midwest and upper great lakes. midwest/great lakes map

MidWest and Upper Great Lakes

MidWest/Great Lakes Map

Copyright 2008 Oxford University Press, Inc.

The Cultural Sequence

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.


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.



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. midwest/great lakes map

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