Early and Middle Woodland Landscapes of the Southeast

15. Working Out Adena Political Organization and Variation from the Ritual Landscape in the Kentucky Bluegrass

15 Working Out Adena Political Organization and Variation from the Ritual Landscape in the Kentucky Bluegrass edWAr d r . henry This chapter examines the distribution of structural variation in Adena mortuary ritual and burial practices across three subregions of the Kentucky Bluegrass: the Northern Bluegrass, Central Bluegrass, and Eastern Bluegrass (Pollack 2008). This study is used as a foundation to conceptualize Adena leadership as situational and heterarchical in nature (Abrams and Le Rouge 2008; Byers 2011; Sahlins 1968). Such decentralized political organization could be a principal source of the variation documented across the Adena ritual landscape in the Kentucky Bluegrass. Intraregional patterns of premound mortuary rituals and mound interments reflect an observable degree of variation relating to the structure of specific ritual practices and/or events, even as common themes in the character of these premound and mounded practices are identifiable across the Bluegrass. This pattern may suggest that all subregions , each somewhat distinct from the others in its approach to mortuary ceremonies, relied upon a common ideological structure from which specific rituals could be drawn to fit a particular event or situation. The basic foundation of this ideological structure would have been understood across kin groups throughout the Bluegrass region. In this regard, this chapter addresses a common issue with contemporary interpretations of Adena peoples. Recent archaeological discourse has cited variation in Adena material culture as one reason to move away from the taxonomic category of “Adena” and rewrite the concept altogether (Brown 2005; Clay 2005; Greber 2005). However, if variation in Adena assemblages represents typological problems attributable to how the “culture” was fabricated early on in our discipline’s history, then how do we interpret gross similarities that continue to be observed across these assemblages? Perhaps the nature of variation within the Adena ritual structure is a result of a particular form of sociopoliticalorganization.Iarguethattheconstructionoftherituallandscape 220 Edward R. Henry byhighlymobilepeoples,operatingwithinadecentralizedheterarchicalsociopolitical atmosphere, led to the material variation we encounter today. From this perspective, variation becomes attributable to specific situations or events in which a ritual practice is selected from a common ideological theme. Situating Adena in Time, Space, and Theory Teasing out evidence of human social interactions from landscape-level analyses requires a thoughtful consideration of the peoples under examination. Furthermore , such analyses benefit from grounding the investigation within specificandexplicittheoreticalperspectives .Forthepurposesofthisstudy,Adena socialorganizationisregardedasconsistingofmultiple,dispersedautonomous tribal kin groups (Clay 1998; Railey 1991, 1996). These semimobile huntergatherer -gardenersperiodicallyandtemporarilycoalescedintolargercorporate groups in the middle Ohio Valley circa 500 BC to AD 250 (Clay 1998; Fenton 2001; Hays 2010; Railey 1991, 1996). Working with this definition of Adena allows for the classification of corporate Adena social units as tribes (Howey 2012; Parkinson 2002a; Sahlins 1961, 1968), rather than Big Man societies or chiefdoms (Clay 1992; Custer 1987; Mainfort 1989; Shryock 1987). Thus, Adenasociopoliticalorganizationshouldbeconsidereddecentralizedornoninsti tutionalized rather than egalitarian (Howey 2012: 9; Parkinson 2002b: 8–9). With this research placed in the broader context of tribal societies, a multiscalar landscape approach becomes especially well suited to studying the Adena ritual landscape. As Alice Wright and I (chapter 1, this volume) have emphasized, this approach allows for the inclusive assessment of the complex interactions between people, their natural environment, and overarching social structures. Utilizing landscape studies provides the ability to highlight the intimate relationships that peoples had with their built environment (Anschuetz et al. 2001: 177). Further, it places great importance on ritual events and places that helped organize and shape shared experiences (Anschuetz et al 2001: 178–79). Working on a landscape scale for this study stresses how Adena rituals were practiced at sites specifically, and organized across the Kentucky Bluegrass generally. It calls attention to the roles of situational leaders in coordinating the labor and selecting the mortuary rituals that constitute the ritual landscape in this region. Acknowledging that some form of leadership would be required to coordinate the construction of the Adena ritual landscape reopens the debate of how decentralized (or noninstitutionalized) leadership is organized. In this situation, Crumley’s (1979, 1987, 1995) ideas of heterarchy prove useful in conceptualizing Adena leadership roles. Crumley (1979: 144) describes het- Working Out Adena Political Organization andVariation 221 erarchy as a structure in which “each element possesses the potential of being ranked or unranked in a number of different ways.” This definition suggests both spatial and temporal flexibility in authority (Crumley 1995: 4). Perhapsmostimportanttothisdiscussionofdecentralizedleadershiproles, as Crumley (1995: 4) noted, heterarchy can facilitate brief moments of hierarchical leadership even as it enables regression to noninfluential...