Late Woodland Period “Waste” Reduction in the Ohio River Valley

Abstract

The “good and gray” (Williams 1963:297) cultures of the Late Woodland period in the Eastern Woodlands are so named because they lack the elaboration of the preceding Middle Woodland. Traditional attempts to explain this loss of elaboration as a consequence of social breakdown or climatic change fail empirically or are untestable and do not account for the variety of trajectories observed. The “waste” hypothesis both accounts for this kind of variation and is testable. Here we describe the critical variation in different areas of the Ohio Valley and outline a brief explanation, relying on simple variables drawn from evolutionary theory.