnent, et je ne saurais plus y supporter le bruit.
Retournons à la ville, dira-t-il bientôt après ; je languis dans la
solitude : l’homme n’est pas né pour vivre avec les bêtes, et il y a
trop longtemps que je n’entends plus ce doux fracas qui se trouve
dans la confusion de la ville. Un voyage n’est pas plus tôt fini, qu’il
en entreprend un autre. Ainsi, se fuyant toujours lui-même, il ne peut
s’éviter ; il porte toujours avec lui son inconstance ; et la source de
son mal est dans lui-même, sans qu’il la connaisse.
 VOYAGE DE LAPONIE

Les voyages ont leurs travaux comme leurs plaisirs ; mais les
fatigues qui se trouvent dans cet exercice, loin de nous rebuter,
accroissent ordinairement l’envie de voyager. Cette passion, irritée
par les peines, nous engage insensiblement à aller plus loin que
nous ne voudrions ; et l’on sort souvent de chez soi pour n’aller
qu’en Hollande, qu’on se trouve, je ne sais comment, jusqu’au bout
du monde. La même chose m’est arrivée, monsieur. J’appris à
Amsterdam que la cour de Danemark était à Oldembourg, qui n’en
est qu’à trois journées : j’eusse témoigné beaucoup de mépris pour
cette cour, et bien peu de curiosité, si je n’eusse été la voir.
Je partis donc pour Oldembourg ; mais le hasard, qui me voulait
conduire plus loin, en avait fait partir le roi deux jours avant que j’y
arrivasse. On me dit que je le trouverais encore à Altona, qui est a
une portée de mousquet de Hambourg. Je crus être obligé
d’honneur à poursuivre mon dessein, et à faire encore deux ou trois
jours de marche pour voir ce que je souhaitais. De plus, Hambourg
est une ville hanséatique fameuse pour le commerce qu’elle
entretient avec toute la terre, et recommandable par ses fortifications
et son gouvernement. J’y devais rencontrer la cour de Danemark ; je
n’y vis cependant qu’une partie de ce que je voulais voir : je n’y
trouvai que la reine mère et le prince Georges, son fils, qui allaient
aux eaux de Pyrmont. Je vis Hambourg, dont je fus fort content ;
mais, après avoir tant fait de chemin pour voir le roi, je crus devoir
l’aller chercher dans la ville capitale, où je devais infailliblement le
trouver. J’entrepris le voyage de Copenhague. M. l’ambassadeur me
présenta au roi ; j’eus l’honneur de lui baiser la main et de l’entretenir
quelque temps. Le séjour que je fis à Copenhague me fut infiniment
agréable, et j’y trouvai les dames si spirituelles et si bien faites, que
j’aurais eu bien de la peine à les quitter, si l’on ne m’eût assuré que
j’en trouverais en Suède d’aussi aimables. L’extrême envie que
j’avais de voir aussi le roi de Suède m’engagea à partir pour
Stockholm. Nous eûmes l’honneur de saluer le roi et de l’entretenir
pendant une heure entière. Ayant connu que nous voyagions pour
notre curiosité, il nous dit que la Laponie méritait d’être vue par les
curieux, tant par sa situation que pour les habitants, qui y vivent
d’une manière tout à fait inconnue au reste des Européens, et
commanda même au comte Steint-Bielke, grand trésorier, de nous
donner toutes les recommandations nécessaires, si nous voulions
faire ce voyage. Le moyen, monsieur, de résister au conseil d’un roi,
et d’un grand roi comme celui de Suède ! Ne peut-on pas avec son
aveu entreprendre toutes choses ? et peut-on être malheureux dans
une entreprise qu’il a lui-même conseillée, et dont il a souhaité le
succès ? Les avis des rois sont des commandements : cela fut
cause que, après avoir mis ordre à toutes choses, nous mîmes à la
voile pour Torno le mercredi 23 juillet 1681, sur le midi, après avoir
salué M. Steint-Bielke, grand trésorier, qui, suivant l’ordre qu’il avait
reçu du roi son maître, nous donna des recommandations pour les
gouverneurs des provinces par où nous devions passer.
Nous fûmes portés d’un sud-ouest jusqu’à Vacsol, où l’on visite
les vaisseaux. Nous admirâmes, en y allant, la bizarre situation de
Stockholm. Il est presque incroyable qu’on ait choisi un lieu comme
celui où l’on voit cette ville pour en faire la capitale d’un royaume
aussi grand que celui de Suède. On dit que les fondateurs de cette
ville, cherchant un lieu pour la faire, jetèrent un bâton dans la mer,
dans le dessein de la bâtir au lieu où il s’arrêterait : ce bâton s’arrêta
où l’on voit présentement cette ville, qui n’a rien d’affreux que sa
situation ; car les bâtiments en sont fort superbes, et les habitants
fort civils.
Nous vîmes la petite île d’Aland, à quarante milles de Stockholm ;
cette île est très-fertile, et sert de retraite aux élans, qui y passent de
Livonie et de Carélie, lorsque l’hiver leur a fait un passage sur les
glaces. Cet animal est de la hauteur d’un cheval, et d’un poil tirant
sur le blanc ; il porte un bois comme un daim, et a le pied de même
fort long ; mais il le surpasse en légèreté et en force, dont il se sert
contre les loups, avec lesquels il se bat souvent. La peau de cet
animal appartient au roi ; et les paysans sont obligés, sous peine de
la vie, de la porter au gouverneur.
En quittant cette île, nous perdîmes la terre de vue, et ne la
revîmes que le vendredi matin, à la hauteur d’Hernen ou Hernesand,
éloignée de Stockholm de cent milles, qui valent trois cents lieues de
France ; et le vent demeurant toujours extrêmement violent, nous ne
fûmes pas longtemps à découvrir les îles d’Ulfen, Schagen et
Goben ; en sorte que, le samedi matin, nous trouvâmes que nous
avions laissé l’Angermanie, et que nous étions à la hauteur d’Urna,
première ville de Laponie, qui prend son nom du fleuve qui l’arrose.
Cette ville donne son nom à toute la province qu’on appelle Urna
Lapmark. Elle se trouve au trente-huitième degré de longitude et au
soixante-cinquième onze minutes de latitude, éloignée de Stockholm
de cent cinquante milles, faisant environ quatre cent cinquante
lieues françaises.
Nous découvrîmes le samedi les îles de Quercken ; et le vent,
continuant toujours sud-sud-ouest, nous fit voir sur le midi la petite
île de Ratan ; et sur les quatre heures du même jour, nous nous
trouvâmes à la hauteur du cap de Burockluben.
Quand nous eûmes passé ce petit cap, nous perdîmes la terre de
vue ; et le dimanche matin, le vent s’étant tenu au sud toute la nuit,
nous nous trouvâmes à la hauteur de Malhurn, petite île à huit milles
de Torno. Il en sortit des pêcheurs dans une petite barque aussi
mince que j’en aie vu de ma vie, dont les planches étaient cousues
ensemble, à la mode des Russes. Ils nous apportèrent du strumelin,
et nous leur donnâmes du biscuit et de l’eau-de-vie, avec quoi ils
s’en retournèrent fort contents.
Le vent demeurant toujours extrêmement favorable, nous
arrivâmes à une lieue de Torno, où nous mouillâmes l’ancre.
Il est assez difficile de croire qu’on ait pu faire un aussi long
chemin que celui que nous fîmes en quatre jours de temps. On
compte de Stockholm à Torno deux cents milles de Suède par mer,
qui valent six cents lieues de France ; et nous fîmes tout ce chemin
avec un vent de sud et sud-sud-ouest si favorable et si violent,
qu’étant partis le mercredi de Stockholm, nous arrivâmes à la même
heure le dimanche suivant, sans avoir été obligés de changer les
voiles pendant tout le voyage.
Torno est situé à l’extrémité du golfe Bothnique, au quarante-
deuxième degré vingt-sept minutes de longitude, et au soixante-
septième de latitude. C’est la dernière ville du monde du côté du
nord ; le reste jusqu’au cap n’étant habité que par des Lapons, gens
sauvages qui n’ont aucune demeure fixe.
C’est en ce lieu où se tiennent les foires de ces nations
septentrionales pendant l’hiver, lorsque la mer est assez glacée pour
y venir en traîneau. C’est pendant ce temps qu’on y voit de toutes
sortes de nations du Nord, de Russes, de Moscovites, de Finlandais,
et de Lapons de tous les trois royaumes, qui y viennent ensemble
sur des neiges et sur des glaces, dont la commodité est si grande,
qu’on peut facilement, par le moyen des traîneaux, aller en un jour
de Finlande en Laponie, et traverser sur les glaces le sein
Bothnique, quoiqu’il ait dans les moindres endroits trente ou
quarante milles de Suède. Le trafic de cette ville est en poissons,
qu’ils envoient fort loin ; et la rivière de Torno est si fertile en
saumons et en brochets, qu’elle peut en fournir à tous les habitants
de la mer Baltique. Ils salent les uns pour les transporter, et fument
les autres dans des basses-touches qui sont faites comme des
bains. Quoique cette ville ne soit proprement qu’un amas de
cabanes de bois, elle ne laisse pas de payer tous les ans deux mille
dalles de cuivre, qui font environ mille livres de notre monnaie.
Nous logeâmes chez le patron de la barque qui nous avait
amenés de Stockholm. Nous ne trouvâmes pas sa femme chez lui ;
elle était allée à une foire qui se faisait à dix ou douze lieues de là,
pour troquer du sel et de la farine contre des peaux de rennes, de
petits-gris et autres : car tout le commerce de ce pays se fait
ordinairement en troc ; et les Russes et les Lapons ne font guère de
marchés autrement.
Nous allâmes le jour suivant, lundi, pour voir Joannes Tornæus,
homme docte, qui a tourné en lapon tous les psaumes de David, et
qui a écrit leur histoire. C’était un prêtre de la campagne : il était
mort depuis trois jours, et nous le trouvâmes étendu dans son
cercueil avec des habits conformes à sa profession, et qu’on lui avait
fait faire exprès : il était fort regretté dans le pays, et avait voyagé
dans une bonne partie de l’Europe.
Sa femme était d’un autre côté, couchée sur son lit, qui
témoignait, par ses soupirs et par ses pleurs, le regret qu’elle avait
de perdre un tel mari. Quantité d’autres femmes ses amies
environnaient le lit, et répondaient par leurs gémissements à la
douleur de la veuve.
Mais ce qui consolait un peu dans une si grande affliction et une
tristesse si générale, c’était quantité de grands pots d’argent faits à
l’antique, pleins, les uns de vins de France, d’autres de vins
d’Espagne, et d’autres d’eau-de-vie, qu’on avait soin de ne pas
laisser longtemps vides. Nous tâtâmes de tout ; et la veuve
interrompait souvent ses soupirs pour nous presser de boire ; elle
nous fit même apporter du tabac, dont nous ne voulûmes pas
prendre. On nous conduisit ensuite au temple dont le défunt était
pasteur, où nous ne vîmes rien de remarquable ; et, prenant congé
de la veuve, il fallut encore boire à la mémoire du défunt, et faire,
monsieur, ce qui s’appelle libare manibus.
Nous allâmes ensuite chez une personne qui était en notre
compagnie : la mère nous reçut avec toute l’affection possible ; et
ces gens, qui n’avaient jamais vu de Français, ne savaient comment
nous témoigner la joie qu’ils avaient de nous voir en leur pays.
Le mardi, on nous apporta quantité de fourrures à acheter, de
grandes couvertures fourrées de peaux de lièvre blanc, qu’on voulait
donner pour un écu. On nous montra aussi des habits de Lapons,
faits de peaux de jeunes rennes, avec tout l’équipage, les bottes, les
gants, les souliers, la ceinture et le bonnet. Nous allâmes le même
jour à la chasse autour de la maison : nous trouvâmes quantité de
bécasses sauvages, et autres animaux inconnus en nos pays, et
nous nous étonnâmes que les habitants que nous rencontrions dans
le pays ne nous fuyaient pas moins que le gibier.
 Le mercredi, nous reçûmes visite des bourgmestres de la ville et
du bailli, qui nous firent offre de service en tout ce qui serait en leur
pouvoir. Ils nous vinrent prendre après le dîner dans leurs barques,
et nous menèrent chez le prêtre de la ville, gendre du défunt
Tornæus.
Ce fut là où nous vîmes pour la première fois un traîneau lapon,
dont nous admirâmes la structure. Cette machine, qu’ils appellent
pulea, est faite comme un petit canot, élevée sur le devant, pour
fendre la neige avec plus de facilité. La proue n’est faite que d’une
seule planche, et le corps est composé de plusieurs morceaux de
bois qui sont cousus ensemble avec de gros fil de renne, sans qu’il y
entre un seul clou, et qui se réunissent sur le devant à un morceau
de bois assez fort, qui règne tout du long par-dessus, et qui,
excédant le reste de l’ouvrage, fait le même effet que la quille d’un
vaisseau. C’est sur ce morceau de bois que le traîneau glisse ; et
comme il n’est large que de quatre bons doigts, cette machine roule
continuellement de côté et d’autre : on se met dedans jusqu’à la
moitié du corps, comme dans un cercueil ; et l’on vous y lie, en sorte
que vous êtes entièrement immobile, et l’on vous laisse seulement
l’usage des mains, afin que d’une vous puissiez conduire le renne, et
de l’autre vous soutenir lorsque vous êtes en danger de tomber. Il
faut tenir son corps dans l’équilibre ; ce qui fait qu’à moins d’être
accoutumé à cette manière de courir, on est souvent en danger de la
vie, et principalement lorsque le traîneau descend des rochers les
plus escarpés, sur lesquels vous courez d’une si horrible vitesse qu’il
est impossible de se figurer la promptitude de ce mouvement, à
moins de l’avoir expérimenté. Nous soupâmes ce même soir en
public avec le bourgmestre ; tous les habitants y coururent en foule
pour nous voir manger. Nous arrêtâmes ce même soir notre départ
pour le lendemain, et prîmes un truchement.
Le jeudi, dernier juillet, nous partîmes de Torno dans un petit
bateau finlandais, fait exprès pour aller dans ce pays : sa longueur
peut être de douze pieds, et sa largeur de trois. Il ne se peut rien voir
de si bien travaillé ni de si léger ; en sorte que deux ou trois hommes
peuvent porter facilement ce bâtiment lorsqu’ils sont obligés de
passer les cataractes du fleuve, qui sont si impétueuses qu’elles
roulent des pierres d’une grosseur extraordinaire. Nous fûmes
obligés d’aller à pied presque tout le reste de la journée, à cause des
torrents qui tombaient des montagnes, et d’un vent impétueux qui
faisait entrer l’eau dans le bateau avec une telle abondance, que, si
l’on n’eût été extrêmement prompt à la vider, il eût été bientôt rempli.
Nous allâmes le long de la rivière toujours chassant ; nous tuâmes
quelques pièces de gibier, et nous admirâmes la quantité de
canards, d’oies, de courlis, et de plusieurs autres oiseaux que nous
rencontrions à chaque pas. Nous ne fîmes pas ce jour-là tout le
chemin que nous avions déterminé de faire, à cause d’une pluie
violente qui nous surprit, et nous obligea de passer la nuit dans une
maison de paysan, à une lieue et demie de Torno.
Nous marchâmes tout le vendredi sans nous reposer, et nous
fûmes depuis quatre heures du matin jusqu’à la nuit à faire trois
milles ; si l’on peut appeler la nuit un temps où l’on voit toujours le
soleil, sans que l’on puisse faire aucune distinction du jour au
lendemain.
Nous fîmes plus de la moitié du chemin à pied, à cause des
torrents effroyables qu’il fallut surmonter. Nous fûmes même obligés
de porter notre bateau pendant quelque espace de chemin, et nous
eûmes le plaisir de voir en même temps descendre deux petites
barques au milieu de ces cataractes. L’oiseau le plus vite et le plus
léger ne peut aller de cette impétuosité ; et la vue ne peut suivre la
course de ces bâtiments, qui se dérobent aux yeux, et s’enfoncent
tantôt dans les vagues, où ils semblent ensevelis, et tantôt se
relèvent d’une hauteur surprenante. Pendant cette course rapide, le
pilote est debout, et emploie toute son industrie à éviter des pierres
d’une grosseur extraordinaire, et à passer au milieu des rochers, qui
ne laissent justement que la largeur du bateau, et qui briseraient ces
petites chaloupes en mille pièces, si elles y touchaient le moins du
monde.
Nous tuâmes ce jour-là dans les bois deux faisandeaux, trois
canards et deux cercelles, sans nous éloigner de notre chemin,
pendant lequel nous fûmes extrêmement incommodés des
moucherons, qui sont la peste de ce pays, et qui nous firent
désespérer. Les Lapons n’ont point d’autre remède contre ces
maudits animaux que d’emplir de fumée le lieu où ils demeurent ; et
nous remarquâmes sur le chemin que, pour garantir leur bétail de
ces bêtes importunes, ils allument un grand feu dans les endroits où
paissent leurs vaches (que nous trouvâmes toutes blanches), à la
fumée duquel elles se mettent, et chassent ainsi les moucherons,
qui n’y sauraient durer.
Nous fîmes la même chose, et nous nous enfermâmes, lorsque
nous fûmes arrivés chez un Allemand qui est depuis trente ans dans
le pays, et qui reçoit le tribut des Lapons pour le roi de Suède. Il
nous dit que ce peuple était obligé de se trouver en un certain lieu
qu’on lui assigne l’année précédente pour apporter ce qu’il doit, et
qu’on prenait ordinairement le temps de l’hiver, à cause de la
commodité qu’il donne aux Lapons de venir sur les glaces par le
moyen de leurs rennes.
Le tribut qu’ils payent est peu de chose ; et c’est une politique du
roi de Suède, qui, pour tenir toujours ces peuples tributaires à sa
couronne, ne les charge que d’un médiocre impôt, de peur que les
Lapons, qui n’ont point de demeure fixe, et à qui toute l’étendue de
la Laponie sert de maison, n’aillent sur les terres d’un autre, pour
éviter les vexations du prince de qui ils seraient trop surchargés. Il y
a pourtant de ces peuples qui payent plusieurs tributs à différents
Etats ; et quelquefois un Lapon sera tributaire du roi de Suède, de
celui de Danemark, et du grand-duc de Moscovie. Ils payeront au
premier, parce qu’ils demeurent sur ses Etats ; à l’autre, parce qu’il
leur permet de pêcher du côté de la Norwége, qui lui appartient ; et
au troisième, à cause qu’ils peuvent aller chasser sur ses terres.
Il ne nous arriva rien d’extraordinaire pendant tout le chemin que
nous fîmes le samedi ; mais sitôt que nous fûmes arrivés chez un
paysan, nous nous étonnâmes de trouver tout le monde dans le
bain. Ces lieux, qu’ils appellent basses-touches ou bains, sont faits
de bois, comme toutes leurs maisons. On voit au milieu de ce bain
un gros amas de pierres, sans qu’ils aient observé aucun ordre en le
faisant, que d’y laisser un trou au milieu, dans lequel ils allument du
feu. Ces pierres, étant une fois échauffées, communiquent la chaleur
à tout le lieu ; mais ce chaud s’augmente extrêmement lorsque l’on
vient à jeter de l’eau dessus les cailloux, qui, renvoyant une fumée
étouffante, font que l’air qu’on respire dans ces bains est tout de feu.
Ce qui nous surprit beaucoup fut qu’étant entrés dans ce bain, nous
y trouvâmes ensemble filles et garçons, mères et fils, frères et
sœurs, sans que ces femmes nues eussent peine à supporter la vue
des personnes qu’elles ne connaissaient point. Mais nous nous
étonnâmes davantage de voir de jeunes filles frapper d’une branche
des hommes et des garçons nus. Je crus d’abord que la nature,
affaiblie par de grandes sueurs, avait besoin de cet artifice pour faire
voir qu’il lui restait encore quelque signe de vie ; mais on me
détrompa bientôt, et je sus que cela se faisait afin que ces coups
réitérés, ouvrant les pores, aidassent à faire faire de grandes
évacuations. J’eus de la peine ensuite à concevoir comment ces
gens, sortant nus de ces bains tout de feu, allaient se jeter dans une
rivière extrêmement froide qui était à quelques pas de la maison ; et
je conçus qu’il fallait que ces gens fussent d’un fort tempérament,
pour pouvoir résister aux effets que ce prompt changement du
chaud au froid pouvait causer.
Vous n’auriez jamais cru, monsieur, que les Bothniens, gens
extrêmement sauvages, eussent imité les Romains dans leur luxe et
dans leurs plaisirs ; mais vous vous étonnerez encore davantage
quand je vous aurai dit que ces mêmes gens, qui ont des bains chez
eux comme les empereurs, n’ont pas de pain à manger. Ils vivent
d’un peu de lait, et se nourrissent de la plus tendre écorce qui se
trouve au sommet des pins. Ils la prennent lorsque l’arbre jette sa
séve ; et, après l’avoir exposée quelque temps au soleil, ils la
mettent dans de grands paniers sous terre, sur laquelle ils allument
du feu, qui lui donne une couleur et un goût assez agréable. Voilà,
monsieur, quelle est pendant toute l’année la nourriture de ces gens,
qui cherchent avec soin les délices du bain, et qui peuvent se passer
de pain.
Nous fûmes assez heureux à la chasse le dimanche : nous
rapportâmes quantité de gibier, mais nous ne vîmes rien qui mérite