Eastern Woodlands Research Articles

Evolution of dentition in prehistoric Ohio Valley Native Americans III. Metrics of deciduous dentition

Deciduous tooth size in Native Americans of the Ohio Valley area is fairly stable from the terminal Late Archaic (3200 BP) through the Late Prehistoric (350 BP) periods. Some fluctuation in average size did occur during this time. These fluctuations most likely reflect random changes due to gene drift. However, no difference in the pattern of interactions among the sizes of teeth (covariance structures) can be demonstrated during this period. Principal components analysis of the buccolingual and mesiodistal dimensions in the total sample indicate that the major axis of deciduous tooth size in the Ohio Valley population shows an allometric relationship, with the dimensions of the anterior teeth increasing (or decreasing) as the 1.33 power of the dimension of m1(1) and as the 2.0 power of the dimension of m2(2). Comparison of the Ohio Valley samples with other samples from the Eastern Woodlands suggests that geography may have played a minor role in structuring deciduous tooth size variation. For the most part, however, widely separated Eastern Woodlands populations appear to have been evolving independently with respect to deciduous tooth size.

Wetlands and Emergent Horticultural Economies in the Upper Great Lakes: A New Perspective from the Schultz Site

The Schultz site (20SA2) is a benchmark site for understanding the Woodland adaptations of the Upper Great Lakes, although its older excavation data is not comparable with recent Eastern Woodlands research, which consistently uses fine-grained recovery techniques. The 1991 Schultz-site research collected supplementary and upgraded subsistence and environmental data to address questions about regional transformations from hunting and gathering to horticulture. In addition, questions regarding the role of aquatic and wetland resources, and how environmental change affected the availability and productivity of these alternative resources, were addressed. Results of faunal, floral, and geoarchaeological research reveal that Woodland economies in the Saginaw region of the Upper Great Lakes were keyed to environmental changes affecting wetland availability and productivity. The Early Woodland presence of cucurbits does not appear economically important until later when it is combined with more reliable supplementary food sources. Although chenopod is present during the Middle Woodland and early Late Woodland, wetland plant and animal resources act as surrogates for other starchy and oily seeded annuals common in other portions of the Midwest and in the Mid-South. Maize apparently does not achieve economic significance until the Late Woodland period. A model of this combined northern and southern strategy is developed.

Culture and Agriculture: A Comment on Sissel Schroeder, Maize Productivity in the Eastern Woodlands and Great Plains of North America

Using selective maize yield data from ethnohistoric and government sources dating between the mid-nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries, Schroeder (1999) argues that Mississippian average yield potential fell within a 9-10 bu/acre range. We evaluate her argument in terms of well-established climatic, environmental, varietal, and behavioral constraints on maize agriculture and conclude that reconstructing prehistoric agricultural potential requires a more precise methodology that incorporates these factors.

Mysteries of the Hopewell: astronomers, geometers, and magicians of the eastern woodlands

Buried beneath today's Midwestern towns, under several layers of earth and the accumulated debris of two thousand years, are the clues to an ancient mystery. A Native American people, now known as the Hopewell, lived and worked these lands, building earthworks which in some instances dwarf the ruins at Stonehenge. More significantly, these mammoth earthworks were built in different geometric shapes, using a standard unit of measure and aligned to the cycles of the sun and the moon. Using the foundation of existing scholarship, this book presents new discoveries showing the accomplishments of the Mound Builders in astronomy, geometry, measurement, and counting. William Romain then goes one step further to theorise why generations of people toiled to move millions of tons of earth to form these precise structures, joining the ranks of the Egyptians, Mayans, Greeks, Chinese, and other advanced ancient cultures. This book will appeal to many readers, including anthropologists, mathematicians, and historians, but perhaps especially to readers curious about ancient cultures and seeking explanations for these magnificent earthen structures.

Dental microwear evidence for a dietary shift between two nonmaize‐reliant prehistoric human populations from Indiana

Several recent studies have demonstrated the efficacy of dental microwear analysis (DMA) for dietary reconstruction among nonhuman primates, early hominids, and prehistoric humans. The current study seeks microwear evidence for a paleobotanically suggested change in the types of foods that were consumed by two temporally distinct populations of the North American eastern woodlands. This particular dietary shift between the Late Archaic and the Early/Middle Woodland periods did not include the introduction of maize or any other tropical cultigen. In contrast, most dietary reconstructions from this area have compared later populations that consumed tropical cultigens (such as maize) with those that did not. High-resolution casts of adult mandibular second molar protoconid phase II wear facets were viewed via a scanning electron microscope at 500×. Photomicrographs of the microwear features were analyzed with specialized software, Microware 2.2 (Ungar [1995] Scanning 17:57–59). Analysis of variance statistical tests were performed, with one variable requiring rank-transformation. A dietary transition is evidenced by a statistically significant increase in the mean number of pits and concomitant decreases in scratch width and scratch length from the Late Archaic to the Early/Middle Woodland. Overall, the diet became harder and less abrasive. The implication here is that dental microwear analysis is able to discern relatively subtle dietary transitions in human populations that may not be as readily accessible by other means of dietary reconstruction. Am J Phys Anthropol 114:139–145, 2001. © 2001 Wiley-Liss, Inc.

Dental microwear evidence for a dietary shift between two nonmaize-reliant prehistoric human populations from Indiana.

Several recent studies have demonstrated the efficacy of dental microwear analysis (DMA) for dietary reconstruction among nonhuman primates, early hominids, and prehistoric humans. The current study seeks microwear evidence for a paleobotanically suggested change in the types of foods that were consumed by two temporally distinct populations of the North American eastern woodlands. This particular dietary shift between the Late Archaic and the Early/Middle Woodland periods did not include the introduction of maize or any other tropical cultigen. In contrast, most dietary reconstructions from this area have compared later populations that consumed tropical cultigens (such as maize) with those that did not. High-resolution casts of adult mandibular second molar protoconid phase II wear facets were viewed via a scanning electron microscope at 500x. Photomicrographs of the microwear features were analyzed with specialized software, Microware 2.2 (Ungar [1995] Scanning 17:57-59). Analysis of variance statistical tests were performed, with one variable requiring rank-transformation. A dietary transition is evidenced by a statistically significant increase in the mean number of pits and concomitant decreases in scratch width and scratch length from the Late Archaic to the Early/Middle Woodland. Overall, the diet became harder and less abrasive. The implication here is that dental microwear analysis is able to discern relatively subtle dietary transitions in human populations that may not be as readily accessible by other means of dietary reconstruction.

The Barbeau Archives at the Canadian Museum of Civilization: Some Current Research Problems

The archives containing the field research documents of the late C. Marius Barbeau (1883-1969) of the former National Museum of Canada (now the Canadian Museum of Civilization--hereinafter CMC) are extensive and complex. Although the Barbeau Archives were not generally accessible until the early 1990s, some ethnologists had access before that. In the years that they have been more accessible, the Archives have provided valuable data for scholars in many disciplines, especially Anthropology and Folklore Studies, but their full potential as a research base have hardly yet been realized. Under the present organization of the CMC the archives are administered by the Information Management Services Division, Information Access Services. The very able Client Archivist, with whom most researchers work to establish access to the Barbeau Archives, is Benoit Theriault, who has an enviable knowledge of the Barbeau holdings.The principal components of the Barbeau Archives contain a diverse range of materials on aboriginal, folkloric and historical materials from across Canada. They consist of documentary materials, sound archives (mostly of songs) transcribed from wax cylinders used in field research by Barbeau and other National Museum personnel, photographic archives (which even include photographs of potlatches in progress on the North Pacific Coast during the prohibition period), and an extensive correspondence with some of the leading ethnologists, musicians, public servants, politicians, artists, musicians and folklorists of Barbeau's day. In the Museum collections there are totem poles, clothing and basketry, silverware, clothing, religious items and folk art which he collected on his many journeys in North America.On appointment to the National Museum in 1911, Barbeau wanted to continue his work on the social organization, the subject of his thesis prepared under R.R. Marrett at Oxford. Edward Sapir as Chief of Ethnology urged him instead to begin immediately on assembling ethnographic documents relating to the Huron-Wyandot, and this was one of Barbeau's first tasks after his appointment to the Museum (Barbeau 1957-58: 57). Despite a widespread idea in Canadian popular thought, the Huron are not even now extinct in the sense of being eradicated; rather they were depopulated, dispersed and displaced. Barbeau interviewed Huron-Wyandot people particularly at Ancienne-Lorette near Quebec City and in Oklahoma, where many had taken up residence during the massive population displacements of Native peoples after the mid-17th century. Much of his work focussed on the displacement of the Huron and on their genealogies, many details of which were remembered early in the 1900s. Barbeaus's work was a kind of salvage ethnology, an attempt to document information which could have disappeared quickly. Incidentally to this task, he collected much Iroquois, Mohawk, and other materials from Eastern Woodlands groups. In addition to textual, photographic and sound archival recordings, Barbeau collected many objects in Quebec which now reside in the permanent collections of the CMC.Plate 1 [Not Transcribed]Perhaps the best known and largest component of the archives is the Barbeau-Beynon Northwest Coast Collection. Barbeau began work in the Prince Rupert area in 1915, and he spent periods of time residing in the Skeena area (for example he spent 1921-22 in Terrace, BC, the location of much of my own present work with the Kitselas First Nation). During that time he brought many visitors to the Skeena and Nass River areas, including artists such as (Sir) Ernest MacMillan, A.Y. Jackson, Emily Carr, Langdon Kihn, Edwin Holgate and others.(1) His aim was to promote some degree of intercultural stimulation between the Skeena and Nass peoples and the Canadian arts, as well as to secure the technical advice and active collaboration of experts in music and the arts. Musicians Ernest MacMillan and Alfred Laliberte, and artists A. …

Ancient Earthen Enclosures of the Eastern Woodlands. Robert C. Mainfort, Jr. , Lynne P. Sullivan

<i>Ancient Earthen Enclosures of the Eastern Woodlands</i>. Robert C. Mainfort, Jr. , Lynne P. Sullivan

The pattern of spondylosis deformans in prehistoric samples from west-central New Mexico

A Pre-Columbian skeletal sample (n=42) from two ancestral Pueblo sites in the Rio Grande valley of west-central New Mexico was examined for frequency and severity of spondylosis deformans (vertebral osteophytosis). No significant sex differences were detected. Degenerative changes in the collective sample are generally confined to no more than well-defined horizontal lipping at the joint margins. Advanced proliferative osteophytic change is infrequent even in the oldest age category. Not surprisingly, the lumbar vertebrae were the most frequently and most severely involved vertebral segment for all three adult age cohorts defined. The cervical vertebrae were the least involved. This pattern generally conforms with observations made on other archaeological samples from west of the Mississippi River, but it contrasts with the general pattern of more extensive cervical involvement in Pre-Columbian North American samples from the Eastern Woodlands. This possible east–west difference is hypothesized (Bridges, P.S. 1994. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 93: 83–93) to be related to differential burden bearing habits. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Figurines, Flint Clay Sourcing, the Ozark Highlands, and Cahokian Acquisition

AbstractAt the pinnacle of Eastern Woodlands’ prehistoric cultural development, Cahokia has been interpreted as a political and economic power participating in prestige-goods exchanges and trade networks stretching from the Great Plains to the South Atlantic. Among the more spectacular of the Cahokian elite artifacts were stone pipes and figurines made from a distinctive red stone previously identified as Arkansas bauxite. In this research, we used a combination of X-ray diffraction, sequential acid dissolution, and inductively coupled plasma analyses to establish the source of the raw material used in the manufacture of the red figurines and pipes that epitomize the Cahokian-style. Our research demonstrates that these objects were made of locally available flint clays. This finding, in conjunction with other evidence, indicate Cahokian exploitation of many mineral and stone resources focuses on the northern Ozark Highlands to the exclusion of other areas. These findings indicate that we must reassess the direction, extent, and role of Cahokian external contacts and trade in elite goods.

Burned Rock Complexes, Baked Clay Objects, Steatite, and Ceramics: Evolutionary Implications for Plains/Eastern Woodlands Cooking Technologies

Burned rock complexes (BRC) have a broad geographic distribution. However, they are not a fully understood class of cultural feature. Dated to Early/Middle Woodland times by some Plains researchers, BRC also have been attributed to Late Archaic cultures in the Eastern Woodlands (e.g., Kentucky Shell Mound Archaic). Archaeologists have documented important Late Archaic/Middle Woodland cooking technologies other than BRC as well. These technological improvements include baked clay objects, steatite cooking slabs, and fiber- and mineral-tempered ceramics. Comparing various contextual, functional, and physical characteristics for these cooking tools results in an improved understanding of the advantages conferred by each. Such an understanding will shed light on the varying circumstances under which prehistoric groups utilized cooking technologies. The overall goal of this article is to develop models which account for the full range of variation in late prehistoric economies of the Central Plains and Eastern Woodlands.

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

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.

Maize Productivity in the Eastern Woodlands and Great Plains of North America

Archaeologists and ethnohistorians have long been interested in quantifying potential maize productivity for late prehistoric and early historic Native Americans of the Eastern Woodlands. Maize yields obtained by Native Americans using traditional farming techniques in the nineteenth century are compared to yields obtained by nineteenth-century Native Americans using plows, and nineteenth- and twentieth-century farmers in Illinois and Missouri. The result is a notion of average resource productivity for maize that is more reasonable and modest than previous estimates. In this study, the mean yield of maize for nineteenth-century Native American groups who did not use plows was 18.9 bu/acre (stdev=4.1) (1,185.4 kg/ha [stdev=254.1]). Yields on the order of 10 bu/acre (627.2 kg/ha) probably are closer to the average prehistoric yields that were available for subsistence purposes. The mean size of gardens cultivated by nineteenth-century Native American families without plows was .59 acre (stdev=.45) (.24 ha [stdev=.18]). These newly compiled data are used to generate a model of nuclear family household economy and minimal and maximal garden sizes given different levels of maize productivity and consumption. Population estimates made on the basis of previous assessments of high rates of resource productivity will need to be reevaluated.

Gender and the Early Cultivation of Gourds in Eastern North America

Discovery and AMS dating of mid-Holocene Cucurbita pepo fragments from central Maine and north-central Pennsylvania necessitate the reevaluation of the status of the earliest gourds in noncoastal areas of the Eastern Woodlands and the role of women in their cultivation. Gourds may have been spread initially in conjunction with improvements in fishing techniques, with small gourds used primarily as net floats. In this scenario, people passed temperate, Eastern (ovifera-type) gourds northward from the coastal plains of the Southeast into river valleys of the Midwest and Northeast as fishing became more significant in Archaic subsistence systems. The growing of gourds was fully compatible with a fisher-gatherer-hunter lifeway, and it did not necessarily trigger a transition to farming. Women may have grown gourds, but the possible role of women in fishing activities is more ambiguous than is their role in gathering and eventually domesticating the food plants of the Eastern North American agricultural complex.

Warfare in prehistoric and early historic eastern North America

Recent criticisms of the use of historically and ethnographically recorded conflicts as models for warfare in prehistoric times force archaeologists to reexamine assumptions about the frequency, severity, and effects of intergroup fighting. In eastern North America, skeletons of victims and palisaded settlements—the only information consistently available on intergroup hostilities—indicate that the prevalence of conflicts varied greatly over time and space. Occasionally the attacks, typically ambushes of small numbers of people, cumulatively resulted in numerous casualties.Variation in palisade strength is consistent with the organizational structure and warrior mobilization potential of late prehistoric societies in different parts of the Eastern Woodlands.

The Adoption of the Bow and Arrow in Eastern North America: A View from Central Arkansas

North American archaeologists have long been interested in distinguishing between dart and arrow points in order to establish when bow-and-arrow technology was adopted in the Eastern Woodlands. A quantitative analysis of point form and qualitative reconstructions of bifacial reduction trajectories from Plum Bayou culture sites in central Arkansas indicate that arrow points were abruptly adopted and became widespread about A.D. 600. Moreover, arrow points are metrically discrete entities that were not developed through gradual modification of dart points in this region as appears to be the case elsewhere. Comparisons with patterns observed in other regions of the East show significant variation in the timing, rate, and direction of the adoption of the bow and arrow, as well as the role of this technological change in Native American economies and sociopolitics. These observations suggest that the bow and arrow were: (1) introduced significantly earlier than some researchers have posited; (2) independently invented by some groups and diffused to others; and (3) relinquished and later readopted in some areas of the Eastern Woodlands in response to changing social, historical, and environmental conditions. Our data also call into question simple unilinear or diffusionary models that claim to explain the development and spread of this technological innovation.

Analysis of Slips and Other Inorganic Surface Materials on Woodland and Early Fort Ancient Ceramics, South-Central Ohio

Petrographic analyses were made of 386 utilitarian pottery vessels from 23 dated components of 18 Early Woodland through early Fort Ancient period sites (ca. 1150 B.C.–A.D. 1300) in south-central Ohio. The analyses reveal that a significant percentage ( 11.6 percent) of the 386 vessels bear uncolored (i.e., unpigmented) pottery slips and washes, that these surface materials were common (&gt;56 percent) among the 23 sampled components, and that they were produced throughout most of the examined prehistoric sequence, including the earliest Early Woodland, when pottery making began in the Midwest. In contrast, a literature review indicates that uncolored slips and washes are unrecorded for utilitarian wares in the prehistoric Eastern Woodlands, that both colored and uncolored slips are unknown for any ceramics of the Early Woodland period, and that colored slips or washes in the pre-Mississippian Midwest have been observed in only low frequencies. Electron microprobe analysis of seven sherds show the compositional similarity of the clays of slips to the clays of their associated vessel bodies, indicating that the slips were made from the same raw clays as the bodies, but with no or little added rock temper and/or with the sieving of the slip clay. Contextual analyses give further insights, including the possible uses of slips and washes for decoration and to decrease vessel wall permeability. Calcite and apatite coatings on the vessel surfaces also were observed and are interpreted. Results indicate greater continuity between and Midwestern and Southeastern United States in ceramic technology than previously thought, and suggest a need for caution in electron microprobe and INAA chemical studies of Midwestern ceramics.

Shawnee Convergence: Immigrant Indians in the Ozarks

FOR MANY YEARS A FRONTIER was understood to be simply a boundary between two or more societies with different cultures. When one side was characterized as native, the complementary understanding was that an inevitable decline and absorption of the weaker group would occur. In recent years, however, a much more complex understanding of the dynamic process in the confrontation of two societies has emerged. Central to the new vision is the replacement of a linear frontier by the image of a zone of interaction in which creative energies are released among the participating social groups, leading to new and possibly unique cultural formations. These complex phenomena are frequently referred to as occurring in the middle ground, a spatial and experiential metaphor with much greater utility than frontier.' The Ozarks area of Arkansas and Missouri in the early nineteenth century is an excellent candidate for analysis as a middle ground, for it became for several decades home to a number of different Native American groups. The accounts of Territorial Arkansas, with its political dramas enacted by white Americans with strong personalities, create the illusion that the progress from Louisiana Purchase to territory to statehood within the modem boundaries was inevitable, even planned. The reality, however, is that for its first few decades, the land that is now Arkansas was the stage for a number of imaginative experiments, some of which, if realized, Quatawapea or Col. Lewis, a Shawnee leader who settled in Arkansas and encouraged other Shawnees to do likewise. From Thomas McKenney and James Hall, The Indian Tribes of North America (1836-1844; 1933). Courtesy, Special Collections Division, University of Arkansas Libraries, Fayetteville. would have left a quite different social structure behind. From the still unplumbed 1805 plan of Aaron Burr until the 1828 treaty in which the who had relocated from their eastern homeland to Arkansas (the Cherokees West) returned the Ozarks to the United States, there were players on the scene who imagined quite different futures for the region. The story of the West is fairly familiar to many people.2 The Shawnees were also in the Arkansas middle ground in this period, but their story is less well known, probably because the records are so sparse. Bits of evidence left behind in the documents allow the outlines of this story to emerge, however, and even raise the tantalizing-but ultimately unverifiable-possibility that one Indian leader envisioned a future for Arkansas that included the establishment of a Shawnee nation in the Ozarks. The Shawnees were in Arkansas from the beginning of the nineteenth century up to the 1830s, when they moved on to Texas, Kansas, and Oklahoma. The Ozarks region was truly international during that period. Not only was the area between the White and the Arkansas Rivers officially the Cherokee Nation from 1817 to 1828, these western were joined by Delawares, Kickapoos, Peorias, Miamis, Weas, Piankashaws, Michigameas, and Muskogees. The Shawnees-the focus of this study-were centered at Shawnee Town on Crooked Creek, a settlement that was later reoccupied by Anglo-Americans and renamed Yellville, county seat of Marion County. The background of the Shawnees is complicated, but a brief outline of their history here will help place the Arkansas story in context. Among the various groups of Native Americans in the Eastern Woodlands, the Shawnees stand out as unique in several ways. They claimed a great antiquity, for their traditions said that they were separated from the Leni Lenape (Delaware) in ancient times. No student of the Shawnees has seen fit to challenge this tradition and that closeness was certainly manifest in late historic times as the Shawnees and Delawares participated jointly in many ventures in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Even if the story is untrue, the Shawnee oral tradition is important, for it argues that they saw themselves as one of the significant players in the complex history of the Eastern Woodlands from ancient timeS. …

Maize Agriculture Evolution in the Eastern Woodlands of North America: A Darwinian Perspective

David Rindos' coevolution theory remains the most comprehensive application of Darwinian theory to issues of prehistoric agriculture evolution. While his theory has drawn attention, there has been a lack of subsequent development of the application of Darwinian theory to prehistoric agricultural evolution. Combining Sewall Wright's shifting balance theory of evolution with aspects of Rindos' coevolution theory provides important new insights into the processes of crop transmission between regions. Using these theories, a model is developed for the adoption and subsequent evolution of maize agriculture in the Eastern Woodlands of North America.

Ancient earthern enclosures of the Eastern Woodlands

Ancient earthern enclosures of the Eastern Woodlands