Anthropology Commons^™

Reconsidering The Late Woodland: A Critical Reassessment Of Perception And Periodization In The Ohio Valley, 400-1000 Ce, Devin A. Henson

Senior Independent Study Theses

The Late Woodland period in eastern North America has traditionally been conceptualized as a cultural hiatus between the region’s Hopewell and Mississippian traditions. As a drastic (though not complete) reduction in the practices of monumental architecture and art produced with nonlocal materials occurred during this time, the end of the preceding Hopewell tradition (and its related Interaction Sphere) has been depicted as a “collapse” or “devolution” by multiple researchers. However, the Late Woodland also saw a rise in population, intensification of agriculture, and technological innovation. Although the combination of these factors and the period’s architectural and artistic reduction appear contradictory, …

Evidence Of Culinary Practices In Faunal Data Of Site 38ch1531, Meagan Perkins

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

Identity In The Late Woodland Northeast: Interpreting Communities Of Practice From Paste Composition At The Thomas/Luckey And The Losey 3 Sites, Douglas S. Riethmuller

Graduate Dissertations and Theses

Thomas/Luckey’s 13th -15th and Losey 3’s 14th-17th century occupations in the Late Woodland Northeast contain assemblages with incongruous regional pottery types; Kelso Corded and an assumed non-local Shenks Ferry. I argue the presence of Shenks Ferry vessels at these two sites indicates the movement of people who reproduced their natal designs upon arrival, rather than trade. The question of whether identity and communities of practice can be discerned from pottery decorations and paste was answered by analyzing sherds with pXRF. While pottery types are based on visual attributes, pXRF looks at elemental composition. Decoration is mimicable, but paste is not; …

Households And Changing Use Of Space At The Transitional Early Mississippian Austin Site, Benjamin Garrett Davis

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The Austin Site (22TU549) is a village site located in Tunica County, Mississippi dating to approximately A.D. 1150-1350, along the transition from the Terminal Late Woodland to the Mississippian period. While Elizabeth Hunt’s (2017) masters thesis concluded that the ceramics at Austin emphasized a Late Woodland persistence, the architecture and use of space at the site had yet to be analyzed. This study examines this architecture and use of space over time at Austin to determine if they display evidence of increasing institutionalized inequality. This included creating a map of Austin based on John Connaway’s original excavation notes, and then …

Corncobs In The Campfire: Evidence Of Cultivation Of Zea Mays At 44ch62, The Randy K Wade Site, Olivia A. Mehalko, Cameron E. Reuss

Selected Publications

In 20 years of excavation, the Randy K. Wade site (44CH62) has only produced indirect evidence of the cultivation of corn (Zea mays) in the Late Woodland village. This indirect evidence consists primarily of corncob impressions on Dan River pottery. In the summer of 2017, an intact hearth was excavated which contained the preserved remains of multiple charred corncobs- the first direct evidence of corn. The hearth also contained remains of other organic materials such as charred corn kernels, bark, sticks, bone fragments, and acorns. This paper will examine the direct evidence for corn cultivation at the Wade …

Exploring Community Formation And Coalescence At The Late 14th-Early 15th Century Tillsonburg Village Site, Rebecca Parry

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis examines the Tillsonburg Village’s particularly large and dispersed community plan through an intra-site analysis of ceramic vessels and longhouse attributes, as these are considered useful indicators of social, organizational, and temporal processes. The archaeological site in Tillsonburg, Ontario dates to the late Middle Iroquoian Period (AD 1350-1420). Community coalescence involves the aggregation of previously separate social groups into one communal settlement. It is explored as the predominant conceptual approach to better understand the formation of the Tillsonburg Village’s community plan. However, other processes relating to the contemporaneity of village areas or houses are also considered. Spatial and statistical …

If Pits Could Talk: An Analysis Of Features From The Figura Site (Aghk-52), Kelly Gostick

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis examines the features and spatial patterning of features across the Figura site (AgHk-52), a Late Woodland, Younge Phase Western Basin site, dating to the 13^th century AD. The features from this site were analyzed to gain insight into these unique contexts and how they can, in turn, advance our understanding of life at the Figura site. Given the clean and ordered settlement pattern of the site, the spatial relationships of features to other settlement patterns – such as residential and non-residential areas, inside and outside the palisade – could be analyzed. The site was divided into defined …

Maize Provisioning Of Ontario Late Woodland Turkeys: Isotopic Evidence Of Seasonal, Cultural, Spatial And Temporal Variation, Zoe Morris, Christine D. White, Lisa Hodgetts, Fred J. Longstaffe

Earth Sciences Publications

The isotopic composition (δ¹³C, δ¹⁵N) of bone collagen from Ontario Late Woodland archaeological turkeys was compared with that of modern Ontario wild turkeys, and archaeological turkeys from American Southwestern, Mexican and other Woodland sites to determine whether Late Woodland Ontario peoples managed wild turkeys by provisioning them with maize, the only isotopically distinct horticultural plant at that time. Despite the fact that humans from Late Woodland Western Basin and Iroquoian traditions consumed equal amounts of maize, wild turkeys utilized by the two groups exhibit different diets. Western Basin turkeys reflect a C₃-only diet, …

Expanding Social Networks Through Ritual Deposition: A Case Study From The Lower Mississippi Valley, Megan C. Kassabaum, Erin S. Nelson

Megan C Kassabaum

No abstract provided.

Between Surface And Summit: The Process Of Mound Construction At Feltus, Megan C. Kassabaum, Edward R. Henry, Vincas P. Steponaitis, John W. O'Hear

Megan C Kassabaum

Geophysical methods that explore depths more than 1m below the surface were employed at Feltus (22Je500), a Coles Creek period (AD 700–1200) mound-and-plaza group in southwestern Mississippi, USA. It is difficult to assess the internal structure of large platform mounds such as those at Feltus using excavation and traditional geophysical techniques alone. As a result, such investigations often focus only on activities that took place during and after the final stage(s) of construction. Our 2012 research at Feltus utilized electrical resistivity tomography and downhole magnetic susceptibility to examine the internal structure of two platform mounds at depths beyond those commonly …

Northern Flint, Southern Roots: A Diachronic Analysis Of Paleoethnobotanical Remains And Maize Race At The Aztalan Site (47-Je-0001), Jennifer L. Picard

Theses and Dissertations

Located in Southeast Wisconsin on the west bank of the Crawfish River, the Aztalan site was first settled by horticultural Late Woodland peoples. By the mid-eleventh century A.D., Middle Mississippian migrants arrived from the south. The site was eventually transformed into a fortified village with three platform mounds. During the later component, Middle Mississippian and Late Woodland peoples appear to have coexisted. This thesis consists of a diachronic comparison of floral subsistence remains and maize race at the site. The results of the analysis indicate that while the Late Woodland inhabitants grew maize, food production involving maize and native cultigens …

Pottery Production And Cultural Process: Prehistoric Ceramics From The Morgan Site, Lucianne Lavin, Fred Gudrian, Laurie Miroff

Northeast Historical Archaeology

Bert Salwen was a pioneer in the study of prehistoric ceramics. In this paper, we use Bert's procedures of classification and interpretation to analyze the pottery assemblage from the Morgan site, a Late Woodland horticultural community located in the lower Connecticut drainage at Rocky Hill, Connecticut. The analysis provides insight into Native American cultural development in southern New England during the 12th and 14th centuries A.D. especially in the realm of social interaction and inter-regional exchange with Hudson valley groups.

Effigy Mounds, Social Identity, And Ceramic Technology: Decorative Style, Clay Composition, And Petrography Of Wisconsin Late Woodland Vessels, Jody Clauter

Theses and Dissertations

This ceramic analysis is focused on a combination of technical and decorative analyses involving energy dispersive X-ray fluorescence (EDXRF) and petrographic data unused by or unavailable to previous researchers. The ceramics used in this study are non-collared forms of Late Woodland (AD 700 - 1200) types found across southern Wisconsin. Ceramic attributes from these data sets are analyzed using multi-variate statistical methods and the resulting clusters are plotted geographically. Results indicate regionalization of particular attributes with a major east-west trend noted in some cases. However, geographical plotting shows broad overlap among river valleys and locales. Importantly, EDXRF data demonstrates that …

The Use Of Space At The Late Woodland Shady Grove Site (22-Qu-525), Stephen George Harris

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Very little previous work has been done at the Late Woodland Shady Grove site. This thesis will examine and reconfirm some of the previous conclusions about this site's placement within the temporal framework of the Northern Yazoo Basin. The Late Woodland and Mississippian occupations of the site used the same space in decidedly different ways. How the use of space has changed through time will be examined from several different perspectives, including geophysical survey and the intra-site distribution of artifacts.

Seasonal Subsistence In Late Woodland Southwestern Ontario: An Examination Of The Relationships Between Resource Availability, Maize Agriculture, And Faunal Procurement And Processing Strategies, Lindsay J. Foreman

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This study uses the zooarchaeological record to examine the seasonal mobility and scheduling of faunal procurement and processing activities by southwestern Ontario’s two Late Woodland (ca. A.D. 800-1600) communities, Western Basin and Iroquoian. Faunal datasets helped to reconstruct the timing and location of Western Basin annual hunting and fishing pursuits and identified a greater degree of flexibility in the organization of these activities than previously recognized, as well as in comparison to contemporaneous Iroquoian communities who also occupied this region.

Western Basin groups oriented themselves near lakes and rivers year-round where they exploited locally abundant fish, mammals, birds, and other …

Multiple Modes Of Monumentality: Case Studies From The American South, Megan Kassabaum, David Cranford, Erin Nelson

Megan C Kassabaum

No abstract provided.

Looking Beyond The Obvious: Identifying Patterns In Coles Creek Mortuary Data, Megan Kassabaum

Megan C Kassabaum

While the lack of grave goods has been the focus of most scholarly discussion of Coles Creek burial practices, the mortuary analyses presented here focus on recognizing correspondences among sex, age, and burial position. Using assemblages from three Coles Creek sites (Greenhouse, Lake George, and Mount Nebo), I find that while there is significant intersite variability among Coles Creek mortuary programs, certain age groups are consistently treated differently from each other and from everyone else. Thus interments were being made with deliberate care and consideration for those involved and are not nearly as haphazard and disorderly as previously thought.

Villagers And Archaeologists: An Examination Of Past Behaviors At The Barton Site (21gd02), Emily Hildebrant

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

After a 40 year hiatus, excavations at the Bartron site (21GD02) resumed from May 2008 through June 2008 with new research questions. The primary impetus for this research was an investigation into the nature of the reported wall trench structure (Feature 13), one of the characteristics of the site previously cited as evidence of Mississippian contact or influence in the Red Wing Locality. This structure was hypothesized to be part of Pierre Charles Le Sueur's 1694/95 overwintering post on the southern end of Prairie Island. When excavated three centimeters below the previously excavated depth, the proposed wall trench structure was …