MIDCONTINENTAL JOURNAL OF ARCHAEOLOGY

Residential Mortuary Practices and Skeletal Biology at the Late Mississippian Hovey Lake Site, Posey County, Indiana
Cheryl Ann Munson and Della Collins Cook
pp. 1-52
Excavation of a protohistoric (ca. A.D. 1650) Mississippian house at the Hovey Lake site (12 Po 10), a Caborn-Welborn phase village in southwestern Indiana, recovered eight burials and 145 identifiable disarticulated human elements. Collaborative analysis of biological characteristics and archaeological contexts resulted in the identification of a minimum of 19 individuals. Because the elements are highly biased with respect to size, we argue that in certain cases the incomplete remains are the result of intentional removal of larger elements for secondary burial elsewhere rather than disturbances caused by the household inhabitants when digging holes for posts, otherwise renovating the house, or preparing new burial pits. Reports on burials and grave goods excavated in the late 1800s at the related Murphy site provide contrasting data from formal cemeteries separated from residential space. Intra- and intersite comparisons were made with respect to age-at-death profiles, burial treatments, spatial and temporal patterns, and grave goods. These reveal a multidimensional mortuary program having complementary components in residential areas and cemeteries. Residential burials are preferentially females and infants but also include primary burials that show processing for secondary burial in other locations. Cemeteries contain predominantly adult primary burials with grave goods as well as secondary burials lacking grave goods. Questions concerning mortality and introduced European diseases could not be answered with the available data from Hovey Lake, but knowledge of the locationally differentiated Caborn-Welborn mortuary program will be essential in future studies concerning these issues.

Prehistoric Flint Procurement Strategies at Flint Ridge, Licking County, Ohio
Bradley T. Lepper, Richard W. Yerkes, and William H. Pickard
pp. 53-78
The Flint Ridge flint quarry was utilized for over 10,000 years. Recent investigations offer new views on how flint procurement changed over time. Archaic foragers obtained Flint Ridge flint through an "embedded" procurement system. Resharpened "exotic" Archaic points were discarded at Flint Ridge as foragers visited the quarry to retool. During the Early and Middle Woodland periods, a more "direct" procurement strategy was employed, as shown by extensive debris from the manufacture of bifaces, bladelets, and bladelet cores at the quarry and by construction of ritual structures nearby. The Late Woodland and Late Prehistoric periods were marked by a return to an embedded procurement system, but there was a significant decline in the use of Flint Ridge flint at that time, possibly the result of a proscriptive avoidance of "Hopewell flint."

Glen Elder: A Western Oneota Bison Hunting Camp
Donald J. Blakeslee, Michelle Peck, and Ronald A. Dorsey
pp. 79-104
The Glen Elder site is one of the type sites of the White Rock phase of the Oneota tradition. All previous interpretations of the site called it a village, but reanalysis of the site assemblage indicates that it probably was a large, short-term, bison-hunting base camp occupied in the fall or early winter. We argue that the White Rock phase marks the introduction to the Central Plains of large-scale, long-distance bison hunting, an activity that has several distinct archaeological markers. The hunting camps that resulted may have been the loci of horticultural as well as hunting activities.

Clay Effigy Representations of the Bear and Mishipishu: Algonquian Iconography from the Late Woodland Johnson Site, Northern Lower Michigan
William A. Lovis
pp. 105-119
A small series of intact and fragmentary clay animal effigies was recovered from the Late Woodland Johnson site, Cheboygan County, Michigan. Bear representations are evident, and several fragments appear to represent mishipishu, or missipisiw, the Underwater Panther and principal manitou of the Algonquian underworld. While portable mnemonic devices are known to have been used in ritual activities associated with the historic-period Midewiwin, or Grand Medicine Society, there are no known local Odawa or Ojibwa traditions of such devices in clay; rather, they are usually manufactured of organic materials such as birch bark. Larger-scale representations are produced as petroglyphs or pictographs. The presence of iconographic representations similar to those from the historic period in the middle Late Woodland time period suggests considerable antiquity for certain Algonquian cosmological constructs and, potentially, the ritual activities associated with them. This interpretation is consistent with other archaeological data from the Great Lakes.

Radiocarbon Age Determination of a Rock Painting at Arnold/Tainter Cave, Wisconsin
Karen L. Steelman, Marvin W. Rowe, Robert F. Boszhardt, and John R. Southon
pp. 121-131
A sample from a charcoal rock painting from the Arnold/Tainter Cave site (47Cr560) was radiocarbon dated, providing the first direct age determination for a pictograph in Wisconsin. The sample was pretreated with HCl and NaOH before organic carbon was extracted using an oxygen plasma. The painting, of a creature resembling a caribou because of the orientation of the tines on its antlers, is of interest because caribou have not been found in southwestern Wisconsin since the end of the Pleistocene. However, the accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) radiocarbon age determination of 1260 +/- 60 BP is inconsistent with such a species identification. Another charcoal sample--from painting of a deer--was also taken, but did not yield enough carbon for radiocarbon measurement.