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RESPONSES TO CHIEFDOM COLLAPSE Understanding how populations reconstruct social, political, and economic relationships after the collapse of a chiefdom has long been of interest to archaeologists (Anderson 1990; Barker and Pauketat 1992; Drennan and Uribe 1987; Earle 1991; Yoffee and Cowgill 1995). Research has shown that societies respond in a variety of ways to the demise of an elite class (Anderson 1990, 1994; Tainter 1988; Welch 1991) and the resulting changes in the social boundaries that serve to distinguish the elite from others (Eisenstadt 1995). Sometimes a society of similar complexity emerges, led by a different faction (Anderson 1990; Brum¤el 1994). Recognizing the important role internal factionalism plays within chie®y societies, archaeologists have referred to this process as the “cycling of political power” (Anderson 1994; Hally 1996). Cycling is often associated with the abandonment of an existing regional center and the establishment of a new center within the same territory. It does not, however, involve the total collapse of a regional chiefdom. But under certain circumstances, a new elite does not replace the old, and when this happens, the chiefdom usually collapses completely, its center and associated settlements abandoned. In such cases, the regional population may disperse to smaller, more widely scattered settlements within the same general area (Butler 1991; Steponaitis 1991; Welch 1991) or relocate to another region (Anderson 1994; Bareis and Porter 1984; Butler 1991; Muller 1986). Although some characteristics of the earlier sociopolitical organization are probably retained as the social boundaries that distinguished the elite from others are rede¤ned (Knight 1986, 1994), in both situations there is a tendency for political power to become decentralized and extraregional interaction to decline (Tainter 1988). The creation of political alliances by the remnants of former chiefdoms, taking the form of a confederacy (Galloway 1994; Knight 1994; Swanton 1911, 1946), may represent still another response to the collapse of regional chiefdoms . Confederacies also represent a decentralization of power vis-à-vis former chiefdoms. However, confederacies differ in that under certain circumstances (i.e., in response to external threats), centralized power can return for short periods of time. 1 Introduction Regardless of the type of response, archaeologists have not always been able to ¤nd the physical manifestations of chiefdom collapse in the archaeological record. This is owing to the fact that dispersal of regional populations to smaller, widely scattered settlements can result in sites that have low archaeological visibility and are thus dif¤cult to locate. Likewise, it is often dif¤cult to trace population movements or migration in the archaeological record (Anthony 1990). THE “VACANT QUARTER” Up until ca. a.d. 1400, diverse Mississippian polities, including Cahokia, Kincaid , Angel, and Wickliffe, inhabited much of the region in central North America drained by the lower Ohio, Green, the lower and middle Cumberland, lower Tennessee, and central Mississippi rivers. But after the late fourteenth/ early ¤fteenth century, a decline in population density, extraregional interaction , and sociopolitical complexity throughout this region re®ects the widespread collapse of these Mississippian polities (see Tainter 1988:193). This region has become known as the “Vacant Quarter” (Bareis and Porter 1984; Butler 1991; Cobb and Butler 2002; Lewis 1990; McNutt 1996; Milner 1990; Morse and Morse 1983; Muller 1986; Williams 1990) (Figure 1.1). In most cases, researchers working in the Vacant Quarter have been unable to locate post–a.d. 1400 settlements and often refer to their respective regions as having been depopulated or abandoned (Muller 1986). Researchers have hypothesized that late Mississippian settlements throughout the Vacant Quarter likely were small and scattered and therefore are archaeologically dif¤cult to identify (Butler 1991:273). But every instance of Mississippian chiefdom collapse within the Vacant Quarter did not lead to a decline in population density, the dispersal of the regional population, or the abandonment of the region. Nor was collapse always associated with a decline in intersocietal interaction and access to nonlocal goods. A case in point: the cultural developments that occurred after the ca. a.d. 1400 collapse of the Angel chiefdom near the northern edge of the Vacant Quarter, in the vicinity of the mouths of the Green and Wabash rivers in southwestern Indiana, southeastern Illinois, and northwestern Kentucky during the Caborn-Welborn phase (a.d. 1400–1700) (Figure 1.1) (Green and Munson 1978; Muller 1986; Pollack 1998; Pollack and Munson 2003). A catastrophic event (e.g., a sudden natural or human disaster) does not appear to have been the cause of the Angel chiefdom’s collapse. More than likely, a combination of...

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