North America - Midwest (Geographic Keyword)
251-275 (329 Records)
The Butternut-Franklin Lakes Archaeological District is located immediately south of the confluence of the Upper Wisconsin, Menominee, Brule River watersheds, in an area dominated by several thousand lakes. The preponderance of streams, swamps, and marshes make this a vast and extraordinary aquatic ecosystem. Archaeological research in this region, extending back into the 1960s, provides a solid baseline for reconstruction of the dynamic settlement/subsistence adaptation of prehistoric...
A Prism or a Mirror? Reflections of a Hopewell Man (2017)
Interred within a deep, mounded and relatively elaborate tomb nearly two millennia ago, our Hopewell man lived approximately as many years as we have studied his remains. While his tissues have remained unchanged since excavation, our analytical gaze has witnessed near tectonic shifts in theoretical perspectives. The first interpretations, those of the senior author in zealous pursuit of her doctoral degree, were decidedly processual and lacked reflexivity. She spoke of status, for example,...
Promoting Responsible Heritage Tourism through Public Archaeology at Two Great Lakes Lighthouses (2015)
Central Michigan University recently undertook a series of public archaeology projects in cooperation with local historical societies and county governments in to investigate two northern Michigan lighthouses that are public parks. The McGulpin Point Lighthouse operated from 1869 to 1906 and was purchased by Emmett County in 2009. The 40 Mile Point Lighthouse was built in 1897, was deeded to Presque Isle County in 1998. The modern political and socioeconomic conditions of the two counties are...
Pros and Cons of Consulting Collectors: A Case Study from the River Raisin in Michigan (2015)
In survey, we collect what lies on the surface. But so have others, for decades or more. Ignoring private collections risks neglecting a selective but informative part of the accumulated record. One way to gauge collector effects is to compare what archaeologists found in survey to private collections from the same places. In 1975-77 the University of Michigan surveyed the River Raisin watershed in southeastern Michigan. I compare Michigan’s results to what collectors had found already and,...
Prospects and Challenges toward Globalization for Crops in the Eastern Agricultural Complex of North America (2015)
Two crops domesticated in North America north of Mexico before European colonization have achieved global economic success: (1) sunflower (Helianthus annuus var. macrocarpus); and (2) eastern squash (Cucurbita pepo ssp. ovifera var. ovifera). Other members of the Eastern Agricultural Complex became extinct as domesticates before European contact or shortly thereafter, forfeiting potential to figure in the Columbian Exchange. Both sunflower and the domesticated eastern chenopod (Chenopodium...
A Proto-Historic Site in the Western Great Lakes (2015)
The discovery of several early iconographic/Jesuit rings in 1996 in Marquette County, Michigan led to the subsequent discovery of a proto-historic locus within a larger multi-component site. Professional archaeologists and volunteers spent two summers excavating 34 square meters near this discovery, and eventually identified the area as Location A at the Goose Lake Outlet #3 site. The excavated area is a single component occupation located in an ecologically diverse region that has been used...
Quantifying Variation in Ramey Incised Motifs: A Stylistic Evaluation of Cahokian Authority Across the American Bottom (2017)
Ramey Incised jars, often considered to be indicative of Cahokia’s twelfth-century Stirling Phase fluorescence, are characterized by angular shoulders, polished exteriors, and incised symbolic motifs arranged around the vessel orifice. Thought to be for ritual or symbolic use, the ceramic type is not only present at Cahokia, but ubiquitous across sites in the American Bottom. However, the process through which these vessels were manufactured and then disseminated is still not fully understood....
Quaternary Chronostratigraphy and Archaeology of Big Bone Lick, Kentucky, USA (2015)
Big Bone Lick in northern Kentucky has been a critical site in the historical development of North American Quaternary vertebrate paleontology and archaeology since the 1700s. Solid-sediment cores, stream profile excavations, vertebrate paleontology, archaeology, accelerator mass spectrometry radiocarbon and optically stimulated luminescence dating, and stable carbon and nitrogen isotope analyses were undertaken to address the lack of a modern study of the Quaternary chronostratigraphy and to...
A Re-evaluation of Oneota Cultural Phases in the La Crosse Locality (2015)
The Oneota culture has dated in La Crosse Wisconsin to between AD 1300-1625 (Boszhardt 1994). Single component sites have allowed for definition of specific ceramic types and attributes as diagnostic of each of three phases. Previous excavations and analysis of materials recovered from the Tremaine site (47-LC-95) by the Wisconsin Historical Society revealed pottery and radiocarbon dates corresponding to all of the phases (O’Gorman 1995). During the summers of 2011 to 2014, new excavations by...
Reconstructing Seasonal Subsistence Patterns: A Case Study in Michigan's Saginaw Valley (2017)
The Saginaw Valley provides one of the most robust records of Michigan’s prehistoric subsistence history. Of this 10,000-year history, the Middle Woodland to Late Woodland regional transformation has been a particular point of interest concerning local subsistence practices. Previous research has hypothesized a three-zone seasonal subsistence strategy as an essential element of the Saginaw Valley Late Woodland adaptive shift. In particular, this regime included a reliance on riverine and...
Relatedness and Social Organization at the Ray Site (11BR104): Biological Distance Analysis of a Middle Woodland Ridge Top Cemetery (2015)
A considerable number of biodistance studies have been conducted on archaeological populations from the Lower Illinois Valley. Many of these have included groups of remains dating to the Middle Woodland Period (50BCE to 400CE), a period which has in the past gained attention for the elaboration of burial mound complexes, intensification of horticulture, as well as proliferation of "exotic" and intricately crafted artifacts. In the Lower Illinois Valley, this period is also characterized by the...
Religious Subjects and Gendered Transformations at the Native American City of Cahokia (2015)
Though processes of subjectification are continuously ongoing, there are moments when powers coalesce in particular persons, places, or objects and bring about pervasive transformations. We explore these moments through gendered divisions of key religious spaces, objects, and practices at the Native American city of Cahokia and other early Mississippian places. Through cosmological oppositions, these spaces, objects and practices both created balance and fomented politico-religious...
Reservation Archaeology in an NPS Setting: Native-White Relations and Land Use on the Grand Portage Reservation, 1854-1930 (2017)
Grand Portage National Monument (GRPO) is located within the Grand Portage Reservation in Northern Minnesota and is primarily concerned with interpreting the events and impacts of the fur trade in the eighteenth century. In an effort to increase Grand Portage Ojibwe representation and in compliance of Section 110, GRPO conducted archaeological excavations in the summer of 2016 of the historic yard of a Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) building to explore land use and plant use throughout time and...
Rock and Roles: The Chunkey Experience in the Mississippian World (2015)
Games have the ability to change the course of relationships between people, whether through direct engagement as participants or spectators. This paper explores the peripatetic nature of the pre-contact Chunkey game and its role in the initial and sustained spread of Middle Mississippian lifeways from the greater Cahokia region near modern day St. Louis, beginning around A.D. 1050. While Middle Mississippian culture quickly spread throughout the midcontinent at this time, the Chunkey game...
Rock, Paper,….XRF….: Continuing Improvements to the UI-OSA Lithic Raw Material Assemblage (2015)
The University of Iowa Office of the State Archaeologist (OSA) has an expansive lithic raw material assemblage with a 30 year compilation history. The largest portion contains multiple samples of 75 in-state lithic types while the second portion contains multiple samples from the seven surrounding and 16 additional states. A revision and reorganization of the OSA collection was completed in 2006 to provide a more systematic and consistent approach to lithic identification and sourcing. This...
The Rockhouse Hollow Rockshelter, Ohio River Valley (2015)
Recorded within the sediments of Rockhouse Hollow rockshelter in the Hoosier National Forest in southern Indiana is a rich history of prehistoric occupation spanning 10,000 years. Unlike any other site in Indiana, Rockhouse Hollow has produced artifacts from all prehistoric cultural time periods, with the notable exception of the Paleoindian Period. Although the site had already been looted for decades, excavations in 1961 produced a wealth of lithic and faunal data that have not yet been...
Rocks that Roll: Potential Spatial Applications for X-Ray Fluorescence Data (2016)
This poster explores the potential applications of using x-ray fluorescence data to assess site integrity and site formation processes. The subject of the analysis was the fire-modified rock assemblage from the University of Iowa Field School at Woodpecker Cave (13JH202), a Late-Woodland rock shelter. The assemblage was selected because of their ubiquity throughout the site, their likely sourcing from the adjacent limestone cliff face, and association with known cultural horizons. The assemblage...
Rockshelters and Farming Villages: Complementary seasonal occupations at Woodpecker Cave (2015)
The Late Woodland Period in the Midwest of North America shows a marked shift in diet from mixed hunting, gathering and farming a few indigenous crops to a predominance of maize in the diet, indicated by radical changes is stable isotope ratios. The sumptuary displays of elite trade goods of the Adena and Hopewell Interaction Sphere in the Early and Middle Woodland were replaced by more egalitarian burial practices. Farming villages in the major river valleys underwent a major reorganization in...
The Role of Public Space in Identity Making at Morton Village (11F2) (2015)
The circa 1300 AD Morton Village site in west-central Illinois lies at the intersection of Mississippian and Oneota worlds. High levels of violence and social stress witnessed in the site’s nearby Norris Farms #36 cemetery suggests that regional social interaction was marred by internecine conflict and raiding. The multi-ethnic nature of cohabitation at the site, on the other hand, suggests that ritual and cultural convention were creatively modified to reflect a new multi-cultural reality. This...
Scioto Hopewell Concepts of Soul-Like Essences in Humans: Mortuary Evidence in Light of Historic Woodland and Plains Native American Concepts (2016)
Scioto Hopewell conceptions of soul-like essences in humans are evident in the systematic placements of grave goods of particular kinds at particular bodily locations of inhumations, and with insights from comparative information on historic Woodland and Plains Native Americans. Analysis of 284 burials from 11 Scioto Hopewell cemeteries indicates a recognition of one "free" journeying soul and multiple "body" souls; their bodily residences, locations of exit upon death, and likely directions...
A Scraper is Sometimes Just a Scraper: A Multi-Method Approach to Inferring Tool Use at an Oneota Site in Southeastern Wisconsin (2016)
A sample of lithic artifacts from the Crescent Bay Hunt Club site, a 12th-14th century Oneota village at Lake Koshkonong in southeastern Wisconsin, were subjected to a multiple-method analysis to determine individual tool use. In this example, an assemblage based analysis of raw material type and quality, heat alteration and energy input into manufacturing combined with debitage analysis provides an overall understanding of the lithic economy. Triangular bifaces and unifacial tools from Crescent...
Sculpting a Mississippian Aztalan: A Landscape Perspective (2017)
The culmination of over a century of research at the Aztalan site in south-central Wisconsin has highlighted the drastic extent of landscape modification by the site’s inhabitants. Notably, with the arrival of Middle Mississippians by the end of the 11th century A.D. these modifications included construction of earthen platform mounds, formal plazas, and landscape reclamation. Utilizing publicly available LiDAR derived surface data for Jefferson County, Wisconsin, this poster presents a summary...
Sculpting, Renewal and Perdurance of Illinois Hopewell Mounds (2017)
Investigations of Illinois Valley Middle Woodland (Hopewell, ca 50 cal BC – cal AD 400) mound structure have traditionally emphasized the organization and composition of initial, or primary, features that anchor these monuments. Particular attention has been placed upon the distinctive ramp and tomb complex that centers initial ritual activity at mound sites and its connection to mortuary activity, cosmology, and creation. In contrast, archaeologists have typically underappreciated subsequent...
The Search for Little Bow's Village, Cedar County Nebraska (2015)
The Corps of Discovery Expedition traveled the stretch of the Missouri River that today divides Nebraska from South Dakota in August of 1804. From their vantage point on the river, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark both note an abandoned Omaha village at the mouth of what is now Bow Creek, Cedar county, Nebraska. The explorers' map identifies the village as having been founded by Omaha leader Little Bow after branching off of the main Omaha tribe. Since the 1940's archeogists have made attempts...
Seeds as artifacts: Investigating the spread of agroecological knowledge in Eastern North America, c. 1000 BCE-1300CE (2016)
For crops to spread successfully, transmission of knowledge about how, when, and where to grow them is just as important as the seed itself. Seed morphology can be used as a proxy for this knowledge in two ways: 1) Domesticated seeds have been shaped by many generations of human cultivation, and agricultural practices can be reconstructed from their morphology; and 2) plasticity causes morphological variation that is a function of the growth environment created by communities for their crops. I...