In this paper, we employ a communities of practice approach to investigate precontact childhood social learning and pottery production in the Lower Great Lakes. Until recently, there has been an implicit assumption that childhood learning involved primarily parent-child interactions. Building on current research that has begun to improve understanding of Indigenous socialization strategies, we apply a multi-scalar decorative analysis to investigate traditions of learning among potting communities in Southern Ontario and upstate New York, from ca. 900–1650 CE. Through a series of statistical analyses, we demonstrate a remarkable continuity in motif practices by child potters that is not evident among skilled potters, who were more impacted by social, demographic, and economic changes in their communities. The multi-generational tradition spanning at least 750 years leads us to suggest that child potters learned primarily in child groups through peer-to-peer learning. Although peer-to-peer learning has been observed ethnographically, this practice has often been overlooked in archaeology and warrants further inquiry.

在本文中，我们采用社区实践方法调查下大湖区儿童接触前的社会学习和陶器生产。直到最近，还存在一个隐含的假设，即儿童学习主要涉及亲子互动。基于当前已开始增进对土著社会化战略理解的研究，我们应用了多尺度装饰性分析，调查了安大略省南部和纽约州北部的盆栽社区从大约6年开始的学习传统。公元900–1650年。通过一系列的统计分析，我们证明了儿童陶艺师在图案实践方面的显着连续性，而熟练陶艺家中并没有明显的延续性，而这些陶艺家受其所在社区的社会，人口和经济变化的影响更大。跨越至少750年的多代传统使我们建议，儿童陶工主要通过点对点学习在儿童群体中学习。尽管从民族志方面观察到了对等学习，但这种做法在考古学中经常被忽视，值得进一步研究。