m7/98 Encyclopedia of North American Prehistory M

Anth 3511 Professor Gibbon

Middle Woodland and the Hopewellian

The middle periodor stage of the Woodland tradition in eastern North America. Many trends that began thousands of years earlier in the Archaic reach their climax in the Middle Woodland in some resource rich regions. Among these were tendencies towards: 1) an increasing ef~iciency in harvesting a wide variety of productive and nutritious wild food resources; 2) an increasing emphasis on the gathering and gardening of seed-bearing plants; 3) an intensitication of food procurement; 4) smaller, better defined, and more circumscribed group territories; 5) more sedentary lifeways; 6) "packing" in resource rich emironments caused by increasing population sizes, group fissioning, and inward migration; 7) a sense of corporate, or "ethnic," identity; 8) increasingly conspicuous group boundary markers to legitimize a corporate right to local resources; 9) more elaborate burial rites; 10) more complex intra- and intercommunity social arrangements; and 11) increasingly formal inter-group exchange mechanisms. The

most spectacular archaeological evidence of this climax is associated with the Hopewell phenomenon in the heartland of the culture area.

Middle Woodland archaeological complexes include Ohio Hopewell in southern Ohio; Havana Hapewell in the Illinois Valley and adjacent Mississippi Valley; Crab Orchard in southern Illinois; Kansas City Hopewell; Swift Creek, Copena, Deptford, Miller, and Marksville in the Southeast; Laurel in the western Upper Great Lakes; and Point Peninsula in the Northeast. Most of these complexes participated to varying degrees in what has been called the Hopewell Interaction Sphere; some in mostly spatially peripheral areas did not participate at ail.

Dates for the Middle Woodland time period vary widely across the Eastern Woodlands, for archaeologists do not agree on which traits are diagnostic of the period or stage. In addition, some events, such as the appearance of new ceramic forms, occurred at different times in different areas. For some archaeologists, the "Middle Woodland" is that period between 200 B.C. and A.D. 400 when most of the Eastern Woodlands was dominated by the Hopewell culture. For others, it is defined by the presence of "Middle Woodland" ceramic complexes, which, according to some interpretations, ranges from about 300 B.C. to A.D. 300 in the Illinois Valley, ca. A.D. 1-600 in the Southeast, and ca. A.D. 1--900 in the Northeast. In the southeastern Deptford and Swift Creek complexes, pottery was check, complicated, and simple stamped. Classic Ohio Hopewell and Illinois Havana Hopewell decorated pottery had rocker-anddentate stamp and incised designs arranged largely in zonal patterns. In general, Middle Woodland ' ceramic vessels tended to have more complex and sophisticated shapes and designs than Early Woodland pottery. They also had thinner walls that were more resistant to breakage when heated.

The most spectacular Hopewell ceremonial sites are in the Sciota Valley near Chillicothe, Ohio. These religious and political centers typically contain a burial mound and geometric earthwork complex that covers 10 to hundreds of acres and sparse; evidence of large resident populations is lacking. Larger

mounds can be up to 12 m high, 150 m long, and 55 m wide. Multiple mortuary structures under the mounds were often log tombs that contained the remains of skeletons that had been cremated, bundled, or interred in some other manner. Exotic raw materials and "art" objects, the diagnostic artifacts of the Hopewell Interaction Sphere, accompanied some of the burials. Included were Lake Superior copper, galena, obsidian ~om Wyoming, Knife River nint from North Dakota, pipestone, silver, meteoric iron, mica, chlorite, quartz crystal, petrified wood, foreign nodular flints, both large and small marine shell (Cassis, Busycon, Farrciolaria, Marginella, Oliva, OliveNa), ocean turtle shells, alligator and shark teeth, barracuda jaws, clay figurines, platform effigy pipes, and two-dimensional representational art cut from sheets of copper or mica, among other items. Small villages where people hunted and gathered wild food resources and tended small gardens presumably surrounded these large centers. However, the intense focus on the larger centers and their exotic contents has detracted until recently from investigations of year-round subsistence-settlement patterns. Smaller amounts of Hopewell Interaction Sphere items are found in Havana graves in Illinois and in other Hopewellian complexes. Differences in regional burial practices, ceramics, settlement pattern, and other aspects of the archaeological record suggest that these items and presumably their associated ritual practices were grafted onto local cultures.

Just what the Hopewell phenomenon represents remains a focus of investigation. Some researchers view the norescence in burial mound and earthwork construction, the elaboration of burial ceremonialism, and the presence of "powerful" exotic substances and manufactured items as the archaeologically visible manifestation of a climactic expression of a cosmology whose roots extend deep into the Archaic. According to this view, the spirit world had to be propitiated to ensure an abundance of food, a successful raid on a traditional enemy, and so on, and these items functioned within that process of communication. Others regard the florescence as evidence of the emergence of regional social ranking. In this view, heads of high ranking lineages legitimized their positions in part by obtaining interaction sphere symbols of power from other high ranking lineage heads in distant communities. Still another interpretation considers the aspirations of "Big Men" as responsible for moving interaction sphere items through an extensive intertribal network. Here, a potential "Big Man" would attempt to build his own reputation and a political blee within the segmented tribal organization by exchanging locally available items for interaction sphere raw materials and ritual items. Presumably, aspects of all three interpretations were important to varying degrees in different Middle Woodland complexes. What seems

apparent, however, is the value of viewing the Hopewell phenomenon from a social rather than a strictly material perspective.

See also Copena Culture, Crab Orchard, DeptTord Culture, Havana Hopewell, Hopewell Interaction Sphere, Kansas City Hopewell, Laurel Culture, Miller Culture, Ohio Hopewell, Point Peninsula, Swift Creek Culture Further Readings

Prose, David S., and N'omi Greber (editors). 1979. HopaueNArchaeology. Kent State University Press, Kent, Ohio.

Caldwell, Joseph R, and Robert L. Hall (editors). 1964. Hopewellian Studies. Illinois State Museum, Springfield, Illinois.

Mason, Ronald J. 1981. Great LakesArchaeology. Academic Press, New York. Seeman, M. F. 1979. The Hopewelllnteract'on Sphere: The Evidenceforlnterregional Trade and Structural Complexity. Indiana Historical Society, Indianapolis.

Smith, Bruce D. 1986. The Archaeology of the Southeastern United States: From Dalton to de Soto, 10,500 to 500 B.P. Advances in WorldArchaeology 5:1--92.

Steponaitus, V. 1986. Prehistoric Archaeology in the Southeastern United States 1970--1985. Annual Reviav ofAnthropology 15:363-404.

Guy Gibbon, University ofMinnesota

Midland Complex

The Midland archaeological complex was defined following discoveries at the Scharbauer site near Midland, Texas, where the presence of a human skull, animal bones, and artifacts in ancient dune deposits of uncertain late Pleistocene age brought considerable notoriety to the site in the late 1950s. Despite additional study at this "type site" and at other deposits in the region, and study of stratified Paleoindian assemblages at the Hell Gap site in Wyoming, the relationships between Midland and other Paleoindian complexes, especially Folsom, still remain a topic ofdebate. Although the links between the Midland and Folsom complexes are numerous, specific aspects of their shared chronology, technology, group composition, and archaeological taxonomy remain unresolved.

The single primary difference between Folsom and Midland assemblages is that Folsom projectile points are fluted and Midland points are not; Midland points share most other morphological and technical attributes or characteristics of Folsom points, and other elements of their tool technologies are essentially identical. These include spurred end scrapers, delicate gravers, eyed bone needles, and a pattern of use of the same lithic sources. However, there are few stratified sites that provide a clear indication of the chronological relationship between Folsom and Midland assemblages, and there are at present no radiocarbon dates for clearly unmixed Midland assemblages.

It is often assumed that Midland represents a late phase ofFolsom technology when projectile point fluting was loosing popularity. This assumption is based in part on the fact that, while the abandonment of the fluting of projectile points by Paleoindians most likely occurred at different times and

at different rates in various regions of the Plains, it was a technique that was eventually completely lost. The relationship between Midland and Folsom could reasonably be, then, a chronological or historical.