Early Woodland Research Articles

UPDATING THE CLASSIC NEW YORK LAMOKA LAKE AND SCACCIA SITES: REFINED CHRONOLOGIES THROUGH AMS DATING AND BAYESIAN MODELING

ABSTRACTThe Lamoka Lake and Scaccia sites in present-day New York have played important roles in the development of archaeology in New York, and in the case of Lamoka Lake, in eastern North America. Lamoka Lake is the type site for the “Archaic” period in eastern North American culture history and the “Late Archaic” “Lamoka phase” in New York culture history. The Scaccia site is the largest “Early Woodland” “Meadowood phase” site in New York and has the earliest evidence for pottery and agriculture crop use in the state. Lamoka Lake has been dated to 2500 BC based on a series of solid carbon and gas-proportional counting radiometric dates on bulk wood charcoal obtained in the 1950s and 1960s. Scaccia has been dated to 870 BC based on a single uncalibrated radiometric date obtained on bulk charcoal in the early 1970s. As a result, the ages of these important sites need to be refined. New AMS dates and Bayesian analyses presented here place Lamoka Lake at 2962–2902 BC (68.3% highest posterior density [hpd])) and Scaccia at 1049–838 BC (68.3% hpd).

Right connection, right insight engaging private estate managers on woodland expansion issues in times of uncertainty

Woodland expansion and related targets are central to the Scottish Forestry Strategy (2019–2029). However, planting rates over the last decade have mostly fallen short of targets and, with the majority of Scottish land in private ownership, estates could play an influential role in achieving these targets. The current political (e.g. Brexit) and ecological (e.g. climate and biodiversity emergencies) uncertainty impacting the UK presents both opportunities and potential threats to the forestry sector and environmental policies. This research used walking interviews with estate managers to gain insights into perceptions of forestry and woodland culture on private sporting estates. Co-planning of new planting areas involved discussions with a mixture of estate owners, factors and land managers from neighbouring estates, along with the researcher. The co-planning process provided scope to navigate the uncertainty between estate priorities, woodland expansion targets and wider management issues by exploring the local culture and land capability from the perspective of individual land managers. A range of constraints and opportunities were identified including the influence of deeply embedded perceptions of past and current woodland creation schemes that continue to impact the estates, market instability, and the desire to design and create beneficial integrated deer and amenity areas. These are counterbalanced with a clear passion for trees among some managers, but a relatively low interest in extensive woodland management, which was underpinned by a widespread lack of in-house forestry knowledge. The woodland planning exercise resulted in managers identifying explicit areas for potential woodland expansion on every estate, favouring mixed native woodlands with limited productive objectives. Woodfuel production was viewed as an output from early woodland thinnings with the potential to increase short-term profitability and offset management costs. This paper highlights that strengthening personal connections between land managers and woodland management, through knowledge building and contact with up-to-date forestry knowledge from a trusted provider, could further opportunities for expanding and enhancing woodland culture, and become a more significant part of the rationale that drives decision-making. Facilitating local knowledge of the estate and local community involvement in woodland design and planning, even on a small-scale, offers potential to support the expansion and integration of woodland on some private estates that have lost or reduced woodland culture.

Potential influence of landscape transition on stream water chemistry trends during the last decades in a karst catchment (Pyrenees, SW France) in a context of global environmental changes

Over the last century, lands used for livestock and agriculture have been progressively abandoned on mountains across Europe. The afforestation of abandoned agricultural lands leads to significant environmental impacts particularly in karst catchments, which are highly responsive to climate change and human disturbances. Due to the lack of long-term historical records and appropriate methods, these impacts are not yet well investigated. The remote Baget forested catchment (Pyrenees Mountains), where a long-term hydrochemical survey has been conducted since 1979, was chosen to develop a method for reconstructing the evolution of landscapes based on heterogeneous and multi-temporal satellite imagery and aerial photographs from 1942 onwards. An indicator of landscape change is proposed, based on three vegetation groups, compatible with the various supporting data. The spatio-temporal landscape evolution evidenced a regular increase of 31% in forest extension between 1942 and 2019, while pioneer (grassland and heathlands) and open forest (early woodland) stages showed an overall but uneven decrease, marked by an accelerated decline of the latter due to an increase in livestock activities. The trends of streamwater discharge and chemistry were related to these environmental changes. A set of processes influencing the changes in the hydrochemical patterns, particularly the increase in dissolved elements in streamwater originating from carbonate dissolution, is proposed and discussed. The forest recolonization (+0.05 Km2.yr−1) enhanced soil organic matter content, generating an increased pCO2 in soils, which in turn enhanced the carbonate dissolution, expressed by a concentration increase of + 5 μeq.L-1.yr−1 for (Ca2++Mg2+) and of + 10 μeq.L-1.yr−1 for HCO3–. The steeper slope of HCO3– could result from decreasing terrestrial Ca2++Mg2+ export together with decreasing SO42- leaching (−4 μeq.L-1.yr−1) due to decreasing acid atmospheric deposition. In the meantime, the observed increase in air temperature (+0.03 °C.yr−1) favoured tree growth, litter decomposition and water demand by trees. This study has demonstrated the powerful indicator of linking the historical evolution of the landscape, quantified using images, to the observed trends in the hydrochemical composition of stream waters, to highlight the internal processes of the critical zone. However, because of nested effects, it still remains a challenge to strictly quantify their respective impact on streamwater chemistry.

The millennia-long use history of triangular bifaces

Relatively small, triangular bifaces often considered to be projectile points have a demonstrable use history that includes the Middle Archaic, Late Archaic, Early Woodland, late Middle Woodland, Late Woodland, and Contact periods of regional archaeology. Radiocarbon dates and other data are used to document this extensive history using the Upper Delaware Valley of New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and New York as a case study. Observed trends are evaluated in a broader regional context. The degree to which triangles of different ages can be distinguished from one another is addressed and suggestions for future research are made.

AN UPDATED HISTORY OF PRE-CONTACT NEW ENGLAND: NEW AMS DATES FOR THE HORNBLOWER II AND FRISBY-BUTLER ARCHAEOLOGICAL SITES

ABSTRACTFaunal assemblages from the pre-Contact period sites Frisby-Butler and Hornblower II on Marthaʼs Vineyard, Massachusetts, USA, remain unstudied since excavation during the 1980s. This project establishes radiocarbon (14C) dates from faunal remains and evaluates occupation and abandonment at each site. 14C measurements were collected from 17 specimens and 13 dates from previous analyses were re-examined. Dates were identified from the archaeological time periods Transitional Archaic (2700–3700 BP), Early Woodland (2000–2700 BP), and Late Woodland (450–1200 BP) at Frisby-Butler. Occupation likely represented seasonal visitations during autumn and winter to hunt based on white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) demographic profiles. A combined dataset of new and re-calibrated 14C measurements from Hornblower II date to the Late Archaic (3700–6000 BP), Early Woodland, Middle Woodland (1200–2000 BP), and Late Woodland periods. Settlement was focused on gathering warm-weather foods like demersal fish and lakebirds. Together, the sites demonstrate periodic seasonal use of the southwest coast of the island throughout the Late Holocene and fit within an established regional pattern in southern New England.

Food production in the Early Woodland: macrobotanical remains as evidence for farming along the riverbank in eastern Tennessee

ABSTRACTOpen riverbanks and disturbed floodplains are targeted by archaeologists as optimal habitats for the growth of many of the weedy indigenous seed crops in eastern North America, but there is still little evidence for garden locations in the archaeological record. This article combines macrobotanical and geoarchaeological analyses from the Birdwell site (40GN228), located on the Nolichucky River, to give insight into where cultigens were planted and how they were managed in eastern Tennessee during the Early Woodland period. The recovery of uncharacteristic amounts of edible seeds and wood charcoal from the lower terrace of this site suggests that inhabitants were actively managing cultigens along the floodplain of this settlement. The presence of these remains in a non-midden context is evidence that precontact farmers in the Tennessee foothills took advantage of the newly created floodplains of the Early Woodland by implementing a burning regime, an early agricultural strategy aimed at increasing soil productivity and encouraging the growth of weedy annuals on the riverbank. In absence of lines of evidence such as preserved paleosols that can be examined for soil micromorphology, pollen, and phytoliths, integrated paleoethnobotanical and geomorphological analyses can be used to reconstruct land use and archaeologically identify prehistoric cultivated fields.

Something fishy in the Great Lakes? A reappraisal of early pottery use in north-eastern North America

Abstract

Unified Theory of Cosmogram Decorations on Potteries of the Upper Midwest

Abstract Early Woodland Liverpool (Black Sand variant) pottery decorations consist of belts, rectilinear panels, and/or punctates encircling the vessel. Vertically arranged thematic motifs reflect the structure of the cosmos in its simplest form: Below realm, Earth’s disk, Above realm. This article postulates that the Early Woodland decorative tradition was an enduring symbolic system shared by women making pottery in the upper Midwest. Cosmograms in pottery motifs trace three universal metaphors of the Woodland era belief system: (1) Cooking vessels were feminine spiritbeings; (2) the Woodland culinary vessel shaped like the female form represented her biological destiny as the reproductive vessel for humankind and cooking was a ritual action (“prayer”), a metaphor for the creation of new members of society; (3) the cooking pot was a mandala of cosmograms expressing daily life, ritual practice, and cosmology. These themes carry through subsequent studies on Middle Woodland Havanoid and Late Woodland corded or trailed pottery in an upcoming book.

Serpent Mound in its Woodland Period Context

Abstract The Serpent Mound in Adams County, Ohio, is probably the most widely recognized effigy mound in the world. Opinions differ, however, as to who built the effigy and when. Currently there are two conflicting positions. According to Lepper and colleagues (this volume and elsewhere) the effigy was built by people of the Fort Ancient culture circa AD 1070. According to the present author and colleagues, recently obtained radiocarbon dates and other data indicate that Serpent Mound was built much earlier, by people of the Adena culture, circa 320 BC. In this article, evidence is presented that corroborates the earlier published radiocarbon dates suggestive of an Adenaera construction. This evidence includes a review of findings that real serpents were sometimes buried with Adena and Hopewell people and consideration of a relational complex reaching back to the Early Woodland—wherein the Great Serpent of Native American legend is associated with the journey of the deceased person’s soul, the star constellation Scorpius, and the Lowerworld. Together, these data provide an Early Woodland cultural and interpretive context for Serpent Mound and further corroborate the Adena-era radiocarbon dates for its construction.

Modeling Kansas City Hopewell Developments and Regional Social Interactions

Abstract In the 1950s, the Kansas City Hopewell (KCH) was modeled as a phenomenon originating from a migration of people or diffusion of ideas from Middle Woodland Hopewell communities in Illinois, a model that greatly influenced subsequent research. Two lines of evidence were instrumental in the formation of this model: ceramics and chronology. This study presents the results of 24 newly obtained accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) dates associated with a typological analysis of ceramics from three KCH sites, plus Early Woodland sherds from several regional sites. The results indicate that the KCH developed in part from local Early Woodland populations (ca. 500–1 BC) and was chronologically equivalent to Havana Hopewell in Illinois (ca. 100 BC–AD 400). Early and Middle Woodland ceramics also share affinities with types in regions to the north, south, and east of Kansas City, indicating that KCH origins and interactions were more multiregional and complex than the traditional model suggests.

Early Holocene wetland succession at Lake Flixton (UK) and its implications for Mesolithic settlement

This paper reports on new research into the timing and nature of post-glacial environmental change at Lake Flixton (North Yorkshire, UK). Previous investigations indicate a succession of wetland environments during the early Holocene, ultimately infilling the basin by ca 7,000 cal bp. The expansion of wetland environments, along with early Holocene woodland development, has been linked to changes in the human occupation of this landscape during the Mesolithic (ca 11,300–6,000 cal bp). However, our understanding of the timing and nature of environmental change within the palaeolake is poor, making it difficult to correlate to known patterns of Mesolithic activity. This paper provides a new record for both the chronology and character of environmental change within Lake Flixton, and discusses the implications for the Mesolithic occupation of the surrounding landscape.

AN EARLY WOODLAND DOMESTICATED CHENOPOD (CHENOPODIUM BERLANDIERISUBSP.JONESIANUM) CACHE FROM THE TUTELA HEIGHTS SITE, ONTARIO, CANADA

A cache of charred, domesticated chenopod (Chenopodium berlandierisubsp.jonesianum) seeds is reported from the Early Woodland (930–915 cal BC) Tutela Heights site (AgHb-446) in Brantford, Ontario, Canada. This is the northernmost report of the crop, approximately 800 km northeast of Kentucky where the previous northernmost occurrences contemporary with Tutela Heights are reported. The Tutela Heights chenopod dates to about 1,500 years before the earliest maize is reported in Ontario and is the earliest Eastern Agricultural Complex crop in Canada. The chenopod may represent a crop that was not grown locally. In this scenario, the crop was strictly an exchange item that was circulating in an interregional exchange system that extended south to the US Midwest region and east to the Maritime provinces. Another possibility, although less likely given our current understanding of Early Woodland plant use in Ontario, is that chenopod was introduced to Southern Ontario in this exchange network and subsequently became a crop in a low-level food producing economy during the Ontario Early Woodland. However, no ecological indicators of cultivation have been found at Tutela Heights, and continuity of domesticated chenopod utilization from the Early Woodland period in the province has not yet been documented.

Unified Theory of Cosmogram Decorations on Potteries of the Upper Midwest: Part I. Early Woodland Period

ABSTRACTEarly Woodland Liverpool (Black Sand variant) pottery decorations consist of belts, rectilinear panels, and/or punctates encircling the vessel. Vertically arranged thematic motifs reflect t...

Invention or diffusion: on the appearance of limestone temper in the late Holocene archeological record of southern Ohio, USA

One of the most fundamental questions archeologists face is whether some form or expression of material culture appears at a specific geo-temporal position in the archeological record as a result of invention or diffusion. As one of the most common archeological phenomena, ceramic technology at different times and places was either invented by, or diffused across, prehistoric populations. Here, we investigate whether the use of limestone temper—an additive added to clay before firing—could have been indigenously invented by prehistoric people in southern Ohio, USA. Since current evidence suggests that limestone temper was used on a limited basis during the Middle Woodland period in southern Ohio, it follows that if it were invented there indigenously, then evidence for its invention should be present in that period or the period prior, that is, during later portions of southern Ohio’s Early Woodland period. We tested this hypothesis via an assessment of 32 Early and Middle Woodland pottery sherds from southern Ohio using the HCL method. Our results unequivocally show that small amounts of limestone were indeed present in these early periods, consistent with possibility that the independent invention of limestone temper in southern Ohio could have occurred.

Cohabitants, Captives, or Trade: The Early Late Woodland Non-Weaver Ceramic Assemblage at the Marseton #2 Weaver Village in Mercer County, Illinois

The Marseton #2 site is a Weaver ring midden in the Mississippi Valley of Mercer County, Illinois, that was buried by a catastrophic flood event a few centuries after the site had been abandoned. A...

On the Age of Serpent Mound

Abstract Radiocarbon dates reported by Romain and colleagues (2017) suggesting that Serpent Mound (33AD1) is an Adena effigy mound are problematic because they cannot be linked reliably to cultural activities associated with the original construction of the effigy mound. Additional arguments offered by Romain and colleagues (2017) in support of an Early Woodland age for Serpent Mound also are unconvincing. A Late Prehistoric age for Serpent Mound is supported by the radiocarbon dates reported previously, new radiocarbon dates, the relative abundance of serpent imagery in the Fort Ancient culture and the contemporaneous Mississippian Tradition, the virtual absence of serpent imagery in the Adena culture, and the fact that, whereas effigy-mound building is otherwise unknown in the Early Woodland period, it is well documented, if rare, for the Fort Ancient culture and in the not-so-terribly-far-away upper Midwest it is so common that it defines the broadly contemporaneous Effigy Mound culture.

Current Research at Arkansas Archeological Survey’s Henderson State University Research Station

During 2017, the Arkansas Archeological Survey celebrated its 50th anniversary with a series of website postings (http://archeology.uark.edu/who-we-are/50moments/), a forum at the annual meeting of the Arkansas Archeological Society, and a symposium at the annual Southeastern Archaeological Conference in Tulsa. In addition, the Survey made strides in documenting and archiving its history and collections. The Survey’s Henderson State University (HSU) Research Station in Arkadelphia continued to inventory curated artifact collections and scan older paper records and color slides. Trubitt and Cinotto, assisted by volunteers during weekly Archeology Lab Days, are updating the station’s curated collections database with artifact counts and weights, and using identified diagnostic artifacts to revise temporal information in the AMASDA state site files database. We are also adding new information on novaculite projectile point distributions to the “Arkansas Novaculite” website (http://archeology.uark.edu/novaculite/index.html) database. Ultimately, the novaculite distribution map will be expanded to create maps for each time period. This attention to the station’s curated collections inventory has sparked several new projects. We inventoried over 10,000 artifacts from 1973 testing at the Spanish Diggings site (3GA48) in Garland County, the largest of the Ouachita Mountains novaculite quarries. Novaculite debris from this quarry can now be compared with excavated samples of chipping debris and in-process pieces from other quarries and habitation sites. Diagnostic dart points (Marshall and Gary, var. Gary) indicate use of the quarry at least during the Middle and Late Archaic and Early Woodland periods (ca. 6000-200 B.C.).

Rapid climate change-induced collapse of hunter-gatherer societies in the lower Mississippi River valley between ca. 3300 and 2780 cal yr BP

Hunter-gatherer communities in the American Southeast reached an apogee of social and political complexity in the period between ca. 4200 and 3000 cal yr BP. In the lower Mississippi Valley (LMV) the Poverty Point culture defined this period of socio-political elaboration. However, following a significant period of climate change that led to exceptional flooding and a major reorganization of the course of the Mississippi River, this culture collapsed beginning ca. 3300–3200 cal yr BP and the LMV was abandoned for the subsequent 500 years. In this study, we use data from the Jaketown site in the Yazoo Basin of west-central Mississippi to refine the chronology of the climate event that caused the collapse of the Poverty Point culture. A large flood buried Poverty Point-era occupation deposits at Jaketown around 3310 cal yr BP. Lateral migration of the Mississippi River during flooding led to inundation of the Yazoo Basin and re-occupation of ancient river courses. A coarse sand stratum topped by a more than a meter-thick fining upward sediment package marks a crevasse deposit caused by a rupture of the natural levee at Jaketown. This levee breach was part of a larger pattern of erratic flooding throughout the LMV and is associated with major landscape evolution and the abandonment of Poverty Point sites within the valley. Early Woodland peoples re-colonized the crevasse surface after ca. 2780 cal yr BP. Following this event, the Jaketown site and the eastern Yazoo Basin witnessed a period of landscape stability that lasts to this day. These archaeological data demonstrate how climate change and natural disasters can lead to socio-political dissolution and reorganization even in relatively small-scale hunter-gatherer populations.

Radiocarbon Dates Reveal Serpent Mound Is More than Two Thousand Years Old

Abstract Recent radiocarbon dating (Herrmann et al. 2014) found that Serpent Mound was likely built during the Early Woodland period—around 320 BC. Herrmann et al. (2014) also suggested that the effigy was repaired or restored during Fort Ancient times, thereby accounting for the late prehistoric radiocarbon-dated samples recovered by Fletcher et al. (1996). The present article presents new data in support of the Early Woodland construction date. These data include lidar analyses, electrical resistivity ground imaging (ERGI) studies, and iconographic assessments.

The Nature and Pace of Change in American Indian Cultures: Pennsylvania, 4000 to 3000 BP

The Nature and Pace of Change in American Indian Cultures: Pennsylvania, 4000 to 3000 BP