midwest and upper great lakes. copyright 2008 oxford university press, inc. midwest and upper great...

MidWest and Upper Great Lakes

Copyright 2008 Oxford University Press, Inc.

Midwest and Upper Great Lakes

• Paleoindian and Archaic foragers of the Midwest and Upper Great Lakes,

• Woodland and Mississippian periods, sociocultural complexity, and

• changes during the Protohistoric and Historic periods.


MidWest/Great Lakes Subareas

• The western portions of the Northeast culture area can be subdivided into the Midwest and Upper Great Lakes.

• Part of the Central Lowlands and adjacent physiographic provinces

• Naturally forested region except for the Prairie Peninsula, which is an area of tall-grass prairie that extends across Illinois and into Indiana

• Drained by the Mississippi and St. Lawrence rivers

MidWest/Great Lakes Map


Environment

• Pleistocene glaciation has sculpted the surface of most of these areas.

• The end of the Pleistocene meant change in drainage patterns, vegetation, and available resources.

• The Hypsithermal interval brought warm, dry conditions between 9000 and 5000 BP.

• Modern conditions have been more or less in existence since 5000 BP, but humans also have altered resource distributions since that time.


The Cultural Sequence

Hunters and Foragers of the Distant Past • The Chesrow complex of

southeastern Wisconsin may represent Pre-Clovis butchering of mammoths.

• Surface finds of fluted points are widespread in the Midwest and Upper Great Lakes.

• However, dated sites are rare. • The fluted point era is between

11,000 and 10,000 BP.Copyright 2008 Oxford University

Press, Inc.

Chesrow Complex• Hebior mammoth kill site.• Dates on bone collagen

– 12,480 +/- 60 BP, 12,590 +/-50 BP, and 12,520+/-BP.

– Cutmarks on bone.


Paleoindian characteristics

• Fluted points styles changed over time.• Paleoindians preferred high-quality raw materials.• The Kimmswick site in Missouri is the only one with a clear Clovis mastodon association.• Paleoindians exploited a variety of species and

moved frequently.• Large sites may have been used repeatedly.


The Archaic period in the Midwest and Great Lakes

• This period includes Early (10,000–8000 BP), Middle (8000–5000 BP), and Late Archaic (5000–3000 BP) subperiods.

• Appearance of notched projectile points is diagnostic, but bifurcate and stem points predominate as the period continues.

• People were generalized foragers.


The Middle and Late Archaic

• Times of major change, at least in some areas.

• Addition of shellfish after 7000 BP • Development of seed plant harvesting,

cultivation, and domestication by 5000–3000 BP

• Adoption of collector strategies, with base camps being used for longer and longer periods

• Trade and exchange—bone pins


Late Archaic burial complexes• Old Copper culture• Glacial Kame mortuary complex• Red Ocher mortuary complex

Old Copper Culture• Mined on the shores of Lake Superior • Utilitarian for the most part, rather

than objects for adornment. • Artifacts that have been recovered

include: – spear points, knives, drills, axes, hooks

and harpoons. – Some rings, beads and pendants which

were probably made for personal adornment.

http://www.uwlax.edu/MVAC/PreEuropeanPeople/EarlyCultures/archaic_oldcopperculture.html

Copper Points


Copper Awl


Glacial Kame Complex• Found in northwestern Ohio and

parts of neighboring states as well as southern Ontario.

• Name from the "glacial kames“ (formed along glaciers), in which they buried their dead.

• Glacial Kame burials are known for a particular style of shell gorget shaped like the sole of a sandal.

http://www.ohiohistorycentral.org/entry.php?rec=2049

Glacial Kame

http://www.physicalgeography.net/fundamentals/10af.html

“Sandal” Shapted Gorget


Red Ochre Complex• Burials were accompanied by ceremonial and

exotic goods, such as copper ornaments, fine stone tools made from imported materials, ground-stone artifacts, and bone tools.

• Exotic materials such as obsidian from Yellowstone, hornstone from Indiana , chalcedony from the Dakotas and marine shell from the Gulf coast.

• Sometimes caches of fine ceremonial items made of these materials were buried with the dead, and sometimes they were buried as offerings alone.

http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/archaeology/mounds/cemetery/roc.asp

Red Ochre sites

• Most early Red Ochre complex sites in Wisconsin are known from accidental finds and avocational or amateur excavations.

• The discoverers of the Molash Creek site in Manitowoc County in the early 1900's found human bone in association with a large offering cache of stone and copper spear points, a necklace of copper beads, one white stone "sword", and 165 chipped stone tools.

• The cache, like the burial, had been coated in red ochre.


Red Ochre sites con’d

• In the 1950's, two burials were found in a sandy knoll in Ozaukee County.

• One was a woman buried in a flexed position and covered with ochre. – She was accompanied by a cache of five

hornstone knives, two hafted knives, 43 other stone tools, four copper awls and four copper beads.

• The grave of a man was found nearby, near a marine shell bead and a polished stone ornament.


Convent Knoll

• In the 1970's salvage excavations at Convent Knoll, in Waukesha County , uncovered three intact Red Ochre burial pits.

• Two pits contained flexed and semi-flexed burials accompanied by mortuary offerings.

• A third pit contained the disordered remains of six adult males without mortuary offerings.

• Evidence of violence was found in the first burial pit as well - the adult man buried there had been scalped, and a stone dart point was still lodged in his body.



Woodland Farmers and Mound Builders• The Woodland begins at 3000 BP.• The mound-building Adena and Hopewell

cultures developed in this area in the Early and Middle Woodland subperiods, respectively.


Early and Middle Woodland material culture• Early Woodland pottery usually grit-

tempered, cord-marked, and thick-walled• Arrives from the east and south as early as

3500 BP in the Upper Ohio drainage and later further west

• Middle Woodland pottery of several types, including flat- bottomed Crab Orchard tradition vessels and finely incised Hopewell ware

• Contracting stem Early Woodland points and various forms, including the Snyders point in the Middle Woodland

• Blades and sometimes exotic raw materials


Mound building and mortuary ceremonialism• Adena mound building (2500–2000

BP), conical mounds with ditches, postmolds found beneath mounds, and burials within

• Illinois and Ohio centers of Hopewell by the end of the third millennium BP— Hopewell Interaction Sphere

• Hopewell earthwork complexes, including mounds and enclosures


Stone platform pipes

• A diagnostic Hopewell artifact• Made of a variety of materials,

including Ohio pipestone• Fairly rare—in caches in

mounds • How and by whom were such

items made?


Subsistence and settlement • Dramatic increase occurred in

domesticated and cultivated weedy seed plants at least by Middle Woodland.

• Early Woodland settlements often were small with high residential mobility.

• Middle Woodland settlement is poorly understood due to the focus on earthwork and mound sites.

• One idea is the vacant center model, which sees earthworks as seasonally used centers used by communities of dispersed farmers.

• There is no consensus.

Middle Woodland beyond Hopewell• Other Middle Woodland peoples

were not as tied into Hopewell ceremonialism: – Western Basin tradition of northern

Ohio, – southeastern Michigan, and – southwestern Ontario as well as

northern complexes grouped under the Lake Forest Middle Woodland.



The Late Woodland (1500–1100 BP)• Except in the north, where it continues to

contact Plainer, thinner-walled ceramics• Bow and arrow• Localization of resource use, including

some intensification• Variable settlement patterns• Intrusive Mound culture and Effigy

Mound culture• End of Late Woodland marked by spread

of new type of maize—Eastern Eight Row


Midwestern Mississippian subperiods• Emergent Mississippian 1150–

950 BP• Early Mississippian 950–800 BP• Middle Mississippian 800–650

BP• Late Mississippian 650–450 BP• Protohistoric 450–350 BP


Cahokia is located in the Illinois Mississippi River floodplain east of St. Louis.

• Site includes Monks Mound.• Site covers 3.9 square miles, more

than 100 mounds, woodhenges.• Plaza was constructed by scraping

off and laying new sediments.– Was this site the center of an incipient state?– How centralized was the society? – How much power did elites have?


Mississippian cultural remains• Platform mounds with buildings on

top• Plaza lined by mounds of various

kinds• Wall-trench houses with wattle-and-

daub walls• Utilitarian and special-purpose

pottery, including effigies• Nature of economic production

debated


Contemporary traditions have some parallel traits.

• Fort Ancient tradition– central Ohio River drainage 950– 250 BP

• Oneota tradition (Upper Mississippian)– margins of Midwest and Great Plains (950–350

BP)

• Other Late Woodland people to the north and east

Fort Ancient and Oneota

Fort Ancient Culture

• The Fort Ancient culture (beginning circa 950 A.D.) existed along the Ohio River and its tributaries and continued up to the early historical period.

• Fort Ancient was originally thought to be a later extension of the Mississippian cultures to the southwest but are now generally seen as being contemporaneous.

• During the 9th and 10th centuries the Fort Ancient culture had become increasingly dependent upon agriculture as a subsistence base, though floral and faunal evidence hunting and gathering continued to play a large role in subsistence.

http://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/prehistory/northamerica/culture/plains/fort_ancient.html

Fort Ancient Artifacts

• Fort Ancient is distinguished primarily by its ceramic ware styles, but also by their small triangular arrow points and shouldered pentagonal flint knives.

• Other artifacts include shell hoes, "weeping eye" gorgets, and other ornamentation, bowl stone pipes and elbow stone pipes, and stone discoidals.

• Many bone tools are also evident such as deer and elk scapula hoes and awls, punches and fish hooks.

http://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/prehistory/northamerica/culture/plains/fort_ancient.html

Fort Ancient Pottery


Fort Ancient “Face”


Fort Ancient Village


Oneota Culture• General characteristics of the

archaeological Oneota: – Site size varies from 0.5 hectares (1.24

acres) to 14-16 hectares (35.6-40 acres)– Houses: a. Oval or sub-rectangular in floor

plan b. 7.5-21.0 meters in length – Many probably were multifamily (i.e.,

analogueous to "longhouses") – Had deep underground storage pits

• Villages Sometimes had 600-800 people Sometimes stockaded Located on flat river terraces above rich bottom lands.

http://www.indiana.edu/~arch/saa/matrix/naa/naa_web/mod11.html

Protohistoric and Historic Periods

• Europeans arrived in these areas in the seventeenth century from the Great Lakes, – but the Protohistoric began earlier

when Native trading networks circulated European goods.

• Algonquian and Siouan speakers • Foragers in the north and farmers

in the south • Considerable displacement in the

Protohistoric and Historic periods



French and British colonialism

• Champlain’s visit to Huronia in 1615 began French exploration and colonialism.

• The French dominated the entire area until 1763 and the end of the Seven Years’ War, when the British came into power.

• The French also came up the Mississippi from the south to establish settlements around modern St. Louis.

Five key topics of Historic Period:• American Revolution and War of

1812• Story of the frontier• Urbanization and industrialization• American Civil War• Development of shipping and

commerce on the Great Lakes


midwest and upper great lakes. copyright 2008 oxford university press, inc. midwest and upper great...

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