What can be learned about Wabanaki culture from their pottery?

Pottery will get personal with Dr. Bonnie Newsom, Assistant Professor of Anthropology at The University of Maine, when looking at examples of pre-contact Wabanaki pottery in the Wilson Museum’s collection and considering the designs choices made by their Wabanaki artists.

Dr. Newsom is an Indigenous archaeologist interested in the pre-contact lifeways of Native people in what is now Maine. Most of her research has occurred within the Penobscot River Valley in Maine focusing heavily on Native peoples living during the Ceramic Period (ca. 3050-250 years ago). Through her research, she seeks to humanize people in the past by exploring concepts of identity, style, social boundaries, and human agency. Most recently, her research has focused on population distinctions in pre-contact Maine through an analysis of potters’ choices in the manufacture of aboriginal ceramics from Maine’s coastal and interior settings. As a faculty member at UMaine, her research is dedicated to exploring some of Maine archaeology’s most interesting and unresolved questions.

The public is invited to join the program in-person and virtually. To receive the Zoom link, email Haley at education@wilsonmuseum.org with the subject line “Pottery Zoom Link.”

This program is part of the Pottery: Shaping Clay, Shaping Culture segment of the Wilson Museum’s Connecting to Collections program series made possible through the generous support of Bangor Savings Bank.