Captives and Culture Change

Author(s): Catherine M. Cameron

Source: Current Anthropology, Vol. 52, No. 2 (April 2011), pp. 169-209
Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological
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Current Anthropology Volume 52, Number 2, April 2011 169

Captives and Culture Change

Implications for Archaeology

by Catherine M. Cameron

Captives were found in societies of all social levels throughout much of history and prehistory. They
were frequently women, and they could be potent agents of culture change. In some societies they
entered a highly stigmatized slave class, while in others they might be fully incorporated into the
society of their captors. Regardless of their social position, captives played an important role in the
transmission of cultural practices and ultimately in culture change, but few studies have explored
the role of captives in culture change, especially in nonstate societies. I begin that process, using
ethnohistoric, historic, ethnographic, archaeological, and other data. I document the prevalence and
antiquity of captive-taking around the world, its gender selectivity, and the rights of social personhood
that captives were accorded in captor societies and assess factors that affected captives’ ability to
effect culture change. The focus is especially on craft activities, because captive influence is likely to
be most evident to archaeologists in the production of craft goods.

tory in most parts of the world: the introduction of captives.

The wives and children of those whom they had defeated
were frequently made slaves. (Ellis 1828:147)
The Huron took prisoners in war. . . . They seldom put to
death women and children, but kept some for themselves
or made presents of them to those who had previously lost
some of their own in war. (Tooker 1991 [1964]:31)
The major motives for warfare [among contact-period peo-
ple of the Llanos of South American] seemed to be to
capture women and children and loot villages and gardens.
(Morey 1975:282)
On their return [from war], they handed any prisoners
over to the relatives of their victims: Women and children
for enslavement, men for torture and death. (Galloway
and Jackson 2004:607)
Intercultural interaction encompasses a large segment of ar-
chaeological research, including trade and exchange, culture
contact, and migration. Archaeological approaches to inter-
cultural interaction have been criticized for their unidirec-
tional and macroscale focus (Cusick 1998b; Stein 2002), and
we have recently seen calls for a reassessment of how inter-
cultural interaction produces culture change (Kristiansen and
Larsson 2005). In this paper, I consider a single type of in-
tercultural interaction that was common throughout prehis-
Catherine M. Cameron is Professor in the Department of
Anthropology at the University of Colorado (233 UCB, Boulder,
Colorado 80309-0233, U.S.A. [cameronc@colorado.edu]). This paper
was submitted 15 V 08 and accepted 23 VII 09.
I argue that captives, who were frequently women, brought
into the society of their captors novel technologies, ideologies,
and social behavior, transforming that society in the process.
Captives were typically obtained during raids or warfare,
although some were traded, given as gifts, or taken for re-
payment of debt. They were also accrued as capital and oth-
erwise treated as commodities. The scale of captive-taking is
startling. Captives, especially captive women, were present in
societies of almost every sociopolitical level from bands to
states and in societies on every continent. Cavalli-Sforza
(2000:82) has noted that captive women likely affected gene
flow, and other biological anthropologists and archaeologists
are beginning to use isotopic data to identify slave populations
(Cox et al. 2001; Price, Tiesler, and Burton 2006). Linguistic
studies on the effect of captives on captor language have
commenced (D. Fleck, “The Mayourna Languages of the Pa-
nona Family,” unpublished manuscript; see also Steward and
Faron 1959:322). Archaeologists documenting the intensity
and ubiquity of warfare in prestate societies report that the
capture of women was a constant characteristic of prestate
warfare (Golitko and Keeley 2007:339; Keeley 1996:86; Le-
Blanc 2002:362, 2003:71, 208; see also Ferguson and White-
head 1999a:23–24; for raiding for wives, see also Barnes 1999;
Bowser 2008; DeBoer 2008; Jorgensen 1980; McLennan 1865),
but archaeology rarely considers the potential effects of cap-
tives on culture change.
Both historic and prehistoric archaeology recognize the ac-
tive role that subordinate individuals play in cultural con-
struction and transformation (Blanton and King 2004; Cusick
1998c; McGuire and Paynter 1991; Stein 2002, 2005a, 2005b;

䉷 2011 by The Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. All rights reserved. 0011-3204/2011/5202-0003$10.00. DOI: 10.1086/659102
 170
Wilkie 2000), and the study of captives builds on and expands
these emerging perspectives (Cameron 2008). Archaeologists
are developing methods for identifying captives in prehistoric
societies (e.g., Donald 1997:201–213; Kohler and Kramer
2006; Martin 2008), and some have shown the importance
of captives as a strategy for power acquisition in prehistoric
societies (e.g., Ames 2001, 2008; DeBoer 1986; Robertshaw
1999). Especially important for this study are recent efforts
to understand how cultural practices were transmitted and
then adapted to a new social setting (see, e.g., Kristiansen and
Larsson 2005). Here I argue that in many cases, cultural prac-
tices were transmitted by young female captives, and I begin
the process of assessing the circumstances under which
captive-introduced practices would have been accepted by
captor society. I contend that unless we recognize the potential
contributions of captives, our explanations of culture change
are destined to be incomplete or even incorrect. This is a twist
of the kaleidoscope that I hope will allow archaeologists to
bring into focus people who, after suffering violent displace-
ment, disappear into a foreign society. There is good evidence
that in spite of living often marginal lives, captives made
lasting contributions that archaeologists have not recognized.
While culture change is frequently linked to trade or migra-
tion, uprooted young women may also have been a driving
force behind the transmission of cultural practices.
Because the evidence of captives is so extensive and because
of my areas of expertise, I focus on nonstate societies—tribes
and chiefdoms—with the acknowledgment that the pervasive
practice of captive-taking enmeshes societies of all social levels
in what have been called “predatory landscapes” (Bowser
2008; Stahl 2008). While I focus on nonstate societies, societies
of other social levels are discussed where appropriate, in-
cluding the extensive literatures on classical slavery and the
Atlantic slave trade. Captives in nonstate societies made con-
tributions to technological, social, and ideological aspects of
ancient societies, but I emphasize especially captives’ effects
on material culture because those will likely be most evident
in the archaeological record.
This paper has four major sections. I begin by describing
recent approaches to the study of intercultural interaction
(“Intercultural Interaction and the Transmission of Cultural
Practices”) from both historic and prehistoric archaeology,
highlighting those aspects of current theory and models most
important for a study of captives. The second section con-
siders the terms “captive” and “slave” to clarify the meaning
and overlap in these terms and defines “captor” as an im-
portant social actor in the taking and keeping of captives
(“Captive, Slave, and Captor”). The third and fourth sections
(“Captives in Global Perspective” and “Captives as Agents of
Social Change”) develop the principal argument.
“Captives in Global Perspective” examines how and where
captives were obtained and the frequent capture of women
and children, using ethnographic, ethnohistoric, historic, and
archaeological data from nonstate societies. Captive-taking
was surprisingly widespread and should be considered along-
Current Anthropology Volume 52, Number 2, April 2011
side more familiar processes that moved people around the
landscape, including marriage, migration, and refugee situa-
tions. This section consists of three subsections. The first,
“Captives in Prehistory,” assesses evidence for the antiquity
of captive-taking from archaeology, biological anthropology,
oral traditions, linguistics, and other sources and not only
establishes that captive-taking extends far back into prehistory
but also highlights the place of captive-taking among these
other processes of population movement. In the second sub-
section, “Personhood in Captor Society,” I document captives’
identity and social personhood within captor society. Finally,
in “Captive as Laborer,” I consider how the nature of captives’
labor conditioned their effects on captor society and captives’
visibility within captor society and therefore their archaeo-
logical visibility.
Building on these understandings of how captives articulate
with their captor’s social and material world, I then explore
the parameters that condition the acceptance of cultural prac-
tices introduced by captives in “Captives as Agents of Social
Change.” These parameters—discussed in three subsections—
include the characteristics of the captive at the time of capture
(“Characteristics of Captives and Cultural Transmission”), the
attitude of captor society toward the captive (“Attitudes of
Captor Society”), and the nature of the material culture they
produced (“Captives and Material Culture”). Captives had
constraints on their ability to participate fully in the society
of their captors, but nevertheless their influence is likely to
be socially significant and potentially evident in material cul-
ture. Gender is a very significant aspect of this problem; be-
cause of the frequent capture of reproductive-age women,
effects on captor societies may be strongest and more evident
in female-linked cultural practices.
Intercultural Interaction and the Trans-
mission of Cultural Practices
The following is a brief overview of theoretical perspectives
that this examination of captives draws from and contributes
to, including culture-contact studies (which have focused pri-
marily on the historic period), studies of trade and exchange
among prehistoric groups, and migration. This study con-
tributes to the development of microscale models involving
the actions of individuals in the introduction and especially
the adoption and modification of cultural practices. The shift
to microscale models in some theoretical arenas and a focus
on gender, power, and identity hold new promise for under-
standing processes of culture change through intercultural
interaction. Captives were important social persons whose
role in these processes should be investigated.
Culture-contact studies have focused, until recently, on the
historic period, especially on colonial encounters between Eu-
ropean and traditional societies (e.g., the Columbian Conse-
quences series: Thomas 1989, 1990, 1991). Investigations of
prehistoric intercultural or interregional interaction have been
Cameron Captives and Culture Change
dominated by studies of trade and exchange, generally aimed
at explaining the development of complex social systems (e.g.,
Schortman and Urban 1992). Both historic and prehistoric
archaeologists have rejected unidirectional models for culture
change. The culture-contact field discarded the acculturation
model (developed in the 1930s) that saw Western cultural
traits as actively imposed by Western colonizers and passively
accepted by colonized people (Cusick 1998a:135; Schortman
and Urban 1998:103–107; Stein 2002:905). Scholars of pre-
historic intercultural interaction have emphasized problems
with world-systems models that see domination of a subor-
dinate periphery by a superior core (Schortman and Urban
1998; Stein 1999, 2002).
In culture-contact studies, movement away from unidirec-
tional models of culture change has refocused study on mi-
croscale aspects of power relations and especially the appre-
ciation that subordinate individuals were an active part of
cultural construction, participants in a constant engagement
between domination and resistance (Joyce, Bustamante, and
Levine 2001; Paynter and McGuire 1991). Scholars of New
World plantation slavery found that slaves maintained a sub-
culture separate from that of their white masters, sometimes
retaining elements of their African identity (Ferguson 1992;
Ruppel et al. 2003; Singleton 1995, 1998). New concepts such
as ethnogenesis, transculturation, and creolization emphasize
the cultural and genetic exchanges that occurred among in-
digenous New World populations and European and African
newcomers (Armstrong 1998; Deagan 1998; Singleton 1998;
Stein 2005b). Most important for this study is the recognition
by scholars of New World slavery that slaves could actively
affect the culture of their masters. For example, Armstrong
(1998) demonstrates that in Jamaica, white slave owners
changed the style and use of their dwellings (especially the
use of outdoor space), following some of the practices of their
African slaves. Although New World plantation slavery has
been described as perhaps the most unusual system of slavery
known worldwide (Reid 1983b:2; Walvin 2006:4) and thus is
unlike most of the systems of capture and enslavement con-
sidered here, these studies establish that even in the most
restrictive situations, captives are potentially powerful agents
of culture change.
Stein (2002) has argued that among scholars who study
prehistoric intercultural interaction, a new paradigm is de-
veloping that has replaced unidirectional concepts of culture
change (from colonizer/core to indigenous/periphery) with a
“multiscalar” approach. This new approach explores inter-
action from “top-down” and “bottom-up” perspectives, em-
phasizes human agency, and incorporates concepts of gender,
class, and ethnicity in analyses of culture contact (e.g., see
Lightfoot, Martinez, and Schiff 1998; Silliman 2001). Studies
in Stein’s (2005a) edited volume show this new approach in
action for the colonization of states and empires, including
many prehistoric cases (Stein 2005b:12). This is an important
development because prehistoric archaeologists studying in-
tercultural interactions have tended to focus on the upper
171
strata of society, partly because so many studies of intercul-
tural interaction concentrate on the development of complex
societies. For example, Schortman and Urban (1992) suggest
that “the social faction most likely to have been involved in
[intercultural interactions] . . . is the local elite and their
agents” (237; see also Kristiansen and Larssen 2005; Schort-
man and Urban 1998). However, even Stein’s approach ig-
nores a large social group of unwilling travelers—captives—
whose contributions to cultural change, including the devel-
opment of social complexity, were also likely to have been
significant.
In spite of the important developments outlined by Stein
(2002, 2005a), Kristiansen and Larsson (2005) still find that
archaeologists have not developed useful models for the trans-
mission of cultural practices. They argue that any study of
the transmission of cultural traits must be accompanied by a
theoretical concern with the processes through which alien
cultural practices are assimilated in the recipient culture. They
emphasize that we need to develop new approaches to un-
derstanding the variety of ways that cultural practices were
transferred among social groups in the past and then given
meaning in the culture to which they were introduced. This
study responds to Kristiansen and Larsson’s call by proposing
a set of parameters under which captives would be most likely
to contribute to culture change. Captives entered society at
the lowest rung of the social ladder and were forced to adjust
to alien cultural traditions, but as this paper shows, their
presence, knowledge, and actions could be transformative.
Theoretical approaches to migration are especially impor-
tant for this study because captives were a unique but com-
mon type of prehistoric migrant. Study of migration died
almost completely during the heyday of processual archae-
ology. Although migration studies were revived over the past
two decades, they have only recently moved beyond study of
migration causes, the process of migration, and seeing mi-
grants in the archaeological record (Anthony 1990; Cameron
1995). There is a growing recognition of the importance of
understanding the nature of interactions between migrant and
native and the implication of different types of interactions
for seeing migrants in the archaeological record as well as
understanding their influence on culture change (Ortman and
Cameron 2011; Stone 2003). Burmeister (2000) highlights the
importance of power differentials between migrant and native
and age and sex selectivity in the migration process, both of
which affect migrant visibility and impact. New methods of
identifying migrants in the past using material-culture indi-
cators, especially those that distinguish between material that
actively signals ethnic identity and objects that are the result
of nondiscursive aspects of daily practice (e.g., approaches
such as “technology of style”; Stark 1998; see also Clark 2001),
may become especially useful in understanding the role of
migrants in the transmission of cultural practices, and they
are applied to captives below.
Study of captives, especially captive women, should be an
important element of new models for understanding how
 172
cultural practices are transmitted and incorporated in a new
social context. In fact, the capture of women is one of the
main phenomena that should prevent scholars from consid-
ering intercultural interaction as a process with two (or more)
players (migrant/native, colonizer/indigenous, trader/cus-
tomer, core/periphery; see Voss 2008). The capture of women
can result almost immediately in multiethnic households and
multiethnic children, and these multicultural individuals are
entangled in a web of ethnicities and social roles from which
they must chose, or are forced to select, their identity. As Stein
(2005b:27) points out for situations of colonization, the for-
mation of novel identities through processes of transcultur-
ation, ethnogenesis, or hybridization is fundamental to un-
derstanding the process of intercultural interaction. Captives
were common and key players in such processes.
Captive, Slave, and Captor
“Captive” and “slave” are overlapping terms and are used
somewhat interchangeably in the following discussion; some
clarification is necessary, however. “Captives” are people—
women, children, and men—who are unwillingly and often
violently seized from their natal society and forced into a new
social group, bringing with them different cultural practices.
Sometimes the new society is that of their initial captors, and
sometimes they are sold or traded to a distant group. The
social roles assigned to captives in captor society range from
separation into a highly restricted and stigmatized slave class
to adoption with all or most of the rights of full members.
In other words, not all captives become slaves; instead, slaves
are a subset of the category of captives (except for slaves born
into that status).
We know a great deal more about slaves than we do about
captives. Slavery literature is used often in the remainder of
the paper, but some explanation is necessary for the per-
spective taken here. The word “slave” conjures up images of
long-established systems of labor exploitation in the American
South, ancient Greece and Rome, and elsewhere, and there
is an enormous literature on ancient and colonial institutions
of slavery. The practice plays out in such a variety of ways in
different parts of the world that scholars have spent a con-
siderable amount of time defining slavery (Bonnassie 1991:
16–25; Copley 1960 (1839):4–9; references in Davis 1966:31–
35; Engerman, Drescher, and Paquette 2001; Patterson 1982:
13; Reid 1983b). Because this study focuses on the transmis-
sion of cultural practices, it is less important to determine
whether captives fit definitions of “slave” than to determine
how they were integrated into the society of their captors and
the social roles they played in these societies (Bowser 2008;
Brooks 2002). These are the factors that determined their
effect on cultural development in their captor’s society. Slaves
born into their status might seem to be of less interest to the
purposes of this paper, but studies of New World plantation
slavery have shown that alien cultural practices—such as
pottery-making or the organization of household space—can
Current Anthropology Volume 52, Number 2, April 2011
be maintained within subaltern groups through generations
and transmitted to the dominant group even under the most
oppressive conditions (Armstrong 1998; Ferguson 1992; Sin-
gleton 1995, 1998).
Although slavery is well documented, captive-taking is only
beginning to be studied (see Brooks 2002; Santos-Granero
2009). War captives have been occasionally reported in his-
toric and ethnographic accounts, but these individuals are
generally male enemy combatants; women and children taken
captive at the same time are usually mentioned only in pass-
ing, as the quotes at the beginning of this paper illustrate.
Especially if they are absorbed as wives or adoptees, captives
become invisible to history. Captives appear to have been
common, perhaps universal, in the past (Taylor 2005). Nu-
merous accounts demonstrate that captives taken during war-
fare and raiding were the major means of enslavement in both
small-scale and complex societies (Donald 1997; Goody 1980:
24; Lovejoy 2000:4; Patterson 1982:113; Santos-Granero
2009). Regardless of whether they became slaves, wives, or
some intermediate category of social person, all captives are
of interest for the purposes of this study (with the possible
exception of those too young to have been enculturated in
their natal society) because the focus here is on the trans-
mission of cultural practices.
In the drama that results in captive-taking, captors are
essential actors. Because of the association of captive-taking
with warfare, initially captors are almost exclusively male war-
riors. In nonstate societies, when a captive is returned to the
warrior’s home, the face of the captor often changes when
she is given away to others within the community or traded
or sold beyond the community. In the discussion that follows,
the captor is not only the person who initially takes the captive
but also those individuals or groups (“captor society”) that
hold the captive during her life in captivity and to whom she
may pass elements of her natal culture.
Captives in a Global Perspective
The slavery literature (although it generally ignores captives
who become wives or are otherwise adopted) provides a sense
of the pervasiveness of the practice of captive-taking and en-
slavement. Scholars who have undertaken global studies of
slavery reveal a practice that was, until about 200 years ago,
almost universal (Davis 2006:1–2; Hochschild 2005; Patterson
1982; Taylor 2005). Hochschild (2005:2) makes the startling
observation that at the end of the eighteenth century, more
than three-fourths of the world’s population was in bondage
of one type of another (slaves, serfs, indentured servants); he
adds Seymour Drescher’s assessment that “freedom” was the
“peculiar institution,” not slavery. In their introduction to the
Macmillan Encyclopedia of World Slavery (1998:viii), Finkel-
man and Miller note that “With the exception of marriage,
the family, and religion, slavery is perhaps the most ubiquitous
social institution in human history.” Reid (1983b) agrees:
“There are few institutions which appear to be so universal
Cameron Captives and Culture Change
as ‘slavery’” (1). Even Nieboer (1910 [1900]), who wrote the
earliest ethnographic study of slavery among what he called
“the savage tribes,” observed that “Slavery has played a great
part in the social history of mankind” (xxi).
The slavery literature does not present the full picture of
captive-taking, however. For this study, I have gathered data
on captive-taking societies from around the world, not only
those with formal systems of slavery but also societies in which
captives attained some measure of integration into the social
system of their captors as secondary wives or even full mem-
bers of the group. These data—from three regions of the Old
World and five in the New World, focusing primarily on
nonstate societies—were acquired from historic, ethnohis-
toric, and ethnographic accounts as well as occasional ar-
chaeological reports (table 1). In northern, central, and east-
ern Europe, data pertain to the period from about 1000 BCE
to 1000 CE and include archaeological evidence of the use of
slaves in Iron Age mines, systems of slavery among Germanic
tribes during the Roman era, and the depredations of Viking
raiders, who engaged in an extensive slave trade. In Africa,
data are mostly from nineteenth- and early twentieth-century
accounts of internal systems of capture and enslavement from
sub-Saharan Africa. Islamic practices of capture and enslave-
ment, especially in east Africa after about 700 CE, as well as
the devastation wreaked on African societies by the Atlantic
slave trade, require cautious use of these data. In Southeast
Asia, accounts of maritime raiding by aggressive chiefdoms,
small states, and larger polities date from the twelfth to the
nineteenth centuries and cover vast expanses of ocean, island,
and mainland.
Four regions in North America have extensive evidence for
the taking of captives, with historic and ethnohistoric ac-
counts dating from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries
and archaeological and other evidence extending these prac-
tices into the prehistoric periods. In the Northeast, the
seventeenth-century accounts of Jesuit priests living among
the Huron and other groups provide the most detailed ac-
counts of captive-taking and captive adoption. In the South-
east, accounts come from the earliest European explorers and
later ethnographic and historic studies. In the Southwest and
the adjacent High Plains, archaeological data document cap-
tive Pueblo women in Plains sites, earliest travelers’ accounts
report the presence of captives in indigenous settlements they
visited, and later historic documents detail extensive trade in
captives among Native American groups and the Spanish. On
the Northwest Coast, the earliest European accounts from the
early nineteenth century document widespread practices of
warfare, capture, and formal systems of enslavement that ex-
tended from Alaska to northern California. In South America
and the Caribbean, accounts date from the late fifteenth cen-
tury to the twentieth century and are primarily from Ama-
zonia and adjacent areas. Among the tribes and chiefdoms of
these areas, warfare and captive-taking were endemic, with
the focus often on capture of women and children.
In the compiling of these data, efforts were made to provide
173
a broad characterization of the regions of the world where
captive-taking in nonstate societies was especially prevalent.
The emphasis on broad characterization necessitated the gloss
of some temporal and spatial variability within regions. Table
1 presents narrative data on captives in each region, providing
a sense of the pervasiveness of the practice of captive-taking,
its origin in violence and warfare, and the frequent focus on
the capture of women and children. Tables 2–4 present data
from these same regions concerning other aspects of captives’
lives in captivity that are used below to document evidence
for the antiquity of captive-taking and captives’ contributions
to culture change.
Captive-taking is one of a set of processes that move people
across the landscape. Others include voluntary migration, ref-
ugee situations, and marriage practices. Captive-taking is dis-
tinguished from voluntary migration and marriage practices
by its coercive nature and from either voluntary or refugee
migration by the selective targeting of women and children.
While captive-taking might seem to be most difficult to dis-
tinguish from marriage practices that circulated women over
large regions, DeBoer (2008) uses a substantial set of eth-
nohistoric data from the Americas to show that women were
captured from beyond the boundaries of the area where wives
were normally recruited. This suggests that captive women
should be archaeologically distinguishable from normal mar-
riage partners even if they are integrated as wives.
In each of the regions included in table 1, captives were
obtained primarily through raiding and warfare, although kid-
napping, trade, debt, the sale of children, judicial and religious
proceedings, punishment for crimes, and other social factors
also resulted in the transfer of individuals between social
groups. Warfare and raiding were most common among
neighbors and were especially common where complex so-
cieties bordered acephelous or small-scale groups. While this
might suggest that captives would not travel far, this was not
always true (table 1). In many regions, long-distance raids
were also undertaken. In Europe, Southeast Asia, parts of
tropical South America, the Caribbean, and other places
where maritime raiding occurred, long-distance raids were
often the norm. Furthermore, many accounts report efforts
to move or trade captives far from their homes to reduce the
possibility of escape or efforts at rescue. Captives in many
parts of the world could be traded, moved, or recaptured
again and again, meaning that they were likely some of the
most well-traveled members of any society.
Captives were overwhelmingly women and children in so-
cieties around the world (table 1). Warfare and raiding in
nonstate societies were lethal practices that resulted in a high
death rate for male combatants (Keeley 1996:59–69; LeBlanc
2003:151, 161), but women and children were usually part of
the plunder of war, and in some cases (especially the North-
west Coast, South America, and Southeast Asia) their acqui-
sition was a primary goal of warfare. Males were sometimes
captured and enslaved, but they were dangerous and difficult
to transport and keep. The Atlantic slave trade was unusual
 Table 1. Captives in the Old and New Worlds

Geographic Proportion of slaves

area/culture Approximate date Source of captives
Old World:
Northern, 1000 BCE–1000 CE Raiding, warfare, slave trade
central,
and east-
ern Eu-
rope
“Slave raiding was a major
commercial activity of the
Viking Age and later. Vi-
kings not only sold slaves
to the eastern Islamic
countries but possibly
traded captives taken in
Britain and Ireland to
Muslim Spain. . . . Scan-
Distance taken Gender of captives
After about 800 CE, Viking In battle, Germanic warriors Taylor (2001:38) argues that Arnold 1988; Bonnassie
raids took slaves from (first–fifth centuries CE)
Franks, Anglo-Saxons, and were more likely to kill
Celts male enemies and enslave
mostly women and chil-
dren; however, both male
and female slaves were
common because Ger-
mans had a well-devel-
oped system of chattel
slavery (Lenski 2008)
Warfare among Anglo-Saxon Female slaves were the larg- Of Celtic society (450–150
kingdoms in Britain dur- est of the four categories
ing second half of first of adults during the Long
millennium CE resulted in Iron Age (free men, free
many captives, who were women, unfree women,
often sold in Europe: unfree men) in portions
“The Anglian or Saxon of Europe away from the
slave was a common sight Mediterranean (Woolf
in the markets of Gaul” 1997)
in society References
the Scythians of eastern 1991; Golitko and
Europe in the first millen- Keeley 2007; Karras
nium BCE held enormous 1988; Keeley 1996;
numbers of slaves, the Kristiansen 1998, Len-
slave population outnum- ski 2008; McDonald
bering native Scythians 10 and Snooks 1986; Pel-
to 1 teret 1981; Taylor
2001; Woolf 1997
BCE) Kristiansen (1998)
says, “Slaves were . . . al-
ready a substantial part of
society by this time, cap-
tives being a necessary
outcome of raids” (324–
325)

174
dinavians came to think
of all slaves as foreigners”
(Karras 1988:49–50).
Vikings raided Britain and “Just as the continental Ger- An account of a traveler
Ireland for slaves, both
young women and men;
Norwegian Vikings also
raided the Norse settle-
ments of Britain and Ire-
land (Karras 1988)
The Germanic law codes Slavs were the main target
suggest that enslavement
through capture, birth,
purchase, or self-enslave-
ment because of debt or
other misfortune had long
been part of Germanic
tradition (Lenski 2008)
(Bonnassie 1991:33)
mans had exported their
slaves to the Roman
Empire, so the Anglo-Sax-
ons [in England, fifth cen-
tury to 1066 CE] exported
their slaves across the
seas” (Pelteret 1981:104)
“From the 5th to the 8th
population for Viking and
Arab slave trade, and their
name is the source of our
word “slave” (Taylor 2001:
35)
Between one-quarter and
from Baghdad to the Bul- one-third of the material
gars of the Volga in the in the Germanic law codes
tenth century CE de- (first–fifth centuries CE)
scribed Swedish people deals with enslaved or
selling only female slaves semiservile individuals,
here, but Karras questions suggesting the prevalence
this sex selection (Karras of slavery (Lenski 2008)
1988:46–47)
centuries, war was perma-
nent in western Europe
and it remained funda-
mentally a manhunt. . . .
The Anglo-Saxon con-
quest was accomplished
by the large-scale enslave-
ment of the Celtic popu-
lation” (Bonnassie 1991:
32).
 “Slaves [in medieval Europe]
tended to be of foreign
origin, often distinguished
from their masters not
only by nationality but
also by religion” (Karras
1988:14)
Africa Early nineteenth to Warfare, raiding, kidnapping, Slaves were moved away
early twentieth cen- debt, trickery, witchcraft from home so that they
turies CE, except accusations, judicial and could not escape (Baier
where noted religious proceedings, and Lovejoy 1977:399;
175
punishment for crimes Klein 1983:77; Kopytoff
and Miers 1977:53)
The Domesday Book census
of 1086 reported that 10%
of England’s population
was slaves; proportions of
slaves were highest in the
west and southwest (as
much as 25%) and lowest
in the east (5%; Mc-
Donald and Snooks 1986:
16–17)
“[In Scandinavia] a typical
farm of the twelfth cen-
tury would have had three
slaves” (Karras 1988:78)
“It is possible that in eastern
Denmark during the Vi-
king Age, slaves make up
almost the entire popula-
tion, perhaps with royal
stewards to oversee them”
(Karras 1988:85)
The internal African slave Kopytoff and Miers (1977: G. Brooks 1998; Lovejoy
trade focused on women 60–61) report more slaves 2000; McDougall 1998;
and children (Kopytoff in complex societies than Meillassoux 1971,
and Miers 1977:21, 53,72; in small-scale societies. Of 1991; references in
Lovejoy 2000:16; Meillas- the small-scale societies, Miers and Kopytoff
soux 1983:56; Olivier de Margi was 1%–2% slaves 1977; Robertshaw
Sardan 1983:130; Robert- and Sena 10%, but Kongo 1999; Robertshaw and
son and Klein 1983b:4) was 50%. There were Duncan 2008; Robert-
more slaves in small-scale son and Klein 1983a,
societies when they were 1983b; Stahl 2008;
involved in trade. Watson 1980a; Wright
1993
Among the Aboh, the num-
ber of slaves was reported
to be greater than the
number of free people;
most were held by wealthy
chiefs (Nwachukwu-
Ogedengbe 1977:140–141)
Of the more complex socie-
ties, Wolof, Sereer, and
others in Sudan were one-
third slaves, Hausa was
50%, and western Sudan
was 30%–60% (Kopytoff
and Miers 1977:60–61)
 Table 1 (Continued)
Geographic Proportion of slaves
area/culture Approximate date Source of captives Distance taken Gender of captives in society References
Southeast Twelfth–nineteenth Maritime slave raiding, debt Female slaves taken through- The majority of slaves in The proportion of slaves Campbell and Alpers
Asia centuries CE bondage out Philippine archipelago Southeast Asia, Asia, and among the Batak of North 2005, Junker 2008;
and as far as Vietnam, Indian Ocean Africa were Sumatra and the Toraja of Reid 1983a, 1983b;
Thailand, and Sumatra girls and young women South Sulawesi was 30%; Terwiel 1983; Warren
(Junker 2008) (Campbell and Alpers among the Nias (near Su- 1981
2005; Junker 2008) matra), 15%; among the
Kayan, Kenyah, and Me-
lanau on Borneo, 10%
(Reid 1983a:161–162)
Slavery at Angkor may have
reached 50% of the popu-
lation. Slaves were cap-
tured or bought from the
surrounding hill people or
neighboring states (Mab-
bet 1983:57; Reid 1983b:
12). In early nineteenth-
century Siam, perhaps
25% of populace were
slaves (Terwiel 1983:129).
More than half the labor

176
force in some Southeast
Asian polities consisted of
captured and debt-bonded
slaves (Junker 2008)
New World:
Northeastern Seventeenth–nineteenth Warfare with other groups: Slaves taken primarily from Most accounts suggest that Warfare caused heavy losses Callender 1978a, 1978b;
North centuries CE “The ultimate aim [of neighboring groups, but women and children were of population. Captives Fenton 1978; Heiden-
America warfare] was to return longer-distance raids were more readily adopted into were adopted to maintain reich 1978; Peregrine
(Iroquoian with captives” (Heiden- also undertaken. Gallay captor society than men, or increase population. Je- 2008; Sioui 1999;
groups reich 1978:386) (2002) reports that the Ir- but men were also suit missionaries reported Starna and Watkins
and Illi- oquois made long-distance adopted (but see Trigger that in the mid-seven- 1991, Tooker 1991
nois, Fox) raids into the Southeast. 1969:47–48) teenth century, two-thirds (1964); Trigger 1969,
Captives might also be or more of the people in 1976, 1978
given or traded to a dis- Iroquois villages were
tant tribe. adopted.
 Southeastern Prehistoric, ethnohisto- Slaves were obtained almost Historical accounts report For most groups, captive Data available report only Anderson 1994; Bright-
North ric, historic (seven- entirely through frequent long-distance raids and men tended to be killed figures for Native Ameri- man and Wallace
America teenth–nineteenth warfare; slaves were also the trade of captives over and women and children cans as slaves of Europe- 2004; Campisi 2004;
centuries CE) traded extensively and great distances either enslaved or ans Fogelson 2004; Gallay
could be given as gifts adopted; men could also 2002; Galloway and
adopted or enslaved Jackson 2004; Hudson
1976; Lankford 2004;
Marquardt 2004; Per-
due 1979; Rudes,
Blumer, and May
2004; Saunt 2004; Us-
ner 1992; Walker 2004
Southwest Sixteenth–nineteenth Raiding among Native Captives could be sold re- Eighteenth-century records By the late seventeenth cen- Bailey 1966; Brooks
and centuries CE American groups and by peatedly and often trav- show that two-thirds of all tury, 21% of Spanish co- 2002; Brugge 1993,
southern the Spanish eled large distances; captives in colonial New lonial New Mexicans were 1968, 1999; Habicht-
High Brooks (2002:48) notes Mexico were women and non-Pueblo slaves (Brooks Mauche 2008
Plains, that “in the vast region girls (Brooks 2002:147; 2002:50)
North crisscrossed by trade in also Brugge 1968:109).
America meat, hides, maize, jew- Habicht-Mauche (2008)
elry . . . women might argues for the presence of
have been the most mo- captive Pueblo women
bile and negotiable item among the mobile bison
of exchange” hunters of the southern
Plains.
Northwest Prehistoric, late eigh- Warfare and raiding were Slaves were often taken from Women and children were On the Northwest Coast, Ames 2001, 2008; Cybul-

177
Coast, teenth–early/mid- primary sources; also neighbors and near neigh- preferred as slaves: “When slaves composed 15%– ski 1979, 1990; Donald
North nineteenth century trade in slaves, debt, and bors, but an extensive a war party attacked a set- 25% of the population; 1997; Hajda 2005;
America CE slave by birth slave-trade network meant tlement . . . their initial there were more slaves in MacLeod 1929; Mitch-
that captives could pass efforts were concentrated northern part of the re- ell 1984; Oberg 1973
from hand to hand, end- on killing or driving into gion than in the south
ing up far from home. retreat the men . . . who
Sometimes long-distance were of fighting age”
raids were undertaken: “a (Donald 1997:112)
Ginakangeek Tsimshian at
Fort Simpson told [a
trader] . . . of old wars
and ‘terrible trips they
made far to the south to
capture slaves’” (Mitchell
1984:42).
South Amer- Protohistoric, early his- Captives were taken during Conibo raided near neigh- In Yanomamo raids, men are Chagnon (1992:106) reports Bowser 2008; Carneiro
ica and toric (early sixteenth warfare and raiding. They bors but sometimes more killed and women and that 12%–17% of Yano- 1991; Chagnon 1992;
Caribbean century CE), and were also traded and sold. distant groups (DeBoer children are captured mamo wives had been DeBoer 1986, 2008;
historic (seven- A slave market was re- 1986; Santos-Granero (Bowser 2008) captured in raids Santos-Granero 2005,
teenth–twentieth ported in the Cauca Valley 2009); for example, Santos 2009; Socolow 1992;
centuries CE) by earliest European ex- Granero (2009:56) reports Spencer 1991; Trim-
plorers (Trimborn 1949: raids of up to 600 km born 1949
200, 204, cited in Carneiro
1991:175).
Table 1 (Continued)
Geographic
area/culture Approximate date Source of captives
Santos-Granero (2009) pro- The Kalinago of the Lesser
vides detailed information
on six “capturing socie-
ties”: the Kalinago of the
Lesser Antilles, the Conibo
of eastern Peru, the Tu-
kano of Colombia and
Brazil, the Chiriguaná of
southeastern Bolivia, the
Calusa of southern Flor-
ida, and the Guaicurú of
Paraguay; for these groups
he describes “permanent
raiding, pillaging, and the
taking of captives, gener-
ally children and young
women” (Santos-Granero
2009:42)
Socolow (1992) reports
Proportion of slaves
Distance taken Gender of captives in society References
The capture of women and Santos-Granero (2009) re-
Antilles conducted long- children were the primary ports the following pro-
distance maritime expedi- goals of warfare in the portions of slaves in Am-
tions against Arawak- Llanos area of Colombia erindian societies:
speaking people of the and Venezuela (Morey Kalinago at contact, about
Greater Antilles and Gui- 1975:282), among the 5% (p. 54); Conibo, 110%
ana coast (Santos-Granero Conibo in Amazonian (p. 57); Tukano 8%–28%
2005:46, 2009:49–51) Peru (DeBoer 1986:233), (higher figure includes at-
and among indigenous tached servant groups; p.
groups in colonial Argen- 70–71); Chiriguaná 20%–
tina, who raided the 80% (unclear what pro-
Spanish (Socolow 1992:83) portion were captives and
what proportion were at-
tached servant groups; p.
79)
Santos-Granero (2005:44)
Spanish captives taken to notes that women and
different indigenous dis- children were the most
tricts (distances not pro- common war captives
vided) among non-Arawak Am-
erindian slaving societies,
as adult men and older
women were generally
killed (see also Santos-
Granero 2009)
Cameron Captives and Culture Change
in seeking male agricultural laborers for plantation work in
the New World, and African slavers targeted males for this
external market, while within Africa the internal and Islamic
markets focused on female captives (Klein 1983; Lovejoy 1989,
2000:16; Patterson 1982:159).
The proportion of captives in societies around the world
is startling. Figures range from 10% to almost 70% in some
groups, and for most groups, the proportion of captives
ranges between 20% and 50%. Data in table 1 have been
taken primarily from historic sources, and some scholars sug-
gest that warfare and enslavement were increased by encoun-
ters between Europeans and indigenous groups (Fage 1969;
for warfare, Ferguson and Whitehead 1999b; for the American
Southeast, Gallay 2002:29; for the Northwest Coast, see dis-
cussion in Donald 1997:35–40; for New Zealand, see Vayda
1961). There is significant evidence, however, that warfare and
captive-taking were ancient precolonial practices in all of the
regions discussed here, although proportions of captives may
have been somewhat smaller before Western contact (table
2). The studies discussed here confirm the antiquity of
captive-taking, suggest directions that archaeologists can take
to identify captives in the past, and highlight the ways captive-
taking converges with other types of movement across social
boundaries. Data come from archaeology, osteology, isotopic
studies, linguistics, oral history, and early travelers’ accounts.
Captives in Prehistory
Examples from the Northwest Coast, South America, and the
American Southwest suggest the types of information that are
beginning to be used to demonstrate the presence of captives
in prehistory (table 2). An elaborate system of slavery among
the tribes of the Northwest Coast has been documented his-
torically, but some scholars have argued that it was the result
of engagement with the Euroamerican trade in fish and furs
(J. Brooks 1998:54). Others have presented abundant evidence
from human remains, language, oral tradition, and labor es-
timates that warfare, captive-taking, and enslavement were
ancient practices in the Northwest Coast (Ames 2001, 2008;
Cybulski 1979, 1990:58, 1992:49–51; Donald 1997; see also
Hajda 2005; Maschner and Reedy-Maschner 1998; Mitchell
1984), with Donald’s (1997) study being the most compre-
hensive. Cybulski (1979, 1990, 1992) studied skeletal remains
from two Northwest Coast archaeological regions and found
fewer women in the population with the highest rate of his-
toric slavery. Cybulski (1990) reports on the remains of in-
dividuals discarded at death rather than formally buried and
argues that slave women were not buried in the same location
and manner as other members of the group, accounting for
their low numbers in the burial population and providing
evidence for the antiquity of the practice of the capture and
enslavement of women. (Early travelers’ accounts from the
Northwest Coast describe dead slaves left for dogs or crows,
thrown under logs or in rivers, or left lying on the beach
179
[Hajda 2005:573].) In another study, Ames (2008) uses ar-
chaeological evidence for household productive capacity to
show that slaves were essential to maintaining the status of
elite titleholders in prehistoric Northwest Coast societies, im-
plying that slavery was an ancient practice here. Donald (1997:
205–209) examines Northwest Coast languages that have
terms for “slave” and argues that in these languages the terms
seem to be ancient, not recent loan words. In a study of
Northwest Coast oral traditions, Averkieva (1966, cited in
Donald 1997:45) reported that slaves appear as a normal part
of the social scene in these accounts, suggesting that they had
considerable antiquity.
In portions of South America and the adjacent Caribbean,
early travelers’ accounts show that practices of captive-taking
and enslavement were highly developed at the time of first
European contact. Santos-Granero (2009; see also Santos-
Granero 2005) argues that scholars have tended to ignore
evidence for stratified societies in these regions during the
precontact period and shows that indigenous forms of ser-
vitude were characteristic of many societies here prehistori-
cally. He uses accounts from the fifteenth to the nineteenth
centuries, including reports from chroniclers who were part
of Columbus’s second voyage to America, to describe the fate
of male and female captives in six Amerindian societies. Sim-
ilarly, the first Europeans to visit the Cauca Valley of Colombia
in the early sixteenth century described elaborate chiefdoms
with well-developed systems of captive-taking, enslavement,
and trade in slaves, including slave markets (Carneiro 1991,
citing Trimborn 1949). Finally, DeBoer (1986) shows that
competitive feasting and captive women were historically part
of male strategies for power acquisition in Amazonian Peru
and uses ceramics to suggest that the same patterns had op-
erated in prehistoric times (see below).
In the American Southwest, the earliest Spanish chroniclers
reported that captive people from the Great Plains were held
in Pueblo villages (Brooks 2002), and Habicht-Mauche (2008)
demonstrates the presence of captive Pueblo women among
buffalo hunters in the adjacent Plains. A recent detailed ar-
chaeological study of Grasshopper Pueblo, a fourteenth-
century site in east-central Arizona (Lowell 2007), also implies
the presence of captives (although this is not the author’s
interpretation) and allows us to consider (along with Habicht-
Mauche 2008) the convergence of captive-taking with prac-
tices of marriage and migration. Lowell (2007) describes an
excess of women in the burial population at Grasshopper and
argues that they were female war refugees who migrated from
the north during a time of intensive warfare. The women
were apparently incorporated as wives, and this case illustrates
the blurring of the categories of migrants, marriage partners,
and captives. Lowell (2007:103–104) discards the possibility
that these individuals were captives because they do not show
obvious signs of trauma or casual burial. Although trauma is
one indicator of captive status (Martin 2008), not all captives
necessarily retained skeletal evidence of physical abuse, and
while slaves were often buried informally or their bodies sim-
 Table 2. Evidence for the antiquity of captive-taking

Geographic area/culture Evidence

Old World:
Northern, central, and eastern Europe
A 20,000-year-old figurine from southern Russia presents an image that suggests a shackled pregnant female (Taylor 2005)
Keeley (1996) and Golitko and Keeley (2007) provide archaeological evidence for significant levels of warfare in the European Neolithic.
Gronenborn (1999, cited in Taylor 2001) argues that some form of slavery was in existence in central Europe from at least the begin-
ning of the Neolithic, given evidence of warfare and human sacrifice.
Kristiansen (1998:116–117) presents evidence of use of slave labor in the Urnfield culture of central Europe (1100–750 BCE)
Arnold (1988) presents archaeological and literary evidence for slave raiding and trading in the Iron Age cultures of the late Hallstatt
(800–600 BCE) and La Tène (600–100 BCE) periods as well as archaeological and literary evidence for an indigenous less-privileged
population. Although some scholars link European slave trade to Greek stimulus, Arnold (1988:185) suggests that the idea of treating
human beings as commodities existed before Greek contact.
Iron shackles and gang chains provide material evidence of slavery in the later Iron Age of the first millennium BCE (Taylor 2001:28; see
also Arnold 1988:180)
Patterson (1982:149; citing Fox 1945) reports a slave gang chain at a site on the island of Anglesey off the coast of Wales, indicating that
slave trading was well established by the time of the Celtic La Tène culture, first century CE
Archaeological evidence of Germanic peoples raiding the Roman empire for slaves includes Roman objects in Germanic sites, evidence

180
that Roman metalworkers had been captured, Germanic hoards that included shackles, and funerary inscriptions that discuss slave
dealers (Lenski 2008)
“Slavery existed in Britain before the arrival of the Anglo-Saxons. . . . The word wealh, with the original meaning of ‘Celt’ or ‘Welsh’
came by the 9th century to have a distinct meaning of ‘slave’” (Karras 1988:30; see also Pelteret 1981).
“The [Viking Age] sunken huts in eastern Denmark have been interpreted as slave dwellings” (Karras 1988:84)
“Slaves were an integral and numerically important part of English society during the Anglo-Saxon period. They appear in the earliest
English law code promulgated between 597 and 616.” (Pelteret 1981:99)
Lack of formal burial is common treatment for slaves; Taylor (2005:230) provides an account of a man who traveled from Baghdad to
Kazan on the Volga river in the 920s CE and reported dead slaves scattered on midden heaps and being eaten by dogs
Africa African slaves present in ancient Greece and Rome were likely a product of a trans-Saharan trade through western Africa (via oasis towns
of the Fezzan) that was well established at the latest during the time of the Roman Empire (K. Bradley, personal communication,
November 2007)
During the period 1100–1500 CE in West Africa, horse warriors engaged in warfare and conquest. West of the Niger bend, Madekan-
speaking horse warriors created centers that included large numbers of slaves either captured during warfare or purchased (G. Brooks
1998).
Robertshaw (1999) suggests that large polities had developed in western Uganda by the middle of the fifteenth century and mobilized
followers for raiding and warfare, obtaining captive women needed for agricultural labor
Keim (1983:145) reports that slaves are present in Mangbetu oral history, although he does not use this to suggest antiquity of the prac-
tice
Lovejoy (2000) notes, “That slavery probably existed in Africa before the diffusion of Islam is relatively certain. . . . People who were
kidnapped, seized in war, or condemned to be sold as a result of a crime.” (21)
Archaeological evidence of the slave trade is presented by Kusimba (2006), although these sites date to the past 400 years
Southeast Asia Reports (as early as the thirteenth century) of slave raids and the presence of foreign slaves in many parts of Southeast Asia document
the antiquity of the practice (Junker 2008)
Reid (1983a:157–158) presents early European travelers’ accounts of the very large numbers of slaves held in Southeast Asia

New World:
Northeastern North America (Iroquoian
groups and Illinois, Fox)
Southeastern North America
Southwest and southern High Plains,
North America
Northwest Coast, North America
181
South America and Caribbean
Note. Dates, characterization of captives, and references for each region are provided in table 1.
Pottery designs provide clues to the presence of captives; Junker (2008) reports that designs on earthenware pottery were introduced by
captives from small-scale societies to larger societies
Warfare in the Northeast is thought to have been common prehistorically (Trigger 1969:32). Homogeneity in pottery types suggests the
movement of captive women (Trigger (1969:159–161). Starna and Watkins (1991:44) note that captives’ fingers are mutilated upon
capture and that this may be a mark of enslavement. They also report linguistic evidence for the antiquity of slavery (Starna and
Watkins 1991:48–49).
Early European accounts report slavery. Chiefs gave the conquistador De Soto their “slaves” for use as burden bearers.
Hudson (1976:77) and Alt (2008) suggest that prehistoric evidence of human sacrifice indicates the presence of captives
Anderson (1994:95, 133) notes that De Soto’s expedition found large buffer zones between warring groups, and similar depopulated areas
are evident in the prehistoric period; these depopulated areas may indicate warfare and captive-taking
A collection of traumatized female human remains from the La Plata Valley dating to the period 1100–1300 CE has been suggested to
represent captive women (Martin 2008)
Sex ratios showing a female bias in populations of human remains are found in Chaco Canyon during the eleventh century. Female-
biased sex ratios are found at Aztec ruins during the thirteenth century, and a male bias is found in the Mesa Verde region to the
north at the same time. Kohler and Kramer (2006) interpret these patterns as raiding for women.
Pueblo-style ceramics found at sites occupied during the protohistoric period (1500–1700 CE) by southern Plains bison hunters are inter-
preted by Habicht-Mauche (2008) as evidence for the presence of captive Pueblo women there
Coronado, the first Spanish explorer to visit the Southwest in the early sixteenth century, found Plains captives among the Pueblo people.
A Spanish expedition in 1583 obtained Querecho women from Hopi Pueblo (Brooks 2002:85–86).
Archaeology, osteology, ethnohistory, early travelers’ accounts, and linguistics all suggest that slavery was an ancient practice
There is archaeological evidence of slavery by at least the Late Pacific period, if not earlier (500–1775 CE; Ames 2001)
Cybulski (1979, 1990) uses skewed sex ratios and unconventional burial methods to document prehistoric slaves at sites dating between
1500 BCE and 500 CE
Archaeological evidence for warfare and raiding as well as increased labor needs suggest the presence of slaves (see especially Ames 2008
for use of labor estimates to determine the prehistoric presence of slaves)
Linguistic studies find that words for slaves are ancient (Donald 1997:202–209)
The formal system of slavery found among the Tupinamba was recorded in detail by some of the first explorers in this area in the mid-
1500s (Bowser 2008)
For the Peruvian Amazon, DeBoer (1986) provides archaeological evidence of links between competitive feasting and raiding for women,
suggesting that captive-taking was an ancient practice
The earliest European accounts by travelers to the Cauca Valley and the Llanos report slaves as an important social class (Morey 1975;
Trimborn 1949, cited in Carneiro 1991)
Santos-Granero (2005, 2009) presents accounts from the earliest European travelers in the Caribbean and South America (including Co-
lumbus’s second voyage), as well as linguistic evidence, documenting that precontact captive-taking and enslavement were common
among Caribbean and South American groups (he discusses extensively the Kalinago, Tukano, Conibo, Chiriguaná, Guaicurú, and Ca-
lusa in Santos-Granero 2009)
 182
ply discarded (Ames 2001:5; Donald 1997:203; Hajda 2005:
573; Martin 2008), captives incorporated as wives into the
social system of their captors might not have suffered such
treatment. The distinction between voluntary (and likely des-
perate) refugee and violently acquired captive is difficult to
discern archaeologically. However, the abundant accounts
worldwide that describe the long-distance transfer of captive
women and their integration into ethnically different social
groups must be contrasted with the dearth of accounts of
numerous women traveling many miles through war-torn ter-
ritory who are then safely accepted into ethnically different
communities. Habicht-Mauche (2008) similarly shows the al-
ternate possibilities of long-distance marriage partners and
violently acquired captives. Lowell’s (2007) innovative study
of female-linked migrant traits is used below to explore factors
that condition captives’ roles in cultural transmission.
Isotopic studies of human remains are beginning to be used
to identify individuals who were transported out of their
homelands, likely through capture. Isotopic ratios vary with
the elements present in foods a person ate during life, and a
foreign-born person may have isotopic ratios that are different
from those of native-born individuals. Cox and her colleagues
(2001) used stable carbon and nitrogen isotopes to identify
foreign-born individuals who were likely first-generation
slaves buried in a colonial cemetery in Cape Town, South
Africa. Price, Tiesler, and Burton (2006) used strontium iso-
topes as well as dental mutilation to identify first-generation
slaves from West Africa in an early colonial burial ground in
Campeche, Mexico. Similarly, Alt (2008) reports that some
individuals buried at a Mississippian site in eastern North
America had isotopic signatures that indicated a nonlocal
origin and evidence that they had been sacrificed, which sug-
gests that they were captives. Isotopic studies are of special
interest in the study of captives because they have the potential
to identify place of origin.
Personhood in Captor Society
Captives were thrust into an alien society where they had no
kin and no place in the social structure, and they often un-
derwent violent rites of passage as their fate in that society
was decided and their captors determined what sort of social
persons they would become. Fowler’s (2004) call for the ar-
chaeological study of varying concepts of personhood is par-
ticularly appropriate for the investigation of captives in the
past because in most societies, captives occupied social po-
sitions that were strongly marked off from the rest of the
population, even when they were not part of a formal system
of slavery.
As Bowser (2008) notes,
Generally, captives experience a loss of social personhood
that is complete at the time of their capture. They are com-
pletely vulnerable, disposable persons with no rights,
including the right of life. . . . It is useful to shift from
examining the meanings of categories of servitude to ex-
Current Anthropology Volume 52, Number 2, April 2011
amining how the captive’s rights of social personhood come
to be meaningfully ascribed through the process of incor-
poration into a community. (268)
We can begin the process of exploring the nature of social
personhood for captives by considering factors that affected
how they were incorporated into the society of their captors.
These factors include characteristics of the captive, such as
their age, gender, and sexuality; the social status of their cap-
tor; and, according to some scholars, the source of wealth in
the captor’s society.
Gender and age conditioned the experience of the captives,
from their initial selection during combat and their treatment
upon entering captor society to the ways in which they were
incorporated into captor society, their opportunity for social
development in that society, and (of most importance here)
their potential to introduce their native cultural practices into
the culture of their captors. Voss and Schmidt (2000:2–3,
following Rubin 1984) suggest that gender (defined as the
“cultural organization of biological sexual differences”) and
sexuality (defined as “sexual activities, eroticism, sexual iden-
tities, sexual meanings, and sexual politics”) are different,
although related, arenas of social practice. One could argue,
however, that these two arenas come together at the moment
of capture. Captors were almost universally male, while cap-
tives were very often female, and captives’ sexuality, as well
as their procreative abilities, was usually a key part of their
immediate and long-term value. Once the life of a captive
was embarked on, however, gender roles could break down
and the “nonbeing” emerge, for example, in the assignment
of female captives to tasks typically accomplished by males
and vice versa.
As indicated in table 3, women were most likely to be
offered membership into the society of their captors as wives,
while males were more often made slaves (e.g., the North
American Southeast and Southwest and South America). Cap-
tive women could provide wives or concubines without in-
curring bridewealth or other payments for the captor, and
this was a strong motivation for capturing women in South
America, Africa, and elsewhere (see especially DeBoer 2008).
Kopytoff and Miers (1977) note that in Africa, captive women
had no kin and therefore no divided loyalties. Men would
have more direct control over the children these captive
women produced.
Age at capture was also important in determining the rights
of social personhood offered to captives, and child captives
were often highly valued (table 3). As Brooks (2002) notes
for the Comanche of the American Southwest Borderlands,
“children capable of easy assimilation fit into the traditional
pattern of adoption and acculturation” (187) In some soci-
eties, for example, the Conibo of tropical South America,
capturing children was as important as capturing women
(Santos-Granero 2009:61). Young captive girls were raised by
the Conibo to be future concubines for their captor’s sons,
although they were forced to have sexual relations at a much
Cameron Captives and Culture Change
earlier age than native Conibo women (Santos-Granero 2009:
152). Among the Kalinago of the Caribbean, young boys were
kept as servants until they reached adulthood and could be
sacrificed in ritual ceremonies. Childhood did not necessarily
offer young captives protection from abuse, however (e.g., see
Bowser 2008:276–277 for treatment of captive children in
Amazonia). Brooks (2002:187) adds that while younger boys
were adopted into Plains tribes, older boys were enslaved. For
purposes of this study, we might distinguish infants and very
young children who would be enculturated in captor society
from older children who might retain some practices of their
natal group, although even very young children who are cap-
tured with a mother or other adults may continue to learn
practices from their culture of origin.
The status of the captor could affect the rights of social
personhood afforded to captives, and captives were often held
by the most prominent members of society: chiefs, rulers, and
wealthy families. This was because rulers and the wealthy most
often initiated and funded the wars and raids in which captives
were obtained and, as a result, also kept the lion’s share of
the human and other booty. The prominence of their owners
could sometimes result in an enhanced status and rights for
captives. For example, Robertson and Klein (1983b:16–17)
note that in Africa, female slaves might achieve an influential
position as wives or retainers of a king. Marriage with slaves
was an advantage to African rulers because, as noted above,
slave women were without kin ties and were unlikely to have
their loyalties divided between their husband and their natal
family. In a study of Spanish women captured by Indians in
Argentina in the seventeenth–nineteenth centuries, Socolow
(1992) suggests that these women actually gained social status
in moving from being the wife of a Spanish peasant to being
the wife of an Indian chief. As discussed below, the status of
a captive’s owner or husband could afford captive women
expanded abilities to transmit their natal culture.
Some scholars have suggested that the ways in which cap-
tives are incorporated into slave-owning societies, at least in
Asia and Africa, have to do with sources of wealth (Watson
1980b:11–12, following Goody 1971:32). In Africa, where
wealth was built through control over people, captives in-
corporated as wives or concubines increased the population
and hence the prestige of the group (see also Nieboer 1910
[1900]). In contrast, in Asia, where land was the primary
source of wealth, captives were rarely invited into kinship
systems where they would have claims on kin land. This di-
chotomy in sources of wealth can also be applied to the North-
west Coast’s intensive foragers, where wealth and prestige were
based on control of property, including resources such as
salmon-fishing locations. As Donald (1997:101–102) shows,
this emphasis on control of property resulted, as in Asia, in
a closed system of slavery in which slaves were never invited
into the kinship system of their captors.
However, even in societies where captives were married,
adopted, or otherwise appear to have been fully integrated
into captor society, their rights of social personhood may have
183
been limited, their alien origin never completely forgotten.
Some examples suggest the liminal nature of even some “for-
mally adopted” captives. Starna and Watkins (1991) have
questioned the completeness of captive adoption in the
Northeast, noting that, as in Africa, kin terms applied to
captives were not intended to suggest the closeness of a re-
lationship but authority and subordination (see also Kopytoff
1982:215; Patterson 1982:62–65; Trigger 1969:49). Bowser
(2008) also emphasizes the vulnerable position of captive
women in the Amazon who were without kin in the captor
society. After being claimed as wives, they had no relatives to
defend them if their husband abused them, and their captive
children could be subject to abuse by other children or adults.
Both Brooks (2002) and Brugge (1993) document the elab-
orate fictions of kinship and claims of saving souls by which
Spanish families in the Southwest disguised the practice of
capturing, trading, and holding Native American women,
children, and men, most of whom became domestic labor,
the women doubling as concubines or drudge wives.
Regardless of the social role into which captives stepped,
they had a potentially transformative effect on captor society.
The relationship of owner to captive is intrinsically hierar-
chical, and the introduction of captives into society imme-
diately creates a system of inequality. In fact, Carneiro (1991:
179) argues that keeping captives alive and enslaving them
was a major evolutionary step (a perspective also taken by
the early social evolutionists of the nineteenth century, such
as Tylor, Morgan, and also Marx; see Koyptoff 1982). Simply
by their presence as outsiders, captives could also strengthen
or define social boundaries both within captor society and
between societies (Brooks 2002:246–247; Perdue 1979:17).
It is important to note that captives often functioned as
more than simply social persons. Around the world, captives
were repeatedly described as media of exchange (Brugge 1993:
97; Taylor 2001:35; Warren 1981:186, 201). Patterson (1982:
167–199) describes the many places in the world where slaves
functioned as money. For example, in Ireland, the cumal, or
female slave, was equivalent to 3–8 cows or 3 ounces of silver.
Because of their humanity, however, captives’ value could be
different than that of other units of exchange. They were the
ultimate gift, used to establish and maintain ties among dif-
ferent groups. In describing the French involvement in the
indigenous warfare and slave raiding in late-seventeenth- and
early eighteenth-century New France, Rushforth (2003) shows
how Native American groups in the Northeast used captives
as symbols of alliance, power, and spiritual renewal. They
offered captives to seal diplomatic agreements, to signify
friendship, and to secure valuable trade goods. The practice
was also a familiar one to European colonizers. In a recent
look at the early years of colonial Jamestown, Clausen (2007)
reports that a teenage English boy who arrived with a group
of settlers in 1608 was given to a Powhatan chief as a hostage
in exchange for the chief’s “servant.” This exchange of hos-
tages was intended to encourage friendly relationships be-
tween the two groups.
 Table 3. Captives in captor society

Geographic area/culture Role and status in captor society

Old World:
Northern, central, and eastern Europe Despite variations through time and across the continent, in most cases slaves formed a separate, stigmatized social class. Bonnassie (1991:

184
16–25) provides evidence from medieval European legal documents that slaves were considered subhuman. Bonnassie (1991:5) suggests
two kinds of slavery in medieval Europe: (1) rural slavery of the early Middle Ages and (2) slave trade of the late Middle Ages (urban
slavery, artisanal or domestic). Bonnassie (1991:28–31) also notes that in the first millennium CE, the Catholic Church was the largest
slave owner; slaves often worked on large estates owned by the church.
In Iceland, slaves were classified as a single ethnic group (Karras 1988:50). “The stereotype of the slave as ethnically different was part of
the social construction that made the slave an other” (Karras 1988:56).
Germanic law codes after the mid-fifth century CE show that Germans conceived of their slaves as property; in many laws the slaves were
treated the same as livestock (Lenski 2008)
Africa Captive women were often incorporated as wives, secondary wives, or concubines. Slave wives were often preferred because they were
without kin (Robertson and Klein 1983b:6). Kopytoff and Miers (1977) argue that in Africa, slaves were outsiders and slavery was an
institution that allowed slaves to be incorporated into captor society: a slavery-to-kinship continuum (see also Watson 1980b:2–9).
For the Sena, Isaacman and Isaacman (1977:111) note that while marriage allowed for incorporation into a lineage, captives still held
marginal social positions, did less desirable tasks, and in a crisis were more likely to be sold
The more valuable a slave, the more likely he or she was to be integrated quickly into the new society; value depended on the slave’s
intelligence, speaking ability, fertility, and skill at farming or handicrafts (Keim 1983:148–149)
Captives could be held by kings or powerful rulers: women as part of large harems (see, e.g., Bay 1983) and men as retainers, bearers,
canoe paddlers, etc. (see, e.g., Nwachukwu-Ogedengbe 1977)
Southeast Asia Much of Southeast Asia had “open slave systems,” where captives were rapidly integrated into host communities because the control of
people, not land or capital, were keys to power, although closed systems were also reported (Junker 2008; Reid 1983a:157)
New World:
Northeastern North America (Iroquoian Most scholars argue that captives who were not killed were incorporated into the society of their captors as full members. Starna and
groups and Illinois, Fox) Watkins (1991) disagree, suggesting that even after adoption, captives formed a slavelike group (see also Trigger 1969:49). Young
women were especially at risk of ill-treatment until they had been assigned a husband, but even adopted men could be ill-treated or
killed. Starna and Watkins (1991:39) believe that during raids, women were more likely than men to be kept alive. This contradicts
Trigger (1976:70), who states that women and children were often killed.
 Southeastern North America
Southwest and southern High Plains,
North America
Northwest Coast, North America
South America and Caribbean
185
Note. Dates, characterization of captives, and references for each region are provided in table 1.
Captives could be adopted as members of the captor society or enslaved. The Cherokee Atsi nahsa’I formed a separate slave class that was
outside the kinship system. Women and children were more likely to have been adopted than men. Accounts from the sixteenth-
century De Soto expedition reported the “hamstringing” of male captives to ensure that they did not escape.
Captives were distributed by chiefs to their followers (Anderson 1994), suggesting that they were disproportionately held by the wealthy
or prominent members of a group
Captives were most often incorporated into the society of their captors as wives, concubines, or domestic laborers. Brooks (2002) notes
that “although captives were often assimilated through institutions of kinship, they seldom shed completely their alien stigma, and even
then their numbers were regularly renewed through capture or purchase, thereby reinvigorating the service classes” (31). Brugge (1993)
states that “some tribes, such as the Comanche and Chiricahua Apache, as their numbers dwindled through war and disease, supple-
mented their population with captives” (98).
Habicht-Mauche (2008) believes captive Pueblo women lived among the mobile bison hunters of the southern Plains as drudge wives
used to increase the production of buffalo hides
Captives became part of a highly stigmatized and separate slave class with few or no opportunities for manumission or incorporation into
the host society; captives were held primarily by “titleholders” who were the elite members of Northwest Coast society
Formal systems of slavery existed among the Tupinamba, who lived near the mouth of the Amazon River, the Yuqui in the Bolivian
Amazon (Bowser 2008), and the chiefdoms of the Cauca Valley of Columbia and adjacent areas (Carniero 1991; Morey 1975; Spencer
1991)
Captive women were incorporated as wives or secondary wives among the Yanomano of Venezuela and Brazil and the Waorani and
Achuar of the tropical portions of Ecuador (Bowser 2008)
Captive women were made wives among the Conibo, but young boys were made slaves or servants (DeBoer 1986)
Bowser (2008) shows the marginal lives led by captive women in Amazonian groups; like orphans, they had no kin and no one to protect
them
Santos-Granero (2005, 2009) finds that among Amerindian slaving societies of the Caribbean and South America, captives were physically
marked, maintained in servile positions, and considered less than human; however, some captives or their children or grandchildren
could eventually be incorporated into the society of their captors. For example, Kalinago captives had the following fates based on age
and sex: “Adult men were brought back home, killed, and eaten in cannibalistic rituals. Boys were emasculated and used as slaves until
they grew up, after which time they were killed. . . . Young women were taken as concubines or given as maidservants to their wives
[wives of captors]” (Santos-Granero 2009:49). However, he distinguishes between homogenous and hegemonic regional systems. In the
latter, the attitude of groups who had greater demographic and military strength toward their weaker neighbors was “almost as slave-
breeding populations” (Santos-Granero 2009:48).
 186
The Captive as Laborer
Although we tend to equate slaves primarily with labor-
intensive industries, captives in nonstate societies were ac-
tually involved in virtually every active field of endeavor, in-
cluding food production, manufacturing of craft goods and
other goods, and mundane tasks such as gathering wood and
fetching water (table 4). They generally participated in the
same range of activities as other members of captor society,
although they might be required to work longer and harder
at those tasks or undertake the most difficult or unpleasant
tasks (table 4). Because they were generally owned by high-
status members of the society, captives provided their masters
and mistresses relief from daily chores. The more complex
the society, the more specialized the available tasks became
and the more specialized the labor of captives. Although we
might expect captives to be restricted to the production of
the most mundane objects, at times they were involved in the
production of symbolically charged or ritual objects.
Donald’s (1997:318–321) study of slavery in the Northwest
Coast provides an informative list of the tasks slaves carried
out in this area (see also table 4). Captives here were primarily
owned by “titleholders,” the elite members in these forager
societies, although some were held by commoners, and there
are few activities in which slaves did not participate. Subsis-
tence tasks included picking berries, collecting shellfish, dig-
ging roots, fishing, hunting, and preserving food. Household
tasks included carrying water, child care, cooking, fetching
wood, acting as a house servant, and serving food. Miscel-
laneous tasks included accompanying their master on his or
her travels, carrying burdens, going on raids, serving as a
personal attendant, serving as a lookout or watchman, serving
as a messenger, and paddling canoes. Slaves were also involved
in the production of huts, temporary shelters (when travel-
ing), and fish dams or weirs and with dressing skins, building
and repairing houses, making canoes, making and mending
baskets and nets, and collecting cedar bark and rushes (Don-
ald 1997:127). As discussed below, talented slaves could be
involved in production of ceremonial objects.
In the more complex societies of Africa, chiefdoms and
secondary states put captives to work not only in agricultural
and domestic tasks but also in textile or pottery production,
mining, and service as porters or canoe rowers. Robertson
and Klein (1983b) report that slave women in various parts
of Africa “did domestic, craft, and/or agricultural work—the
same things that free women did” (16). They grew indigo,
made dye, helped to dye cloth, spun thread, mined gold,
collected rubber and snails, served as cultivators, maids, and
porters, and drove cattle. In Europe during the Late Bronze
Age, slaves labored in mines; in Britain during the eighth to
fifth centuries BCE, they labored in agricultural fields and on
the construction of hill forts (table 4). Later, during the Mid-
dle Ages, some slaves toiled on large estates owned by the
Catholic Church (Bonnassie 1991:28–29), but in Iceland
slaves on small farms worked alongside their masters making
Current Anthropology Volume 52, Number 2, April 2011
hay, cutting wood, herding, and hauling (Karras 1988:81). In
Southeast Asian chiefdoms, captive women were employed in
agriculture and in the production of household equipment
and the luxury items used by their masters in a prestige-goods
economy. In the Sulu sultanate of Southeast Asia, captives
functioned as agricultural workers, fishermen, traders, con-
cubines, wet nurses, and attendants, and they participated in
slave raids like those in which they had been captured; more-
skilled captives became craft workers, tutors, and healers
(Warren 1981:215–226).
Archaeologists should be especially interested in the role
of captives in the production of crafts that may be visible
archaeologically. It is here that we might be most able to see
captives’ role in the transmission of cultural practices. Table
4 shows that captives produced containers, tools, textiles,
houses, boats, and other objects. Although Costin (1998:8)
reports a general association between the status of craftspeople
and the value of the crafts they produce, she also notes cases
where high-value goods are produced by craftspeople of low
social status. For example, Wright (1998) reports that slaves
produced crafts during the Ur III period in southern Mes-
opotamia. In the classical world, many slaves were involved
in craft production, and some were skilled artisans. Finley
(1962:53) argues that sixth- and fifth-century signed Greek
vases were painted by slaves. Patterson (1982:179–180) notes
that slaves dominated the category of skilled craftsmen in
both Greece and Rome and that in many slaveholding soci-
eties, slaves were acquired specifically to introduce techno-
logical skills into that society (see also Lenski 2008:90, for
Roman metalsmiths captured by Germanic tribes, and Usner
1992:54–56, for a New World case). Similar patterns of captive-
produced crafts and even tributary goods are evident in the
North American Southeast (Anderson 1994:101; Hudson 1976:
264–267; Perdue 1979:15), Africa (Harms 1983:100; Keim 1983:
145; Klein 1983:85), Southeast Asia (Junker 2008), and the
Southwest and southern Great Plains (Habicht-Mauche 2008).
These examples demonstrate the key role played by captives in
the production of craft goods that were employed in everyday
activities and were sometimes used by their masters to gain
wealth.
While captives might seem unlikely to produce high-value
prestige goods that were often a source of power for elites,
there is good evidence that they could be involved in that
activity as well. Especially in societies with formal systems of
slavery, slaves were often considered subhuman, allowing
them to be conceived of as “tools” (Romans called their slaves
“tools with a voice”; Bonnassie 1991:30; see also Lenski 2007).
Because of their liminal position, slaves were sometimes able
to participate in activities that commoner members of the
same society could not. For example, in Northwest Coast
Chilkat society, slaves were not allowed to perform any cer-
emonial task, yet skilled slaves did sometimes carve masks.
The resulting mask was considered to have actually been
carved by the titleholder slave owner, and the slave was con-
sidered simply the tool used in its production (Oberg 1973:
Cameron Captives and Culture Change
87–88, cited in Donald 1997:174). Among the Tlingit, slaves
who were skilled at carving totem poles were highly prized
and were loaned out to other people who were not skilled
carvers (Patterson 1982:179).
Captives as Agents of Social Change
Clearly captives had the potential to be important agents in
the transmission of cultural practices. Kristiansen and Larsson
(2005) urge us to consider how alien cultural practices are
assimilated and given new meaning, although they focus on
the elite in prehistoric societies. This is an important goal
that should also be undertaken by archaeologists investigating
the role of captives in intercultural interactions, including
studies of how captive-introduced practices are employed,
whether they strengthen or weaken social boundaries, and
their role in cultural development. However, this study ad-
dresses only one part of this larger task: exploring factors that
condition the acceptance of cultural practices introduced by
captives.
Factors that are likely to condition the transfer of cultural
knowledge in nonstate societies include the characteristics of
captives and the attitudes of captor society toward captives.
Considering specifically craft production, captives’ contri-
butions to culture change could be constrained by the nature
of the tasks they were assigned as well as the visibility of the
material-culture practices they might try to introduce. While
determining the characteristics of captives and the attitudes
of captor societies in the absence of historical records may
be challenging, archaeologists are already beginning to de-
velop tools that can be used to assess the contributions of
captives to craft production.
Characteristics of Captives and Cultural Transmission
Captives did not form a representative or random sample of
their natal society. During warfare or raiding, individuals were
targeted for capture based on their age, their sex, and some-
times their skills. Just as age and sex affected the rights of
social personhood offered to captives, such characteristics also
affected the captives’ role in the transmission of cultural prac-
tices.
Age at capture is one of the key factors that condition the
impact of captives on captor society. As discussed above,
reproductive-age women and older children were most often
targeted (table 1; see especially DeBoer 2008). Reproductive-
age women could be expected to have been fully enculturated
by their natal society, acquiring the language, technological,
social, and at least some of the ritual skills that made them
competent members of their group. Because elderly individ-
uals were generally not targeted for capture, highly developed
technology or key ritual or cultural knowledge held by older
members of a society would often not be introduced, although
sometimes these older individuals may have been targeted for
capture because of their skills (see below).
187
Individuals captured as infants, toddlers, or even very
young children could quickly lose memory of their natal cul-
ture (including language) and immediately adopt the culture
of their captors. For the Amazon, DeBoer (2008) provides an
account of a boy captured by the Shipibo as a toddler. He
returned to his natal group as a young adult and became a
vocal booster of Shipibo culture. In considering the degree
to which young captives may have been able to retain and
transmit natal culture, however, we should recognize that to-
day’s extended childhood is an anomaly. Cuneiform tablets
from sixth- and fifth-century BCE Babylonia suggest that
slaves began work around age five; in Anglo-Saxon Britain
before the tenth century, individuals older than age 10 were
considered adults (Crawford 1991).
Gender must have had a significant effect on the types of
skills introduced by captives because of the sexual division of
labor and gender-determined social roles operating in vir-
tually all societies. For example, scholars have suggested that
because of a gender bias in favor of male slaves on New World
plantations, slaves in the Americas arrived with a simplified
subset of African cultural knowledge (Foster 1960, cited in
Singleton 1998:175; Otto 1975). Otto (1975) found that slave
artisans reproducing African-styled objects mostly created ob-
jects related to male activities. Similarly, DeBoer (2007) shows
that in parts of Amazonia where raiding for women was com-
mon, the most widely distributed material-culture traits were
those used by women in domestic tasks rather than those
used by men.
In other parts of the world where captives were most fre-
quently women, we should also anticipate that a restricted set
of female-linked skills and knowledge would be introduced
into captor culture. Lowell’s (2007) study of Grasshopper
Pueblo provides an example of this pattern and is a model
for the types of studies we should undertake to understand
the contributions of captives in the past (acknowledging Low-
ell’s alternative explanations for the immigrants). Evidence
for immigrants at Grasshopper was confined to female-linked
(domestic, especially food-production) material culture, such
as pottery and hearth style. Male-linked material culture, such
as ceremonial architecture and projectile points, retained na-
tive patterns even after the influx of nonlocal women. Com-
bined with the biological evidence of an excess of nonlocal
women and their low status, Lowell’s archaeological data open
avenues for exploring interactions between natives and im-
migrant (likely captive) women at Grasshopper Pueblo.
Building on Lowell’s (2007) work, we should recognize that
female-linked artifacts not only are key evidence of captive
women in the past but also form our primary evidence of
their interactions with their captors. We can move beyond
artifacts into other realms of activity and daily practice, such
as food production (see Lightfoot, Martinez, and Schiff 1998
for an example of how daily practice was organized in mul-
tiethnic households). Because women in nonstate societies
often function as horticulturalists, scholars should explore the
extent to which captive women may have introduced new
 Table 4. Captive labor

Geographic area/culture Labor

Old World:
Northern, central, and eastern Europe
Scythian slaves (eastern Europe, first millennium BCE) were used in horse dairying. They were blinded to keep them from escaping
(Taylor 2001:38).
During the Long Iron Age (1000 BCE–1000 CE), slaves were held in small agricultural households, presumably accomplishing the same
agricultural tasks as the rest of the household (Woolf 1997)
Archaeological evidence of slaves used as mine labor in the Urnfield culture of central Europe (750 BCE–1100 CE) is presented by Kris-
tiansen (1998:116–117). In Britain, for the period 450 BCE–750 CE, Kristiansen (1998:302) reports the use of slaves in agriculture and
the construction of hill forts. The spread of hill forts after 400 BCE may have been for protection against slave raiding.
During the Viking Age and later, slavery operated at the household level in the Scandinavian countries, with slaves working alongside
their masters (Karras 1988:78–79). Icelandic family sagas suggest that tasks of slaves were typical of what any farmer would do: hay-
making, woodcutting, herding, and hauling. Slaves may have had the less desirable jobs, such as dunging fields, and low-status jobs,
such as preparing food and swine herding. Female slaves could be concubines; they could do household tasks such as weaving and
grinding grain or serve as nurses or foster mothers (Karras 1988:81).
According to the Roman writer Tacitus, slaves in Germanic society were tenants on independent farms disconnected from the household
of their master (Lenski 2008). Germanic law codes after the mid-fifth century CE show that slaves were primarily employed in agricul-
ture. Some were specially trained as sheep, cattle, goat, or pig herders, horse grooms, or plowmen. Germans used some slaves as skilled
craftsmen: gold-, silver-, iron- and bronzesmiths. Slaves were also carpenters, masons, millers, vinedressers, shoemakers, and household
attendants. Germanic slaves (unlike Roman slaves) were not allowed to conduct business without the express permission of their own-

188
ers, so they were not involved in mercantile activities (Lenski 2008).
Africa Both male and female slaves might do the same work as freeborn people, but they often worked longer and harder. Female slaves did a
wide variety of productive work in Africa. They were agricultural workers, domestic servants, child-care givers, fishermen, craft workers,
and textile workers, and they worked in mines, operated as traders, and served as porters and herders and retainers to rulers (articles
in Robertson and Klein 1983a). Male slaves also participated in many of these activities as well as serving as warriors; sometimes
women did, too (see especially articles in Miers and Kopytoff 1977).
Southeast Asia “Slaves were reported in every conceivable occupation, as rice farmers, cash croppers, fishermen, seamen, construction workers, miners,
urban laborers, craftsmen of all sorts, textile workers, entertainers, concubines, domestic servants, retailers, traders, scribes, interpreters,
surgeons, soldiers, and even trusted ministers. . . . Weaving and textiles . . . seem to have been both the most important item of
manufacture and the one most given to large scale slave labor. . . . The most characteristic roles for slaves were as domestics and
entertainers” (Reid 1983b:22–23). Among stateless groups—Nias, Toba Batak, Toraja, Dayak, and Kenyah—certain types of labor, such
as carrying water, cutting wood, and handling the dead (both animal and human), were seen as slaves’ work (Reid 1983a:161).
Ethnographic and historic accounts from Philippine coastal chiefdoms show that women were the primary manufacturers of earthenware
pottery and textiles. Captives also did agricultural work and other craft work, and they served as household servants and oarsmen on
trading and raiding expeditions (Junker 2008).
In the Sulu sultanate, “Banyaga [slaves] were used in trading ventures, in diplomatic negotiations, as slave raiders, as concubines and wet
nurses, as tutors to their masters, as craftworkers, and as peasants and fishermen. . . . Men assisted their masters in clearing virgin forest, in
ploughing, in harvesting timber, in building and maintaining boats, and hauling water. . . . Tasks of female banyaga were sowing and
weeding in rice farming, pounding and threshing of rice, and gathering and preparation of strand products (Warren 1981:220).
New World:
Northeastern North America (Iroquoian Captives undertook all of the routine tasks of their captor society: they tended fields, gathered food, carried heavy burdens, etc. That they
groups and Illinois, Fox) relieved their owners of much labor is indicated by an account by Starna and Watkins (1991:51) of a seventeenth-century Seneca
woman (a Christian convert) who lamented to a Jesuit priest that her dead daughter would have to do her own domestic duties in
heaven because none of her slaves had yet died to go with her. Captives also went to war with their captors, sometimes even against
their natal group (Tooker 1991 [1964]:31).
 Southeastern North America
Southwest and southern High Plains,
North America
Northwest Coast, North America
South America and Caribbean
189
Note. Dates, characterization of captives, and references for each region are provided in table 1.
Captives seem to have done the same work as their captors. Perdue (1979) reports of the Cherokee slaves that “[they] worked alongside
their masters . . . accompanied men when they left to hunt, carried burdens, got bark for cabins, and other servile work, carried
messages back to the village, dressed deer skin, helped women in cultivation by clearing fields” (15). Hudson (1976:253) believed that
slaves were kept primarily for prestige, while Anderson (1994:101) argues that agricultural production and the production of tributary
goods would have increased their master’s wealth.
Captives held by Native American groups typically did the same tasks as other members of the society. Among the Navajo, captives were
set to agricultural and herding tasks (Brugge 1968:123). Captives served as intermediaries between different cultures, and they might
become part of military forces.
Habicht-Mauche (2008) presents evidence that captive Pueblo women were used by status-seeking males among the bison hunters of the
southern Plains to increase the production of bison hides. They also made pottery.
Captives held by the Spanish usually became domestic servants, and female captives were the traditional wedding gift to Spanish brides.
Indian children were a medium of exchange, used to pay debts and make purchases. Captives were trained as maids, weavers, herders,
and performed other tasks considered drudgery (Brugge 1993:97).
Subsistence tasks: picking berries, collecting shellfish, digging roots, fishing, hunting, preserving food. Household tasks: carrying water,
child care, cooking, fetching wood, serving as house servant, serving food. Miscellaneous tasks: accompanying master on travels, carry-
ing burdens, going on raids, serving as lookout or watchman, serving as messenger, paddling canoes. Slaves produced huts and tempo-
rary shelters, fish dams, or weirs; they dressed skins, built and repaired houses and built canoes; they made and repaired baskets, mats,
and nets; and they collected cedar bark and rushes. They served as personal maids and attendants. Slaves were used in numerous
ceremonies in which they were either freed, given away, or killed. Slaves were used as bodyguards, and they went to war with their
masters. They made a variety of handicrafts, built canoes, and repaired houses (Donald 1997:127, app. 6–9.)
Skilled slaves were allowed to make ceremonial objects when they possessed great talent; in these cases, the slave’s owner was considered
the actual producer of the object, and the slave was regarded as a “tool”
The labor of slaves was critical to the status of their owners, and they were important as an item of wealth (Donald 1997:130–138)
In Amazonia, captive women apparently carried out the normal tasks of wives, but captive boys paddled canoes or did other menial tasks
(DeBoer 1986)
Where formal systems of slavery existed in the Cauca Valley and Llanos areas, slaves were used to till the fields of the chiefs and nobles
and also served as personal servants to the paramount chief (Trimborn 1949:201, cited in Carneiro 1991:175)
Among the Tupinamba, slaves were required to perform agricultural work, domestic labor, and domestic service for their masters. They
were obligated to work for their owners “like sons-in-law.” They were allotted land, grew their own food, and hunted for themselves
(Bowser 2008).
Santos-Granero (2009) describes the wide range of tasks accomplished by captives in the six Amerindian groups he has studied (see table
1). They were generally given the most difficult and labor-intensive jobs. Women captives accomplished all sorts of household work:
they cooked, prepared manioc, made beer, planted and tended gardens, fetched water and firewood, and served as porters. Male cap-
tives did the heaviest agricultural work: they served as porters, carried their masters, and served as guards, warriors, rowers, etc. Male
captives could be forced to do women’s work. Both men and women served as personal attendants. Both men and women did craft
work. Women wove mosquito nets, clothing, bags, baskets, and pottery. Men made canoes. Makú servile groups made ritual objects for
their Tukano patrons. Captives served important roles in ceremony as sacrificial victims. Santos-Granero (2009:127) emphasizes that
captives contributed to the prestige of their owners but not necessarily to their economy, except in cases where servant groups created
a large number of dependents.
 190 Current Anthropology Volume 52, Number 2, April 2011

plant species, propagation techniques, or soil-preparation to shear the hair of the female and infant captives. . . . Short
methods as well as harvesting or storing techniques. hair was seen as a sign of servitude. (Santos-Granero 2009:
Gender studies have stressed problems with assuming a 108)
strict sexual division of labor in any society, and studies of
The ability of captives to introduce new cultural practices and
captives may make gender distinctions even more complex.
behaviors should have been strongly affected by the attitude
One of the humiliations captives endured was that gender
of the captor society toward them. Captives engendered per-
roles could be ignored and males be required to undertake
ceptions that can range from reviled and evil to intriguing
tasks normally reserved for females and vice versa. For ex-
and powerful, and their influence was likely to increase as
ample, in the Northwest Coast, Donald (1997:134–135) re-
attitudes became more positive. Attitudes were likely to be
ports that slave labor was a solution to a shortage of female
most positive in instances where captives became well inte-
labor in activities such as salmon processing. Slaves were “un-
grated into the society of their captors and least positive where
differentiated labor power” because they were considered not
captives formed a low-status slave class, although this may
male or female but slave (see also Ames 2001:4; Hudson 1976:
not always have been the case. This section examines how
253 for the Southeast, and Meillassoux 1991:100–101; Rob-
these attitudes could be created by the initial conditions of
ertson and Klein 1983b:10 for Africa). While male captives
capture, attitudes toward captives with special knowledge or
might have been required to undertake female tasks, in cases
skills, the development of “subcultures” where multiple cap-
where these were novel skills for them, they might have been
tives are able to interact, and the effect of gender on attitudes
less likely to transmit natal practices than would women, who
toward captives, including captive women’s role in child care.
had greater familiarity with such tasks.
Initial conditions and the context of capture were impor-
Captors at times selected individuals for capture who could
tant in establishing attitudes toward captives. As suggested by
provide a craft skill or technological knowledge that was lack-
the quote above, after a raid or warfare, captives entered
ing in the captor society. Patterson (1982:179) notes that in
captor society accompanied by a wave of violent and negative
many slaveholding societies, slaves were acquired specifically
feelings toward the captives’ social group, especially if any
to introduce skills into that society. Usner (1992:55–56) re-
captor-society warriors were lost in battle. A fiction of su-
ports that African slaves imported into the Lower Mississippi
periority was often maintained, and raiders may have felt that
Valley during the eighteenth century arrived with skills as
they were “liberating” the women they had captured from a
woodworkers, weavers, and blacksmiths. Whether skilled in-
low and degraded existence (DeBoer 1986; Santos-Granero
dividuals or castes were specifically targeted by slave raiders
2005). Individuals who entered captivity through debt, crim-
in Africa is not noted, but it may have occurred. Similarly,
inal accusations, sale by their parents, and other means may
on the Northwest Coast, a white man, John Jewitt, was cap-
have entered captor society with a stigma of incompetence,
tured by the Mowachaht Indians in the first years of the
antisocial behavior, or low value that would dominate atti-
nineteenth century. His life was spared because he was a black-
tudes toward them. They may have been forced to discard
smith and could make iron harpoons for the chief who held
natal practices that were characteristic of their despised group
him (Ames 2001:4). In medieval Europe, a variety of new
(distinctive pottery forms or designs, particular styles of cloth-
technologies were introduced by Asian slaves imported
ing or body decoration, unique foods, etc.), and the natal
through Italy, including the vertical-axle windmill, the hot-
practices that they did retain may have been considered in-
air turbine, and a new type of governor (White 1962:116,
ferior or inappropriate, especially in societies where captives
cited in Patterson 1982:180). The sudden introduction of a
became part of a subordinate slave class. Furthermore, cap-
complete technological package into a society in which this
tives may have chosen to shun natal practices in order to
technology had not previously existed might be a sign of the
improve their position in their new society. Because archae-
presence of skilled captives. In their study of Bronze Age
ologists tend to look for the most obvious material evidence
Europe, Kristiansen and Larsson (2005) suggest that traveling
of migrants (especially architecture and pottery), such “re-
chiefs returned with special knowledge, especially of craft skills
programming” of captives makes them more difficult to see
such as metal-working, and were able to transform knowledge
in the archaeological record.
of distant societies and craft skill into power. It is also possible
DeBoer (1986, 2008) provides an instructive example of
that they returned with captives or hostages whose knowledge
the role that attitudes can play in the ability of captives to
and skill they put to use in the production of high-value
transmit their natal culture. He examined raids conducted
goods.
between the seventeenth and twentieth centuries by the Co-
nibo, an Amazonian group, on their near and distant neigh-
Attitudes of Captor Society bors. The Conibo viewed their victims as “cannibalistic, dirty,
and otherwise loathsome savages” (DeBoer 1986:238). He ar-
Once they arrived at their captors’ village, all war prisoners gues that at least some abducted women introduced into Co-
were subjected to the fury, insults, and beatings of the local nibo society and apparently fully incorporated into the social
people. . . . Almost immediately, Kalinago masters proceeded group as wives were slavish reproducers of Conibo pottery
Cameron Captives and Culture Change
designs. Their marginal position allowed them little latitude
for challenging established conventions by either introducing
natal practices or their own novel interpretations (also DeBoer
1990). However, in more general study of the Amazon, Bowser
(2008) argues that the presence of captive women here should
be evident in less obvious characteristics of pottery, such as
the use of different technological steps or quantitative analysis
of design style.
In some instances, captives from distant or exotic places,
especially those with special knowledge or skills, could en-
gender more positive, although likely guarded, attitudes.
Helms (1988, 1998) has documented the power that knowl-
edge of distant places can impart to travelers and others (see
also Kristiansen and Larssen 2005). This suggests that captives
could use knowledge of their natal society or of other groups
to which they had been traded to negotiate a position of
influence in captor society. Captives could bring novel curing
methods, medicinal treatments, religious rituals, or cultural
practices (DeBoer 2008). Such special knowledge could make
them intriguing but also dangerous individuals. Captives held
by the most prominent members of society might have been
in an especially good position to transmit their natal culture.
For example, in the West African kingdom of Dahomey, Bay
(1983:340–341) reports that women slaves served as ministers
of state, counselors, soldiers or commanders, provincial gov-
ernors, and trading agents as well as favored wives. In these
positions, they would likely have significantly enhanced abil-
ities to transmit aspects of their natal culture. Bay (1983:347)
emphasizes that female slaves were an important channel of
cross-cultural influence, providing accounts of a female slave,
held by a king, who introduced new deities into the pantheon
of local gods and others who transmitted other religious prac-
tices, including Islam. Similarly, Lenski (2008) documents the
role of captives in the spread of Christianity among the Ger-
manic tribes during the first few centuries of the Current Era.
During captivity, captives might, of necessity, have quickly
become multilingual and function as mediators for their cap-
tors during interactions with their natal society or with other
groups, bringing them enhanced status. In the Southwest,
Brooks (2002) provides several accounts of multilingual
women, most of whom had been traded from group to group
after their capture, learning languages and customs as they
moved. For example, the Spanish used as a translator a Kiowa
woman who had been captured by the Comanche, captured
again by the Ute, and finally sold to the Spanish (Brooks
2002:65). Another woman, part Spanish and part Pueblo In-
dian (likely the result of sexual abuse of her mother, a do-
mestic servant in a Spanish household), was captured by the
Navajo and after being ransomed, continued to communicate
with her captors and became a wealthy trader and interpreter
who facilitated economic exchanges among the three groups
with whom she had ties (Brooks 2002:100–105).
Even where attitudes toward captives were negative, those
with significant skills could still be recognized and exploited
by captor societies regardless of general attitudes toward the
191
captive population. The fiction of the slave as “tool” allowed
captor societies to exploit captive skills without acknowledg-
ing either the talents or the personhood of the captive. Study
should be made of how skilled captives set about introducing
their craft to their captors. Was knowledge willingly shared?
Did skilled captives try to introduce impediments to the use
of the craft by their captors? Such detailed studies could do
much to help us understand the process of intercultural trans-
fer of technology.
Situations in which multiple captives from the same place
of origin remained as an interacting group in their captor’s
society would have the best opportunity of preserving aspects
of their natal culture, including language (Socolow 1992),
social practices, and technology. This situation might be most
likely where the captor society made frequent raids against
the same neighboring group, as is common where socially
complex groups repeatedly attack their small-scale neighbors.
Permitting groups of captives from the same society to form
an interacting group might have been most common when
captives were women and children, because they posed far
less risk of uprising or mass escape than would a group of
interacting alien men. The fact that captives were often moved
or traded far from their homes shows that captors feared
escape and insurrection (table 1). Finley (1962:55) quotes an
ancient Greek scholar who advised that as a security measure,
slaves should be of mixed nationalities both within individual
slave holdings and in cities. However, the stigma of capture
and enslavement (sometimes physically marked with tattoos
or mutilation and stressed by the children women may have
had with their captors) dampened impulses to escape or revolt
and severely limited captives’ options to return home (Brooks
2008a; Donald 1997:93–94).
Attitudes toward captives may have had a gender bias.
Women’s rights in many societies are circumscribed even for
native-born full members, so we might expect that female
slaves would occupy particularly low-status positions and en-
gender especially negative attitudes. But because captive
women are much more easily incorporated as wives or con-
cubines then captive men, attitudes toward them and their
role in the transmission of cultural practices might actually
have been enhanced. We should also consider the potential
roles that captive women played in cultural reproduction as
child-care providers for their captors and in some circum-
stances for their own children. Child care is a task that might
have given captives an especially powerful role in the trans-
mission of cultural practices. In the African city of Mombasa
in the early twentieth century, Strobel (1983:128) notes that
female slaves who functioned as nannies played an important
role in socializing young freeborn children. Patterson (1982:
88) reports that Greek slaves, both male and female, engaged
in child care. While he argues that such interactions did little
to soften attitudes of masters toward their slaves, he suggests
that slaves might have had an important role in the character
formation of upper-class Greeks (see also Finley 1980:107–
108). Donald (1997:319) also reports that child care was a
 192
common task for slaves in Northwest Coast societies but does
not provide details of this activity. In neither the Greek nor
the Northwest Coast case is it clear that child care was pref-
erentially assigned to female slaves, but women must have
been selected as wet nurses, and the significant numbers of
female captives in nonstate societies argues that slaves un-
dertaking child care were usually women.
Captives and Material Culture
The presence and influence of captives will be most visible
to archaeologists in ancient material culture. When captives
were forced to create and use a foreign material culture, their
involvement in these activities had the potential to change
the material culture of their captors. Cultural identities can
be created and transformed through craft production, and by
recognizing the presence of captives in prehistoric societies,
we can begin to understand their role in this process. Because
captive-taking is a selective process, archaeologists should fo-
cus especially on gender-linked material culture in studies of
captives. This section considers other factors that encourage
or constrain the impact of captives on material culture, es-
pecially craft goods. These factors include the nature of the
tasks that captives were assigned, the complexity of the tech-
nologies in which they labored, the visibility of the novel
material-culture practices they might have introduced, and
the social meaning of the goods they produced. The third
factor—the visibility of material-culture practices—builds on
studies of migration and prehistoric social boundaries, es-
pecially the efforts of archaeologists to recognize the presence
of immigrants after a migration (Carr 1995b; Clark 2001;
Stark 1998). Aspects of migration studies can be usefully ap-
plied to understanding the influence of captives on material
culture.
The nature of the tasks to which captives were assigned
could significantly curtail their influence on the material cul-
ture of their captors. A skilled potter who spent her captive
life hauling debris in a silver mine would have little or no
opportunity to transmit her skills (for a Southeast Asian ex-
ample, see Warren 1981:225). Some state-level societies, in-
cluding ancient Greece and Rome and the American South,
used slaves to fulfill such routine unskilled tasks. However,
other captives had far more involvement in the production
of material goods. Many slaves in state-level societies were
skilled craftspeople (Baker 2001:19–20; Fisher 1993:42–43,
50–53, 55–56; Patterson 1982:254–255; Siegel 1945, 1947:6n;
Taylor 2001:32), and in nonstate societies, captives tended to
undertake the same activities as other members of society,
including the production of household goods (table 4). Cap-
tor societies recognized and exploited the talents of skilled
captives even when attitudes toward captives were negative.
The nature of the technology in which captives labored
could affect their ability to transmit their natal culture. Cap-
tives who labored in complex technologies, such as metallurgy,
might have had less influence, especially if the technology was
Current Anthropology Volume 52, Number 2, April 2011
not practiced in the society from which they had come. Their
unfamiliarity with the technology and different production
steps would have left them with little to contribute. On the
other hand, simpler technologies and ones with which the
captive was familiar could provide opportunities to introduce
modifications, improvements, or simply different “ways of
doing,” as long as these changes were accepted or overlooked
by captor society. Where captives were obtained from near
neighbors in areas with widespread cultural similarities, they
were likely to be familiar with a basic repertoire of cultural
practices and material culture that differed only somewhat
from that of their captors. For example, Trigger (1976:159)
discusses extensive warfare and captive-taking among Iro-
quoian peoples in the northeastern part of the United States
and suggests that an “index of female movement” (Trigger
1976:161) would be foreign pottery in the village of the cap-
tors (made by captive women) and a lack of foreign pottery
in the villages from which these women had been taken. He
notes that use of such an index among proto-Huron groups
is difficult because the frequency with which female captives
were moved across the landscape had resulted in homogeneity
in pottery types throughout the region. Trigger’s discussion
mentions only pottery form and decoration; a study of tech-
nological steps (discussed below) might allow archaeologists
to “see” these foreign women as they continued to use prac-
tices common in their homeland.
Consideration of captives in the production of material
culture requires reformulation of many of our assumptions
about the transfer of cultural knowledge. In the Philippine
example discussed above, large numbers of women captured
during maritime raids and integrated as wives became pro-
ducers of earthenware pottery (Junker 2008). In a challenge
to our assumptions concerning stylistic innovation, the design
styles used in the pottery were brought by these women from
the small-scale societies in which they had originated. In other
words, the direction of design innovation was from the smaller
groups to larger centers, and the agents of change were captive
women.
The visibility of material-culture practices and the context
of production and use of goods are factors that constrain
captives’ roles in the transmission of cultural practices. Prac-
tices that actively signaled a captive’s ethnic identity would
have been most likely to be suppressed, while nondiscursive
practices that are part of captive habitus (technological se-
quences of vessel forming or house building, e.g., or food-
preparation techniques) might have been introduced either
consciously or unconsciously and would not have elicited
active suppression from their captors. Assessment of this fac-
tor draws on recent examinations of prehistoric migration
and focuses on the degree to which migrants chose to em-
phasize or deemphasize their ethnic differences. Captives were
a distinct, although quite common, type of migrant but had
potentially serious constraints on their ability to either express
or hide their origins. Under such circumstances, what ele-
Cameron Captives and Culture Change
ments of their natal material culture or technology might they
have been able to introduce?
Archaeologists have argued that migrants can be identified
in the archaeological record by the use of a foreign technique
of manufacture coupled with a local decorative style (Bowser
2008; Cameron 1998; Clark 2001; Duff 2002; Gosselain 2000;
Stark 1998). In other words, while formal or decorative styles
of artifacts or architecture could change when migrants en-
tered a new social context, migrants could retain material-
culture practices that were part of deeply embedded processes
of enculturation, such as manufacturing steps or specific
methods of production. In a recent study, Clark (2001) argues
that the artifact attributes most likely to have been retained
by a moving population are (1) not highly visible or evident
in the artifact and (2) not highly evident in the context within
which the artifact was used. In other words, those attributes
with low physical and contextual visibility will have low mes-
sage potential and will be most likely to have been retained
through time and to passively reflect a shared enculturative
background (Clark 2001:12–13; see also Carr 1995b:195–198).
An example of this process is provided by Hensler and
Blinman (2002), who show that potters in the northern San
Juan region of the American Southwest produced utility-ware
pottery using an “exterior-coiling” pot-forming method,
while potters in the northern Rio Grande region about 150
miles to the southeast used an “interior-coiling” method (the
difference involves how coils are joined as the pot is formed).
In the late fourteenth century, the northern San Juan region
was almost totally abandoned, and many people migrated to
the northern Rio Grande region. Northern San Juan immi-
grants can be identified among northern Rio Grande popu-
lations by the presence of the exterior-coiling method. Di-
rection of coiling in pottery production is a technique that
is evident primarily during the production process and likely
played little role in signaling the cultural identity of the potter
in the same way that pottery form or decoration might.
Clark’s distinction between levels of visibility of artifact
traits holds promise for identifying captives and their influ-
ence. However, one difficulty with these distinctions is that
perception varies with context, including the social position
and attitudes of the perceiver. Attributes that were an un-
conscious part of design, production, or decoration of objects
in the captives’ natal society might suddenly become highly
evident as captives attempted to undertake mundane daily
production tasks. Where captives were part of a stigmatized
and low-status group, their “errors” in reproduction would
likely be squelched. On the other hand, where captives were
accepted as full members of society or accorded special status,
their introduction of novel designs, production steps, or dec-
orative elements might more likely have been accepted.
The social or symbolic meaning of material goods is also
an important consideration. There is good evidence that cap-
tives were involved in the creation and use of objects with a
wide variety of social meanings. They would likely have been
more able to introduce, modify, or change objects with low
193
value and little social meaning—at least to their captors—
than high-value ritual objects with established and firmly held
social meanings. For example, Habicht-Mauche (2008) has
found that cooking pots associated with protohistoric Plains
Indian sites in the Texas panhandle had been made in the
style and used the technology of the Pueblo people to the
west. She demonstrates that the potters were likely captive
women brought in as drudge wives to help Plains males in-
crease their production of buffalo hides. They were apparently
able to introduce a novel pottery-making process into a for-
eign society, possibly because these pots were useful cooking
receptacles but were not highly charged with social meaning
for their Plains captors. Captives in other parts of the world
may have been equally successful at introducing useful objects
with low symbolic meaning.
While cooking pots in this example may have had low social
meaning for Plains captors, they may have had tremendous
social meaning for captive Pueblo women. The production
of these pots likely represented a familiar material focus
around which women could share stories of past lives with
their children and other captive wives. A parallel account of
the importance of material culture to captives in retaining
native traditions, enculturating children, and resisting dom-
inant culture is Ferguson’s (1992) archaeological study of
African-style pottery made by recently arrived African slaves
in the American South. Ferguson (1992) found that the earth-
enware pots were made to accommodate traditional African
cooking and eating methods. Along with other goods either
brought from Africa or copied from African models (houses,
shrines, ornaments), pottery helped keep aspects of African
culture alive in the New World. Ferguson argues that these
pots and the food they held (rice and okra, both introduced
from Africa) were involved in creating identity and molding
values, allowing slaves to ignore European American culture
and develop their own (Ferguson 1992:119–120; Ferguson
even found pots made by children, supporting evidence of
the role of pottery in enculturation [1992:87]). In an even
more active view of the role of material culture, Silliman
(2001) argues that Native Americans on an Anglo ranch in
early nineteenth-century California continued to use stone
tools as part of their political negotiation of identity and
gender.
Archaeologists should be aware that occasionally captives
with esoteric knowledge or power attributed to their distant
origins might have been able to introduce new objects with
high symbolic content or to implement changes to existing
high-value objects. As noted above, Bay (1983) reports that
in Africa, the “society of the dead” was introduced by slave
wives of the king of Dahomey into his kingdom during the
late nineteenth century. Although she does not discuss ma-
terial objects associated with this society, we might anticipate
the presence of such objects in this society and in others.
While at times captives may have appeared eager to blend
in to the society of their captors and may even have become
advocates for captor society (e.g., DeBoer 1986, 2008), we
 194
should be alert to hidden acts of resistance in the material
goods they produced, including symbolic references to their
places of origin, such as those identified among enslaved pop-
ulations in the New World (Deagan 1998:32–34; Scott 1990).
For example, Ruppel et al. (2003) show how African Amer-
icans in the Chesapeake Bay area arranged everyday objects
in interior or exterior spaces in ways that recreated and re-
ferenced African traditional beliefs and that the meaning of
these arrangements was opaque to their masters (see also
Ferguson 1999). Both Ferguson (1992:119–120) and Singleton
(1998:180) argue that by creating a culture entirely separate
from that of their masters, African slaves in the New World
engaged in active resistance to their oppression.
Conclusions
Prehistoric archaeology should widen models of intercultural
interaction to recognize the contributions of captives to cul-
ture change. Captives, especially captive women, were com-
mon in many (perhaps most) prehistoric societies, especially
those that were involved in frequent or endemic warfare. Cap-
tives brought with them a repertoire of technological skills,
symbol systems, religious practices, social customs, and lan-
guages that were available for adoption by their captors. In
spite of low social standing, captives could be vectors of cul-
ture change.
Captives in nonstate societies were most frequently taken
during warfare or raiding; they were generally women and
children, they could be traded over long distances, and they
often formed a surprisingly large proportion of the captor
society. Captives labored at a wide variety of tasks, including
subsistence activities, manufacturing, and domestic chores.
Colonial penetration into traditional societies and especially
European demand for labor likely increased the numbers of
captives held by nonstate societies. However, archaeological,
osteological, and linguistic data, as well as oral histories, stud-
ies of labor, early travelers’ accounts, and other sources, dem-
onstrate that captives formed a common social role in many
societies long before the advent of European colonization.
Captives were forced to accept the cultural practices of their
captors, but the central argument of this paper is that the
transmission of cultural practices in these situations was not
all in one direction. As historical archaeologists studying New
World plantation slavery have discovered, even in the most
restrictive industrial systems of slavery, practices from the
slave’s natal society were transmitted to captor society. We
can expect that in the far more intimate domestic relationships
between captive and captor that characterized nonstate so-
cieties, the transmission of cultural practices from captive to
captor would be significantly more common. Understanding
this “bottom-up” process involves evaluating the parameters
conditioning the transfer of cultural practices from captive to
captor society. These factors include the age, sex, and skill
level of the captive. The frequent capture of reproductive-age
women suggests that captives might have been most likely to
Current Anthropology Volume 52, Number 2, April 2011
introduce aspects of their natal culture through female-linked
activities, such as the production of household goods or hor-
ticultural practices. The attitude of the captor society toward
captives could limit the ability of a captive to transmit ele-
ments of her natal culture, although these limitations could
be ameliorated if she was held by a high-status household or
with a large group of captives from the same place or if she
had special skills or knowledge or had gained the ability to
act as a cultural intermediary. As archaeologists, our view of
the contributions of captives will come primarily from studies
of the material culture they produced, and there is good evi-
dence that captives in nonstate societies were involved in the
production of virtually every element of material culture pro-
duced in the society of their captors (tools, containers, cloth-
ing, furniture, and buildings). They may have been most likely
to transmit elements of their natal culture when working with
simple technologies or ones with which they already had some
degree of familiarity, when they were working with objects
that had little social meaning to captor society, and when
introducing attributes from their natal society that were not
highly visible, such as a variant of a production step. Captives
whose distant origins accorded them some level of respect or
power in captor society would, of course, have been at a
significant advantage in transmitting cultural practices from
their places of origin.
This study of captives’ contributions to culture change is
a first step. I hope that other archaeologists will develop the
concepts presented here by using particular archaeological
cases. The study of captives is a potentially enormous topic
in which issues of power, gender, class, personhood, and
agency are all engaged. Captives’ roles as active agents of
culture change, however, should be of most interest to ar-
chaeologists.
Acknowledgments
Thanks to Jim Skibo and Jeff Grathwohl, who gave me an
opportunity to develop my interest in captives in prehistory as
part of a Foundations of Archaeological Inquiry conference held
in 2006, and also to the participants in that conference—Susan
Alt, Ken Ames, Brenda Bowser, James Brooks, Warren DeBoer,
Judith A. Habicht-Mauche, Laura Junker, Noel Lenski, Debra
Martin, Peter Peregrine, Peter Robertshaw, and Ann Stahl—
for many interesting interactions on the topic of captives. A
number of people shared their insights or work in progress
with me, including Keith Bradley, David Fleck, Peter Hunt, and
Warren DeBoer. Brenda Bowser, Art Joyce, Steve Lekson, Mark
Mitchell, Payson Sheets, and four anonymous reviewers pro-
vided valuable comments on drafts of the paper. Colleagues at
the School for Advanced Research, Jamila Bargach, Gloria Bell,
Lucas Bessire, Sarah Croucher, Doug Kiel, and Teresa Montoya
provided insights and comments on my reply to the commen-
tators. Special thanks to Brenda Bowser and Steve Lekson, who
read several drafts and who were always willing to talk about
Cameron Captives and Culture Change
captives. Jakob Sedig adeptly handled technical matters. My
thanks to all; any errors remain my own.
Comments
James F. Brooks
School for Advanced Research, P.O. Box 2188, Santa Fe,
New Mexico 87504-2188, U.S.A. (jfb@sarsf.org). 9 VII 10
As an ethnohistorian concerned with chronicling the signif-
icance of captives, especially women and children, in the his-
tories of indigenous and colonizing peoples in the Southwest
Borderlands of North America and through extensions to
western Canada, the Russian Caucasus, Transorgangia, and
the Argentine Pampas (Brooks 1996, 2001, 2002, 2008a,
2008b), I commend Cameron’s impressive article. Compre-
hensive in range and conceptualizing insightfully, Cameron
places the question under the searchlight of her discipline.
Moreover, scholars from other disciplines will be the better
for her efforts.
My own devotion to the topic came accidentally as I
plumbed family histories among Hispano families in the Col-
orado coalfields and found that many harbored stories of
Native America forebears who had entered those families as
captives. At the same time, some of these same families had
lost members to captivity among Navajos, Comanches, and
Apaches, a form of human circulation little acknowledged in
the region. Cameron shows how widespread was this “hidden
history” of cultural transfer and that sorting out the influences
of captive exchange among cultural groups poses a compelling
research challenge. A focus on material culture may well il-
luminate what the narrative silences wish to suppress.
Historians of captivity will applaud Cameron’s argument
that archaeological methods may comprehend—and help oth-
ers to understand—the complex transmission of cultural
ideas, artifacts, and long-term change by attending to the
“novel technologies, ideologies, and social behavior” that were
forcibly transferred in the hands and minds of captives. This
is especially true if archaeologists’ focus on material culture
will allow us to see tangible examples of cultural transmission
beyond those thin allusions historians find in the documen-
tary record. It is one thing to learn that Spanish governors
put their captive Ute women to work in obrajes to weave
mantas and stockings for export to Mexico but another to
see these cotton and woolen products, and the looms that
yielded them, centuries later. So, too, for archaeologists’ skill
in seeing social distinctions in households and settlement pat-
terns in ways that usually elude historians’ eyes. There will
be shouting in the streets of Santa Fe if an archaeologist one
day confirms—in evidence visible and tactile—the oft-
repeated assertion that the Barrio de Analco did, indeed, har-
bor the genı́zaro Indian slaves of that villa.
195
Yet several related elements of captives’ roles in culture
change deserve attention deeper than that in Cameron’s essay.
She may believe that they lie beyond the evidentiary grasp of
archaeology, but I urge the discipline to engage these issues
as well. The affective worlds of captives and captors, the close
relationship between captive and marriage economies, and
the place of captives in political and diplomatic relations pre-
sent opportunities for archaeologists, ethnographers, and his-
torians to work more closely in concert.
The emotional and psychological tensions and bonds that
shaped relations among captives and captors have proven a
topic of obsession since the Mercedarians and Puritans used
them as allegories for the struggle between the godly and the
satanic (Allen 2009; Davis 2009; Rodriguez 2007). The great
threat, of course, lay in the potential for captives to shift con-
fessional, affective, and kin allegiance from their natal peoples
to those who held them in bondage (Demos 1995; Mifflin
2009). Cameron references this dilemma in the fourteenth-
century Grasshopper Pueblo case (Lowell 2007) as one expla-
nation for the preponderance of women in that community’s
burial assemblages. Such shifts seem likely throughout the so-
cieties Cameron treats—supported by ethnographic cases
(Bowser 2008) as well—and this suggests that any sharp dis-
tinction separating a traffic in women as captives and the traffic
in women as wives ought be rigorously questioned in our stud-
ies. If we place captivity at one end of a continuum of semi-
coerced unions and marriage at the other end, we may find
that the capture and integration of women and children rep-
resent the most violent expression of a wider universe of ex-
change traditions and is therefore closely allied with classic
anthropological thought on the source of “culture” itself (Barr
2005; Brooks 1996; Collier 1988; Engels 1972 [1884]; Lerner
1986; Levi-Strauss 1969 [1949]; Mies 1988; Rubin 1975).
Once we treat the circulation of captives as conceptually
and functionally similar to the circulation of wives (or fictive
kin) between societies, we can see more clearly the political
and diplomatic potency of captives in social change. Although
captive wives (and children) often found themselves inte-
grated as kin (or quasi kin) among their captors, signaling a
shift in allegiances, they did not always sever kin and social
relationships with those they left behind. In the Southwest
Borderlands, these transcultural linkages sometimes facilitated
antistate action by “communities of interest” that reached
across the indigenous/colonial divide, to the consternation of
imperial and national authorities (Barr 2007; Brooks 2009).
Similar transtribal conduits characterized fragile alliances, un-
derwrote conflict, and transmitted disease in the colonial
American Southeast, the nineteenth-century Ohio Valley, and
as far distant as transcordilleran diplomacy in Argentina and
Chile (Brooks 2008b; Ekberg 2007; Ethridge 2010; Kelton
2007; Rushforth 2006; Snyder 2010). Archaeologists may, I
hope, attend to each of these additional aspects of captivity
and in doing so enrich their own and allied disciplines in a
potent field of inquiry.
 196
Janet M. Chernela
Department of Anthropology, University of Maryland, Col-
lege Park, Maryland 20182, U.S.A. (chernela@umd.edu). 11
XII 10
“Captives and Culture Change” by Catherine Cameron is an
important review of captive circumstances and the challenges
for researchers in recognizing the contributions of captives,
particularly women, to the cultures of their captors. Implicit
in her argument but underexplored is the possibility that
captives have been far more influential than acknowledged
by captors. I explore this possibility while suggesting that
influence and subordination are not mutually exclusive, as
prevailing theory and Cameron’s article suppose.
To illustrate, I use the case of the northwest Amazon in Brazil
and Colombia, where speakers of some 20 distinct Eastern
Tukanoan and Arawakan languages carried out abduction, in-
duction, and subordination over centuries, with persistent con-
sequences. The inheritance of peoples of this region was forged
in a crucible of population displacement, interethnic assimi-
lation, coercive kin making, and bride capture. I focus on two
related phenomena involved in the institution of reciprocal
bride capture: captor-captive relations and captive agency.
Dangerous liaisons. Eastern Tukanoans generally prohibit
marriage within the language group, requiring that persons
find spouses from alien groups. The ethnographic literature
presents two conventional means of marrying: violent seizure
and negotiation (Århem 1981; Goldman 1963; Hugh-Jones
1979; Jackson 1992).
Goldman and Århem have described bride capture as the
stated ideal for marriage. Goldman describes a “rite of ab-
duction” that accompanies formal marriages in which a young
man and his sibmates attempt to seize a girl in her home
village (Goldman 1963:142–144). As the visitors force the girl
to their canoe, she implores her kinsmen and fights off her
would-be abductors. If the girl is willing, according to Gold-
man, there is no “serious damage” (Goldman 1963:144).
Århem (1981) recounts that all disputes he observed were
“over women and . . . small-scale raids to capture women”
(9). Together, Goldman and Århem’s accounts suggest that
all Eastern Tukanoan marriages are regarded as abductions,
with those agreed on and prearranged marked by ritual cap-
ture and those lacking agreement carried out through actual
violent capture. The first accompanies the reciprocal exchange
of women; the second the absence of such exchange (Århem
1981; Chernela 2008a). Expectations of reciprocity and the
tallying of conjugal exchange were, and still are, followed with
vigilance.
Although the raiding that once typified the region is now
unlawful, married women continue to be identified with the
stigma of alien. Ritualized bride capture recapitulates the cap-
tivity of wives, reproducing their Otherness and the adver-
sarial relations among in-law groups.
Current Anthropology Volume 52, Number 2, April 2011
At the same time, by distributing stakes in future generations
across distinct language groups, marriage brings former ene-
mies within the boundaries of the moral community. Thus,
relations of enmity, hatred, and hostility are transformed into
positive familial relations created through the agency of women.
In what James Brooks (2008a:288) calls a “fearsome paradox,”
forms of war “contain” peace (Albers 1993).
Captives and captors. Such cycles of predation result in
residential units that defy homogeneity and confound essen-
tialisms. As early as 1965, Roger Owen challenged assump-
tions of ethnic uniformity when he demonstrated the world-
wide frequency of culturally and linguistically “hybrid bands”
(Owen 1965). Later, Sharrock (1974) argued that the Cree
ethnic unit, linguistic unit, territorial coresidential unit, and
the societal unit “did not correspond in membership com-
position” (96). More recently, Albers (1993) examined inter-
marriage in Plains history. Albers calculated a minimum num-
ber of foreign wives adopted or captured per generation,
concluding that one-half of all Cheyenne wives/mothers
would have been foreigners within 200 years. If the northwest
Amazon is a model, the estimate is conservative.
In the highly common practice of mutual raiding, the roles
of captive and captor alternate. The result over time is a
residential unit in which foreign captive women (1) approx-
imately equal the number of adult males in the community
and (2) are thoroughly enmeshed in kin networks of both
captives and captors. Among Tukanoans, a woman’s mother-
in-law, father-in-law, sisters-in-law, and brothers-in-law may
be her close relatives. Her greatest influence, moreover, is as
mother. All children in Eastern Tukanoan society are born to
foreign mothers.
Where foreign wives are abducted, women—ideologically
and categorically rendered subordinate—may be powerful
agents of culture change and cohesion (Chernela 2003). As
foreigners with multiple allegiances, Tukanoan women are
positioned at the center of the relations of production. In-
marrying wives provide in-laws with innovative horticultural
techniques and plant varieties; they contribute novel food
preparations; and they open crucial channels for trade and
diplomacy between distant settlements (Chernela 1986).
In Tukanoan craft circulation, the only means available to
a nonproducer to acquire a specialized item is through mar-
rying a woman of the producing group. The distribution of
these items traces the movements of women throughout the
intermarrying region (Chernela 1992, 2008b).
Ethnologists of the northwest Amazon recognize that lin-
guistically distinct patriclans are articulated through marriage
to form a unified social and cultural system, yet they neglect
to relate this phenomenon to the role of women in the dy-
namic formation of common ground and mutual knowledge.
When women are included in the analysis, what emerges is
not a series of discrete ethnicities but a multiethnic cosmo-
politan society. If once distinct language groups became ho-
mogenous over time, the most persuasive agent of change lies
in the roles played by women, whose origins lay in captivity.
Cameron Captives and Culture Change
Olivier P. Gosselain
Centre d’Anthropologie Culturelle, CP 124, Université Libre
de Bruxelles, 44 avenue Jeanne, 1050 Brussels, Belgium
(olivier.gosselain@africamuseum.be). 2 IX 10
Any study that considers cultural transmission and cultural
dynamics seriously, without getting bogged down in the “evo-
lutionary theories” that have been endlessly sold to archae-
ologists for the past 20 years, must be saluted, as does any
study paying attention to a category of social actors whose
sheer importance through time and space seems inversely
proportional to the attention devoted to them in archaeo-
logical discussions. Cameron’s paper is thus a most welcome
addition to current debates on the dynamics of cultural in-
teractions, especially because it offers a refreshing perspective
on cultural transfers with its “bottom-up” perspective. I cer-
tainly rally to her contention that we should change the scale
of archaeological approaches and that captives qualify as po-
tential agents of culture change. The extent to which the
Atlantic slave trade affected religious, food, or language prac-
tices in the New World is a good illustration at hand.
Yet the question of how such potential materializes in ar-
tifact production and may be recognized as such in the ar-
chaeological record remains severely challenging. At the end
of her paper, Cameron seems to oscillate between two posi-
tions. The first, inspired by Clark (2001), considers that the
less visible and socially invested elements of material culture
(e.g., mundane objects, production tasks) are likely arenas
within which captives herald their native identities and resist
dominant culture. They do so in reproducing knowledge and
know-how acquired before their capture, thus becoming in-
dividual “depositaries” of cultural practices that may be par-
tially transferred to captors’ societies so long as they stay
“below the radar” of the dominant culture. Cameron’s second
position is more nuanced. It states that the decision to aban-
don or reproduce native ways of doing depends on the social
position and attitude of both captives and captors. Thus, the
recipient culture is not just “another context” where cultural
practices are to be transferred but a socially and historically
constituted world where the changing relationships between
captives and captors determine the dynamics of cultural trans-
mission. And given the variety of status and attitudes in cap-
tors’ societies through time and space, such dynamics are
likely to be highly variable.
Both positions could be considered complementary. I am
afraid, however, that the first is too reductionist to serve Cam-
eron’s aim. Having developed a model similar to Clark’s
(Gosselain 2000), I now believe that this “low physical and
contextual visibility” line of reasoning is wrong because it
keeps an outsider point of view on technical practice (Gosse-
lain 2008). “Doing” is not just a question of fitting with
explicit cultural expectations or prescriptions; from a pro-
ducer point of view, it is also a way of defining one’s own
197
identity through membership in a meaningful context (Lave
1996). But what is a “meaningful context” for captives en-
gaged in production activities? Their new society? Their native
society? Following Lave, I would rather point to their social
world of activity. In societies where captives or slaves assume
most or all craft activities, newcomers are likely to enter pre-
existing communities of practice whose members share a
common technical and aesthetic repertoire. Becoming a mem-
ber means adopting such a repertoire. The newcomers may
refuse to do so. But as slavery involves an initial dehuman-
ization of individuals through the stripping of their former
social identity (Kopytoff 1982), this would relegate them to
some sort of “social limbo,” an unbearable position in most
human societies. Developing membership through shared
practice, on the other hand, is a powerful way of acquiring
a new social identity and, in the case of slaves, being rehu-
manized. This means, however, adopting parts of a repertoire
that may have low physical and contextual visibility for out-
siders (Gosselain 2008).
Captives would thus be better positioned as agents of cul-
ture change if they did not constitute a specialized force of
production or if they were subject to segregation rather than
assimilation. In the first case, novel techniques and ideas
would be introduced randomly and in isolation, depending
on captives’ prior knowledge and capacity to put them into
practice. Note, however, that the adoption of alien things
generally involves a reformulation (Wenger 1998). In the sec-
ond case, captives may tend to reproduce native ways in areas
uncontrolled by their captors, for example, making pots the
native way and for one’s own consumption, as in New World
plantations. But then what is their ability to affect the captor’s
culture? If inserted into castelike specialist groups, however,
captives are likely to become invisible, both because of the
resocialization process endured when entering a new com-
munity of practice and because captors consume what they
produce.
Such complexity should not compel us to stop looking for
captives and their effect in the archaeological record. My point
is just that doing so requires that aspects such as social strat-
ification and craft specialization be taken into consideration.
Fortunately, these are not out of reach for archaeologists.
Chapurukha M. Kusimba
Department of Anthropology, Field Museum of Natural
History, 1400 South Lake Shore Drive, Chicago, Illinois
60605, U.S.A. (ckusimba@fieldmuseum.org). 19 VIII 10
“Captives and Culture Change: Implications for Archaeology,”
by Catherine M. Cameron, discusses the role captive women
played as agents of change. The article contributes to an on-
going discussion concerning the means through which knowl-
 198
edge transfer occurs. Although she focuses on tribal and chief-
dom societies, the author addresses questions of great
relevance to all societies. She decries the inability of archae-
ology to develop meaningful models for operationalizing
transmission of cultural practices.
Cameron’s article is based on the premise that for much
of humankind’s existence, conflict, coercion, and warfare have
been the primary modus operandi for making a living. War-
fare provided the primary means for securing much-needed
resources and legitimized the looting and annexation of
resource-rich territories but most of all made it possible for
the victors to increase their numbers through capturing
women and children. Women, especially reproductive women,
and children were especially popular for capture because they
provided much-needed labor, were easy to rehabilitate, were
potentially less dangerous opponents, and could make excel-
lent wives and companions.
Setting the spotlight on captives is a compelling proposi-
tion, one that has the potential to transform our perspectives
on understanding the evolution of inequality, technology and
biological transfer, and the evolution of language. Until now,
archaeologists and historians have attributed large-scale so-
cietal transformations, in particular technology transfers, to
migration, trade, conquest, colonization, and assimilation.
Cameron introduces the notion of enforced migration—cap-
tivity and the role of captives—as an equally plausible and
potentially powerful means through which cultural transfor-
mations likely occurred. She employs many examples from
all corners of the worlds and in all societies, from tribal
through state societies.
To make her argument, Cameron has accepted, perhaps
uncritically, the ideas put forth by those who have champi-
oned coercion, conflict, and warfare as a cultural universal
and perhaps the most common means through which re-
sources were acquired (e.g., Keeley 1996). According to this
view, coercion was the primary way of conducting business
between stranger communities, with the outcome being loot-
ing. Included in the booty were livestock and people, in par-
ticular reproductively active women and children (both boys
and girls). Captives were sources of labor, procreation, and
statuses for their captors.
Cameron makes an excellent argument, laced with many
examples, for considering the role of captives in shaping cul-
tural transformations alongside other mechanisms, including
trade, migration, and colonization (e.g., Oka and Kusimba
2009), which up to now have provided the major interpretive
frameworks for evaluating social change in complex societies.
The detailed tables serve to illustrate and strengthen the ar-
gument that as archaeologists, we need to take seriously the
idea that until the nineteenth century, bondage, peonage, and
other forms of servitude were the norm. Entertaining this
problematic notion calls into question our perspectives on
how we evaluate humankind’s contributions to global history.
Is it possible that our civilization is a product of coerced labor
and that without elite manipulation, voting with feet was likely
Current Anthropology Volume 52, Number 2, April 2011
to have been the norm? Is it just possible that women, whether
captive or free, may well be the chief architects of change?
And how could archaeologists have missed this for so long?
The main point of the article is that some of the mundane
transformations that we often see in the archaeological record
and that we explain away in terms of intermarriage, migration,
imitation, interregional trade, conquest, colonization, and as-
similation may indeed be the products of captive labor. The
very idea may seem scandalous and indeed may well be seen
as such. The question now is, how does one go about teasing
out the material culture produced by captive labor from that
produced by free labor? Indeed, perhaps the weakest section
of the article resides in Cameron’s failure to explicitly show
how archaeologists might go about identifying evidence for
captive material culture. The detailed tables provide further
evidence for captives, but in reality these are footnotes rather
than a checklist that a student of archaeology might use for
beginning a discussion for interpreting his/her data. The tables
could also do with tighter editing and in their present form
confuse the reader. As archaeologists, we still find evidence
for slavery difficult to read (Alexander 2001; cf. Kusimba
2004) despite the overwhelming historical evidence for the
institution in precolonial Africa. As Cameron proposes, new
methodologies, including stable-isotope analysis and genetics,
coupled with traditional archaeology of mortuary studies, may
provide avenues for distinguishing free and captive popula-
tions. But this is not going to be an easy task, because the
window for conducting large-scale excavations of human re-
mains is pretty much closed in many parts of the world.
Be that as it may, this is an important contribution that
challenges mainstream ideas for evaluating evolution of cul-
ture. It poses interesting and provocative questions and pro-
poses intriguing new ways of interrogating the archaeological
record and apportioning credit. But its chief weakness lies in
the author’s failure to interrogate alternative ways of orga-
nization and making a living. For example, a recent global
survey by Richard Blanton and Lane Fargher (2008) highlights
various examples of less deterministic collective human action
in social change.
Julia Lowell
Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Criminology,
University of Northern Iowa, Baker Hall 356, Cedar Falls,
Iowa 50614, U.S.A. (lowell@uni.edu). 24 VI 10
Archaeologists have come a long way from making vague
references to “cultural influence” or “cultural interaction” in
efforts to explain cultural change that involves the apparent
mixing of elements from two or more traditions. Trade, mi-
gration, and intermarriage are among the processes that typ-
ically have been considered. Catherine Cameron adds another
Cameron Captives and Culture Change
important process, one that has largely been ignored by ar-
chaeologists. According to Cameron, because women are of-
ten the ones taken captive, changes in women’s artifacts may
signal captive-taking. Similarly, I have argued (Lowell 2007,
2010) that in times of war, female refugees can contribute to
these often perplexing archaeological mixes of material cul-
ture. Like captive populations, warfare-refugee populations
are characterized by large numbers of women and children
and low numbers of men (e.g., Cohen and Deng 1998). We
are finally abandoning the assumption that population move-
ments always involve whole families with a normal distri-
bution of men, women, and children. This interpretive shift
is rooted in the frequent observation that when material cul-
ture changes, it rarely does so along all dimensions.
It is important that we establish criteria to tease out dif-
ferent processes that produce similar results in the archaeo-
logical record. I suggest that we start with considering the
broad concept of gender imbalance. This concept can help
determine the presence of groups that have produced changes
in material culture that are not uniform from the perspective
of gender. These groups may be captives, warfare refugees, or
even conquerors. Distinguishing between captive-taking and
warfare-refugee movements in the archaeological record will
be particularly tough, because both situations involve greater
numbers of women than of men and therefore encourage
changes in female-oriented material culture in the recipient
community. Other complications include, first, that captive-
taking and refugee movements are not mutually exclusive
activities. Second, both occur in settings of conflict. Third,
both types of migrants will likely be of lower status than the
natives and may have to cope with poor diets or physical
abuse. Finally, both situations might require that in order to
survive, the individuals involved take similar steps, such as
producing craft goods for the dominant population.
In recent research that focuses on burial data and changes
in material culture, I have argued that beginning in the late
thirteenth century, many of the migrant groups to the Grass-
hopper region of Arizona were typical warfare refugees, with
large numbers of women and children and small numbers of
men (Lowell 2007, 2010). In her article, Cameron suggests
that captive-taking might help explain the Grasshopper case.
I stand by my interpretation that the primary reason for the
movements of these particular people was that they were flee-
ing warfare. My arguments for this position might help es-
tablish some criteria for distinguishing between two related
and probably at times overlapping processes. First, it is well
documented that during this conflict-ridden period in the
Pueblo Southwest, major migrations involving abandonments
of some regions and movements into others, including Grass-
hopper (Reid et al. 1996), did take place. Second, motives for
captive-taking during this period are not clear. Why would
the Grasshopper people suddenly begin taking large numbers
of captives whom they would have to feed and protect in a
difficult time of drought and conflict? Third, at Grasshopper
Pueblo it has been established that one room block of some
199
100 rooms housed many of the immigrants (Riggs 2001). If
these immigrants were captives, this room block would rep-
resent a haremlike housing situation. Harems do not make
much sense in the context of the generally egalitarian culture
of these people. Finally, through their mythology and history,
a powerful ethic of hospitality is well documented among the
historic Pueblos (e.g., Fewkes 1894; Kroeber 1917; White
1935). This tradition includes taking in migrant groups. Al-
though some captive-taking occurred among the historic
Pueblos, hospitality is a far more regularly documented pro-
cess that would bring groups of people from different
traditions together in one community. Also, through an anal-
ysis of architecture and changes in material culture, I have
demonstrated that hospitality came into play prehistorically
in the Grasshopper region when native peoples allowed some
of the migrants to live in houses that the natives had originally
constructed for themselves (Lowell 2007, 2010).
Cameron’s thorough and thought-provoking paper makes
a valuable contribution by encouraging archaeologists to con-
sider the common cross-cultural practice of captive-taking
and how it might influence the archaeological record. I suggest
that considering the concept of gender imbalance is helpful,
because several different circumstances involving gender im-
balance, particularly captive-taking and refugee movements,
might look similar in the archaeological record. Our challenge
is to work out criteria that might help distinguish the different
processes leading to gender imbalance from each other. In
general, explaining the presence of nonnative women in a
society requires that our explanation fits into what we know
of the broader picture.
Fernando Santos-Granero
Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Unit 9100, Box
0948, DPO AA 34002-9998, U.S.A. (santosf@si.edu). 6 VII
10
The call for an archaeology of slavery by Catherine M. Cam-
eron is both timely and stimulating. The capture of human
beings for a variety of purposes—including enslavement—is
a social practice found in all times and places and is far from
having been completely eradicated (see Quirk 2008). Un-
questionably, the capture, uprooting, and circulation of slaves
is objectionable. It can be argued, however, that, together with
the incest taboo, captive slavery has been one of the main
mechanisms by which historic and prehistoric societies have
ensured biological and cultural exchanges. In most of these
societies, slavery assumed the form of exoservitude, that is,
the enslavement of people from different, often distant, ethnic
groups (Lévy-Bruhl 1931:9). This explains why researchers
studying the connection between genetic and linguistic relat-
edness in Native America have concluded that “the genetic
 200
affinities among tribes show no clear linguistic or geographic
pattern” (Mousinho-Ribeiro et al. 2003:232; also see Black et
al. 1983). In other words, interethnic admixture does not
result from marriage exchange between linguistically or geo-
graphically close peoples but most probably from practices
such as captive slavery.
The capture of enemy people—especially young women
and children—has not only ensured genetic diversity but has
also stimulated intercultural exchange. Cameron’s article fo-
cuses on this latter aspect, placing emphasis on the factors
that must be taken into consideration in order to detect the
cultural signature left by captives in the archaeological record.
Her intriguing reflections on the topic concern regimes of
servitude in which slaves are captured as individuals and in-
corporated as such into their captors’ society. In those con-
texts, captives are generally forced to adopt the language and
mores of their captors. They are seriously constrained in their
ability to express their ethnic origins and cultural traditions.
As a result, evidence of their presence should be looked for
in “attributes with low physical and contextual visibility,” such
as artifacts with little social or symbolic meaning or with
imperceptible manufacturing steps and methods of produc-
tion. Cameron’s main point, and one that cannot be stressed
sufficiently, is that although captives are forced to adopt the
cultural practices of their captors, cultural transmission in
such contexts is never unidirectional.
Here, I would like to enrich an already rich discussion by
calling attention to other regimes of servitude that differ in
important ways from those discussed by Cameron, to wit, the
capture, incorporation, and eventual assimilation of enemy
collectivities as “servant groups.” In tropical America, this
was the case of the Makú subjected by the Tukano of north-
west Amazonia, the Chané subjugated by the Chiriguaná of
eastern Bolivia, and the Naborey conquered by the Taino of
Hispaniola (Santos-Granero 2009, 2011). In those cases, the
conquering peoples—generally newcomers to the region—
occupied vast areas, subjecting entire native settlements. They
were thus faced with the challenge of incorporating large
numbers of captives. Under such circumstances, “natal alien-
ation,” the process by which war captives are uprooted, de-
personalized, and alienated from the rights and ties to which
they are entitled by birth, was not a viable option (Patterson
1982:111). Collectivities thus conquered were resettled in the
periphery of their captors’ settlements and incorporated as
servant groups. They were allowed to retain their authorities,
family networks, and a certain modicum of autonomy, but
they were always at the beck and call of their masters, who
held rights of life and death over them. More importantly,
they were often encouraged to pursue their particular skills,
especially those their captors lacked, such as Makú hunting
abilities or Chané farming know-how.
Unlike captive slaves, however, who within the space of one
or two generations were totally assimilated, servant groups un-
derwent a much longer process of ethnic transfiguration that
ended not with complete assimilation but rather with the emer-
Current Anthropology Volume 52, Number 2, April 2011
gence of new hybrid identities embracing elements from the
cultural traditions of both conquered and conquerors. Makú
servant groups were eventually assimilated as low-status patri-
sibs; the acculturated Naborey became members of an endog-
amous servile stratum; the conquered Chané, on the other
hand, adopted the language and traditions of their Chiriguaná
masters but retained the stigma of being slave descendants. The
traces left by these servile populations in the archaeological
record should be more visible than those left by individual
captive slaves. More importantly, in such situations, the role of
servant groups as vectors of cultural change was even greater
than that in regimes of servitude based only in captive slavery,
with servants often passing onto their masters not only new
technologies, rituals, and cosmologies but also alternative social
models (see Combés and Lowrey 2006). In brief, in order for
the proposed archaeology of slavery to be effective, it must
necessarily take into consideration the variations in cultural
signatures entailed by different regimes of servitude including
not only captive slavery but also servant groups and even trib-
utary populations.
Natalie J. Swanepoel
Department of Anthropology and Archaeology, P.O. Box
392, University of South Africa, 0003, Pretoria, South
Africa (swanenj@unisa.ac.za). 13 VII 10
Stahl (2008:38) argues that regarding slavery as present and
integral to the functioning of social, political, and economic
landscapes in West Africa, in short as a social fact, frees schol-
ars from investigating slavery as a “special topic” and rather
directs us to its process, the examination of which must be
integrated into the research process (Stahl 2008:42). In this
paper, Cameron presents enough examples from a range of
times and places to convince me that depending on the spe-
cific context, archaeologists should also regard the presence
of a captive population (including but not limited to slaves)
as a “social fact” rather than something that must be proven
before it can be examined further.
As demonstrated by Cameron, captive-taking resulting
from warfare, conflict, and raiding most probably formed the
basis for cultural exchange in a number of societies, including
decentralized and nonstate societies. What does seem to
emerge from the discussion, however, is that captives are likely
to be more archaeologically visible in interactions between
societies of differing complexity. This is mostly because the
reasons for and the nature of captive-taking by state-based
societies may have been very different from those in small-
scale societies, most notably in the degree to which captive-
taking can be regarded as a form of mutual cultural exchange.
To take the expansion of settler societies in North America
or southern Africa (Boeyens 1994:190) as an example, captive-
Cameron Captives and Culture Change
taking and the subsequent incorporation of captives into those
societies grew out of the broader process of colonialism and
the consolidation of power through the appropriation of not
only the natural resources of indigenous people but also their
labor resources. Native Americans forced into indentured ser-
vitude occupied a different “space” as captives than captured
Spanish women forced to marry a local chief. While both
may be conceived, as Cameron points out, as an affirmation
of the power of the captor, they speak to broader structural
asymmetries between the two societies. Within a context that
is made up of interactions between small-scale societies, par-
ticularly in cases where political formations are no larger than
one or a group of villagers, these power relations are not as
asymmetrical and are more likely to be representative of a
form of mutual cultural exchange, where groups raid one
another. Over generations this may lead to a homogenization
of material culture across the archaeological landscape.
The problem is also one of terminology. All of the examples
given by Cameron fall under the larger rubric of “captives,”
but while these historical individuals may have started out as
“captives”—in many ways a liminal status—they were inte-
grated into their captor society in a variety of ways. I find it
more useful, therefore, to think of these individuals as being
incorporated somewhere along a continuum of belonging
(outsider, captive, slave, lower caste, spouse, adoptive kin, and
so on). Captives as social persons may move up or down this
continuum, depending on the context and the degree to which
they can be alienated once again from their captor society
(this is implicit in what Cameron has argued), and it is this
place on the continuum, the context of their belonging, that
will determine what cultural traits they pass on and how.
I fully agree with Cameron that captives formed an integral
part in many nonstate and state societies and that they would
have played an important role in introducing new cultural
practices and material-cultural techniques. Our understand-
ing of this process should not, however, rest on identifying
anomalies in the archaeological record that can be attributed
to the actions of captives. Silliman (2010) has made this point
with reference to finding indigenous peoples in colonial con-
texts. Through their labor, indigenous people probably in-
teracted as much with colonial material culture as the colo-
nists, and their presence is implied in large-scale labor projects
such as buildings. Silliman (2010) thus argues that “people
occupying very different levels of social power shared material
and architectural items, and historical archaeologists must be
attuned to that multiple layered meaning” (50) A similar ar-
gument could be made for captives. Once we have deter-
mined, with reference to the specific historical context, that
captive-taking was practiced, we need to integrate the pos-
sibility, indeed the probability, of captives into our explana-
tory frameworks independent of whether we can exactly pin-
point such captives archaeologically.
Ultimately, this paper throws up more questions than it
answers—by no means a bad thing. All of these questions
highlight the critical issues of scale and context that cannot
201
be resolved in the length of a single paper. It is thus clear
that Cameron’s paper (and indeed her edited volume [Cam-
eron 2008]) represents only the beginning of a larger intel-
lectual project that will require theoretical and practical de-
velopment by a number of scholars working in varied
contexts.
Reply
My article “Captives and Culture Change: Implications for
Archaeology” urges archaeologists to explore the potential
contributions of a marginal, “invisible” people to processes
of prehistoric culture change. I was delighted that the com-
mentators agreed that this research direction should be ex-
plored. I was even more pleased with the strong suggestions
for how we might move forward. The commentators’ insight-
ful comments highlight a number of issues that archaeologists
must address if we are to successfully incorporate captives
into our explanations of culture change. In my response, I
will underscore and expand on several of the important and
interrelated issues they raised. These include a broader po-
sitioning of captives within the complex set of processes that
move people around landscapes (marriage, migration, refu-
geeism), a critical questioning of the term “captive,” an in-
creased focus on the role of captives as intermediaries between
captor and natal cultures, the cultural hybridity that may have
occurred when entire populations were enslaved and partially
integrated, and especially (a point mentioned by most com-
mentators) consideration of how archaeologists might “find”
captives in the archaeological record.
The movement of people, especially women, across land-
scapes could take a variety of forms. Both James Brooks and
Janet Chernela emphasize the fine line between socially sanc-
tioned marriage and an unwilling, abducted bride, while Julia
Lowell points to the difficulty in distinguishing captive women
from war refugees. Chernela describes a synergistic system of
real and fictive bride capture among the Eastern Tukanoan
of the northwest Amazon, where groups alternate roles as
raiders and victims and foreign (often captive) women are
central nodes in a process Chernela calls “coercive kin mak-
ing” (see also Snyder 2010 for a North American example).
Chernela provides an excellent illustration of the major point
of my article: captive women were at the heart of the process
of culture change that at least in the northwest Amazon re-
sulted in a “multiethnic cosmopolitan society.” James Brooks
looks even more broadly, across vast expanses of territory and
wide cultural gulfs, emphasizing the blurring of captive and
marriage exchange traditions and even averring that captive
women and children were one end of a continuum of human
economic transfer that is “closely allied with classic anthro-
pological thought on the source of ‘culture’ itself.”
I certainly agree with both Brooks and Chernela concerning
 202
captives in a continuum of economic transfer and especially
with captives as agents of culture change. In the article, I
distinguish captive-taking from migration or marriage
through its coercive character and point to DeBoer’s (2008)
study, which shows that in the Americas, captive women were
obtained from just beyond the boundaries of the area where
wives were normally recruited. But I also urge archaeologists
to look at the places in the world where captives could be
transported hundreds or thousands of miles (such as South-
east Asia; Junker 2008), effectively severing natal relationships,
or places (the Northwest Coast, parts of Africa and South
America) where captives were not integrated as kin or quasi
kin but maintained as slaves. One might compare, for ex-
ample, the constant raiding and warfare in the northwest
Amazon, where captive women often became wives, with en-
demic warfare along the Northwest Coast, where captives be-
came and remained slaves down through the generations. The
contributions of captives in these two regions were almost
certainly different, but as my article suggests, the challenge
for archaeology is to determine how social roles of captives
affected the transfer of cultural practices.
Julia Lowell’s discussion of captives versus war refugees
adds another important dimension to our investigation of
factors that move people across the landscape. Her consid-
eration of gender imbalance and its affect on material culture
(Lowell 2007) is a model for microscale studies of culture
change that I hope will result when archaeologists recognize
captives and other “invisible” social actors on the prehistoric
stage. We should perhaps consider the “ethic of hospitality”
that Lowell offers as a reason that Pueblo people in the South-
west invited refugees into their communities. A recent study
by Wesley Bernardini (2005) of Hopi oral traditions dem-
onstrates the complex and intense deliberations that preceded
invitations by Hopi to migrant groups that hoped to join
established settlements. Migrants often had to bring ritual or
other significant property to the table; in other cases, migrants
were accepted to increase population in times of danger. Sim-
ilar deliberations may have preceded the organization of raids
to take captives.
Comments by Brooks, Chernela, Lowell, and especially
Swanepoel raise important terminological questions about the
term “captive.” Was there a category of social person (“the
captive”) in a consistent vertical relationship with social actors
that I have labeled “captor?” As the examples presented in
my paper show, the captive experience was highly variable,
hence the blurring of the categories of people who moved
between cultures. Yet as Swanepoel stresses, all captives must
have been incorporated into the society of their captors in
one way or another (wife, slave, adoptee, etc.), meaning that
with time, “captive” was no longer the most important social
role they played. Nonetheless, as I hope my arguments in the
article have established, the ways in which individuals entered
a foreign society probably affected their intellectual and ma-
terial contributions to that society. Even if “captive” was a
temporary social role, the origin of these individuals in a
Current Anthropology Volume 52, Number 2, April 2011
foreign, often distant culture is significant for understanding
the process of cultural transmission.
Building on the continuum of captive to kin, James Brooks
urges archaeologists to recognize the powerful roles that cap-
tives could have played as conduits between the cultures of
their birth and those of their captors (see also comments by
Chernela). This is a tremendously important point and one
that goes to the heart of what I hope will be a new under-
standing of the process of culture change. Brooks’s own work
(e.g., Brooks 2002, 2008b) serves as an exemplar for the in-
vestigation of captives’ influential roles as intercultural links.
Captives were often multilingual, and so they could become
cultural intermediaries or facilitate economic exchanges for
their captors and in the process introduce new cultural prac-
tices. Furthermore, they sometimes gained personal power in
the process of intercultural interaction. Brooks urges archae-
ologists to work with scholars in other fields, such as history
and ethnography, to investigate how these critical cultural
transfers took place and their effects on cultural development.
This approach should be highly productive.
Fernando Santos-Granero’s comment provides an impor-
tant new angle on captive-taking and one that archaeologists
should be especially alert to: the capture and incorporation
of “servant groups.” In discussing the Tukano incorporation
of the Makú, Santos-Granero shows how the capture of a
large group that retained some degree of autonomy had a
strong effect on the transmission of cultural practices, re-
sulting in cultural hybrids that blended language, technology,
ritual, cosmology, and social forms. Such servant groups are
certainly not peculiar to South America. Ethridge (2009:37)
describes a similar process in eastern North America, where
social instability resulted in small groups attaching themselves
to larger polities as subordinates. We might also consider
situations where more powerful polities repeatedly undertook
raids and captive-taking against small-scale societies, creating
communities of ethnically related captives within captor so-
cieties (see comment by Swanepoel).
Because of their generally marginal social position in captor
society, captives can be very difficult to find in the archaeo-
logical materials we recover. The commentators almost unan-
imously point to the difficulties of finding captives in the past
but agree that archaeology must consider these “invisible cit-
izens.” Chapurukha Kusimba wonders whether “it [is] pos-
sible that our civilization is a product of coerced labor” but
also voices concerns that I have not shown how archaeologists
might identify material culture left by captives. Although I
discuss some avenues scholars use to identifying captives in
the past (human remains, oral traditions, language), Kusimba
rightly notes that human remains are often not available for
study and that other methods of identification pose other
difficulties. Natalie Swanepoel suggests that captives will be
most archaeologically visible when captives and captors come
from societies at differing levels of social complexity. She ar-
gues (as do other commentators) for a “homogenization of
material culture across the archaeological landscape,” where
Cameron Captives and Culture Change
power relations between raiders and victims are more equal.
However, we must be critical in our application of these ideas.
Recent studies note the selectivity with which cultural prac-
tices are offered or accepted when social groups interact (e.g.,
Mills 2008), and this knowledge must be applied to under-
standing cultural transmission between captive and captor. In
any cultural encounter, people pick and chose among the
traits they accept and reject. Captives may have had far less
freedom in this selection process, but nevertheless it must
have affected the outcome of captive/captor interactions.
Olivier Gosselain comments directly on one of the methods
I suggested for identifying captives in the archaeological rec-
ord, the use of “low-visibility” attributes. Drawing on studies
of prehistoric social boundaries and migration (Bowser 2008;
Carr 1995a; Clark 2001; Stark 1998), I argue that use of a
foreign technique of manufacture, coupled with a local dec-
orative style, might signal the presence of captives in the ar-
chaeological record. “Low-visibility” production steps may be
least likely to be suppressed by captors and most likely to
reflect the presence of captives. But Gosselain astutely suggests
that captives’ contributions to craft production would have
been strongly affected by the “social world of activity” they
entered. This is an important addition to the factors affecting
captive-captor cultural traditions that I developed. Gosselain
notes that stripped of their social identity, captives may well
have entered completely into the craft practices they were
forced to undertake in an effort to gain acceptance and a new
social identity. Not only would this make them difficult to
see archaeologically, but clearly it also limited captives’ op-
portunities to transmit practices from their natal culture. But
as Gosselain points out, such complexity should not suggest
that captives made no contributions to the societies they
joined or that we should despair in finding captives in the
archaeological record. It simply requires us to consider aspects
such as social stratification and craft specialization in our
investigation of the effects of captives on culture change. I
heartily agree.
Although I value and welcome Gosselain’s insights, I still
believe that low-visibility attributes have potential to bring
captives into archaeological focus in many cases. Most pro-
duction activities, especially those undertaken in prestate so-
cieties, admit a myriad of different minor production steps.
Hensler and Blinman (2002), discussed in the article, is a case
in point. Perhaps a foreign woman coiling her pot in the
“wrong” direction might be ostracized by native-born potters,
but what if her product looked sufficiently like theirs? Would
her “mistake” in production necessarily be corrected? Would
she feel constrained to watch every movement of her captors
and duplicate them exactly? Or would she work to get the
final product superficially “right?” In other words, how co-
ercive is the social world of activity that captives join? I think
archaeologists should be alert to the possibilities that low-
visibility production attributes offer.
Developing methods for identifying captives in the ar-
chaeological record may be a challenging task, but the basic
203
issues are not new. Two decades ago, Ruth Tringham (1991)
urged us to abandon the “faceless blobs” with which we peo-
pled the past and look for men and women and their varied
activities. She advocated a “microscale” archaeology of social
relations in prehistory (Tringham 1991:125), a call that has
been taken up often since (for a recent example, see articles
in Brooks, DeCorse, and Walton 2008). Finding captives is
another development in the peopling of the past. As Natalie
Swanepoel points out, “we need to integrate the possibility,
indeed the probability, of captives into our explanatory frame-
works independent of whether we can exactly pinpoint such
captives archaeologically.” I strongly agree and believe that we
will eventually be able to find captives—and their material
record—in many parts of the world.
I am grateful to the commentators for their thoughtful
critiques and valuable insights. My goal for the article was to
explore processes of cultural transmission through a poten-
tially important but often overlooked social person, the cap-
tive. Comments on the article provided helpful and reasoned
evaluations of my arguments and constructive suggestions for
new directions future studies might take. Dialogue surround-
ing the article demonstrates the vigor of current research on
cultural transmission and the importance of microscale ap-
proaches to understanding this process.
—Catherine M. Cameron
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