Estimating Original Firing Tempieraiure in Low Fired Prehistoric Ceramics

1990 ◽  
Vol 185 ◽  
Author(s):  
James K. Feathers
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
Drying Shrinkage ◽  
River Valley ◽  
Eastern North America ◽  
Late Prehistoric ◽  
Prehistoric Pottery ◽  
Prehistoric Ceramics ◽  
River Valleys

AbstractThe river valley clays used for prehistoric pottery throughout much of Eastern North America require a nonplastic additive, or temper, to improve their workability and reduce drying shrinkage. During the Late Prehistoric (roughly after 900 AD) crushed shell was added as temper along most of the river valleys of the Midwest and along portions of the Gulf and Atlantic coasts.

scholarly journals Declining Foraging Efficiency in the Middle Tennessee River Valley Prior to Initial Domestication

2019 ◽  
Vol 84 (2) ◽  
pp. 191-214 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elic M. Weitzel
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
Optimal Foraging Theory ◽  
River Valley ◽  
Foraging Efficiency ◽  
Eastern North America ◽  
Human Populations ◽  
Tennessee River ◽  
Tennessee River Valley ◽  
Middle Tennessee ◽  
Relationship Of

Recently, researchers investigating the origins of domestication have debated the significance of resource intensification in the shift from foraging to food production. In eastern North America, one of several independent centers of domestication, this question remains open. To determine whether initial domestication may have been preceded by intensification in eastern North America at approximately 5000 cal BP, I evaluated the archaeofaunal assemblages from six sites in the middle Tennessee River valley. Analyses of these data suggest that overall foraging efficiency gradually declined prior to initial domestication, but patch-specific declines in foraging efficiency occurred in wetland habitats and not terrestrial ones. Climatic warming and drying during the Middle Holocene, growing human populations, and oak-hickory forest expansion were the likely drivers of these changes in foraging efficiency. These results support the hypothesis that initial domestication in eastern North America was an outcome of intensification driven by environmental change and human population increases. Finally, while the debate concerning the relationship of intensification to domestication has been framed in terms of a conflict between niche construction theory and optimal foraging theory, these perspectives are compatible and should be integrated to understand domestication more fully.

Population Aggregation and the Emergence of Circular Villages in Southwest Virginia

2018 ◽  
pp. 140-159 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard W. Jefferies
Keyword(s):  
Spatial Distribution ◽  
North America ◽  
Late Woodland ◽  
Eastern North America ◽  
Late Prehistoric ◽  
Archaeological Evidence ◽  
Settlement Structure ◽  
Southern Appalachian ◽  
Late Prehistoric Period ◽  
Population Aggregation

Archaeological evidence from throughout much of eastern North America documents a transition from small, scattered settlements to nucleated, often circular, villages during the Late Woodland/Late Prehistoric period (ca. A.D. 1000-1600). In southwestern Virginia's Appalachian Highlands, this transition is marked by the appearance of large circular palisaded villages associated with what Howard MacCord called the Intermontane Culture. This paper investigates the origin, structure, and spatial distribution of Late Woodland circular villages across the southern Appalachian landscape and compares their emergence to similar trends in settlement structure and organization witnessed in other parts of the Appalachian Highlands and beyond.

Conflict and Societal Change in Late Prehistoric Eastern North America

2013 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 96-102 ◽  
Author(s):  
George R. Milner ◽  
George Chaplin ◽  
Emily Zavodny
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
Eastern North America ◽  
Societal Change ◽  
Late Prehistoric

Mississippian Beginnings

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
David G. Anderson
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
Eastern North America ◽  
Complex Societies ◽  
Late Prehistoric ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Analytical Tools

The emergence of the complex societies of the late prehistoric era in Eastern North America has been the subject of extensive research in recent years, resulting in a new appreciation for how these changes played out at specific sites and across the region. Concern with variation within local historical trajectories, the movements and practices of peoples, and detailed site reconstructions have replaced the broad general neoevolutionary approaches that characterized research on Mississippian origins a generation ago. Aided by a wealth of new fieldwork and analytical tools, our understanding of the Mississippian emergence and what is meant by Mississippian itself has become much clearer in recent years, as has our knowledge of events at specific sites.

scholarly journals Statistical Analysis of Paradigmatic Class Richness Supports Greater Paleoindian Projectile-Point Diversity in the Southeast

2016 ◽  
Vol 81 (1) ◽  
pp. 174-192 ◽  
Author(s):  
Metin I. Eren ◽  
Anne Chao ◽  
Chun-Huo Chiu ◽  
Robert K. Colwell ◽  
Briggs Buchanan ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
Atlantic Coastal Plain ◽  
Eastern North America ◽  
Projectile Point ◽  
Tennessee River ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
River Valleys ◽  
First Time ◽  
Atlantic Coastal ◽  
Point Class

AbstractRonald Mason’s hypothesis from the 1960s that the southeastern United States possesses greater Paleoindian projectile-point diversity than other regions is regularly cited, and often assumed to be true, but in fact has never been quantitatively tested. Even if valid, however, the evolutionary meaning of this diversity is contested. Point diversity is often linked to Clovis “origins,” but point diversity could also arise from group fissioning and drift, admixture, adaptation, or multiple founding events, among other possibilities. Before archaeologists can even begin to discuss these scenarios, it is paramount to ensure that what we think we know is representative of reality. To this end, we tested Mason’s hypothesis for the first time, using a sample of 1,056 Paleoindian points from eastern North America arui employing paradigmatic classification and rigorous statistical tools used in the quantification of ecological biodiversity. Our first set of analyses, which compared the Southeast to the Northeast, showed that the Southeast did indeed possess significantly greater point-class richness. Although this result was consistent with Mason’s hypothesis, our second set of analyses, which compared the Upper Southeast to the Lower Southeast and the Northeast showed that in terms of point-class richness the Upper Southeast > Lower Southeast > Northeast. Given current chronometrie evidence, we suggest that this latter result is consistent with the suggestion that the area of the Ohio, Cumberland, and Tennessee River valleys, as well as the mid-Atlantic coastal plain, were possible initial and secondary “staging areas” for colonizing Paleoindian foragers moving from western to eastern North America.

scholarly journals The "Northern Caddoan Area" was not Caddoan

1990 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frank F. Schambach
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
River Valley ◽  
Conventional Wisdom ◽  
The Other ◽  
Eastern North America ◽  
East Texas ◽  
Arkansas River ◽  
Arkansas River Valley

In this paper I will challenge one of the major unexamined assumptions in the archeology of Eastern North America, the assumption that the Arkansas River Valley and Ozark Highland regions of eastern Oklahoma and western Arkansas, the so-called northern Caddoan Area, was the home of Caddo people who were closely related culturally and linguistically to the Caddo people of southwest Arkansas, northwest Louisiana, east Texas, and southeast Oklahoma. I will propose, instead, that the archeology of this locality is much more complex and interesting than the conventional wisdom would have it. What is involved here, I suggest, is not one region but parts of three, with three culturally and biologically distinct populations. Furthermore, I will propose that Spiro, the key site in this locality, is actually two sites, one Caddoan, the other Mississippian.

scholarly journals Declining foraging efficiency in the Middle Tennessee River Valley prior to initial domestication

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elic Weitzel
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
Optimal Foraging Theory ◽  
River Valley ◽  
Foraging Efficiency ◽  
Eastern North America ◽  
Human Populations ◽  
Tennessee River ◽  
Tennessee River Valley ◽  
Middle Tennessee ◽  
Relationship Of

Recently, researchers investigating the origins of domestication have debated the significance of resource intensification in the shift from foraging to food production. In eastern North America, one of several independent centers of domestication, this question remains open. To determine whether initial domestication may have been preceded by intensification in eastern North America at approximately 5000 cal BP, I evaluated the archaeofaunal assemblages from six sites in the middle Tennessee River valley. Analyses of these data suggest that overall foraging efficiency gradually declined prior to initial domestication, but patch-specific declines in foraging efficiency occurred in wetland habitats and not terrestrial ones. Climatic warming and drying during the Middle Holocene, growing human populations, and oak-hickory forest expansion were the likely drivers of these changes in foraging efficiency. These results support the hypothesis that initial domestication in eastern North America was an outcome of intensification driven by environmental change and human population increases. Finally, while the debate concerning the relationship of intensification to domestication has been framed in terms of a conflict between niche construction theory and optimal foraging theory, these perspectives are compatible and should be integrated to understand domestication more fully.

Alligator Mound: Geoarchaeological and Iconographical Interpretations of a Late Prehistoric Effigy Mound in Central Ohio, USA

2003 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 147-167 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bradley T. Lepper ◽  
Tod A. Frolking
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
Late Woodland ◽  
Eastern North America ◽  
Late Prehistoric ◽  
Radiocarbon Dates ◽  
Archaeological Investigation ◽  
Fort Ancient ◽  
Effigy Mound

Alligator Mound is an animal effigy mound in central Ohio, USA. Since Ephraim Squier and Edwin Davis first recorded and mapped it in 1848, many have speculated regarding its age and meaning, but with remarkably little systematic archaeological investigation. Many scholars have assumed the Hopewell culture (c. 100 BC-AD 400) built the mound, based principally on its proximity to the Newark Earthworks. The Hopewell culture, however, is not known to have built other effigy mounds. Limited excavations in 1999 revealed details of mound stratigraphy and recovered charcoal embedded in mound fill near the base of the mound. This charcoal yielded radiocarbon dates that average between AD 1170 and 1270, suggesting that the Late Prehistoric Fort Ancient culture (c. AD 1000-1550) made the mound. This result coincides with dates obtained for Serpent Mound in southern Ohio and suggests that the construction of effigy mounds in eastern North America was restricted to the Late Woodland and Late Prehistoric traditions. Ethnographic and ethnohistoric analogies suggest that the so-called 'Alligator' might actually represent the Underwater Panther and have served as a shrine for invoking the aid of supernatural powers.

A Test for Maize Consumption by Fauna in Late Prehistoric Eastern North America

2009 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 87-101 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sheena A. Ketchum ◽  
Mark R. Schurr ◽  
Rexford C. Garniewicz
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
Eastern North America ◽  
Late Prehistoric
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