Dentro do campo da Arqueologia Social a questão do surgimento das primeiras comunidades políticas é um tema central de inquérito. Consagradamente, as ciências sociais assumem que as bases últimas destes processos formativos são, em alguma medida, irresgatáveis, empregando construções ideais e teóricas na formulação, construção de explanações sociológicas e culturais para este fenômeno. Tais explanações muitas vezes tem dificuldades em identificar realidades materiais nas fases ideais que correspondam as fases presumidas em suas formulações metodológicas de mudança social, materialidades estas que são o foco central da disciplina arqueológica. Nosso trabalho se propõe a tentar um estudo crítico de dois contextos materiais fundamentalmente ligados à formação das comunidades políticas no espaço do Mediterrâneo grego, aqueles das póleis de Corinto e Siracusa durante a transição inicial do Período Arcaico. Manteremos como hipótese de trabalho que estas cidades são neste recorte cronológico momentos chave e situações diagnóstico dos processos de formação da Pólis e das fundações da experiência política, procurando ligações entre a interpretação de estruturas construídas e as soluções explanativas propostas pela teoria arqueológica e social, abordando o tema dos surgimento da comunidade política, da cidade e do estado como realidades interligadas. / Within the field of Social Archaeology, the matter of the emergence of the first political communities is a central theme of inquiry. Regarding this problem the Social Sciences have well estabilished that, at in least in some regard, the fundamental bases of such formative processes are fundamentally irretrievable, opting instead to formulate ideal and theoretical constructions as basis on to formulate sociological and cultural explanations for those phenomena. Such explanations often find difficulties in corresponding direct material realities to such theoretically based ideal phases of social change, indeed even while such material realities are the centerpiece of the Archaeological Discipline. Our present work proposes to attempt a critical study of two such material contexts fundamentaly connected to the development of the polítical communities in the Mediterranean Greek area, those of the Poleis of Corinth and Syracuse during the beginnings of the Archaic Period. We mantain as research hypothesis that such contexts are, in this chronology, key moments and syntomatic examples of the formative processes of the Polis and the beginnings of the Political Community, searching for connections between the interpretation of constructed structures and spaces and the explanative solutions proposed by Archaeological and Social Theory, engaging the theme of the formations of the Political Community, the City and the State as interlinked realities.

At the end of the 18th century, Anglo Americans and Europeans entered the mouth of the Columbia River for the first time. There they encountered large villages of Chinookan and other Native Americans. Soon afterwards, the Chinookan People became involved in the global fur trade. Pelts, supplies, and native made goods were exchanged with fur traders, who in return provided Chinookans with a number of trade goods. Over the next 40 years, life changed greatly for the Chinookans; new trade and political alliances were created, foreign goods were introduced, and diseases killed large portions of the population (Hajda 1984; Gibson 1992; Schwantes 1996; Boyd 2011; Boyd et al. 2013). Additionally, fur trade forts, like the Hudson's Bay Company's (HBC) Fort Vancouver, were established. At these forts, new multiethnic communities were created to support the fur trade economy (Hussey 1957; Kardas 1971; Warner and Munnik 1972; Erigero 1992; Burley 1997; Mackie 1997; Wilson 2010). This thesis is an historical archaeological study of how Chinookan peoples at three villages and employees of the later multicultural Village at Fort Vancouver negotiated the processes of contact and colonization. Placed in the theoretical framework of practice theory, everyday ordinary activities are studied to understand how cultural identities are created, reinforced, and changed (Lightfoot et al. 1998; Martindale 2009; Voss 2008). Additionally uneven power relationships are examined, in this case between the colonizer and the colonized, which could lead to subjugation but also resistance (Silliman 2001). In order to investigate these issues, this thesis studies how the new foreign material of vessel glass was and was not used during the everyday practice of tool production. Archaeological studies have found that vessel glass, which has physical properties similar to obsidian, was used to create a variety of tool forms by cultures worldwide (Conte and Romero 2008). Modified glass studies (Harrison 2003; Martindale and Jurakic 2006) have demonstrated that they can contribute important new insights into how cultures negotiated colonization. In this study, modified glass tools from three contact period Chinookan sites: Cathlapotle, Meier, and Middle Village, and the later multiethnic Employee Village of Fort Vancouver were examined. Glass tool and debitage analysis based on lithic macroscopic analytical techniques was used to determine manufacturing techniques, tool types, and functions. Additionally, these data were compared to previous analyses of lithics and trade goods at the study sites. This thesis demonstrates that Chinookans modified glass into tools, though there was variation in the degree to which glass was modified and the types of tools that were produced between sites. Some of these differences are probably related to availability, how glass was conceptualized by Native Peoples, or other unidentified causes. This study suggests that in some ways glass was just another raw material, similar to stone, that was used to create tools that mirrored the existing lithic technology. However at Cathlapotle at least, glass appears to have been relatively scarce and perhaps valued even as a status item. While at Middle Village, glass (as opposed to stone) was being used about a third of the time to produce tools. Glass tool technology at Cathlapotle, Meier, and Middle Village was very similar to the existing stone tool technology dominated by expedient/low energy tools; however, novel new bottle abraders do appear at Middle Village. This multifaceted response reflects how some traditional lifeways continued, while at the same time new materials and technology was recontextualized in ways that made sense to Chinookan peoples. Glass tools increase at the Fort Vancouver Employee Village rather than decrease through time. This response appears to be a type of resistance to the HBC's economic hegemony and rigid social structure. Though it is impossible to know if such resistance was consciously acted on or was just part of everyday activities that made sense in the economic climate of the time. Overall, this thesis demonstrates how a mundane object such as vessel glass, can provide a wealth of information about how groups like the Chinookans dealt with a changing world, and how the multiethnic community at Fort Vancouver dealt with the hegemony of the HBC. Chinookan peoples and the later inhabitants of the Fort Vancouver Employee Village responded to colonization in ways that made sense to their larger cultural system. These responses led to both continuity and change across time.

Dentro do campo da Arqueologia Social a questão do surgimento das primeiras comunidades políticas é um tema central de inquérito. Consagradamente, as ciências sociais assumem que as bases últimas destes processos formativos são, em alguma medida, irresgatáveis, empregando construções ideais e teóricas na formulação, construção de explanações sociológicas e culturais para este fenômeno. Tais explanações muitas vezes tem dificuldades em identificar realidades materiais nas fases ideais que correspondam as fases presumidas em suas formulações metodológicas de mudança social, materialidades estas que são o foco central da disciplina arqueológica. Nosso trabalho se propõe a tentar um estudo crítico de dois contextos materiais fundamentalmente ligados à formação das comunidades políticas no espaço do Mediterrâneo grego, aqueles das póleis de Corinto e Siracusa durante a transição inicial do Período Arcaico. Manteremos como hipótese de trabalho que estas cidades são neste recorte cronológico momentos chave e situações diagnóstico dos processos de formação da Pólis e das fundações da experiência política, procurando ligações entre a interpretação de estruturas construídas e as soluções explanativas propostas pela teoria arqueológica e social, abordando o tema dos surgimento da comunidade política, da cidade e do estado como realidades interligadas. / Within the field of Social Archaeology, the matter of the emergence of the first political communities is a central theme of inquiry. Regarding this problem the Social Sciences have well estabilished that, at in least in some regard, the fundamental bases of such formative processes are fundamentally irretrievable, opting instead to formulate ideal and theoretical constructions as basis on to formulate sociological and cultural explanations for those phenomena. Such explanations often find difficulties in corresponding direct material realities to such theoretically based ideal phases of social change, indeed even while such material realities are the centerpiece of the Archaeological Discipline. Our present work proposes to attempt a critical study of two such material contexts fundamentaly connected to the development of the polítical communities in the Mediterranean Greek area, those of the Poleis of Corinth and Syracuse during the beginnings of the Archaic Period. We mantain as research hypothesis that such contexts are, in this chronology, key moments and syntomatic examples of the formative processes of the Polis and the beginnings of the Political Community, searching for connections between the interpretation of constructed structures and spaces and the explanative solutions proposed by Archaeological and Social Theory, engaging the theme of the formations of the Political Community, the City and the State as interlinked realities.

The Hudson's Bay Company (HBC), a mercantile venture that was founded by royal charter in 1670, conceived, constructed and ran Fort Vancouver as its economic center in the Pacific Northwest, a colonial outpost at the edge of the company's holdings in North America. Research into the history of the HBC revealed that the company was motivated by mercantile interests, and that Fort Vancouver operated under feudal land policies while steadily adopting a hierarchical structure. Following the work of Marxist archaeologist Mark Leone whose work in Annapolis, Maryland explored the effects of capitalist ideology on archaeological assemblages of ceramics, this study sought to locate the material signatures of ideologies in the ceramic assemblages recovered from the Fort and its adjacent multi-ethnic Village sites. In Annapolis, matching sets of ceramics were used as a material indicator of the successful penetration of capitalist ideals of segmentation, division and standardization that accompanied the carefully cultivated ideology of individualism, into working class households. Following this model, this study analyzed six assemblages for the presence of matched sets of ceramic tablewares using the diversity measures of richness and evenness. The results of this analysis for five assemblages from households in the Village were then compared to those expected for a model assemblage that was inferred to represent the ultimate model of participation in and dissemination of the same ideals of segmentation and division: that recovered from the Chief Factor's House within the fort. Documentary research confirmed that ideology was used to indoctrinate workers into the unique relations of production at Fort Vancouver however it was an ideology of paternal allegiance to the company rather than one of possessive individualism, as in Annapolis. At Fort Vancouver the notion of individuality was subtly downplayed in favor of one that addressed the company's responsibility to its workers and encouraged them to view its hierarchy, which was reinforced spatially, socially and economically, as natural. Analysis of the archaeological assemblages revealed that it is unlikely that the Village assemblages are comprised of complete sets of matching ceramicwares. The lack of these sets is likely the result of the multivalent nature of the economic system at the fort and its distinct ideology of paternalism, as well as the diverse backgrounds and outlooks of the Village occupants themselves, who appear to have purchased and used these European ceramics in unique ways.