Examining the Fort Ancient Madisonville Horizon "Index Fossil" Pottery Type Using Optically-Stimulated Luminescence

Summary

Establishing temporally-diagnostic artifacts has long been a tradition in American archaeology. One such case is that of using the Madisonville-type pottery, one of the most agreed upon temporal markers in the Fort Ancient region of the Middle Ohio Valley. This pottery type is often used as the defining characteristic separating A.D. 1400-1650 Fort Ancient sites from those dating to the earlier A.D. 1000-1400 period. While this temporal marker has been demonstrated in strict terms through stratigraphic relationships (i.e., Madisonville pottery is more characteristic of the more recent sites and vice-versa), what has not been examined is the extent of overlap between the two pottery traditions. This is important as sites with multiple pottery types including Madisonville are often interpreted as having separate components, with Madisonville being the most recent. However, if there is considerable temporal overlap, then that interpretation is not wholly correct, which means that such sites may better be seen to represent aggregations of peoples with different pottery traditions. To examine this problem, we focused on one site (Hahn) that has clear evidence for both traditions and that are often deposited in the same trash pits. We directly test this temporal claim through optically-stimulated luminescence (OSL).

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)   •
• Recent Applications of Luminescence Dating in Archaeology

Keywords

Spatial Coverage