Interactions across the North American Midcontinent
Part of: Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)
This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "Interactions across the North American Midcontinent" at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.
The North American Midcontinent, from the eastern Great Plains to the Ohio River Valley, provides extensive evidence of interaction among and within past cultural groups, interconnected by the Mississippi River watershed, the Great Lakes, and overland trails. For thousands of years, travel and exchange routes facilitated movement of information, ideology, and material culture, supporting long-distance social and economic networks. The material record of the Midcontinent allows for multiscalar examinations of interactions spanning time and space. We interpret distributions of transported items as evidence of relationships amongst communities. Yet, boundaries of these archaeological cultures were more fluid or transitional than our organizational frameworks imply. While archaeologists often are forced to work within existing typologies, we recognize that boundaries were permeable and situational, with interactions regularly occurring among and across archaeologically defined groups. This session convenes scholars working across the Midcontinent to explore varied aspects of past interactions, which often fostered conflict, change, and innovation. By examining the nature and distribution of past material culture, we can better interpret the significance of motifs, styles, foodways, and other precontact material culture indicative of community association and (often) social change. Understanding such processes is critical in today’s world of increasing globalization and connectivity.
Other Keywords
Trade and exchange •
Mississippian •
Woodland •
Lithic Analysis •
Zooarchaeology •
Cultural Interaction •
Regional Interaction •
Ceramic Analysis •
Archaic •
Ritual economy
Geographic Keywords
United States of America (Country) •
Missouri (State / Territory) •
Kentucky (State / Territory) •
Illinois (State / Territory) •
Wisconsin (State / Territory) •
Indiana (State / Territory) •
Michigan (State / Territory) •
Nebraska (State / Territory) •
Kansas (State / Territory) •
Iowa (State / Territory)
Resources Inside This Collection (Viewing 1-7 of 7)
- Documents (7)
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Beyond the Big Valley: Expanding the Temporal, Spatial, and Cultural Context of Red Wing’s Silvernale Phase (2021)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
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 Red Wing Region in the northern Mississippi valley is best known for the Silvernale phase characterized by extensive but ambiguous evidence of some kind of relationship to Middle Mississippian communities downriver. The last two decades of research here have greatly clarified the nature of Red Wing communities during this phase as...
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Contextualizing Mid–Late Archaic Period Copper Complex Sites of the Western Great Lakes (2021)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
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...
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Environmental, Social, and Culinary Relationships in the Northern Great Lakes (2021)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "Interactions across the North American Midcontinent" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Indigenous culinary and pottery traditions were in flux during the Woodland and Late Precontact periods (200 BC–AD 1600) of the Northern Great Lakes. Shifting social relationships are indicated by changing pottery distributions and the increasing stylistic influence and presence of nonlocal wares, particularly Iroquoian styles from...
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Shifting Contexts on the Economy of Pipestone (2021)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "Interactions across the North American Midcontinent" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Red pipestone artifacts often inspire archaeological investigations of craft production at the site level. Reconstructions of pipestone in the past center on the object itself as central to ritual paraphernalia. However, a regional perspective of pipestone’s role in the economies of indigenous and colonial communities are...
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Social Relationships and Connections from the Mississippi Valley to the Great Lakes during the Eleventh to Fifteenth Centuries (2021)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "Interactions across the North American Midcontinent" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. “Mississippianization” has been used by archaeologists to explain the appearance of shell-temper and certain decorative ceramic motifs found in the northern Prairie Peninsula during and after the eleventh century. These ceramic attributes are supposed symbols of an expanding Cahokian worldview, sent north by a diffusionist wave of...
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Surviving or Thriving? Reassessing Social Interaction and Warfare Related Food Insecurity at Morton Village (2021)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "Interactions across the North American Midcontinent" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Violent interaction between people of the Oneota and Mississippian traditions in the Central Illinois River Valley in the North American Midcontinent ca. 1300–1400 CE at Norris Farms #36 is a clear example of intermittent, low-scale warfare. One aspect of initial interpretations of the interaction, based on evidence for raiding of...
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Woodland and Late Precontact Interaction along the Saint Croix River Corridor in Minnesota and Wisconsin (2021)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
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 Saint Croix River is a major tributary to the Upper Mississippi River and forms a boundary between eastern Minnesota and northwestern Wisconsin. Flowing southward out of northwestern Wisconsin and entering the Mississippi near the Twin Cities, this 170-mile, north–south valley offered a passageway connecting communities of the...