3/19/24

• Southwest
  • Pueblo Bonito, Chaco Canyon - AD 1000-1150
    • Very famous site
    • Likely a center of sorts
      • Could have attached population
      • Interaction sphere with other groups in Mesoamerica
        • Rock art - Supernova Explosion?
      • Long way from timber
        • Benson - trying to find timber source, 125 miles away
        • Dendrochronology - Boring (like, bores) samples
    • Core & Veneer Walls
    • 5 floors
    • Artifacts
      • Chaco pottery - Cylindrical vases
        • Ritual aspect
      • Turquoise artifacts
        • Archaeometry - mechanics of this
      • Macaw Feather & Squirrel Pelt Sash - c. AD 920
        • Not many macaws in SW (naturally)
        • Aviary that contained 20 units to contain birds
      • Roads - hard to spot at certain times
        • Carved stone steps
        • Devin White - remote sensing of roads
        • Functional & Ceremonial aspects
  • Aztec Ruins, NM
    • Known for a long time
    • Cement caps in attempt to preserve the site
    • Great Houses
      • Diagonal window
  • Casa Grande
    • Hohokam Trade - Shells, Macaw Feathers, Turquoise
    • Maize is Mesoamerican then selected for productivity
      • Upping agriculture output
    • Craft Specialization
      • Carved Shells
• Pottery - ware shaped from moist clay & hardened by heat
  • Made of Clay, Temper, Water
    • Temper - material added to clay in the formation of vessels in order to reduce rapid shrinkage and/or expansion during the firing process. Allows for a more even distribution
      • Uneven heat distribution can result in cracking and failure during the manufacture process
        • Ex. Sand, Fiber, Crushed Rock, crushed shell, crushed pottery (grog)
  • 3rd most common study
    • Nerds (endearing)
    • Acknowledge source of Modern day people
    • Question of authenticity
    • Lip, Rim, Body, Conoidal Base
      • Terms that aren’t quantifiable
  • Types
    • Plainware
    • Surface treatment
      • Brushing, Burnishing, Cord or Fabric marking, Incising, Stamping
      • Notching, Corrugation (wrapping)
    • Decorative
      • Smoothing & Burnishing
      • Smudging - Putting something in the kiln to have it to look smokey
      • Glazes
      • Slips - Coating
      • Paints (organic and mineral)
    • Analyze the pottery through experimental
  • Mimbres Bowls
    • Hole to release spirits - “Killed”
  • Tonto Polychrome
  • Casa Grandes Ramos Polychrome
• Maize
  • Very early corns
  • 1944 filled beans & maize
    • Don’t crown them
  • Historic Hopi field with corn, beans, & squash
    • The Three Sisters - forms complex amino acid
    • Archaeological Grid Garden - Preserve soil moisture
  • Cool Talk on Water Gathering in Chaco
• Results of Over-Population
  • Not enough food - skeletal evidence of health stress
  • Increased susceptibility to infectious diseases & parasites
  • Violence & Increased Competition
• Evidence of Violence
  • Fortifications & Defensive architectural features
  • Burned buildings & food storage
  • Perimortem wounds
    • Parry fractures, head wounds, etc
  • Points in human skeletons
  • Trophy Collecting
  • Human Bone artifacts
  • Non-standard or casual burial
• SW Specific Evidence of Warfare
  • Enclosed Pueblos
  • Burned Rooms with Bodies
  • Inaccessible areas with Pueblos - Mesa Top Pueblos
  • Lines of Sight - Ex. Fireside & Tower House
    • Being able to see allies
  • Enclosed Plaza
  • Community issues
    • Private/public space
    • Sanitation
    • Access to Resources
    • Conflict Resolution
    • Cooperative Labor
    • Risk-sharing
    • Need for centralized decision making

3/21/24 - Complexity

• Sedentism
  • Increased variety of artifacts
  • Seasonal foods
  • Dense scatter of artifacts
  • Increase in heavy artifacts
  • Cemeteries
• E. Woodlands - Greater Complexity
  • Regional variety - cohesive identity
  • Water resources & crafts
  • Late Archaic
    • Projectile Points
  • Woodworking tools: Adze, Axe, & Gouge
    • Planes - used for shaping wood
    • Pitch - Patching parts of wood
  • Indian Knoll, KY (3000-2000 BC)
    • Shell Mounds
    • Regional Projectile Points
      • Serration
      • NOT Late Archaic
    • Craft Specialization
      • Pipe culture - Tobacco
      • Nutting Stone
  • Watson-Brake, LA - Dated to 5400 BP
    • Earliest Mound Complex
  • Poverty Point, LA
    • Grand Depth
    • Variations in Artifacts
      • Drills
      • Archaeometry: Looking at the edges (of drills)
      • Iconography - Birds
• Interaction
  • If resources in Valley A are low, Valley B & C are occupied
  • Human skeletal evidence
    • Harris lines - indicate where a skeleton has stopped growing
    • Enamel Lines
    • Anemia indicators
    • High childhood mortality rate
  • Extensive use of “marginal foods”
    • Freshwater clams, grass seeds, other foods with poor returns for the effort to collect or process
• Domestication Process
  • Food & other useful plants are harvested
    • Maize is an export from Mesoamerica
  • Dropped (or exerted) seeds grow in disturbed soil close to camp. Some seeds are stored, allowing seeds with thinner coats to survive. Larger seeds outgrow rivals
  • Deliberately planted closer to camp
  • People (inadvertently) select plants for larger seeds sizes, thinner seed coats, easier harvesting attributes
  • Early domesticates
    • Squash, sunflower
    • Goosefoot - seed heads & eventually fiber
    • Marshelder
    • Knotweed
    • Maygrass & Little Barley
    • Wild Tobacco
      • “Keep Tobacco Sacred” - Not an endorsement of addiction
• Ohio River Valley
  • Big Architecture
  • Miamisburg Mound, OH
    • Largest conical burial grounds in E. United States
  • Adena Earthworks - NOT random
    • Societal Organization
    • Adena Burial Mound, PA
    • Adena Mound, OH
  • Mounds on habitation
    • Adena House
  • Adena Points - Continuity
    • Big Whompers (relatively long points)
  • Pottery - Not Southwestern, not typological like SW
    • Woodland ceramics
  • Slate Gorget - Part of something to signal with
  • “Spider” Tablet
  • Wilmington Tablet - Tiny, Ceremonial
  • Adena Birdstones - atl-atl weight
  • Pipes
    • Tubular pipe
    • Duck effigy pipe
    • Adena pipe

3/26/24 - Hopewell

• “Classification of Societies”
  • Service (1971)
    • Ranked: States, chiefdoms
    • Not-ranked: Tribes, Bands
    • Based on increased levels of social complexity from bands to states in multiple ethnographic cases
    • Complexity
      • Number & Proliferation of specialized political, economic or other social roles & institutions within a given society
        • Presence of craft specialization
  • How we recognize chiefdoms
    • Monumental architecture - Poverty Point
      • Commoners attracted to the big things
      • How do we see the 99%
    • Significant amount of organized labor
    • Some levels of settlement hierarchy
• Hopewell Mound Site
  • Ceremonial aspects
  • Mound City Mound Group
  • Features - looking for them even in forests
  • Scioto River - Settlement in bottom lands
• Sites - Typically around waterways
• Craft Specialization
  • Pipes
    • Beaver Effigy Pipe
    • Seip Mound Pipe
  • Personal Adornment
    • Jewelry - Deer horns, earrings
      • Copper
      • Stone ear spools - gauges
      • Beaded necklaces
    • Marine Shells
    • Copper Breastplate
  • Ceramics
    • Utilitarian Ceramics (Majority)
    • Ceremonial Ceramics
  • Materials from lots of areas
    • SW is talking to Mesoamerica
    • Question is interaction with Eastern areas
      • Recent Obsidian from Pachuca
• Trade Networks
  • Raw material exports
    • Flint from near Newark Site
    • Pipestone from near the Tremper Site
    • Red Ochre from near the Seip site
    • Salt from near the McKittrick site
    • Fresh-Water Pearls from the rivers
  • Mica - hand, claw with pearl
  • Bear Claw & Copies (of stone)
  • Canine Teeth
    • Carved - might find tools in Mississippian
      • Burin, graver, lithic tool
  • Copper bird - Bird motif
  • Copper cutouts
  • Ceremonial blades
    • Curved - hard to make without shattering
  • Arkansas Quartz - Curved point
  • Yellowstone Obsidian - 12 cm, ceremonial
    • Symbolic significance
    • Color, knapping characteristics, etc, serve as mnemonic to remember relationships, past occurrences, heritage, it is imbued with meaning, not just function
    • Lee did research on it: continuance
      • Distance decay - how far away disappeared
      • Eastern Idaho → CO - Must have transport Animals (horses)

Mississipian

• Chronology
  • AD 900-1050 - emergent Mississippian
  • AD 1050 - 1350 - Full Mississipian Culture
  • AD 1350 - Post Mississippian
• Subsistence
  • Maize, beans, squash
    • Selected Maize for the environment
  • Continuation of earlier domesticated suite of plants
    • Marshelder, goosefoot, sunflower
  • Deer, other game
  • Freshwater shellfish, fish
  • Nuts, berries, other gathered food items
• Artifacts
  • Stone Hoes
    • Halfted Hoes
  • Fish Effigy Bowl
• Monks Mound
  • Largest structure until relatively recent

3/28/24

• Cahokia & Suburbs
  • Cahokia proper - social knowledge
    • Built of other things
  • Peripheral cities
  • Settlement Pattern
  • Complex chiefdoms - Social theory - Wolkenstein
    • Mound center
      • 2nd line mound centers (Mitchell, E. St. Louis)
        • 3rd Line mound center

Nodal villages, hamlets, & farmsteads

• • • Burials & ascribed status
  • Mound 72 - By central plaza
    • Projectile points - 10k, serrated
    • Burial mounds
    • Guess of high status individual based in grave good quantity
    • Burial mica
      • Excotic material
    • 20k “Falcon” beads
      • Cape, looks like shell beads
      • Individual is on tops
    • 10 individuals buried as well
• Mississippian World from AD 1050-1200
  • Cahokia (founded AD 900), designated as center in AD 1050
  • Etowah (GA) established about AD 1000
  • Moundville (AL) founded AD 1050
  • Spiro (OK) exists from c. AD 900
  • Mound building is extensive & intensive
  • Woodhenges are built & maintained
  • Trade in exotics is base of power
    • Mica from Carolinas
    • Obsidian - Yellowstone
    • Great Lakes Copper
    • Marine shells
  • Monks mound
    • Next to a channel, unsure on Mississippian
    • Plaza - Ball game out front
  • Woodhenge - calendar - more work to be done on these
• After AD 1200
  • Palisades with Bastions become primary monumental architecture (Cahokia palisade)
    • Palisade - walls-ish thing
  • Southeastern Ceremonial Complex (Southern Cult) synthesized
  • Use of maize increases
  • Regional differences increases
    • Localization
• Southeastern Ceremonial Complex (AKA Southern Cult)
  • Name given to a broad regional similarity of artifacts, iconography, ceremonies, and mythology of Mississippian period between AD 1000 & AD 1600
  • Symbolism
    • Chunkey
      • Roll stone disk then bet on who wins
      • Artifacts
        • Stones
        • Player statues - ear spool, gauging
    • Birdman
      • Weeping eye
    • Cross & Circle Pattern
    • Spider gorget
    • Long nose god
      • Mesoamerican connection
      • MT - Sweet Grass hills with red ochre
  • Birdman or Thunderbird Tablet from Cahokia
    • HUman head, bird like beak
    • Caves near St. Louis
      • Pictograph of birdman
      • Tim Pauketaw - did a lot of analysis
      • Maya connection - Tim McCleary