AN ALTERNATIVE ONTOLOGY AND EXPERIMENTAL STUDY OF POTTERY PUNCTATION IN SOUTHERN APPALACHIAN REGION PREHISTORY

Abstract

Implements used in punctation and incising of prehistoric ceramic artifacts were potentially as meaningful as the designs they imparted. Their use may have been prescribed by a perceived relationship between the tool or its source and the vessel in production or its intended function. Replicative experiments reveal use of various styli, but especially feather quills, by native potters of the Appalachian Summit region in applying punctations and incisions to wet clay. Feathers of various birds may have been used because of their roles in the beliefs, rituals, and medicine of Southeastern Indians. Results of this study may benefit typological refinements, studies of vessel function, and traditional craft revitalization and inquiries into prehistoric animism.     

APPALACHIAN MIGRANTS IN NORTHERN CITIES

A lot of places won't hire people from the South. They say, “They won't work.” If they paid a little bit more money they might damn work a lot bit better. Like Chicago Cork, you know what they pay an hour? A dollar and a quarter an hour. And I wouldn't work for no sonofabitch for no dollar and a quarter an hour. Shit, I'd steal off the street first. Can't pay your rent on it. Now down home I'd work for a dollar and a quarter an hour, but that's different. You know what they should do? They should take some a these damn factories, say from Chicago, and just spread em around, you know. Not just only in this state but in different states, or make more in different states or somethin. People from the South down there, they have to leave to come up to this shithole. They don't want up here. That's the only other place. You gotta realize these goddamn people from the South is the ones run most of these plants—most of their employees is people from the South. I can't understand them sonofabitch factories.