Effigy Mounds, Social Identity, and Ceramic Technology: Decorative Style, Clay Composition, and Petrography of Wisconsin Late Woodland Vessels

by Jody Clauter
Abstract of Doctoral Dissertation
Department of Anthropology
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
December 2012

This ceramic analysis is focused on a combination of technical and decorative analyses involving energy dispersive X-ray fluorescence (EDXRF) and petrographic data unused by or unavailable to previous researchers. The ceramics used in this study are non-collared forms of Late Woodland (AD 700 - 1200) types found across southern Wisconsin. Ceramic attributes from these data sets are analyzed using multi-variate statistical methods and the resulting clusters are plotted geographically. Results indicate regionalization of particular attributes with a major east-west trend noted in some cases. However, geographical plotting shows broad overlap among river valleys and locales. Importantly, EDXRF data demonstrates that ceramics or clays were transported across the landscape.

The results are used to assess three models commonly used to explain Late Woodland group spatial distribution and interaction: Monolithic, Low-level Territorial, and High-level Territorial. However, while it is argued the Low-level Territorial model best represents the data, the ceramic attributes indicate that multiple types of social organizations were practiced over space and time during the Late Woodland and that multiple territorial models are necessary to fully understand the social interactions occurring during this period.

Finally, it is hypothesized that these results are best approached from a performance perspective where the social organization provides a contextual basis for investigating the daily performance of pottery making. Pottery manufacture is used to assess the constant making and re-making of social relationships at multiple levels of interaction in an egalitarian setting. It is hypothesized that different suites of attributes reflect different levels of group membership and that potters are consciously selecting attributes to negotiate these nested relationships through the practice of pottery construction.

Oneota Lithics: A Use-Wear Analysis of the Crescent Bay Hunt Club Assemblage from the 2004 Excavations

by Katherine M. Sterner
Masters Thesis Abstract
Department of Anthropology
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
May 2012

The lithic assemblage from the Crescent Bay Hunt Club site (47Je904), an Oneota habitation on the shore of Lake Koshkonong in Southeastern Wisconsin provides valuable insight into 13th-14th century material culture and technology in the Great Lakes.  This study examines materials from the 2004 UWM field school excavations at the site. The analysis first addresses the topics of resource procurement, tool assemblage complexity and diversity, and energetic efficiency, with information derived from a macroscopic analysis of the lithic tools and mass analysis of the debitage.  A combination of low power (10-50x) and high power (200x) microscopic use-wear analyses address issues of tool form and function, including traditional categories of Madison points, humpback bifaces, and thumbnail scrapers as well as the rarely examined class of unretouched flake tools.

Geoarchaeology in the Current River Valley, Ozark National Scenic Riverways, Southeast Missouri

by Erin C. Dempsey
Abstract of Doctoral Dissertation
Department of Anthropology
University of Kansas
August 2012

On the Ozark Plateau, human occupation spanning the last 11,500 14C yr B.P. is well documented in the archaeological record.  Recently, geoarchaeological investigations have been conducted in the reach of the Current River valley contained within Ozark National Scenic Riverways (NSR).  The current study was conducted in an effort to establish a geoarchaeological model for Ozark NSR.  Alluvial stratigraphy, particle-size distribution data, and optically stimulated luminescence ages were used to investigate late-Quaternary landscape evolution and model the geologic preservation potential for cultural deposits. Stable carbon isotope data were used to reconstruct paleoenvironmental change during the late Pleistocene and Holocene.

The Social Networks of Early Hunter-Gatherers in Midcontinental North America

by Andrew A. White
Abstract of Doctoral Dissertation
Department of Anthropology
University of Michigan
September 2012

This dissertation integrates ethnographic information and computational modeling to build theory about hunter-gatherer social networks and the relationships between the characteristics of those networks and patterns of variability in material culture.  Key mechanisms of personal network formation (mobility, marriage, and kinship) and social learning are represented in an agent-based model which allows both system-level social networks and large-scale patterns of artifact variability to emerge from the “bottom up” through numerous human-level behaviors and interactions.  This model is used to: (1) identify patterned relationships between the human-level behaviors that we can observe ethnographically and the characteristics of the system-level social networks that emerge through those behaviors; and (2) explore how the characteristics of system-level social networks are related to the patterns of variability in items of material culture whose production is mediated through those networks.  Comparisons between archaeological artifact assemblages and artifact assemblages produced during model experiments are used to evaluate network-based explanations for the appearance and disappearance of stylistic regions during the Paleoindian and Early Archaic periods (ca. 11,050-8000 radiocarbon years before present) in midcontinental North America.  These comparisons suggest that the appearance of stylistic regions during the Middle and Late Paleoindian periods was most likely the result of processes of stylistic drift operating across social networks that were less inter-connected than those of the Early Paleoindian period.  Decreasing social connectivity across the midcontinent was probably related to an uneven distribution of population as hunter-gatherer individuals, groups, and systems responded to environmental change at the end of the Pleistocene.  Population growth and the emergence of relatively homogenous environments at the beginning of the Holocene (ca. 10,000 radiocarbon years before present) would have increased social connectivity and diminished the capacity of drift processes to produce stylistically differentiated regions.

An Archaeological Model of the Construction of Monks Mound and Implications for the Development of the Cahokian Society (800 - 1400 A.D.)

by Timothy Schilling
Abstract of Doctoral Dissertation
Department of Anthropology
Washington University in St. Louis
December 2010

This dissertation presents a model for the development of Cahokian society through the lens of monumental construction. Previous models of Cahokian society have emphasized the accumulation of individual power and domination of the many by a few. Using analogies from the ethnography and ethnohistory of Dhegian Siouan speakers, I argue the Cahokian system likely contained both achieved and ascribed statuses mediated through a worldview that emphasized balance and integration of the whole. In the face of a growing population, this kind of structural organization may have precluded the development of class conflict and, at the same time, permitted the development of large-scale societies. The analysis of monumental construction focuses primarily on the construction of Monks Mound. Through a combination of stratigraphic and chronometric data, the construction of Monks Mound is argued to be a definable and discrete event in the history of Cahokia. In this view, Monks Mound is a ritual vehicle created to integrate a large population.