Examining Great Oasis Cemeteries in Iowa through a Population Level Analysis.

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Great Oasis is a Late Terminal Woodland culture, dating between AD 900 and 1100, that has produced the earliest evidence for Mississippian contact in Iowa. Great Oasis peoples built unfortified farming villages throughout western and central Iowa, southwest Minnesota, and eastern Nebraska and South Dakota. Several excavated village sites typically have an associated cemetery that includes both primary and secondary burials with no apparent discrimination based on age, biological sex, or status. This data allows for a community health-based analysis and examination of possible family lineages with the potential for generational health conditions. Researchers have established the overall health of individuals through an examination of the remains for frequencies of pathologies such as, porotic hyperostosis, periostitis, dental caries, and tooth loss. Nondestructive comparative examination of three Great Oasis cemeteries in Iowa have led to a better understanding of health overall during this period. Excavated in the 1960s, the ancestors from these cemeteries have been documented in the NPS NAGPRA database and published Notices of Inventory Completion and are currently reposed by the Iowa Office of the State Archaeologist Bioarchaeology Program awaiting repatriation to the 26 tribes that have ancestral ties to the state.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 38951.0