Investigation of biological relationships at the Late Woodland/ Mississippian transition in the northern Mississippian hinterlands

Summary

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 Mississippian sites in three sub-regions of the Midwest at the northern periphery of the Mississippian cultural landscape. General results show each population in the analysis was significantly different from the others, including Late Woodland and Mississippian individuals within the same sub-region. The most northern sites are the most biologically distant from all other sites in the project. Results also show that there was more biological population variation in the Late Woodland period than the Mississippian period for the sub-regions examined. Reduced biological variability may be the result of geo-social boundaries established during Mississippianization of some areas. By comparing three, non-neighboring sub-regions across the northern landscape, a wider look at Late Woodland and Mississippian interaction is achieved.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage