North America - Midwest (Geographic Keyword)
26-50 (329 Records)
The American black bear figured prominently in the visual arts, rituals, ceremonies, and cosmological beliefs of Native peoples inhabiting Midwest North America through antiquity. Bears are almost universally perceived as great Lower World spiritual beings possessing the power to cause or cure illness, maintain life, and change its form where bears become people and vice versa. Their remains and images are often found in mortuary ritual contexts – a powerful means of communicating emotions and...
Beyond Sharks and Laser Beams: Lessons on Informatics Needs, Open Behaviors, and Analytics Practices to Achieve Archaeological Big Data, as Learned from the Digital Index of North American Archaeology (DINAA) (2015)
Demands for archaeological "big data" must move strategically beyond buzzwords. Sciences and humanities that are successfully augmenting their workflows with ubiquitous computing are necessarily dealing with issues of accessibility, interoperability, and fundamental questions about the intended utility of core collection strategies at massive scales. Fortunately for archaeology, solutions to these issues are achievable through emphases on existing research networks and readily "open" solutions....
Bone Marrow as Part of the Local Cuisine at Fort St. Joseph, a French Fur Trade Post in Southwest Michigan (2017)
Analyses of the large faunal assemblage from the eighteenth-century Fort St. Joseph site (20BE23) in Berrien County, Michigan, are becoming more concerned with the question of "food or furs?" With over 70% of the identified animal remains coming from white-tailed deer, we are trying to discern whether broken longbones are the result of removal of marrow for subsistence, or if they may have also been used to prepare hides. In contrast to late prehistoric and early historic Native American sites...
Bridging the Professional-Public Divide through Flood Recovery Compliance Archaeology at the University of Iowa (2015)
Recent federally-funded flood relief compliance projects on the University of Iowa campus provided the University of Iowa Office of the State Archaeologist with an opportunity to involve various publics in our work. It also provided us with an opportunity to reflect critically on how we represent our work and archaeology more broadly to the public and how our work is presented to even wider publics by the media. We first present an overview of the various approaches we took to engage the public...
British Era Trade in the Midwest (2016)
This paper investigates several common assumptions regarding the economic nature of trade interactions in the Midwest during the period from approximately 1760 to 1820. Using a resource dependency theory framework, this research analyzes archaeological and historical sources to demonstrate that these interactions were more nuanced, and more complex, than typically portrayed. It also demonstrates that these economic interactions were strongly intertwined with political decision making. ...
'Bugs in Eagle Cave, Lower Pecos Canyonlands, Texas' (2015)
The desiccating conditions in desert caves provide a unique opportunity for detailed research on organic materials. Previous examples of insect studies from the desert edge in Egypt, from Akhenaten’s city at Amarna, have indicated the potential of research with fossil insects, both for understanding environmental change and the nature of agriculture, and also for evidence of the early biogeography of insect borne diseases. However, there is limited information on hunter gatherer societies and ...
Building Below the Surface: Earth Moving and Caching at Cahokia’s CABB Tract (2017)
Human engagement with the world includes forging and maintaining relationships with social agents, both visible and invisible. Among Native North Americans, these relationships are simultaneously religious, social, and political. We explore these relationships using data from our 2016 excavations at Cahokia’s CABB (Courtyard Area Between Borrows) Tract, located southeast of Woodhenge and west of the Grand Plaza. The CABB Tract is situated north of two known borrow pits (Fowler’s 5-5 and 5-6) and...
Building the Wall: Excavations of Cahokia's East Palisade (2017)
The East Palisade Project at Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site is an ongoing investigation with the main goal of fully determining the path of the multiple construction phases of the palisade walls surrounding the core of the site. Located in Ramey Field, just east of Monks Mound, excavations have occurred intermittently in this area since the 1960s. The study of the area has helped in the understanding of the construction of the palisade walls as well as the varying types of bastions used...
Bundled Transfers and Water Shrines:the big-historical implications of a pan-American phenomenon (2017)
Even a cursory outline of the pan-continental history of non-domestic circular architecture impels us to relate similar buildings, some of which are water shrines, in the greater Cahokia region to Mesoamerica and the Southwest. In the central Mississippi valley, standardized steam baths, rotundas, and circular platforms make a dramatic appearance in the late eleventh century CE. Explaining the big-historical patterns, of which this appearance is a part, entails theorizing the bundled transfer of...
Burial Mound as Palimpsest (2015)
Time perspectivism has been defined as "the belief that differing timescales bring into focus different features of behaviour" or "or different sorts of processes." These different behaviors and processes require different concepts and explanatory principles. Criticism of time perspectivism has ranged from seeing it as advocating environmental determinism to it simply being a version of Annales history. Research under the umbrella of time perspectivism has generally focused on processes...
Cahokia's Mound 34 and the Moorehead Moment (2017)
Cahokia’s Mound 34 was an essential component of the dramatic reorganization of the eastern portion of Cahokia’s site core at the turn of the 13th century. Since the 1990s the Mound 34 Project has included examination of a copper workshop, the exploration of a complex mound construction history, and extended study of Mound 34’s special role in the production and exchange of Southeastern Ceremonial Complex art. The construction of this mound and a series of other low platforms adjacent to the...
Cahokia: City at the Center of the Mississippian Cosmos (2017)
Cahokia stands as the flagship city of the ancient Mississippian world. One of the enduring mysteries concerning Cahokia has been how to account for its skewed orientation and unique layout of its mounds and plazas. What accounts for the site's orientation east of north; and why are the mounds situated where they are? In this presentation I use recently obtained LiDAR imagery together with archaeoastronomic analyses to explore the idea that Cahokia was built according to a grand master plan....
Cahokian Colony or Frontier Fusion? Architectural Variability and "Mississippianization" at Aztalan, Wisconsin (2017)
The concept of a "frontier zone" in which diverse peoples would have been equally susceptible to each others’ influences offers a dynamic and multi-scalar approach to the investigation of "Mississippianization" in Cahokia’s northern hinterland. Aztalan, a site of Mississippian and Late Woodland co-residence in southern Wisconsin (ca. AD 1100-1200), has long been interpreted as a "Mississippian town" or "Cahokian colony". Mississippian-centric interpretations have led some archaeologists to...
Cahokia’s Western Frontier: Consolidation and Collapse as viewed from the Big River Valley, Missouri (2015)
Cahokia was the largest and most complex pre-Columbian Native American society in North America. Its cultural influence extended throughout the Mississippian period Midwest (A.D. 1050–1400). A diachronic investigation of greater Cahokia from its western periphery provides insight into the polity’s consolidation, fragmentation, and collapse. Cahokian groups appear to have annexed portions of the Big River Valley (BRV) in southeast Missouri as part of the polity’s formational Big Bang. However, by...
Can Archaeology help Decolonize the way Institutions Think? How community-based research is transforming the archaeology training toolbox and educating institutions (2017)
Community-based research requires systemic shifts within institutions, from the way research is funded, protection of human subjects/IRB reviews, ethical guidelines, and what is legible/valued in tenure & promotion decisions. Some of the most important yet least discussed changes must happen in the classroom, in terms of what & how we teach. For community-based archaeologists, we know that process matters. How we conduct research with community partners is essential. The relationships and trust...
Challenges and opportunities of archeology in urban parks: An example from the Arch (2015)
Jefferson National Expansion Memorial is an anomaly in the National Park Service. The park was designated in 1935 as the first national historic site, memorializing America’s westward expansion, yet it is best known for the Gateway Arch, a modernist monument that towers over the city. Archaeological information from the St. Louis riverfront is sparse, but the park is located in an area that was densely settled from prehistory to the beginning of the twentieth century. In the late 1930s, NPS...
Challenges to the Wisconsin Burial Sites Preservation Statute (WisStats 157.70) (2017)
The 1987 Wisconsin Burial Site Preservation Statute (WisStats 157.70) serves as the basis for the protection of all burial sites in the State of Wisconsin and assures that all human burial sites be accorded equal treatment under the law regardless of age or affiliation. Recently, challenges to the law have taken the form of an introduced bill (LBR 2890 – eventually withdrawn), and the convening of a Wisconsin Legislative Study Committee of the Preservation of Burial Sites. This committee is...
Changing Foodways in Pre-Columbian Illinois (2015)
Pre-Columbian Native Americans of Illinois have had a long history of plant production from foraging to cultivation via horticulture to domestication via agriculture. Isotopic analysis has been used as a standard for comparing diet from different sites and isotopic ratios are given as parts-per-mil (‰), and reflect the consumption of types of food. Carbon isotopes (δ13C) can indicate the types of plants eaten and nitrogen isotopes (δ15N) indicate the trophic level of protein sources in the diet....
The Changing Role of the Domestic Dog: New Evidence from the American Bottom Region of Illinois (2017)
Recent archaeological investigations in the American Bottom have resulted in the identification of several hundred individual dog remains from Late Woodland (A.D. 650-900), Terminal Late Woodland (A.D. 900-1050), and Mississippian (A.D. 1050-1400) components. On-going research, including coprolite and isotopic analyses, as well as traditional osteological and pathological studies, is providing important new insight on the diet, treatment, and changing roles of domestic dogs in prehistoric Native...
The Changing Use of Space in Cahokia’s Urban Epicenter: Archaeological Investigations on the Merrell Tract (2011-2016) (2017)
The paper summarizes the results of six field seasons since 2011 by a joint Italian/American archaeological project on the Merrell Tract 300 meters west of Monks Mound. The extensive excavations, expanding upon the area of Wittry’s 1960 salvage work on Tract 15B, revealed a complex sequence of occupations covering the entire sequence of Cahokia’s history spanning the Edelhardt through Sand Prairie phases. Throughout its history the Merrell Tract experienced important changes: first as a domestic...
Chipped Stone and Hot Rock Technology: A Late Archaic Example from the Upper Great Lakes (2016)
This study combines a detailed analysis of hot rock and chipped stone technologies in order to investigate behaviors related to subsistence and settlement strategies, domestic life, and knapping activities. This paper contributes to the research of Late Archaic lithic technology on Grand Island in Michigan's Upper Peninsula (UP). There, fire-cracked rocks (FCR) dominate the archaeological assemblage, yet relatively little is known of the roles that they played in the lives of the island's...
The Clash of Stories at Sacred Sites: Reframing the Task of Protecting Indigenous Sites (2015)
Efforts to recover and protect indigenous sacred sites in the United States by framing conflicts over them in adversarial terms that employ the vocabulary of conventional legal doctrine on religious liberty and property rights have failed to succeed despite the creative efforts of many advocates. One cannot understand these failed efforts and move toward the development of a more hopeful approach to these conflicts without taking seriously the contrast between Indigenous views of the land and...
Climate Change, Subsistence and Warfare during the Late Pre-Columbian Period in the Lower Midwest (2016)
Archaeologists are increasingly turning to climate change as part of their explanatory models of regional and interregional population movement, socio-cultural transformation, and the dissolution of societies in North America. In the lower Midwest, both megadroughts and megafloods have been invoked to explain declining agricultural returns, rises in conflict, and abandonment of major river valleys during the latter half of the Mississippian Period. However, the data sources and indices recording...
A Closer Look at Immigrant Life Expectancies from German Cemeteries in Southeastern Wisconsin (2015)
This study describes statistics of life expectancies among the immigrant population and its sub-sets throughout the mid-nineteenth to early twentieth centuries in southeastern Wisconsin. At this time, German populations were becoming established as a major cultural and ethnic force in Milwaukee and the surrounding counties. Data from individuals disinterred from two unmarked cemeteries in Ozaukee county were analyzed to assess cultural and physical disparities in the mortuary record among these...
Collecting Copper and Systematic Archaeological Analysis (2017)
The Old Copper Complex is represented by tens of thousands of copper artifacts recovered from locations widely scattered across the landscapes of the Western Great Lakes. Many of these artifacts continue to be collected and curated by avocational archaeology enthusiasts with characteristically poor contextual information. Traditional scholarly study of this complex has been restricted to the consideration of copper as a symbolically potent object and the construction of artifact typologies. ...