MIDCONTINENTAL JOURNAL OF ARCHAEOLOGY

The Langford Tradition and the Process of Tribalization on the Middle Mississippian Borders
Thomas E. Emerson
pp. 3-56
The influence of Cahokia on its northern neighbors has long been of interest to regional scholars. In this essay I suggest that the Apple River and central Illinois River Mississippian chiefdoms exerted perhaps greater influence in their respective areas. This premise is based on a re-examination of existing data combined with new information from excavations of terminal Late Woodland and Langford tradition sites. The evidence implies that the Late Woodland-Upper Mississippian transition is best understood as a continuous process involving social, political, and economic changes that I have labeled tribalization. Furthermore, it appears that this process was generated by, and was a direct reaction to, asymmetrical power relations. A contributing factor in the process may have been the intensification of conflict between the indigenous Late Woodland-Upper Mississippian groups and the Mississippian chiefdoms.

An Experimental Analysis of a Putative Trephination from the Middle Woodland Period in Southern Illinois
Elizabeth Pennefather-O'Brien
pp. 79-95
Neumann and Fowler (1952) reported a possible case of trephination on the calotte of burial Wh°7-9, an adult male individual from the Middle Woodland Hopewell-associated Ethel R. Wilson site in White County, Illinois. The hole occurs on the anterior portion of the left parietal, immediately superior to the squamosal suture. The Wh°7-9 cranium was thoroughly cleaned and the cut edges of the specimen were macro- and microscopically (light and scanning electron) compared with cut edges produced through controlled experiments on cadaver and unprovenienced archaeological material. The results of this comparison do not support Neumann and Fowler's (1952) trephination hypothesis. The location of the supposed trephination under the temporalis muscle is also inconsistent with other trephination examples, where the holes occur primarily along the midline of the cranial vault under the epicranial aponeurosis and the thin epicranial muscles on the frontal, parietals, and occipital.

Champlain and the Odawa
Charles Garrad
pp. 57-77
On his way to the country of the Hurons in 1615, Samuel de Champlain met a band of people he named "Cheveux-relevés" on the French River. He met them again in 1616 near the villages of the Petun south of Georgian Bay. The identification of the Cheveux-relevés as Odawa (Ottawa) allows the circumstances of both meetings to be examined in the light of recent Odawa research. It is suggested that the Odawa on the French River were engaged in opportunistic trading, which had evolved as a by-product of the Upper Great Lakes fur trade. The archaeology of the Petun area is examined to identify the site of the 1616 meeting, an aspect of the Odawa seasonal round, and the relationship between the Odawa and the Petun.

Adena Burial Mounds and Inter-hamlet Visibility: A GIS Approach
John Waldron and Elliot M. Abrams
pp. 97-111
Adena mounds in the Hocking River valley, southeastern Ohio, were subjected to spatial analysis using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) technology. A study of viewsheds of 42 mounds, conspicuously built upon terraces and, especially, ridgetops in the vicinity of The Plains indicates high intervisibility of these structures. This in turn suggests enhanced intervisibility of the hamlets located near them. This intervisibility is interpreted as having increased the sense of mutual awareness of dispersed hamlet communities in the context of Adena tribal formation. Further, we speculate that increased visibility could have facilitated some form of indirect communication between hamlets over considerable distances.