Migration and Ethnic Hybridity: Examining the Middle Ohio Valley Mississippian Periphery

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Migration and Climate Change: The Spread of Mississippian Culture" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Recent research on the Fort Ancient culture of the Middle Ohio Valley has considerably improved our understanding of the motivation for and subsequent role of Mississippian migrations along a Mississippian periphery. A plethora of new radiocarbon dates on multiple media, strontium and biodistance analyses of human bone, and PDSI reconstructions of climate change have allowed for new insights into the origins of Fort Ancient culture in southwest Ohio and southeast Indiana. In short, Mississippian migrants appear at the onset of the cultural tradition in this area, around the time when prolonged droughts were occurring in neighboring Mississippian regions. The migrants (identified biologically) are accompanied by clear examples of Mississippian pottery (plain, shell tempered, Ramey) and housing forms (wall trenches). Moreover, closely following these events, we see the development of hybrid pottery forms that blend aspects of the new and old (Woodland) traditions into what we have long recognized to be Fort Ancient.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)   •
• Migration and Climate Change: The Spread of Mississippian Culture

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 24886