John H. Blitz

ADOPTION OF THE BOW IN PREHISTORIC NORTH AMERICA

Current ecological archaeology, as often practiced, is too closed a system. The realization that introduced external factors may play a role in cultural change as potently as localized mechanisms demands increased attention to analytical boundaries and matters of scale. This article questions the utility and effectiveness of localized adaptive explanations for large-scale historical processes and, as an illustration, considers the prehistoric distribution of the bow in North America from a continental perspective. Criteria used to determine the presence of the bow in the archaeological record are briefly reviewed and a north to south chronological distribution for the initial adoption of the bow is presented.

Mississippian chiefdoms and the fission-fusion process

In the American Southeast, the simple-complex chiefdom cycle is the predominant model of sociopolitical development applied to the Precolumbian ranked societies known as Mississippian. In this paper, mound-center settlement patterns in the South Appalachian area are reviewed. Most of these distributions fail to conform to the hierarchy of centers predicted by the simple-complex chiefdom model. Contrary to the model, an absence of primary-secondary center hierarchies implies that extension of regional administrative control was not the primary determinant of mound-center distributions. A review of ethnohistorical sources suggests that another sociopolitical mechanism, the fission-fusion process, created the majority of mound-center settlement patterns through the aggregation or dispersal of basic political units. The fission-fusion process was the product of efforts by factional leaders to resolve the conflicting values of autonomy and security. Unlike the simple-complex chiefdom dichotomy, the fission-fusion model encompasses a greater diversity of Mississippian political forms and provides an alternative explanation for changes in mound center size, complexity, and location.

Changes in long bone diaphyseal strength with horticultural intensification in west-central Illinois

This study examines changes in long bone diaphyseal strength in west-central Illinois from the Middle Woodland through the Mississippian periods. Significant differences occur between the Middle Woodland and the Late Woodland periods, at the time when use of native seed crops intensifies. In females, both humeral and femoral strength increases, which may be related to their role in growing and processing these crops. In males, right arm strength declines, which may be tied in part to the replacement of the atlatl by the bow. Fewer significant changes occur between the earlier and later Late Woodland periods, at the time when maize is introduced as a dietary staple, possibly because maize is at first grown as only one of a series of other starchy seeds. Finally, in the Mississippian period, when maize use intensifies, female left arm strength declines. This may be because maize is easier to process than native seeds, or it may reflect innovations in processing technology in the Mississippian period. External dimensions and shape indices, in part, reflect the trends seen in biomechanical strength. Comparisons are made to similar studies in other regions.

Higher Ground: The Archaeology of North American Platform Mounds

Platform mounds, as forms of monumental architecture, have long been central to inquiries into Native American social complexity. The archaeological literature produced over the last 5 years that pertains to North American platform mounds in the Southeast and Southwest is reviewed. Chronologies, forms, and functions of platform mounds are summarized. There are similarities in the platform mound characteristics and construction sequences found in both regions. It is proposed that these characteristics reflect similar social processes of integration and differentiation.

SOCIOPOLITICAL IMPLICATIONS OF MISSISSIPPIAN MOUND VOLUME

Variation in the scale of Mississippian mound building is an important measure of regional settlement hierarchies. However, factors thought to determine the size of platform mounds are subject to two contradictory interpretations. Mound volume is said to result from either the duration of mound use or the size of the labor force recruited by leaders for mound construction. To evaluate these competing propositions, a sample of excavated mounds is examined and four variables are recorded for each mound: a mound volume index, the duration of mound use, the number of construction stages, and the number of mounds at the site. The relationships among these variables are summarized, and the relative merits of the two competing interpretations are assessed. It is concluded that not all of the variation in mound volume can be explained by duration of use, that additional factors must be considered, and that the social context of mound construction probably differed at large multiple-mound sites and smaller mound sites.

Social Complexity and the Bow in the Prehistoric North American Record

This Special Issue of Evolutionary Anthropology grew out of a symposium at the 2012 Society for American Archaeology (SAA) meeting in Memphis, Tennessee (April 18–22). The goal of the symposium was to explore what we will argue is one of the most important and promising opportunities in the global archeological enterprise. In late prehistoric North America, the initial rise of cultures of strikingly enhanced complexity and the local introduction of a novel weapon technology, the bow, apparently correlate intimately in a diverse set of independent cases across the continent, as originally pointed out by Blitz. If this empirical relationship ultimately proves robust, it gives us an unprecedented opportunity to evaluate hypotheses for the causal processes producing social complexity and, by extension, to assess the possibility of a universal theory of history. The rise of comparably complex cultures was much more recent in North America than it was elsewhere and the resulting fresher archeological record is relatively well explored. These and other features make prehistoric North America a unique empirical environment. Together, the symposium and this issue have brought together outstanding investigators with both empirical and theoretical expertise. The strong cross‐feeding and extended interactions between these investigators have given us all the opportunity to advance the promising exploration of what we call the North American Neolithic transitions. Our goal in this paper is to contextualize this issue.

Social complexity and the bow in the Eastern Woodlands.

Bingham and Souza have presented an evolutionary theory that specifies a causal relationship between the advent of powerful projectile weapons such as the bow and radical rearrangements in social relations and histories. They propose that the acquisition of weapons that permitted humans to kill at ever‐increasing distances provided the coercive means to suppress conflicts of interest among nonkin, self‐interested individuals in social groups, thus paving the way for greater social complexity. An unprecedented reduction in projectile point size identifies the arrival of the bow ca. A.D. 300 in the Eastern Woodlands of North America, which initiated a causal chain of cultural changes. In the Midwest, the bow, combined with food production, precipitated the decline of Hopewell by conferring household autonomy and dispersal, which at first suppressed social complexity, but later created conditions favorable to maize intensification. In the lower Southeast, where food production was unimportant, populations aggregated at concentrated wild‐food sources, and the bow did not confer household autonomy. The relationship between the bow and social complexity varied under different environmental, social, and historical conditions.

Introduction: Social Complexity and the Bow in the Prehistoric North American Record

This Special Issue of Evolutionary Anthropology grew out of a symposium at the 2012 Society for American Archaeology (SAA) meeting in Memphis, Tennessee (April 18–22). The goal of the symposium was to explore what we will argue is one of the most important and promising opportunities in the global archeological enterprise. In late prehistoric North America, the initial rise of cultures of strikingly enhanced complexity and the local introduction of a novel weapon technology, the bow, apparently correlate intimately in a diverse set of independent cases across the continent, as originally pointed out by Blitz. If this empirical relationship ultimately proves robust, it gives us an unprecedented opportunity to evaluate hypotheses for the causal processes producing social complexity and, by extension, to assess the possibility of a universal theory of history. The rise of comparably complex cultures was much more recent in North America than it was elsewhere and the resulting fresher archeological record is relatively well explored. These and other features make prehistoric North America a unique empirical environment. Together, the symposium and this issue have brought together outstanding investigators with both empirical and theoretical expertise. The strong cross‐feeding and extended interactions between these investigators have given us all the opportunity to advance the promising exploration of what we call the North American Neolithic transitions. Our goal in this paper is to contextualize this issue.

Remote Sensing as Community Settlement Analysis at Moundville

Abstract Remote sensing has revolutionized procedures for locating buried features at archaeological sites in eastern North America. However, the potential of instruments such as gradiometers to shape innovative research in ways that move beyond survey and testing is not always realized in practice. At the Mississippian site of Moundville, Alabama, we conducted a landscape-scale geophysical survey to serve as the guiding method of community settlement analysis. First, we mapped the distribution of magnetic anomalies across the site. Next, we defined the variability of anomalies and selected a sample for test excavations to correlate specific anomaly shapes and amplitudes with specific cultural features. Once confirmed as cultural features, we extrapolated sample results to identify unexcavated anomalies as specific building forms and other features with a higher degree of probability than would have been possible without confirmation by test excavation. Results include the identification and mapping of over 450 unexcavated probable buildings, nearly five times the number previously discovered in decades of traditional excavation. Because the buried probable buildings have different forms, sizes, distributions, and chronological spans, the interpreted gradiometer map is transformed through interpretation from a static palimpsest of anomalies to a picture of changing community settlement organization.

An Integrated Geoarchaeology of a Late Woodland Sand Mound

Abstract The Graveline Mound (22JA503) is a sand platform mound in Jackson County, Mississippi, built on a low, late Pleistocene terrace on the Mississippi Sound. The Late Woodland mound (A.D. 590–780) is composed of local soils, and its presence today is a testament to the ancient builders’ knowledge of earthen construction materials and methods. Central to the study of the mound is an integrated geoarchaeological approach that uses stratigraphy and micromorphology to decipher material source and selection, construction techniques, and periodicity, in combination with more traditional artifacts, revealing the activities that created this ultimately monumental space. The mound was built in three rapid stages beginning with a low earthwork demarcating a ritual precinct used during late spring/early summer. Stage II quickly followed with a series of alternating zoned fills, sealing the space that was then subsequently covered by Stage III, a massive hard red surface that marked the location with a platform mound.