Fuelwood collection as daily practice: a wood charcoal study for the colonial period North Carolina Piedmont

ABSTRACT

European colonization brought innumerable changes and choices to Native groups across the Southeast. Scholars continue to examine the various ways communities navigated these disruptions. Studying the remains of daily practice offers a window into how communities negotiated continuity and change. Wood charcoal, representing the remains of daily fires, provides an important, but underutilized, method for examining people’s daily routines and interactions with their surrounding landscapes. This paper examines wood charcoal assemblages from several sites in the North Carolina Piedmont that span the precontact to early colonial periods (AD 1400–1705). Fuelwood collection models are used to consider the environments, practices, and preferences that influenced the composition of wood charcoal assemblages. Comparison of these datasets shows a consistent significant pattern of high-quality fuelwood selection with additional patterns potentially related to long-term use of the same environment and factors related to colonialism. Altogether, these patterns suggest continuity of some daily practices despite disruptions to other aspects of life.