Holocene Hunter-Gatherers of the Lower Ohio River Valley

6. The Middle Holocene: Settling Into the Valley

6 / The Middle Holocene Settling Into the Valley Introduction Lower Ohio Valley archaeologists traditionally refer to the time from 8,000 to 5,000 years ago as the Middle Archaic subperiod. As with the other Archaic subdivisions, the precise starting and ending dates for the Middle Archaic varies from one locality to another across the Midcontinent (Emerson et al. 2009). Much of this inconsistency is based on the differential timing for the appearance of cultural traits that we use to define the Middle Archaic (Muller 1986:57). The Middle Archaic subperiod coincided with much of the Middle Holocene (ca. 8000–5000 B.P.). Environmentally, the Middle Holocene is sometimes referred to as a “window of adjustment” when the postglacial environment stabilized, hill and slope sedimentation rates decreased, stream and river channels adjusted to newly forming floodplains, and critical resource zones developed (Schuldenrein 1996:3). Collectively, these conditions contributed to the gradual establishment of backwater swamps, oxbow lakes, and shoal habitats that provided abundant and diverse aquatic plant and animal foods that Lower Ohio Valley hunter-gatherers could easily exploit (Smith 1986:23–24). By the end of the Middle Holocene, the Lower Ohio Valley, as well as the rest of eastern North America, was experiencing essentially modern environmental conditions (Schuldenrein 1996:3). Ultimately, these environmental changes had a major impact on the number, kind, and distribution of the plants, animals , and people that lived on the Lower Ohio Valley’s evolving landscape. 120 / Middle Holocene Evidence for Middle Holocene environmental change comes from a variety of sources, but the fossil pollen record is the primary contributor. Pollen profiles , like those from Old Field Swamp (King and Allen 1977) in southeastern Missouri and Jackson Pond (Wilkins et al. 1991:236) in Kentucky, indicate that the Lower Ohio Valley experienced major vegetation changes between 9,000 and 3,000 years ago. Old Field Swamp experienced its driest conditions about 7000 B.P., reflected by the transition of dense bottomland forest into savannah-like grasslands. By about 5,000 years ago, more moist conditions developed , resulting in the gradual return of the forests (King and Allen 1977). Archaeological data indicate that by this time, regionally distinct archaeological cultures were developing throughout the eastern United States. Variation among these cultures, attributable to the different physical and cultural worlds in which they were evolving, is reflected archaeologically by a variety of technological, settlement, subsistence, and social characteristics (Jefferies 1996b:47). Although these cultures developed along generally similar trajectories , their levels of social complexity were quite variable. The Middle Archaic also was a time of major transition for Lower Ohio Valley hunter-gatherers. For approximately the first 1,500 years, small, highly mobile hunter-gatherer groups, whose material cultures and adaptive strategies closely resembled those of Early Archaic groups, populated the region. In many ways, the division between the Early Archaic and early Middle Archaic subperiods artificially separates societies that were probably organized along very similar lines of social, economic, and technological complexity. Our knowledge of early Middle Archaic (ca. 8000–6500 B.P.) societies and lifeways has been hampered by relatively few radiocarbon dates, a poor idea of associated projectile point forms, the highly mobile nature of early Middle Archaic hunter-gatherers, and the burial of their sites under thick alluvial and colluvial deposits (Stafford and Cantin 2009). Fortunately, archaeological investigations along the Ohio River in western Kentucky (Morrisroe site) and southern Indiana (Caesars Palace complex) are starting to provide a clearer picture of what these societies were like (Nance 1986a, 1988; Stafford and Cantin 2009). Much of what we know about early Middle Archaic hunter-gatherers is based on the distribution of the few known diagnostic projectile points found during regional-scale surveys and data from a few deeply stratified sites along the Ohio River. Throughout much of the North American Midcontinent, including the Lower Ohio Valley, early Middle Archaic settlement systems consisted of numerous small sites in different resource zones where a few people lived for a Middle Holocene / 121 short time. In many respects, this pattern mimics that of the Early Archaic, presumably because early Middle Archaic groups used similar adaptive strategies . Investigation of early Middle Archaic settlement-subsistence strategies to the north in the Lower Illinois River Valley (Brown and Vierra 1983:190) suggests that small hunter-gatherer groups exploited seasonally available resources through high residential mobility. Stafford (1994) documented a similar settlement-subsistence strategy for early Middle Archaic...