A Bobcat Burial and Other Reported Intentional Animal Burials from Illinois Hopewell Mounds

Abstract

The Elizabeth site is a bluff-top mortuary mound group constructed and primarily used during Hopewellian (Middle Woodland) times. Recent reanalysis of nonhuman skeletal remains from the site reveals that an intentional burial previously identified as a dog (Canis familiaris) is actually an immature bobcat (Lynx rufus). As a result of this discovery, we reevaluated eight other purported animal burials from Illinois Middle Woodland mounds, including seven dogs and a roseate spoonbill (Platalea ajaja). The dogs all appear to be intrusive or unrelated burial events, but both the bobcat and the roseate spoonbill were definite Hopewellian mortuary interments. The roseate spoonbill was decapitated and placed beside a double human burial. But the bobcat was a separate, human-like interment wearing a necklace of shell beads and effigy bear canine teeth (Figures and ). To our knowledge, this is the only decorated wild cat burial in the archaeological record. It provides compelling evidence for a complex relationship between felids and humans in the prehistoric Americas, including possible taming.     

CHALLENGES IN APPROACHES TO SKELETAL STATURE ESTIMATION: AN EXAMPLE FROM PREHISTORIC EASTERN MISSISSIPPI AND WESTERN ALABAMA

Abstract

Although stature is used widely as a bioarchaeological health indicator, its determination and subsequent interpretation are not always straightforward. A study of 77 individuals from eight prehistoric populations from the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway illustrates this issue. Application of three common stature estimation formulae to five Middle/Late Woodland and four Mississippian groups strongly suggests that use of partial versus whole bone, choice of element, and stature estimation method can create disparate patterns in health interpretation, not only for the direction of differences but particularly regarding the degree of differences among groups.     

Sourcing galena from a Middle Woodland habitation site in northeast Mississippi

Galena has been recovered mostly in mortuary contexts – burial mounds, burial caves, and associated mortuary facilities – from Middle Woodland sites in the Southeast. Three small pieces of galena from the Cork site (22OK746) in northeast Mississippi came from midden deposits at a site with no mound or burials. Lead isotope analysis was used to source the samples to the Central Missouri-Tri-State-North Arkansas region. Isotopes provide an excellent sourcing method because their ratios are stable and large comparative source datasets are available. Recovery bias may have led to underestimation of galena presence in Middle Woodland habitation sites.     

The Case of the Caldwell Mound: A Woodland Period Mound in the Central Scioto River Valley

ABSTRACT

This article presents a reconstruction and analysis of the Caldwell Mound located in the central Scioto River valley of southern Ohio. The mound contained a log tomb, at least four burials, and associated funerary objects. Four AMS radiocarbon dates place the Caldwell Mound within the last century BC and first century AD, and the mound contains evidence of practices historically associated with “Adena” and “Hopewell.” Few other records exist from this period in the region despite it experiencing perhaps some of the most dramatic socioreligious transformations in precolumbian North America. This analysis documents early evidence for the diversification and segregation of leadership roles based on the interpretation of three buried individuals. It also demonstrates the utility and efficacy of working with amateur-produced records and collections, even when incomplete, to reconstruct and glean insight from important Woodland period sites.     

A Persistent Place for Hunter-Gatherers During the Late Holocene: The Case of Burials in Pit on the Coast of Lángara Bay,Argentine Patagonia

In Argentine Patagonia, the type of archaeological burial “in pit” has been only identified on the coast of Lángara Bay. This modality is characterized by the presence of single and multiple primary burials. Studies on five human burials in pits are presented in this article. The aim is to compare the contexts of burials in pit at the site level and the spatial characteristics of their distribution in the Lángara Bay locality from a diachronic perspective. The approach focuses on mortuary practices and social relations of hunter-gatherer groups during the Late Holocene. A characterization of the burials, their chronologies, bioarchaeological determinations, stable isotope studies, and their spatial distribution are included. The results allow us to chronologically place the contexts between ca. 3000 and 2000 cal BP. A spatial pattern in the distribution of burials in the coastal landscape was identified. Finally, it is proposed that this part of the Patagonian coast was a persistent place of burials in pit.     

Terminal Late Woodland Mortuary Ceremonialism,Social Differentiation,and Long Distance Interaction in Northern Ohio: New Evidence from the Danbury Site

Abstract

The period from A.D. 800 to 1200 was a time of marked cultural transitions across the Midwest which featured the Mississippian emergence in the west and development of sedentary, tribal societies to the north and east. Recent salvage excavations at the Danbury site, a terminal Late Woodland habitation and cemetery in northwestern Ohio, document the intensified exploitation and storage of aquatic faunal resources and maize and the creation of a large corporate cemetery. Whelk shell ornaments accompanying certain burials point to long-distance interaction with southeastern societies as well as new forms of social differentiation. Preserved fibers of cotton (Gossypium spp.) in the dental calculus of several important individuals reveal previously unrecognized social or economic linkages with societies as distant as the Southwest or northern Mexico. The combined evidence for subsistence intensification, specialized mortuary treatments, and long-distance material exchange at Danbury represent unique local responses to pan-regional socio-cultural transformations.     

DATING THE CONSTRUCTION OF EARLY LATE WOODLAND EARTHEN MONUMENTS AT THE JACKSON LANDING SITE IN COASTAL MISSISSIPPI

Abstract

Middle Woodland and early Late Woodland monuments generally have been interpreted as ceremonial spaces that integrated communities both within and among regions. This article presents information on the early Late Woodland component at the Jackson Landing site, a large site with a platform mound and semicircular earthwork, located on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. Earlier research is synthesized with more recent investigations of the mound to argue that the site’s monuments were built during the early Late Woodland period between approximately A.D. 400 to 700. Determining when Jackson Landing’s monuments were built is important because their construction provides a temporal baseline for regional and, perhaps, interregional social integration along the central Gulf Coast.     

Intra-Wetland Land Use in the Kankakee Marsh Region of Northwestern Indiana

Abstract

The physical structure and configuration of the landscape play profound roles in how a culture settles and utilizes a region. The following case study in the former Kankakee marsh region of northwestern Indiana exemplifies how subtle topographic variation can have a significant impact on intra-wetland landscape utilization. In the Kankakee marsh landscape, so-called dune islands provided areas of preferential settlement that were reused throughout the prehistory and early history of the region. In particular, these islands were important locales for resource extraction during the Late Archaic period and resource processing and storage during the Middle and Late Woodland and Upper Mississippian periods.     

Middle Woodland Hopewellian Cache Blades: Blanks or Finished Tools?

Abstract

Cache blades are usually interpreted as blanks that are curated for later production of finished tools or projectile points. A cache of 54 leaf-shaped blades was recovered from Middle Woodland Hopewellian Burial 14 at Sugar Run Mound in northwestern Pennsylvania. Macro and microscopic examination of the cache blades indicates they were used as tools prior to use as burial goods. The study shows that at least the Sugar Run Mound cache was not merely a batch of blanks awaiting further reduction into finished tools.     

Clovis Blades at Paleo Crossing (33ME274), Ohio

Abstract

This paper describes the previously undocumented Paleoindian lithic blade assemblage from the Paleo Crossing Site, Ohio (33ME274). Qualitative and quantitative comparisons of the Paleo Crossing blade assemblage to blade assemblages from other Paleoindian sites demonstrates its fragmented and utterly exhausted nature, but support its designation as Clovis. This is significant given that a majority of the Paleo Crossing toolstone outcrops 600 km southwest of the site in southern Indiana and western Kentucky, a prominent locale for Clovis prismatic blade manufacture. We propose that blade reduction was practiced for prolonging the use-life of distally retouched endscrapers, a prominent tool form at Paleo Crossing. Since use-wear and ethnographic evidence often show that endscrapers were used for hide-working, Paleo Crossing may be an appropriate venue to test for the presence of intense caribou hide-working.     

The Taber Well Site (33HO611): A Middle Woodland Habitation and Surplus Lithic Production Site in the Hocking Valley,Southeastern Ohio

Abstract

From ca. 1500 B.C. through A.D. 300, small indigenous communities in southeastern Ohio incrementally increased their population size, adopted a more sedentary lifeway within recognized territories, formalized the burial of select individuals in mounds, and supplemented their hunting and gathering economy with gardening. Data from the Taber Well site (33HO611) are presented, from which we infer that surplus lithic production was taking place at the site. We suggest that surplus production of utilitarian goods was part of the economy of this and other local communities, especially within an environment of uneven resource distribution. This observation is contextualized within models of Middle Woodland exchange and specialization.     

Patterns of Interpersonal Violence at the Fisher Site

Abstract

Recent reanalysis of crania from the Late Prehistoric Fisher site in Will County, Illinois indicates relatively high levels of interpersonal violence. In the Big East and Big West mounds, cranial trauma was likely a result of repeated, low-level harassment of the villagers, resulting in the death of only a few people at a time. Numerous burials in the south-southwest mound, however, were interred in a large pit that reportedly contained at least 40 partially disarticulated individuals. Of those individuals from the mass burial pit, nearly all of the crania available for study showed evidence of perimortem trauma. These victims were likely the result of a large-scale attack that resulted in numerous deaths and subsequent abandonment of the site. Accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) of radiocarbon dates indicate that this violence was occurring between about A.D. 1225 and 1300, a period that seems to have been a particularly volatile one in Late Prehistoric Illinois.     

PASTE CHARACTERIZATION OF WEEDEN ISLAND POTTERY FROM KOLOMOKI AND ITS IMPLICATIONS FOR SPECIALIZED PRODUCTION

Abstract

We report the results of a petrographic analysis of pottery from Kolomoki, a Middle and Late Woodland period mound and village complex in southwestern Georgia. Thin sections of 65 sherds representing several prestige and utilitarian Weeden Island pottery types, from both domestic (midden) and ceremonial (mound) contexts, were obtained. For comparison, we also analyzed samples from a few potential clay sources. We characterize the range of variability in paste/resource groupings present in the Kolomoki assemblage and use these data to address patterns of manufacture and exchange of Weeden Island pottery through comparisons to thin sections of comparable types from the McKeithen site and other Weeden Island sites in the region.     

A New and Extended Case for Lunar (and Solar) Astronomy at the Newark Earthworks

Abstract

The Middle Woodland period Newark Earthworks in Newark, Ohio, are the largest known set of connected, geometrical earthworks ever constructed. An analysis of available evidence (survey, topographical, statistical, and archaeological) shows that the geometry of this Hopewell complex and its relation to the surrounding terrain can be understood in terms of astronomical alignments to the Sun and Moon. The geometrical structure of the site is consistently aligned with extremes in the 18.6-year cycle of lunar standstills. An understanding of the topographical context is presented by identifying four hilltops connected by lunar standstill alignments to long linear features of the Earthworks and connected to each other by alignments to the Sun at the solstices. The number and accuracy of the alignments together with Monte Carlo studies showing the low likelihood of chance producing such results suggest that Newark was aligned with unprecedented accuracy both to regional topographical features and astronomical phenomena.     

The Woodland Period Occupation of Grand Island

Abstract

The coastal waters surrounding Grand Island, Michigan represent one of the most productive fisheries along the southern shore of Lake Superior. Archaeological investigations of coastal settings like Grand Island have figured prominently in studies of Woodland period (ca. 0–A.D. 1600) subsistence, settlement, and social integration in the Upper Great Lakes. The topic of Woodland subsistence and settlement is not without controversy regarding the timing of technological changes associated with the increased exploitation of the fall fishery. This article provides a summary of Woodland period archaeology on Grand Island with the goal of interpreting the data from within the framework of the Inland Shore Fishery debate. A multiscalar approach is used to look for differences between Initial and Terminal Woodland fishing strategies and address changes in the way Grand Island was socially and economically integrated into the broader context of Woodland period settlement and subsistence systems. The evidence suggests that while Grand Island was occupied and used in a consistent manner throughout the Woodland period, the social and economic significance of the island may have changed with a shift in settlement toward greater access to deepwater settings for the exploitation of fall-spawning fish.     

Terra incognita: terrestrial LiDAR documentation of Mound A at Kolomoki (9ER1)

ABSTRACT

The manifest representation of space and place is essential to good archaeology. Our ability to document and relate these concepts, projected into the past and reflected in the present, has increased tremendously with the expansion and availability of technology. We present recent efforts to further document a well-known place in the cultural landscape: the Kolomoki site in southwestern Georgia, occupied primarily during the Middle and Late Woodland periods. Specifically, we summarize older investigations of Mound A, then present the results of recent terrestrial LiDAR documentation. Our work substantiates the claim that Mound A was the largest Woodland-period mound in Eastern North America in terms of overall volume.     

Mortuary Practices,Cultural Context,Bayesian Chronology,and Maize Consumption among Terminal Late Woodland Societies in Northeastern Illinois

In 1940, Gretchen Cutter and a WPA crew conducted excavations in the Mound Wi^o5 at the Fisher site in Will County, Illinois. We examined those materials as part of our reanalysis of the Fisher site excavations by George Langford and the University of Chicago. The mound’s material culture correlates with the Des Plaines phase but contains strong connections to the east, especially with Albee phase mortuary practices. Calibrated ¹⁴C dates and Bayesian modeling place the Des Plaines phase as contemporary with the Mound Wi^o5 mortuary’s primary use during the ninth to eleventh centuries. There is isotopic evidence of a mixed C₃/C₄ diet with some maize consumption. Mound Wi^o5 represents the only Terminal Late Woodland collective mortuary facility currently known in northeastern Illinois. The identification of such multigenerational communal Terminal Late Woodland mortuary practices lends support to the contention that they provided the cultural base for the emergence of the distinctive Langford Tradition accretional mortuary mounds.     

EARLY WOODLAND SETTLEMENT AND MOUND BUILDING IN THE UPPER TENSAS BASIN,NORTHEAST LOUISIANA

Abstract

Traditionally overlooked because it lacks hallmarks of material and cultural complexity, Early Woodland in the Southeast is an interval of significant transformation in material culture, settlement, and social organization. Investigations at four sites in northeast Louisiana provide insights into changes taking place at this time. These sites are situated on a crevasse splay created by flooding at the end of the Archaic. This flooding is associated with an occupation hiatus ca. 3000–2500 cal B.P. Evidence suggests a rapid colonization of the crevasse splay by people using Tchefuncte pottery, and there is no evidence at these sites of stratigraphic or cultural continuity from Poverty Point. The Early Woodland occupation in the study area dates ca. 2400–2100 cal B.P., which is later than dates associated with Early Woodland in the Pontchartrain Basin and contemporary with Lake Cormorant culture sites farther north. Early Woodland in northeast Louisiana is marked by a diagnostic Tchefuncte ceramic assemblage and the presence of a settlement system composed of small villages or hamlets nucleated around a conical mound that presumably served as a ceremonial/ritual center. This mound was erected very rapidly; radiocarbon dates suggest it was constructed in no more than 10 years. Although mound building has been suspected, this is the first conclusive evidence it was an aspect of Tchefuncte settlement and ceremonial practices. Data from these sites bear on the question of cultural and demographic continuity and change at the Archaic to Woodland transition. Previous models emphasize continuity of populations with ceramic technology and styles diffusing into the lower Mississippi Valley. In contrast, our data support a model of Early Woodland repopulation of the lower Mississippi Valley from the south and east following a prolonged period of regional abandonment.     

Local and “Global” Perspectives on the Middle Woodland Southeast

During the Middle Woodland period, from 200 BC to AD 600, southeastern societies erected monuments, interacted widely, and produced some of the most striking material culture of the pre-Columbian era, but these developments are often overshadowed by the contemporaneous florescence of Hopewell culture in Ohio. I argue that the demonstrable material links between the Middle Woodland Southeast and Midwest demand that we cease to analyze these regional archaeological records in isolation and adopt multiscalar perspectives on the social fields that emerged from and impacted local Middle Woodland societies. In synthesizing recent research on Middle Woodland settlement, monumentality, interaction, and social organization, I make explicit comparisons between the Middle Woodland Southeast and Ohio Hopewell, revealing both commonalities and contrasts. New methodological approaches in the Southeast, including geophysical survey techniques, Bayesian chronological modeling, and high-resolution provenance analyses, promise to further elucidate site-specific histories and intersite connectivity. By implementing theoretical frameworks that simultaneously consider these local and global dimensions of Middle Woodland sociality, we may establish the southeastern Middle Woodland period as an archaeological context capable of elucidating the deep history of the Eastern Woodlands as well as long-standing issues surrounding middle-range societies.     

Modeling Kansas City Hopewell Developments and Regional Social Interactions: A Multisite Ceramic Analysis and New AMS Radiocarbon Ages

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.