Beyond the Big Valley: Expanding the Temporal, Spatial, and Cultural Context of Red Wing’s Silvernale Phase

Summary

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 far less Middle Mississippian than previously thought, and have also highlighted the need to pay greater attention to the presence of materials and traits not related to the Cahokia sphere. Contemporaneous with the Silvernale phase, Red Wing’s connections stretch from northern Wisconsin and Minnesota west and south through the eastern Dakotas, southwestern Minnesota, and northern Iowa, indicating connections with groups affiliated with Plains Village, Middle Missouri, and Mill Creek traditions, as well as with various, poorly understood Late Woodland groups. Moreover, evidence from Red Wing indicates that these connections were long-standing and persistent, beginning before and lasting after the period of Middle Mississippian interactions, and integrated many different communities through time, across environmental and cultural boundaries.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)   •
• Interactions across the North American Midcontinent

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Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 33064