The Ohio Hopewell Episode: Paradigm Lost and Paradigm Gained

6. Ecology, Cosmology, and Society

Name /uap04/22015_u06 04/28/04 01:50PM Plate # 0-Composite pg 127 # 1 ⫺1 0 ⫹1 127 Chapter 6 E C O L O G Y , C O S M O L O G Y , A N D S O C I E T Y The answer to the question of what caused the “demise” of the Hopewell must rely on nonsubsistence factors or entail a better, more subtle , understanding of the interaction of the subsistence base of human populations with other facets of their culture. —(Wymer 1987, 213) Dee Anne Wymer makes these insightful concluding remarks in her comparative analysis of the botanical contents of several pit features containing the residue of foraged and cultivated edible seeds from two Middle Woodland and two early Late Woodland sites of central Ohio. Her analysis initially addresses the contradictory claims that, on the one hand, that the introduction of maize agriculture in the later Early Woodland instigated the emergence of Ohio Hopewell, and, on the other, its introduction in the later Middle Woodland lead to the demise of Ohio Hopewell. By pointing out that no maize was present in any of the pit features, her analysis dispenses with both claims. In fact, it was only in the later Late Woodland, ca. a.d. 800, that maize became an important staple crop, well after the termination of the Ohio Hopewell episode. It is now a widely accepted position that, from as early as the Late Archaic, throughout the Early and Middle Woodland, and Name /uap04/22015_u06 04/28/04 01:50PM Plate # 0-Composite pg 128 # 2 128 a n i m m a n e n t e c o l o g y ⫺1 0 ⫹1 into the first half of the Late Woodland, the primary plants used for staple subsistence were indigenous, both wild and cultivated, making up what is generally called the Eastern Agricultural Complex. In parallel with this indigenous mixed foraging and horticultural system, settlement of the Middle Woodland was bifurcated into two contrasting types of locales: (1) the ceremonial locales such as the earthworks outlined in part 1, and (2) small, almost archaeologically invisible dispersed domestic habitational locales, probably small hamlets and seasonal gardening base camps. These were typically located on the valley floodplains, terraces, and hill slopes. While being dispersed up and down the valleys, they were often near one or another of the Complex G-Form sites, which also occupied primarily the middle and higher terraces of the valley bottoms. In contrast, because of their ridge-top location, the T-Form earthworks appear to be generally isolated from these habitational locales. This bifurcated earthwork/habitation settlement pattern was not only largely the extension of the Early Woodland pattern, it probably was initiated as early as the Middle Archaic with the widespread emergence of collective burial locales, often termed “cemeteries,” separate from floodplain camps throughout much of the greater Midwestern region. A radical change in settlement pattern marks the emergence of the Late Woodland in Ohio. Starting ca. a.d. 400, this was characterized by the apparent abandoning of the earthwork locales and the “implosion” of the dispersed habitation locales into nucleated settlements in the middle and upper terrace zone, forming what can be appropriately termed a nucleated settlement pattern that apparently had ceremonial zones embedded in the individual settlement .1 If Wymer’s archaeobotanical findings are an accurate reflection of the subsistence practices of the Middle and early Late Woodland, it follows that, while the Middle Woodland to Late Woodland transition was marked by this rather abrupt bifurcated to nucleated transformation in settlement patterning, the associated subsistence practices remained largely unchanged.2 As she rightly puts it, this raises a dilemma for the ecological approaches currently used in accounting for the Ohio Name /uap04/22015_u06 04/28/04 01:50PM Plate # 0-Composite pg 129 # 3 e c o l o g y , c o s m o l o g y , a n d s o c i e t y 129 ⫺1 0 ⫹1 Hopewell, which effectively tie settlement patterns to subsistence practices . She suggests that archaeologists either abandon ecological approaches to account for this transformation and, instead, “rely on nonsubsistence factors,” or else develop “a better, more subtle, understanding of the interaction of the subsistence base of human population with other facets of their culture.” It is the second proposal that this book will pursue. This means claiming...