North America - Midwest (Geographic Keyword)
151-175 (329 Records)
An early Mississippian world came about at and around Cahokia in the eleventh century CE owing to the convergences of people with other organisms, celestial objects, atmospheric conditions, landforms, and elements, each with their own distinctive temporalities and affects. Understanding those convergences historically entails grappling with timing and duration, and we offer a Bayesian reading of the latest radiocarbon datasets considered against the backdrop of the suspected periodicities of the...
Holes: The Beginners Guide to Food Caching (2015)
The Michigan State University Subterranean Storage Research Experiment (MSU SStoRE) employed experimental archaeology to better understand the storage efficiency, capacity, and reliability of hunter-gatherer food storage pits. Drawing on archaeological, ethnographic, and ethnohistoric information the project accurately recreated below ground storage pits for the late Late Woodland period (A.D. 1000-1600) of northern lower Michigan. Over three consecutive yearly cycles, subterranean storage...
A Holistic Investigation of Economization at a Late Prehistoric Village in Northern Illinois (2017)
The economization of lithic raw materials for Late Prehistoric groups in the Midwestern United States has long been the subject of research. This research has often focused on explaining aspects of either technological or subsistence changes, such as the shift to agriculture (e.g., Bamforth 1989; Cobb 2000; Emerson, et al. 2000; Emerson and Titelbaum 2000; Jeske 1990, 2000). This project uses the underlying framework of economization used by these lithic studies and applies it to faunal...
Hopewell Culture and the landscape - an introduction to the session (2016)
Sites and monuments of the Hopewell Culture are of high significance and outstanding universal value; embedded into the landscape they have been intensively researched during the past years adding and applying geophysical surveys. New technology with multi-channel, vehicle towed magnetometers allow large scale operations of the landscape and it becomes affordable to go beyond the known monuments into the landscape. This presentation introduction will show some possibilities and discuss the...
The Hopewell Problem: A Discussion of Digital Methods for Legacy Collections at Hopewell Mound Group (2016)
The Hopewell culture was a unique explosion of cultural practices characterized by monumental earthwork construction, elaborate funerary practices and extensive exchange networks of exotic materials. The presence of these monumental burial mounds and earthwork structures on the Midwest landscape captured the interest of the earliest American archaeologists resulting in extensive archaeological excavations in the late 19th and early 20th century. The vast legacy collections that resulted from...
Hunter-Gatherer Mobility Strategies: A Late Woodland Example from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan (2015)
The Late Woodland (LW) period in the upper Great Lakes region has been linked to the development of the Inland Shores Fishery and especially to the advent of deep water fall fishing. A recent study of LW settlement and subsistence patterns in the eastern Upper Peninsula of Michigan has revealed a shift in the mobility strategies used by LW peoples of that region. Using site locational data and an assemblage diversity index trends were identified that directly inform on LW settlement and mobility...
A Hunter’s Paradise: a zooarchaeological analysis of hunting practices in the Kankakee Marsh (2015)
From about 16,000 BCE to the early 20th century, the Kankakee Marsh was a vast wetland covering about a million acres in northern Indiana and Illinois. Today the marsh covers about one percent of its original area. After Removal Period, the marsh was famous among hunters for its abundant populations of fur bearing mammals and waterfowl. A regional analysis of the Kankakee Marsh is conducted to analyze the intersite variability of the faunal remains recovered. These sites date from the Archaic to...
"I Could Feel Your Heart": The Transformative and Collaborative Power of Heartfelt Thinking in Archaeology (2017)
As anthropologists we know that the heart is considered a source of strength in many cultures. Yet in Western society and the culture of science, an epistemology of the heart or heartfelt thinking is generally feminized and as a consequence, devalued. Guided by Feminist and Indigenous theory, I have established an archaeological practice that foregrounds heartfelt thinking as part of community-based heritage work. Importantly, I strive to train the next generation of archaeology...
Identifying Hide-Processing Activity Areas at Hunters Home (2017)
Testing and data recovery at the Hunters Home site (11Wi398) in Naperville, Will County, Illinois, recovered nearly 60 formal end scrapers. Microwear analysis determined that more than 80% of them exhibited traces of use-wear, and, of those, nearly 90% showed evidence of hide working. Spatial relationships between hide scrapers, burnishing stones, ochre crayons, and refitted fire-cracked rocks were examined to define discrete, hearth-centered, hide working activity areas within the site.
Incorporating sex/gender and sexuality studies into general education curriculum (2017)
When considering how to incorporate sex/gender and sexuality studies into college curricula, the question is: Where to start? In this paper, I argue that college and university programs should include content on the social construction of sex/gender and sexuality within general education courses. I will predominately focus on my work with Ohio community college students as a case study that has broader implications for general education outcomes. Pairing courses such as Sociology and Archaeology...
Indigenous Cultural Resource Ceremonies (2015)
Indigenous Cultural Resource Ceremonies looks at the relationship that Indigenous people have with archaeological sites and with sacred places. Spiritual connections that Indigenous people have with the land, waters and even with the stars and with the cycles of the moon. How is this relationship defined within modern archaeology and cultural resource management today? The relationship and the connections to places that we originate from. The villages, communities, towns, and the cities. ...
Indigenous Histories and the Queer Future of Archaeological Anachronism (2016)
Archaeological representations of modernity can inadvertently bind Indigenous history to a political past. Native origin myths, archaeological exhibits, and racist mascots cement the prior-ness of Indigenous communities. In order to challenge settlement in the present, Indigenous bodies must disrupt a settler state that fossilizes Native sovereignty. The case studies presented in this article consider moments when haunting intimacies with Indigenous presences queered the tense of settlement....
Information Exchange in the Postclassic Oikoumene:a view from midcontinental North America. (2017)
Several years ago Steve Lekson and I proposed a Postclassic Oikoumene stretching from Mesoamerica through the Southwest and into midcontinental North America. A frequent question has been how such a "known world" could have been created in the absence of long-distance trade and transportation systems. In this paper I explore how information was exchanged among the peoples of midcontinental North America in the late prehistoric and early historic periods. I examine how hunters and gatherers serve...
Integrating Site Formation Processes, Spatial Analysis, and Local Statistics to Assess Archaeological Site Structure: A Case Study from a Multicomponent Site in the Western Great Lakes (2017)
This paper presents a method to delineate discrete temporal occupations at open-air multicomponent sites by integrating site formation processes, spatial analysis, and local statistics. Open-air multi-component sites, formed on stable surfaces but lacking strong vertical integrity, pose many challenges for the delineation and interpretation of temporally discrete occupations. Such sites often lack vertical stratigraphy, so defining the horizontal spatial structure of components represents a...
Interaction Spheres or Networks of Participation? Organizing Institutional Complexity in Adena-Hopewell societies of Kentucky’s Bluegrass Region (2016)
Since the 1960’s Joseph Caldwell’s notion of the interaction sphere has endured as a global framework through which archaeologists interpret regional systems of trade and exchange. However, a tension exists in this framework between the homogeneous and heterogeneous nature of exchanges within overlapping territories. Implied in the Interaction Sphere approach is that, through their interactions, autonomous social groups engage in homogeneous religious, economic, and sociopolitical institutional...
An Intrasite Analysis of Faunal Remains at the Bell Site (47-Wn-9) (2016)
GIS is being used increasingly in archaeology today, but can also enhance the understanding-through intrasite analysis-of sites excavated before GIS became popular. The Bell site (47-Wn-9), in Winnebago County, Wisconsin, is one such site. The faunal remains collected there represent two short, distinct occupation periods and distinct cultural traditions. An analysis of the quantity, artifact associations, and provenience of faunal remains recovered can add to the established understanding of...
Introduction to the DMM-MSU Morton Village Project (2015)
Morton Village and Norris Farms #36 cemetery, located in the central Illinois River valley in Fulton County, Illinois, offer a rare opportunity to investigate migration and conflict with multiple data sets. The cemetery was excavated in the 1980s for highway improvements. Archaeologists from the Dickson Mounds Museum branch of the Illinois State Museum recovered 264 apparent Oneota burials dating to ca. A.D. 1300, and the cemetery is well known for the high level of violence evidenced. The...
Investigating a Shotgun House: Piloting a new Project Archaeology Shelter Investigation (2017)
"Investigating a Shotgun House" draws on diverse data sources to examine the lives of poor, mid-20th century working-class people in Davis Bottom, an historically integrated neighborhood near downtown Lexington, Kentucky. Piloting drafts of the investigation were integral elements in its development. A week-long teachers’ academy provided revisions to the draft, which was then piloted by four 5-7th grade teachers who had attended the academy. Feedback from interviews with both teachers and...
Investigating Hopewell interaction at the Crib Mound Site through source analysis of chert cache bifaces (2017)
The prehistoric cultures of the Middle Woodland Period (200 BC – AD 350) have been a central research focus in North American archaeology since the 18th Century. One trademark of these culture groups, commonly referred to as "Hopewell", is the presence of extensive social networks as evidenced by large amounts of exotic materials acquired from great distances. Chert cache discs found in the thousands in burial contexts are reported to have moved along these social networks. Both Wyandotte...
Investigation of biological relationships at the Late Woodland/ Mississippian transition in the northern Mississippian hinterlands (2015)
The Mississippian period is exceptional for the fast and wide ranging influence it had on the mid-continent. Processes behind the Mississippianization of the Midwest are often derived from explanations of trade or religion as inferred from the presence of material culture and site organization. It is unknown to what level direct contact occurred. Biological distance investigation using odontometrics and dental discrete trait analysis was conducted on individuals from Late Woodland and...
Inyan: Towards Understanding Sioux Quartzite and a Sacred Landscape (2015)
Both archaeological and ethnographic evidence supports the idea that the locations of petroglyphs and pictographs are considered sacred. In the Northern Plains of North America, the Jeffers Petroglyphs and similar petroglyph sites along the Red Rock Ridge are part of a landscape which includes habitations, petroforms, lithic reduction sites, and quarries. We report on the results of archaeological fieldwork at four sites along the Red Rock Ridge near the Jeffers Petroglyphs: a habitation site...
Islands in the Stream: A GIS Study of Prehistoric Ritual Landscapes Within Southern Illinois (2015)
Native Americans recognized unique natural features as representing parts of ritual landscapes imbued with power that also contained cultural elements including rock art and mortuary sites. One such landscape within Illinois consists of a three mile long isolated bluff segment located on the now-drained Mississippi River floodplain that prehistorically was surrounded by a mosaic of lakes, ponds, and swamps. In this paper we use GIS, LIDAR, and archaeological data to reconstruct the ancient...
Kankakee Marsh Lifeways, Phase III Data Recovery, Northwest Indiana (2016)
Site 12LA0091 represents a unique archaeological setting in northwest Indiana. Located south of Lake Michigan on a sandy dune remnant situated topographically above the historic Kankakee Marsh, this prehistoric site has yielded invaluable information in understanding regional prehistoric subsistence activities from the Late Archaic to Upper Mississippian periods. A recent Phase III data recovery effort has provided data that can help refine the prehistoric chronological framework for northwest...
Large Fields - Big Data. Browsing the meadows of Seip Earthworks, Ohio, using multiple gradiometer arrays (2016)
Surveyed and first published in 1848 by Squier and Davis, the mounds being excavated in early 20th century, Seip Earthworks today forms part of the Hopewell Culture National Historical Park near Chillicothe, Ohio. While the restored burial mounds are among the largest from the so-called Hopewell culture, the earthworks comprise further two miles of embankment walls forming big circles and a precise square with astronomical alignments, a typical geometric figure at a number of places, which...
Late Archaic Body Worlds: Some Preliminary Thoughts (2016)
The Terminal Archaic (ca. 4000-3000 cal. BP) marked an important turning point in the upper Midwest. New relationships among persons, landscapes, and material culture emerged that, in many ways, set a pattern for the next two millennia. This paper makes a preliminary effort to interpret these changes in terms of shifting ontologies of the body. Of particular interest is the emergence of clear spatial divisions between the living and the dead on the landscape. Other patterns include the elaborate...