Current Directions in Midwestern Archaeology

Abstract

Ten years ago James B. Griffin (62) observed that three themes dominated eastern North American prehistory: 1. the gradual evolution from hunting and gathering bands to settled agricultural societies over a period of 15, 000 years; 2. the achieve­ ment of two cultura l climaxes; and 3. the strong impact on cultural evolution of cultivated plant introductions from Mesoamerica. Subsequent research in the Midwest has continued to focus primarily on these themes or on issues and problems derived from them. The historical roots of these themes reach back to a period before serious archaeology existed when the central intellectual questions were the origins and fate of the Mound Builder race. Since then, scholarly attention has turned to an anthropological concern for the processes and conditions promoting cultural evolution in the Midwest as determined by investigations based on a sound regional prehistory. The original issues, however, find echoes in those problems that revolve around the fate of Mississippian high culture in the Midwest and the relationship of historic tribes to this past stage of greater complexity. I have chosen a topical approach here in order to emphasize the central features