North America: Midwest (Geographic Keyword)

DOCUMENT Citation Only Andrea Alveshere.

The Orendorf site (11F107), located on a bluff overlooking the central Illinois River valley, comprises a mound group and a series of Late Woodland and Mississippian habitations. The occupation of the site is characterized by a gradual migration of the community to the west through successive abandonment and rebuilding. Burned structures have been found in all Orendorf settlements, and at least two of the abandonments followed complete burning of all structures. Intensive salvage excavations of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Susan M. Alt.

This is an abstract from the "After Dark: The Nocturnal Urban Landscape & Lightscape of Ancient Cities" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Cahokia may not be the first place to come to mind when thinking about urbanism, but given new thinking and discoveries from a series of major excavations at and around this novel kind of city, views about the causes and consequences of American Indian urbanism are substantially changing. In part this is because...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Steve Boles.

This is an abstract from the "Dancing through Iconographic Corpora: A Symposium in Honor of F. Kent Reilly III" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. A Cahokia female figurine recovered from Ohio in 1935 was recently brought to light. Although this example is made from limestone, it is identical in all other respects to the Cahokian flint clay suite. Additionally, the limestone was sourced to the St. Louis formation, leaving little doubt as to its...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Anya Frashuer. Christopher Carr. Michael D. Glascock.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper examines ceramic exchange as a proxy for the social interaction aspect of community organization in Middle Woodland Period Hopewell groups living in the Scioto River region of Ohio. The results of instrumental neutron activation analysis (INAA) and electron microprobe analysis (EMA) are discussed as they relate to the interaction and influence...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Luke Stroth. Rebekah Truhan. Jacob Foubert.

This paper applies the chaîne opératoire analytical framework to hearth maintenance behavior. There are distinct phases of production involved in creating and maintaining a hearth, as new hearthstones are introduced, exhausted, and discarded. These stages may be identified through spatial distribution of new and exhausted hearthstones. The authors argue that these stages may also be identified geochemically. We use pXRF to compare a series of experimental burnings to those from a hearth feature...

DOCUMENT Citation Only James Enloe.

This is an abstract from the "Archaeology on the Edge(s): Transitions, Boundaries, Changes, and Causes" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In the midcontinent of North America, the transition from the Archaic to the Woodland Period is generally signaled in the archaeological record by the presence of ceramics and the adoption of agriculture, particularly of low yield indigenous plants including barley grass, goosefoot, sunflower, and squash during the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Patrick Lawton.

The story of Chesaning begins long before the first historic documents; the village’s name originating from a massive stone pushed from Ontario by glaciers. This memento, known as the Big Rock, or "Chiasin" in the Anishinabe language was and continues to be an unmistakable feature on the landscape. According to pioneer histories, Chiasin was a place of prehistoric corn feasts and ceremonies. However, when visited in 1837, one such source reports a haunting lack of people. Where had the people of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alexandra Powell. Jeremy Wilson.

This is an abstract from the "The Bethel Cemetery Relocation Project: Historical, Osteological, and Material Culture Analyses of a Nineteenth-Century Indiana Cemetery" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Bioarchaeological analyses of the Bethel Cemetery have provided a unique opportunity to understand population dynamics in central Indiana during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. With over 40% of exhumed individuals classified as juveniles,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alecia Schrenk.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Bioarchaeology has provided useful data on the relationship between subsistence patterns and human health. Yet few studies have considered healthcare provisioning in their models. The Bioarcheology of Care (BoC) is a four-stage method for empirically testing the possibility of healthcare provisioning in the past. Using the BoC, this study examines the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Edward Herrmann. Mackenzie Cory. Katie Hunt. John Flood. Josh Myers.

In this paper, we present an analysis of all recorded Paleoindian sites in Indiana and place them in a diachronic framework. Our findings are part of a long-term project to construct a Geographic Information Systems database of Paleoindian sites that can be queried for data relevant to a better understanding of the Paleoindian presence in Indiana. Preliminary data indicate that time-transgressive differences exist for where Paleoindians placed themselves on the landscape, and for how...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Anthony Krus. Edward Herrmann. Matthew Pike. G. William Monaghan. Jeremy Wilson.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Geophysical survey and excavations from 2010–2016 at Lawrenz Gun Club (11CS4), a late pre-Columbian village located in the central Illinois River valley in Illinois, identified 10 mounds, a central plaza, and dozens of structures enclosed within a stout 10 hectare bastioned palisade. Nineteen radiocarbon measurements were taken from single entities of wood...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Krysta Ryzewski. Tareq Ramadan. Aaron Sims.

This is an abstract from the "Archaeological Congress: Multivocal Conversations Furthering the World Archaeological Congress Agenda" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. An unassuming 800-square-foot home in working-class Inkster, Michigan, was, in some sense, the birthplace of Civil Rights leader Malcolm X in 1952. While living there he changed his name from Malcolm Little to Malcolm X and assumed the leadership roles in the Nation of Islam that...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Matthew G. Hill.

This is an abstract from the "Human Interactions with Extinct Fauna" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Over 40 unpublished AMS results on Rangifer, Cervalces, Bootherium, and Ovibos combined with ~80 published assays for Mammuthus and Mammut are used to profile extinction of these taxa in the Southern Great Lakes. At least one result for each of these taxa falls in the Clovis time period, except for Ovibos. Numerous dates for Mammut and Cervalces...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Melissa Baltus. Sarah Baires.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In the Cahokian sphere, building termination was embedded within broader relational practices tied to politico-religious space and neighborhood dynamics. Drawing from our preliminary analyses of three buildings in the Spring Lake Tract of ‘Downtown’ Cahokia, we argue for an intentional closing down of these buildings using fire and earth. Focusing here on...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nicole Bodenstein.

In this paper, I compare using latex and Sculpey molds with a NextEngine 3D scanner in creating positive copies of upper midwestern, Late-Woodland, cord-impressed pottery for analysis. Making cast positives of these impressions in casting mediums present different hazards to the sherd. A NextEngine 3D Scanner may present fewer hazards to sherds, while allowing for digital copies that are easily manipulated and measured. It is also portable and relatively inexpensive compared to other 3D scanning...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Erin Benson.

The transition between early (AD 1050-1200) and late Mississippian (AD 1200-1350) in the American Bottom is recognized as a significant moment of socio-political and religious change in the historical trajectory of Cahokia. During this time, relationships between persons, places, and things transformed, resulting in different ways of engaging with both Cahokia and the non-human powers that underwrote it and the broader Mississippian world. With a goal of investigating a Moorehead phase...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Caitlin Rankin.

This is an abstract from the "Geoarchaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Ongoing geoarchaeological research studying the relationship between urbanism and environmental change at the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Cahokia Mounds has begun to unravel a pre-contact landscape concealed by historic land-use practices. Archaeological excavations and sediment coring conducted to understand the environmental conditions during the construction and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Andrew Upton.

Prior scholarship on intercultural contacts emphasizes interaction spheres, hybridization, technological transfer, or models of exchange as measures for constructing borders and defining societal membership. This presentation assesses how network relationships among complex and smaller-scale societies structured, and were restructured by, migration. Network models of social interaction and social identification are examined both prior to and following a migration process in a uniquely bellicose...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Leslie Drane.

The John Chapman site is a mounded village that lies along the Apple River in northwestern Illinois. At approximately A.D. 1050, it appears that Mississippian migrants traveled to the area and interacted with the Late Woodland people already occupying the land. Previous excavations in the northern portion of the site revealed John Chapman people changing their ceramics to emulate Mississippian styles, while keeping their houses Late Woodland-like. Recent magnetometry surveys targeted central and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Elspeth Geiger.

There has been a growing recognition within studies from across the US that the dynamics of contact-period interactions are not a homogenous process. Instead, the diversity inherent in these interactions points to the need for further research on local manifestations of these European and Native contact situations. In this paper, I analyze material recovered from the Summer Island Site off the coast of Garden Peninsula in MI. The Anishinaabeg communities within Northern Michigan were connected...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Heather Walder. Marvin DeFoe. John Creese.

This is an abstract from the "Interactions across the North American Midcontinent" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Frog Bay site (47BA60) is an intact, multicomponent archaeological site on the south shore of Lake Superior in Red Cliff, Wisconsin. Similar sites with significant Middle and Late Archaic components associated with the Old Copper Complex are known across the region, but Frog Bay is especially important because it is located within...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Karen Reed. Jonathan Libbon. Aidan McCarty. Benjamin Demchak. Erica Birkner.

Starting in 2015, archaeological survey for a large natural gas pipeline project investigated large portions of the Conotton Creek Drainage in Eastern Ohio. Prehistoric site clusters, identified during the project and previous investigations along Conotton Creek, provide an opportunity to investigate the prehistoric utilization of the landscape. Analysis of the dataset generated suggests there is patterning in the temporal and spatial distribution of prehistoric sites along Conotton Creek....

DOCUMENT Citation Only D. Clark Wernecke.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Previous publication has dealt with the discovery of incised stones at the Gault Archaeological Site and the artifacts of early Paleoindian age. To date, the project has identified 146 stones with incised lines and designs on them from provenienced collections, unprovenienced collections and collections in private hands. The artifacts are on both limestone...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jaelyn Roland.

George Milner points out in his 2015 work, "Population Decline and Culture Change in the American Midcontinent: Bridging the Prehistoric and Historic Divide", that reactions and changes by Native Americans during the Protohistoric period were highly localized, and that each tribe was affected differently through direct and indirect contacts with Europeans. The La Crosse locality was inhabited by the Oneota until c. 1625 when the area was abandoned for the Riceford Creek locality (in southeastern...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lara Noldner. Brennan Dolan. Janee Becker.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. A primary focus of cultural resource protection in Iowa is on prehistorically constructed burial mounds and other earthworks that are important to Native communities, past and present. This involves monitoring the condition of these earthworks and considering all potential impacts given their location and landowner maintenance strategies. This poster...