8 - Long-Term Trends to Sedentism and the Emergence of Complexity in the American Midwest

Abstract

This chapter discusses long-term trends to sedentism and the emergence of complexity in the American Midwest. Cultural complexity among huntergatherers is no longer regarded as an anomaly. Contemporary investigations have discovered, though uncommonly, that complex hunter–gatherers have developed where sedentism was possible and agriculture absent. Archeological findings have disclosed that when agriculture was more limited in distribution, culturall complexity among hunter–gatherers was more common. The combined weight of archeological and ethnological findings supports the position that complexity frequently has arisen following sedentary settlement and before the appearance of agriculture. Archeological information has disclosed sedentism to be one of the principal bases on which complexity in social institutions and cultural life developed. The evolution of agriculture has come to be interpreted as an indirect consequence of decreases in mobility and shifts to an increasingly sedentary life. Generally speaking, as hunter–gatherer residence becomes stationary for longer periods, the breadth and diversity of the food base increases with the consequence that the proportion of smaller and more prolific food sources increases in the diet.