Monumental Memories: Addressing the Association between Fort Ancient Villages and Woodland Earthen Monuments

Summary

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

Since early archaeological investigations in the Ohio River Valley, scholars have speculated on the relationship between late pre-contact Fort Ancient villages and earlier Woodland mounds and earthworks. However, few have empirically addressed the association between these sites and their placement on a persistent landscape. We seek to determine the association between Fort Ancient villages and earlier earthen monuments both broadly and by Fort Ancient temporal component and sub-region. In doing so, we employ archaeological site modeling through Geographic Information Systems (GIS) considering parameters including soil type, distance to rivers, and slope to test settlement patterns against environmental conditions in comparison to earthen monument locations. In addition, we utilize aggregated site data to quantitatively evaluate and provide a nuanced exploration of community settlement during the Fort Ancient period. These methods coupled with an analysis of Fort Ancient village site layouts incorporating Woodland mounds illuminate the association between Fort Ancient communities and Woodland earthen monuments. Our findings contribute to the recognition of persistent landscapes and social memory in the Ohio River Valley and advance our collective knowledge regarding site formation processes in the region.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

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

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Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 39308.0