Blog author's copy of a brass trade kettle.
M.C. Beaudry and T.G. Parno (eds.), Archaeologies of Mobility and
Movement, 17 Contributions To Global Historical Archaeology 35, DOI
10.1007/978-1-4614-6211-8_2, © Springer Science+Business Media New York 2013
Colonialism establishes particular and sometimes surprising networks of desire
between territories, things, and people. Their basis is in materials, material
cultures, and their movements across regions and continents. One such a network
connected the native populations of Lapland in the northernmost region of
Europe and the Swedish colony in North America. The colony of New Sweden was
founded in 1638 in the Delaware Valley, which encompassed the area of northern
Delaware, southwestern New Jersey, and southeastern Pennsylvania. Here I
analyze the establishment and effects of this network through the
seventeenth-century trade in brass kettles in the two distant areas. I will
begin by articulating the relationship between colonialism, desire, and
material culture. The archaeology of colonial identity can be defi ned,
following Lucas ( 2004 : 186), as the study of how subjectivities are
constituted in the context of colonialism in terms of everyday material
culture. Desire, in turn, glues together everyday life with macroscale politics
and global networks of exchange. The concept of desire therefore helps us to
understand how colonialism functions as a force that establishes new ways of
life and interaction. The differing conceptions of desire, however, provide for
this fi eld of research very dissimilar ways of tracing the emergence of
identities. After specifying these differences, I will present the distribution
and consumption of brass kettles in North America, North Scandinavia, and
Finland as a case study. Lastly, I will discuss how brass kettles constituted
an element in the colonial and intercontinental movements of desire. The
concepts of desire and colonialism surface, though obliquely, as the main theme
in two recent historical studies on the relations between the settlers and the
Native Americans in the Swedish colony. The fi rst is Gunlög Fur’s book
Colonialism in the Margins ( 2006 ). The earlier historical tradition argued
that the relations Chapter 2 Intercontinental Flows of Desire: Brass Kettles in
Lapland and in the Colony of New Sweden Visa Immonen V. Immonen (*) Helsinki
Collegium for Advanced Studies , University of Helsinki , P.O. Box 4 , FI-00014
University of Helsinki , Finland e-mail: visa.immonen@helsinki.fi 18 between
the Nordic colonizers and the native populations of the region, mainly the
Lenni Lenape, were unusually friendly and peaceful. This was a symptom of the
civilized attitudes of the Swedes. Fur argues, however, that peacefulness was
more a consequence of the settlers having no options. The survival of the
colony depended on the goodwill of the natives and their readiness to
participate in trade. In a similarly critical vein, Amy Schutt examines
interaction between the native populations of Delaware and European colonists
in her book Peoples of the River Valleys ( 2007 ). Schutt’s focus is on the
native side of the colonial encounter, but she also emphasizes the
Indian–Indian relations. These relations were heterogeneous and affected also
the native attitudes and policies towards the Europeans. These two studies try
to create accounts that operate outside of the paradigm of Western
universalizing history. They do this by approaching the colonized as an active
force, emphasizing, for example, the role of the Lenape in defi ning the
conditions in which the early trade with the Swedes was conducted and later in
adopting the strategy of building alliances with an array of peoples. This
enabled their survival as a people during the advancement of the European
settlers. Both works have been criticized, however. First, Fur is accused of
failing to concretize her claims by explicitly comparing American and Nordic
colonialisms (Smolenski, 2007 ). Schutt’s work, in turn, has been criticized as
implying that the natives were merely reacting to European prompts, not defi
ning various situations of encounter in their own terms (Snyder, 2007 ). These
minor criticisms directed at Fur and Schutt arise in reaction to a particular
conception of colonialism and desire present in both works. The authors appear
to approach colonialism as an ideological device, a particular way in which
colonial social practices produce various subjects and defi ne their relations.
In this way, the colonial system of power carves out the contours of colonizers
and the colonized and their experiences. Desire is understood through the
concept of acquisition: colonial desire seeks to acquire something that it
lacks. In the case of brass kettles, the natives craved European things,
reacting to their presence as material signifi ers of colonial power and
European values, and wanted to satisfy their desire by engaging in trade. In
this framework, the traded items as actual material objects are secondary to
the workings of colonial economies and power. Desire as an Active Force The
relation between colonialism, the emergence of colonial subjects, and the
profusion of European products introduced into the Native American cultures can
be seen in a different light. This perspective rests on another kind of
conception of desire that, rather than confi ning analysis to the rigidly predefi
ned dualism between the colonizer and the colonized, shifts the emphasis to the
materiality and performative force of the products. In this view, desire is not
a representation of colonial politics or ideologies, but a productive force
that allows the emergence of the colonial setting and the fl ows of people and
objects. Such an inquiry into material culture V. Immonen 19 requires the
analysis of artifacts in relation to fundamental networks of desire. The
exploration of relations between bodies and objects, their microscale movements
and transformations, is given priority. The goal is to reveal the complex
dependences between objects and humans, in which the former are not simply
vehicles for meanings given by the latter. Things and material processes should
not be considered in isolation from the performative emergence of both
subjectivity and colonialism. Gosden ( 2004 ) favors such an alternative view
on the relations between desire, material culture, and colonialism. He argues
that colonialism is a particular effect that material culture has on bodies and
minds, and concludes that “colonialism is a relationship of desire, which
creates a network of people and things, but the exact shape of desire and the
ensuing network will vary” (Gosden, 2004 : 153). Colonialism is thus
established as an elementary relationship to material culture. Gosden’s defi -
nition of colonialism is based on the conception of desire as a positive
production of reality (Deleuze & Guattari, 1985 ). Desire is a machine, and
the object of desire is another machine connected to it. Consequently all
social production is desiringproduction, not something that precedes desire.
This framework does not bring about the easy amalgamation of the colonizer and
the colonized into some uniform coherence. Instead, desire is established and
based on differences, differences between the two and within the two. Desire in
this sense is not a desire for an object, for a traded product as such, but it
is desire to be drawn into another world expressed by that object. At the same
time, as a difference, desire establishes moments in which the authoritarian
discourses lose their grip on meaning and become open to the trace of the
language of the other: objects can express various worlds and their values, and
as objects, brass kettles participate in these fl uctuations of meaning.
Kettles in the History of the Swedish Colony The fl ow of kettles from Europe
into colonial setting gave a rise to various formations of desire and
subsequent experiences that I set to trace. These new experiences were highly
differing, but at the same time, part of the same colonial process. First, the
outlines of this process and the role of copper kettles are sketched focusing
on the Swedish colony and its history. Although in terms of archaeology New
Sweden remains poorly studied (Fig. 2.1 ) (Immonen, 2011 ), written documents
related to it are known relatively well and published (Waldron, 1995 ).
Consequently, the outline of the colony’s history is soundly established. After
that, I will continue to the microscale movements of kettles in the everyday
colonial life, giving new insight into the global mechanisms. An important
motivation for the Kingdom of Sweden to become engaged in the colonial venture
was its economy which in the seventeenth century was weak— in stark contrast to
the nation’s increased political importance in Europe (Johnson, 1911 ). At the
same time, with the rapid expansion of military industry 2 Intercontinental
Flows of Desire: Brass Kettles in Lapland... 20 and the constant need for
muskets and cannons, the European copper markets were developing at a quick
pace. Accordingly, copper mining became one of the most important industries
for the kingdom and a major source of income for the government. The Great Copper
Mountain in Falun functioned as the nation’s treasury and funded the heavy war
efforts in Central Europe. Although copper was a relatively valuable metal in
Europe, it was not used for making social distinctions, but rather manufactured
into weapons and domestic objects and distributed to a wide and varied consumer
base (Turgeon, 1997 : 5). In their continuous search for new markets for these
products, Swedish statesmen merged their interests with the commercial aims of
Dutch merchants and set to establish an overseas colony (Johnson, 1911 : 87–92,
95, 102). The developing markets of America and Africa had a huge potential,
but despite the great fi nancial and political ambitions, after its founding in
1638, New Sweden had a short history. The Dutch seized the colony in 1655, and
fi nally, in 1664, it was taken over by the English (Dahlgren & Norman,
1988 : 9, 64–65). The colony’s autonomous position ended in 1682. Because of
the pathetic fate of the colony, the number of colonists who had come from Europe
to New Sweden by the mid-seventeenth century remained less than 700. They did
not, however, come to an uninhabited terrain, but a region settled mostly by
the Lenape, whose number in the region approached 5,000 (Becker, 1976 : 25).
The Lenape were not purely hunter-gatherers, but also engaged in smallscale
horticulture during the Late Woodland Period (cf . AD 1000–1600). A
slashand-burn technique was used to grow corn, beans, and a variety of squash
(Kraft, 1986 : 115–118), and in fact two-thirds or even more of their caloric
intake was obtained through corn cultivation (Fur, 2006 : 106). Fig. 2.1 Among
the few thoroughly excavated sites of New Sweden are the remains of the
governor’s residence or Printzhof at present Governor Printz Park in Essington,
Pennsylvania (Becker, 2011 ). The residence was built by the third colonial
governor Johan Björnsson Printz (1592–1663) in 1643 (Photo by Visa Immonen) V.
Immonen 21 New Sweden never became a major market for Swedish copper, but
artifacts made of the metal nevertheless appear among the imported products.
When the fi rst voyage to North America was planned, the products to be traded
with the aboriginals included “adzes, hatchets, kettles, duffels and other
merchandise” (Johnson, 1911 ; 97; cf. 112). Upon his arrival at Delaware Bay in
1638, the fi rst governor Peter Minuit (1580–1638) presented a sachem , or as
the colonizers conceived, chief of the Lenape, with a kettle and other trifl es
in exchange for land (Johnson, 1911 : 437; Weslager, 1972 : 125). After the fi
rst voyage, brass kettles appear frequently in cargo lists and documents
related to trade. The seventh expedition brought 302 kettles (Johnson, 1911 :
255–256). The preparations for the eighth voyage also mention kettles (Johnson,
1911 : 258–259), while the ninth expedition bought 224 brass kettles from
Holland to bring them to New Sweden (Johnson, 1911 : 268). When there was a
shortage of trade goods in 1643, Governor Printz had to buy cloth and other
merchandise from the English and the Dutch. John Willcox of Virginia sold him a
variety of products including three kettles (Johnson, 1911 : 310). In 1644, the
ship Fama arrived along with 250 kettles (Johnson, 1911 : 316–317), and in 1646
the Haj came also with kettles in its hold (Johnson, 1911 : 329). In 1647,
Printz discussed with the Minquas the sale of land for which he paid, among
other items, four kettles (Johnson, 1911 : 332). In 1654, the last Governor
Johan Risingh (1617–1672) gathered 12 sachems and gave each of them “one yard
of frieze, one kettle [?], one axe, one hoe, one knife, one pound of powder,
one stick of lead and six awl-points” (Johnson, 1911 : 563–565). Brass Kettles
in Native Lives The transportation of kettles from Sweden to New Sweden appears
as a macroscale manifestation of the colonial effort, but the much more subtle
movements of the objects in the colony are of equal importance. These smaller
fl ows and accumulations of kettles did not remain unnoticed by the
contemporary Swedes. In the midseventeenth century, military engineer Peter
Lindeström (1632–1691) ( 1923 : 173) observed how local Indian households were
full of brass and brass kettles small and large, which they had bought from the
colonists. Indeed, in addition to various tools and cloths, brass kettles were
among the things that the Indians asked for most often when trading with the
Swedes or other Europeans [Fur, 2006 : 164; Johnson, 1911 : 191; Schutt, 2007 :
2; Weslager, 1972 : 125–126, 148, 149, 162, 170, 185, 216, 346; see also Martin
( 1975 : 133)]. Eventually brass kettles and imported ceramics replaced local
pottery, and the Lenape pot-making skills declined. By the time of the Swedish
explorer and botanist Pehr Kalm’s (1716–1779) voyage in the mid-eighteenth
century, the Lenape skills of making ceramics had almost vanished (Fur, 2006 :
204– 205; Kalm, 1970 : 240; Nassaney, 2004 : 346). In spite of the references
to objects made from copper or brass being relatively frequent, as actual
objects they are quite rarely found in early colonial Lenape sites. 2 Intercontinental
Flows of Desire: Brass Kettles in Lapland... 22 Besides various copper objects,
like bangles, bracelets, buckles, buttons, crosses, earrings, fi nger rings,
hawk’s bells, Jew’s harps, religious medals, spoons, thimbles, and tubular
beads (Veit & Bello, 2001 ), only a few brass kettles are known. They were
discovered at the Bell-Browning-Blair and Minisink burial sites in the Upper
Delaware River Valley (Heye & Pepper, 1915 ; Marchiando, 1972 : 143). The
adoption of kettles by the Lenape is usually explained in functional terms
(e.g., Fitzgerald, Turgeon, Whitehead, & Bradley, 1993 : 54; Kraft, 1986 :
207–208; Weslager, 1972 : 107). For populations living mainly on hunting,
gathering, and semi-agrarian activities, they had signifi cant advantages
compared with the local pottery. Kettles were more portable and more durable
than ceramics, they were easy to hang over a fi re by the handles, and a hole
in a kettle was relatively easy to mend. Moreover, kettles were also turned
into various other objects, such as ornaments and arrowheads (Mounier, 2003 :
121). All these features greatly enhanced aboriginal ways of living. Turgeon (
1997 : 2) criticizes technological determinism implicit in the comparisons
between native ceramics and imported kettles. Kettles materialized more than
merely utilitarian values. The use of kettles, he suggests, was an act of
appropriation and transformation of the meanings that adhered to the objects.
Unlike functional explanations, interpretations of these meanings emphasize
more the temporal change and fl uctuations in the uses the kettles were put to.
Witthoft ( 1966 ) divides the Indian–European trade into phases, the fi rst of
which covers the era from the fi rst contact to the 1590s. During this early
period, brass kettles were already among the products exchanged, but they seem
to have been cut up into ornaments and knives rather than used as cooking
utensils. It was not until the second phase and increased European contacts in
the seventeenth century that brass kettles started to appear in graves as whole
objects (Kraft, 1986 : 206–209, 214; Witthoft, 1966 : 204–207). The change in
the use of kettles can be associated with the meaning of copper in the network
of native social relations. Prior to the European contact, rare native copper
objects are primarily known from burial contexts, and the earliest contact
period artifacts were primarily of copper, because Native Americans appreciated
the metal for its scarcity and religious signifi cance (Galke, 2004 ). Hence,
values of native objects were extended to the European imports, and Europeans
were assimilated to the local social networks through these objects—materiality
was the basis for certain forms of social behavior (Miller & Hamell, 1986 :
318). When the availability of copper products increased as a result of
intensifi ed European contacts, copper objects became “a kind of currency,
available to and used by the elite and common people alike” (Galke, 2004 :
94–95). European brass kettles, or their fragments, appeared throughout the
native sites of the northeast seaboard once the fur trade began in the last
quarter of the sixteenth century, and they had a more or less similar impact on
all native populations as well (Fitzgerald et al., 1993 : 44). When the objects
appear in written sources related to New Sweden, they are usually among the
payments or gifts given to the natives. In that way, kettles participated in
the ongoing gift-giving process and were a means of building and maintaining
social relations. They were used in a similar manner, when, for instance, land
V. Immonen 23 agreements were settled among the native residents themselves
(Schutt, 2007 : 34–36). As kettles gradually became part of the everyday gear
(Weslager, 1972 : 377, 483), they were incorporated into other social rituals
as well. According to Weslager ( 1972 : 490), a Lenape bride was given a kettle
for cooking in her wedding ceremonies, and after death, she could be buried
with such an implement (Nassaney, 2004 : 335, 343; Weslager, 1972 : 100, 133–134,
174, 488). The movement of kettles from use and exchange into the immobile
grave context might seem minor, but it in fact implies a fundamental change.
The network of desire set by colonialism had become part of the native way of
life and was integrated into the burial rites. Eventually kettles were adapted
to the prevailing ways of gendering material culture and social practices, but
at the same time, their fl ow from Europe transformed the objects and their
micro-movements. As such these Lenape practices and contexts of using brass
kettles do not seem to differ signifi cantly from what occurred in other
colonies in North America. Nevertheless, New Sweden is of particular interest,
because similar developments occurred in the material culture of the Sámi in
Fennoscandia. Brass Kettles and the Sámi As in North America, the Swedish
administration faced seminomadic indigenous populations, the Sámi, in the
northern parts of the kingdom. With the progressing centralization and
tightening of the state control from the seventeenth century onwards, the Sámi
people experienced increased pressures to integrate with the Swedish state. The
colonialist framework in which brass kettles were imported and consumed was
thus more or less similar on the two continents, but the timescale was very
different. The contact between the Sámi and the southern farmer communities had
a much longer history than the relationship between the colonizers and the
colonized in the New World. In Lapland, the cessation of the Sámi pottery tradition
is, as in New Sweden, associated with the adoption of brass kettles. The use of
ceramics among the native populations, however, seems to have ended already by
around AD 400 (Bergman, 2007 ). Not surprisingly, the subsequent archaeological
material refl ects the popularity of kettles among the Sámi. In Finland, the
majority of medieval and early modern kettles, numbering several dozens, are
stray fi nds from the wilderness areas of central, east, and north Finland
(Fig. 2.2 ) (Anttila, 2002 : 25). On the basis of their distribution,
Taavitsainen ( 1986 : 38–39) suggests that the stray fi nds should be
associated with the utilization of the inland wilderness, and moreover, instead
of seeing them as hoards deposited by western and southern farmer–merchants,
they might just as well have been deposited by the “the Lapp” population, or
nomadic hunter-gatherers, who later became the ethnic group of “the Sámi” (cf.
Anttila, 2002 : 16–36; Siiropää & Luoto, 1999 ). In addition to surviving
intact kettles, however, sheets from brass kettles, some with rivets or holes
for rivets, have been found in various sacrifi cial and settlement 2
Intercontinental Flows of Desire: Brass Kettles in Lapland... 24 sites
throughout Lapland in Finland, Norway, and Sweden. Their dating covers a period
from the eleventh to the seventeenth century (Carpelan, 1987 , 1991 , 1992 ,
2003 ; Hedman, 2003 : 186; Odner, 1992 : 131; Okkonen, 2007 : 35–37; Serning,
1956 : 91–93; Zachrisson, 1976 : 47–50, 62). For instance, in Finnish Lapland,
the excavations of the Juikenttä settlement site in Sodankylä, dated from the
twelfth to the seventeenth century, revealed fragments of several brass kettles
(Carpelan, 1966 : 68–69, 74). Further pieces of kettles were discovered at the
Nukkumajoki 2 site in Inari, which was settled from the fi fteenth to the late
seventeenth century (Carpelan, 1992 : 41–42, 2003 : 73). References to kettles
in connection with the Sámi are equally common in written sources. The oldest
one is a document of the Piteå court dated to as early as 1424. The text states
that any coastal farmer who had the right to trade with the Sámi and who
provided items that the Sámi required for their survival, among others a kettle
or a pot, was given the right to trade with and claim taxes from that
particular Sámi for three years without interference ( Handlingar rörande
Skandinaviens historia , 1848 : 27; Voionmaa, 1912 : 61). In the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries, when southern burghers arrived at the Sámi markets of
Normark in Norway, they brought brass kettles along as sales items (Fur, 1992 :
45; Itkonen, 1948b : 206). In eighteenthcentury Finland, the burghers of the
town of Tornio transported kettles to Lapland in order to sell them to the Sámi
(Itkonen, 1948b : 198). Moreover, the brass kettles are common items in the
probate inventories of Sámi families in the nineteenth century with the
wealthiest ones owning as many as six or seven (Itkonen, 1948b : 307–308). In
many cases, fragments of brass kettles appear to have been purposefully
severed. For this reason, Christian Carpelan ( 1992 : 41–42, 2003: 73)
associates the fi nds with Sámi sacrifi ces. When copper fragments are known
from farm settlements not inhabited by the Sámi, they are, in contrast,
interpreted as residue from mending. For instance, fragments of brass sheets
were found in the fourteenth- century site of Kello Fig. 2.2 Two brass kettles
from a hoard of four kettles found in a peatland meadow at Käärmelahti,
Maaninka, Northern Savonia. The kettles were made in the fi fteenth to
seventeenth centuries. They have been interpreted as a hoard for depositing
capital, or a sacrifi cial deposition (Kivikoski, 1934 ; Taavitsainen, 1986 ).
The diameter of the fi rst one is 39 cm and the second 28 cm (National Museum
of Finland, inv. no. 9769:1, 4) (Photo by Visa Immonen) V. Immonen 25 in
Haukipudas, North Ostrobothnia, Finland. The settlement belonged to Finnish
farmers, and accordingly the fi nds are seen as leftovers from repairs
(Koivunen & Sarkkinen, 1994 : 18–19, 21). The Kello site is not an
exception. Although larger objects of copper alloys are absent in the
archaeological assemblages of northern towns, pieces of scrap metal are
relatively common (Nurmi, 2011 : 64, 145). The explanation for this situation
appears simple: brass kettles were valuable items also for European colonizers,
and they were not lightheartedly discarded (Soop, 1963 ). Following this
reasoning, however, Zachrisson ( 1976 : 47) poses the question of whether the
fragments found in indigenous sites are raw material just like the scatter from
non-Sámi settlements. At least some of the sheets have clearly been cut into
pendants and ornaments. Kettles in Colonial Networks of Desire Similarities in
the adoption of brass kettles and the ways in which they changed the local
material cultures in North America and Lapland are notable and denote the
global mechanisms of European colonialism. On a macroscale, the copper created
a geographical and cultural tie between the two continents and between the
worlds of the colonist and the native. Various networks of desire partly
clashed, but partly they also amplifi ed and transformed each other. As in
North America, the decline of the local pottery tradition in Lapland is
associated with the substantive adoption of imported ceramics and brass
kettles. Another striking commonality is the cutting of kettles into smaller
pieces and making them into other artifacts found in both indigenous sites and
sites belonging to the Swedish colonizers. Having said that, however, in fl ows
of desire, there are no hierarchies between macro and micro, or global and
local. Desire is independent of the mobility of people and things, but
constantly establishing their transformations and relations. Hence, it is also
important to trace small shifts and consider their impact on larger trends.
With undeniable force, colonialism drew two worlds and continents together,
concretized by brass kettles, but this apparent uniformity was full of
differences: differences between the administrative strata and the other
settlers, between European and native customs, and between a range of native
populations with their respective histories and ways of life. The social and
economic trajectories of the Lenape and the Sámi groups were quite distinct.
During the seventeenth century, both the Sámi and the Lenape were able to some
extent control the European colonizing power and the fl ows of trade goods
(Fig. 2.3 ). The Sámi communities experienced increasing pressures from the
Swedish state that constantly enhanced its control over its subjects and
regions, and as a consequence, their subsistence strategies took drastically
new shapes. Many communities experienced a transition from hunter-gatherer
subsistence to reindeer pastoralism (Bergman, 2007 ; Itkonen, 1948a : 302).
Unlike the Lenape, however, the Sámi were more aware of their possibilities as
part of the kingdom and were able to employ their position as royal subjects
and appeal directly to the sovereign (Fur, 1992 ). 2 Intercontinental Flows of
Desire: Brass Kettles in Lapland... 26 Under colonial pressure, Lenape social
organization also readjusted from subsistence economy to hunting for skins, as
furs were the currency of European trade. In contrast to the Sámi, the Lenape
initially had an upper hand in terms of subsistence and could set the
availability of the European goods as the condition for the colonizers’
survival (see Fig. 2.3 ). Lenape participation in European trade, however,
never reached the extent of neighboring groups like the Susquehannock (Custer,
1996 : 314). The situation changed fatally around 1675, when the European taste
for furs plummeted and the fur trade stagnated. The basis of the native wealth
and indigenous means for control crumpled (Fur, 1992 ; Newcomb, 1956 : 83). In
the trade networks established by colonialism, brass kettles were commodities
in the fullest meaning of the term. Partly alienated from their prior context
of the colonizer, but still having their benefi cial material qualities, they
became part of the desiring machine of the indigenous life, extending its
possibilities. The meaning of brass kettles shifted and their movements
differed from those in the homeland, and this affected even the lives of the
colonizer. In Lindeström’s description of the Fig. 2.3 The frontispiece of
Thomas Campanius Holm’s book Description of the Province of New Sweden ( 1702 )
depicts a friendly encounter between the local Indians and Swedish traders in
New Sweden. Holm never visited the colony and based the image on stories told
by his grandfather, who lived in New Sweden in the 1640s V. Immonen 27
accumulation of kettles in native houses, one can sense a surprise or
amusement. In Europe, a kettle of brass was an everyday object of no particular
interest beyond its material and utilitarian value, but in the New World, it
became more articulately a trace of homeland, of the familiar domestic sphere
and comfort. Lindeström saw how these ordinary objects, kettles, appeared in
excessive numbers, creating a disturbing colonial experience in which a familiar
object strangely metamorphosed. In Lindeström’s observation, potential feeling
of nostalgic everydayness has been severed, and this surprise continues in the
contemporary scholarly need to provide explanations for the strange movements
of kettles in native lives. Why was a European object not used in the same way
by the Lenape as it was by colonists? What was the function of kettle fragments
in indigenous sites? In North America, the fragments of brass have mainly been
conceived as a sign of the high social esteem given to copper instead of
utilitarian concerns. The appreciation of copper as raw material declined,
however, as objects made of the metal became common through intensifying
European contact. In Lapland, the phenomenon of brass sheets is often
interpreted as cultic behavior, although also more functional views, related to
using brass as raw material, have been presented. The two interpretative
traditions seem to imply that discovering kettle fragments excludes the
possibility that they had other uses prior to breaking them, or simultaneously,
when used in sacrifi cial or cultic contexts. Objects and their fragments are
mobile, taking new shapes and meanings, and taking into account these miniscule
histories is crucial when the range of possible interpretations is considered.
Therefore, if brass objects were so popular and scrap metal could be used to
mend broken kettles, one might ask, why should brass fragments be considered as
signs of exotic and cultic behavior? Might it have been also an effi cient way
of utilizing materials? Brass kettles, their use, and raw material were already
familiar to the indigenous groups. As Marshall Sahlins ( 1993 : 17) concludes:
“The fi rst commercial impulse of the people is not to become just like us but
more like themselves.” Brass kettles were adapted to the native material
culture and attached to different environments, practices, and values through
the process of commodifi cation (Galke, 2004 : 94; cf. Herva & Ylimaunu,
2006 ). Their colonial and European macro-movements were met with confl icting
micro-movements in the native lives. Kettles were invested with distinct social
values and employed as currency, but they were also used in cooking and buried
with certain members of the Lenape community. These various ways in which
kettles circulated among the native groups show how the colonial desire
instituted shifting formations of value. In effect, brass kettles gave form to
the desires of hunter-gathering cultures, made their subsistence strategies
more effi - cient, and contributed to their social change (Fitzgerald et al.,
1993 : 54), and thus, as artifacts, they bore transformative possibilities not
actualized in European contexts (Rubertone, 2000 : 431–432). The expanding
colonial desire produced new differences and created novel affective
attachments and investments involving time and labor. Acknowledgments I would
like to thank the Turku Centre for Medieval and Early Modern Studies (TUCEMEMS)
for a travel grant which partly enabled me to write the present chapter. 2
Intercontinental Flows of Desire: Brass Kettles in Lapland... 28 References
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