Tristram R. Kidder

A Revised Chronology for Mississippi River Subdeltas

Radiocarbon measurements by accelerator mass spectrometry relating to three of the four late Holocene Mississippi River subdeltas yielded consistent results and were found to differ by up to 2000 carbon-14 years from previously inferred ages. These geological dataare in agreement with archaeological carbon-14 data and stratigraphic ages based on ceramic seriation and were used to develop a revised chronologic framework, which has implications for prehistoric human settlement patterns, coastal evolution and wetland loss, and sequence-stratigraphic interpretations.

Climate Change and the Archaic to Woodland Transition (3000–2500 Cal B.P.) in the Mississippi River Basin

Archaeologists frequently assume the cultural transition from Archaic to Woodland (ca. 3000–2500 cal B.P.) in the Mississippi River basin is a gradual process. In the lower Mississippi Valley, however, there is an abrupt gap in the archaeological sequence at this time and pronounced differences between Late Archaic and Early Woodland archaeological remains. Elsewhere in the basin, this transition is marked by an occupation hiatus or decline and is accompanied by significant changes in settlement and material culture organization. In most parts of the floodplain of the Mississippi River and its tributaries there are few sites dating to this interval suggesting the river bottom was abandoned for several hundred years as a location for sustained habitation. High-resolution climate data demonstrates an episode of rapid global climate change involving significant alterations in temperature and precipitation in the period ca. 3000–2600 cal B.P. The proximate cause of this global climate occurrence is change in galactic cosmic ray intensity and solar irradiation possibly amplified by variations in the earths geomagnetic field. Global climate changes led to greatly increased flood frequencies and magnitudes in the Mississippi River watershed during the shift from Late Archaic to Early Woodland. In northeast Louisiana, increased flooding led to major fluvial reorganization that caused settlement abandonment and is associated with the demise of Poverty Point culture. Climate change and associated flooding is implicated as one cause of major cultural reorganization at the end of the Archaic throughout much of eastern North America.

Plazas as architecture: An example from the Raffman site, Northeast Louisiana

Research at the Raffman site (16MA20), a multi-mound center in the Lower Mississippi Valley of northeast Louisiana, demonstrates that the plaza was purposefully built and extended on its northern end. Construction entailed significant earth-moving and labor effort in addition to the erection of mounds flanking the plaza. At Raffman plaza, building is dated ca. A.D. 700–1000. Like the mounds at the site, the arrangement, shape, and dimensions of the plaza changed through time. The final plan of the plaza was the result of a rapid major reconfiguration of the spatial layout of the site at approximately A.D. 1000. The effort expended on planning and construction of the plaza at Raffman and similar features at contemporary and later sites in the southeastern United States indicates that plazas are not just empty spaces that developed because architecture enclosed an open area; they must be understood as one of the central design elements of community planning and intrasite spatial organization. Further research should be devoted to exploring how southeastern mound-and-plaza groups were constructed with specific efforts devoted to comprehending how plazas were laid out and built.

Archaeology of the Anthropocene in the Yellow River region, China, 8000–2000 cal. BP

Although archaeological analysis emphasizes the importance of climatic events as a driver of historical processes, we use a variety of environmental and archaeological data to show that human modification of the environment was a significant factor in shaping the early history of the Yellow River region of North China. Humans began to modify site-specific and local-level environments in the Early Holocene (~11,500–7000 BP). By the Mid-Holocene (~7000–5000 BP), the effects of humans on the environment become much larger and are witnessed at regional and tributary river basin scales. Land clearance and agriculture, as well as related land use, are dominant determinants of these changes. By the Late Neolithic to Early Bronze Age (~5000–3500 BP), population growth and intensification of agricultural production expanded the human footprint across the Yellow River region. By the Mid to Late Bronze Age (~3600–2200 BP), larger populations armed with better technology and propelled by more centralized governments were altering lands throughout the Yellow River region, gradually bringing the environment under human control. By the Early Dynastic period (221 bc–ad 220), the Yellow River region was an increasingly anthropogenic environment wherein human land management practices were, in many instances, as consequential as natural forces. Throughout the Holocene history of the Middle and Lower Yellow River, anthropogenic, climatic, and natural environmental processes were acting to shape human history and behavior, making it difficult, if not impossible, to say whether human or climate processes were more consequential. There is a complex relationship in China’s early history between natural and human forcing much like there is today. The Early Anthropocene concept is useful here because it recognizes that when natural and cultural forces become so intertwined, it no longer makes sense to separate the two.

Timing and Consequences of the Introduction of Maize Agriculture in the Lower Mississippi Valley

Archaeologists in the Lower Mississippi Valley have generally assumed that corn, beans, and squash provided the subsistence stability and the surpluses necessary for the development of complex, stratified polities which existed during the Coles Creek period. Recent research indicates that maize was probably not an important part of the diet until after this time. Therefore, the introduction of maize-based agriculture had little impact on the formation of chiefdoms in Coles Creek culture. In this regard Coles Creek is different from early Mississippian; it is a distinct adaptation to the highly productive environment of the Lower Mississippi Valley.

Perspectives on the geoarchaeology of the Lower Mississippi Valley

Abstract The impact of Harold N. Fisks work on the archaeology and geoarchaeology of the Lower Mississippi Valley (LMV) has been monumental. As a result of his landmark publications on the geology of the alluvial valley of the Mississippi River our comprehension of the interplay between geological, geomorphic, and human actions is relatively well developed. However, geologists and archaeologists still need to work together more closely to appreciate and understand the contributions each field has to offer. Examination of the interplay between geologists and archaeologists in the realm of dating and landscape evolution provides the basis for an investigation of the state of geoarchaeology in the LMV today. Integration of research demands an appreciation of scale which must be approached from an historical perspective. Humans have, both in the past and the present, impacted the natural environment of the Mississippi River and its floodplain. Only when this fact is fully appreciated by archaeologists and geologists alike will it be possible to forge a new synthesis of the relationship between the dynamic alluvial valley and its human occupants.

Anthropocene archaeology of the Yellow River, China, 5000–2000 BP

In this paper, we use geoarchaeological and paleoenvironmental data from three localities in the Yellow River Valley, China – Taosi, Sanyangzhuang, and the Yiluo Valley – to argue that human activity in the mid- to late-Holocene contributed to large-scale changes in the behavior of the Yellow River and that these changes were of sufficient magnitude to bend the arc of China’s history. Massive anthropogenic landscape transformation from the later Neolithic into the early Dynastic periods, especially in the Chinese Loess Plateau, increased sedimentation in the Yellow River requiring intensive investment in flood control features to protect an ever-growing population. As the Yellow River channel aggraded, channel gradients became increasingly steep, and avulsions occurred with greater frequency and consequence. Flooding reached an apogee in the first decades of the Common Era when a massive avulsion of the Yellow River ca. 14–17 CE caused the river to shift to the south and east of its former channel. This avulsion and the catastrophic flooding that followed triggered the collapse of the Western Han dynasty. The Yellow River – known as ‘China’s Tribulation’ – has been seen as a natural scourge that afflicts the inhabitants of the fertile North China Plain. However, when viewed in an Anthropocene perspective, it is evident that China’s Tribulation largely is the result of human manipulation of the environment.

EARLY WOODLAND SETTLEMENT AND MOUND BUILDING IN THE UPPER TENSAS BASIN, NORTHEAST LOUISIANA

Abstract Traditionally overlooked because it lacks hallmarks of material and cultural complexity, Early Woodland in the Southeast is an interval of significant transformation in material culture, settlement, and social organization. Investigations at four sites in northeast Louisiana provide insights into changes taking place at this time. These sites are situated on a crevasse splay created by flooding at the end of the Archaic. This flooding is associated with an occupation hiatus ca. 3000–2500 cal B.P. Evidence suggests a rapid colonization of the crevasse splay by people using Tchefuncte pottery, and there is no evidence at these sites of stratigraphic or cultural continuity from Poverty Point. The Early Woodland occupation in the study area dates ca. 2400–2100 cal B.P., which is later than dates associated with Early Woodland in the Pontchartrain Basin and contemporary with Lake Cormorant culture sites farther north. Early Woodland in northeast Louisiana is marked by a diagnostic Tchefuncte ceramic assemblage and the presence of a settlement system composed of small villages or hamlets nucleated around a conical mound that presumably served as a ceremonial/ritual center. This mound was erected very rapidly; radiocarbon dates suggest it was constructed in no more than 10 years. Although mound building has been suspected, this is the first conclusive evidence it was an aspect of Tchefuncte settlement and ceremonial practices. Data from these sites bear on the question of cultural and demographic continuity and change at the Archaic to Woodland transition. Previous models emphasize continuity of populations with ceramic technology and styles diffusing into the lower Mississippi Valley. In contrast, our data support a model of Early Woodland repopulation of the lower Mississippi Valley from the south and east following a prolonged period of regional abandonment.

Look to the earth: the search for ritual in the context of mound construction

In North America mound research traditionally focuses on how these earthen structures functioned -- as mortuary facilities, ceremonial platforms, observatories, and the residences of political elites and/or ritual practitioners. This paper acknowledges mound building as the purposeful selection of soils and sediments for specific color, texture, or engineering properties and the organization of deposits suggesting that the building process reflects both shared knowledge and communicates specific information. We present two examples: Late Archaic period Poverty Point site Mound A, and Mississippian period Shiloh site Mound A, in the exploration of structured deposits to identify ritual in contrast to a more mundane or purely practical origin. We argue the building of these earthen monuments was not only architecturally important as a means to serve a subsequent purpose but that the act of construction itself was a ritual process intended to serve its own religious and social purposes. In these contexts, ritual does much more than communicate underlying social relationships; it is instrumental to their production.

Tetrahedron Baked-Clay Objects from an Early Woodland Context at the Jaketown Site, Mississippi

ABSTRACT Excavations undertaken in 1951 at the Jaketown site revealed a dense deposit of fragmented and intact pyramid-shaped baked-clay objects (BCOs) at the base of Mound A. This deposit was associated with the site’s Early Woodland component. Recent fieldwork at Jaketown also encountered the same tetrahedron deposit and identified an additional and distinct pit feature filled with the objects. In this article, we present the results of analyses that examine the production, composition, chronology, and function of these enigmatic baked-clay artifacts. Following a hiatus associated with massive flooding in the Mississippi Valley ca. 3200–2850 cal B.P., Jaketown was re-occupied by people who shared ceramic affinities with groups to the south and to the east and, who like many contemporaries, used BCOs as a part of their cooking technology. The tetrahedron deposit represents one of the earliest dated Tchula contexts at ca. 2600 cal B.P., and was used over a short time for a social purpose that brought populations together for food consumption as a means of encouraging cooperation.