From Quarry to Cornfield: The Political Economy of Mississippian Hoe Production

6. The Regional Structure of Hoe Production

Indian Diggings contained hundreds of quarry pits spread out over 14 to 17 acres (6–7 ha) and covered the tops and slopes of two adjacent ridges. Even at the time of his work, some logging had been carried out on and around his quarries, and his description provides the best picture we have of the site prior to an additional century of intermittent logging: Bowl-shaped depressions, twelve to forty feet in diameter, are closely crowded together over the top and down both sides of the hill. Few exceed four feet in depth, but accumulations of leaves hide the surface . While the exploration was in progress, a ¤re which burned over the area of the smaller group did much to reveal surface appearances. Although scattered refuse is fairly abundant, it is in great measure imbedded in the soil. Along the west slope, at the head of a steep side-valley in the hill, the pits are elongated into indistinct trenches. Phillips excavated a trench that bisected ¤ve of the pits, revealing them to range from 2 to 6 meters deep and to be more than 3 meters wide at the ground surface. His trench pro¤le diagrams show that quarrying consisted of the excavation of quasi-shafts to extract chert nodules from the surrounding clay (Figure 5.5). The technology involved in the excavation of the pits seems to have Figure 5.4. Schematic map of the Hale site. Life in the Mississippian Uplands 113 been fairly simple. Phillips (1900) describes excavating tools as being crudely fashioned from Mill Creek chert nodules. It is unclear whether any type of support system, such as timber buttresses, would have been necessary to prevent the walls from collapse. William Holmes’s (1919) later description of Phillips’s work shows the pits as having slight lateral extensions at the base that are not evident in Phillips’s renderings (Figure 5.6). It is uncertain whether Holmes was providing a more accurate picture from the original ¤eld notes or was in error. In either case, there is no evidence for the presence of deep horizontal shafts, which would have demonstrated yet another level of technological sophistication equivalent to intensive mining. Figure 5.5. Phillips’s cross section of quarry pits. (Reproduced by permission of the American Anthropological Association from American Anthropologist 21(1): 43, January 1900. Not for further reproduction.) Figure 5.6. Holmes’s rendering of Phillips’s cross section. 114 Life in the Mississippian Uplands Phillips also described a dense litter of broken nodules as well as early-stage tool rejects and failures throughout the quarry area. The abundance of primary reduction debris suggested to him that quarriers were immediately testing their chert samples after removal from the ground. Further, his reconnaissance of the larger region and observations on lithic technology led him to believe that the ¤nishing stages of biface manufacture were carried out in workshops away from the quarry area (Phillips 1900:46). These ideas on the spatial staging of tool manufacture were echoed by Holmes in his remarks on the Hale site. There are but slight traces on the quarry-shop sites of the getting out of the smaller blades, but on the Hale place in the valley this work appears to have been a leading feature. Here also all other classes of implements were trimmed and specialized, and heavy beds of chips and other wastage of implement making, including the chipping of implements, are found. (Holmes 1919:192–93) Phillips’s work also identi¤ed another, smaller quarry about 3 kilometers to the north of the large quarry, containing 40 pits spread over an area of about 1.25 hectares. This discovery raised the possibility that the extraction of Mill Creek chert occurred over a larger area than previously suspected. The best evidence for actual Mississippian habitation in the Mill Creek locale was the Hale site with its dense midden and burials. In addition to his work at the quarries, Phillips (1900) excavated at one of the workshops, which also yielded evidence for occupation in the form of charcoal and ceramics; he referred to this category of site as a “lodge.” Further con¤rmation of Mississippian habitation stems from the reports of stone box graves throughout the area (Thomas 1894). However, the lack of systematic excavations at other potential living sites and the absence of large-scale surveys made it dif¤cult to make informed statements...