Plummets, Ritual Dance, Individuals, and Macroregional Interactions during the Woodland Period in Florida

Summary

Community making during the Woodland period in Eastern North America manifested itself in a variety of material forms, most notably in the wide distribution of elaborate artifacts dispersed as part of Hopewellian related exchange. In this paper, we examine the role that one particular class of artifact, plummets, played in community making during the Woodland period in Florida. Often interpreted as fishing gear, we suggest that instead such artifacts played a large role in community style dances and can be used as indicators of regional and macro-regional exchanges among varying communities. By tracking the various styles and material types found at sites in Florida through a typological and network analysis, we argue that certain sites, such as Crystal River, played a larger role in connecting sub-regions in Florida, and may have served as cultural brokers across the macro-region due to their connections to Hopewell sites throughout the Eastern Woodlands. Furthermore, it appears that such connections were limited in time and given the prominence of plummets buried with certain individuals, we suggest that specific persons were entwined with some of these larger scale processes.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 82nd Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC (2017)   •
• Investigating Interaction from Tunnacunnhee to Talaje: Papers in Honor of Richard W. Jefferies

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 14323