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The cooling associated with the Little Ice Age (LIA) had differential severity across the globe. Within the American Midwest, the local impacts of this cooling have not been established. Our purpos...

This article reports on recent findings from the ongoing archaeological project at the single- component early seventeenth-century Huber phase site, Middle Grant Creek (11WI2739), located at Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie in Will County, Illinois. Excavations and geophysical surveys conducted over the past four years are yielding valuable data that are expanding our understandings of this critical period just prior to European colonialism. Findings have revealed a wide range of protohistoric activities, including foodways, skilled craft production, and ceremonial activities as well as far-flung trade relationships that illustrate the endurance of Indigenous trade networks into at least the early seventeenth-century. This article introduces the latest findings from Middle Grant Creek and brings them into discussions of this key period in Midwestern archaeology.

This article reports on recent findings from the ongoing archaeological project at the single- component early seventeenth-century Huber phase site, Middle Grant Creek (11WI2739), located at Midewi...

In the US Midwest, the working of marine shell procured through vast trade networks has typically been associated with elite prestige economies and craft specialization at major Mississippian centers. Outside of these contexts, marine shell goods are often assumed to have been brought into communities as completed goods. A recent finding suggests that local, small-scale marine shell working occurred at an early seventeenth-century village in northern Illinois, Middle Grant Creek (11Wi2739). This finding represents the first probable evidence of marine shell working in the Midwest outside of large, Mississippian contexts. Consequently, this practice may be much more geographically and temporally expansive than previously thought. This evidence encourages a rethinking of marine shell finds whenever they are assumed to be imported as finished goods.

Locating the subtle and uneven deposition of human activities across the landscape continues to challenge archaeologists. Existing tools (e.g. excavation, shovel testing, pedestrian survey, and terrestrial geophysics) have proven effective at locating many types of archaeological features but remain time-consuming and difficult to undertake on densely vegetated or topographically complex terrain. As a result of these limitations, key aspects of past communities remain largely outside of archaeological detection and interpretation. This flattening of past lifeways not only affects broader understandings of these communities, but can also negatively impact the preservation of archaeological sites. This paper presents the detection of archaeological features through an analysis of drone-acquired thermal, multispectral, and visible light imagery, alongside historical aerial photography, in the area surrounding Middle Grant Creek (11WI2739), a late prehistoric village located at Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie in Will County, IL. Our investigations discovered a probable housing area and a ritual enclosure, increasing the area of the site from 3.4 ha to 20 ha. The proposed housing and ritual areas of this village also help contextualize finds from the ongoing archaeological excavations at Middle Grant Creek. More broadly, results demonstrate the valuable contributions that these relatively new archaeological survey methods have in shaping our understandings of the archaeological landscape and highlight the importance of integrating them into the archaeological toolkit.

Fine earthenwares imported from England are a distinctive artifact type frequently found on early nineteenth century Native American and Euro-American sites in eastern North America. Relatively rapid changes in decorative motifs and technologies can easily be identified by eye and provide information about site chronology and economic status. However, visual analyses of sherds usually can provide only general information because most assemblages are very fragmented. We present the chemical composition of pigments and glazes from sherds from two sites occupied during the first half of the nineteenth century: Pokagon Village, a Native American site (southwestern Michigan); and Collier Lodge, a Euro-American site (northwestern Indiana). Multi-element compositions of glazed portions of 12 sherds (with 3 different decorations, 2 specimens from each site of each pattern) were determined by scanning electron microscopy-energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (SEM-EDS), micro X-ray fluorescence (μXRF), and laser-ablation-inductively coupled mass spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS). SEM-EDS was especially useful for determining glaze composition, μXRF rapidly provides information on pigment composition and Pb content, and LA-MC-ICP-MS provides information on trace elements and Pb isotopes that reflect different raw material sources.

Examining the formation histories of single-component prehistoric villages is difficult using only radiocarbon dating. This study investigates such a case with the added considerations of two relative dating techniques, artifact accumulation and fluoride dating, at the Guard site (12D29), an early (ca. AD 1000–1300) Fort Ancient/Mississippian village located in southeast Indiana. The goal was to assess the depositional history of the individual house basins and, if possible, to determine a relative sequence of construction within the village. The observed relationship between relative artifact frequencies and fluoride levels was statistically examined with the expected result being that fluoride concentrations and artifact frequencies are significantly correlated. Houses built initially contained lower relative artifact frequencies, whereas houses built more recently contained higher relative artifact frequencies. This pattern is further explored with artifact and fluoride distinctions in vertical stratigraphy, which show that some structures were slowly filled with midden trash, whereas others were more likely rapidly filled during the latter part of the village occupation, perhaps at the time of site abandonment. Overall, the results are very promising and consistent with the SunWatch site, the only other Fort Ancient culture site with a defined construction sequence, establishing a general pattern of village development in the study region.

A limestone cave on the lower slopes of the southeastern Australian high country reveals a deep, stratified deposit dated from ca. 14,000 to 2000 cal. BP and rich in predominantly non-cultural faunal remains. Located in a sensitive ecological area between the Australian Alps and the Southern Tablelands, the site provides a valuable chronological archive for the interpretation of local environmental change using the faunal record as a proxy, in particular native rodents and other small mammals. Inferred palaeoenvironmental trends include the cessation of periglacial conditions in the surrounding ranges during the Terminal Pleistocene; a shift to warmer conditions and the establishment of forest and wetland habitats from around 13,500 to 10,000 cal. BP, with a significant decline in cold-adapted species at ca. 11,500 cal. BP and a period of significant taxon fluctuation and extinctions corresponding to a possible peak in warm and moist conditions (a ‘Holocene Optimum’), beginning around 8000 cal. BP and lasting perhaps 1500 to 2000 years. Complications to the relatively steady and continuous chronostratigraphy, formed from an AMS radiocarbon sequence from sedimentary charcoal, arose from the presence of several teeth of extinct sthenurine megafauna. These were resolved with direct U-series analysis to establish their much greater antiquity and comparison of the sthenurine teeth with teeth of extant macropodids from the same deposit through fluoride absorption analysis, which also identified the megafauna teeth as anomalous to the sequence. The site provides an important case study for the interpretation of megafauna remains in stratified sedimentary deposits, especially for sites that appear to contain evidence for the co-occurrence of megafauna and humans in primary contexts.

Prehistoric population sizes are difficult to determine, even with very well documented archaeological contexts. Within the Western Great Lakes, USA region, village population size is poorly understood due to poor preservation of village structures, excavations that did not capture the full extents of villages, and widespread destruction of archaeological sites. We combine data from geophysical surveys, historical aerial and drone-based image analyses, as well as excavation to determine the distribution of archaeological features at the protohistoric Middle Grant Creek site (11WI2739), Illinois, USA. Estimates of village population are calculated and compared using multiple measures, including structure floor area, maize storage volume, cultivation area, and maize consumption. The different estimates vary, yet they converge to indicate a population of 100 and 180 people at this agricultural village. The use of converging multiple estimates of population provides a more convincing estimate than any single source and shows how various assumptions affect different estimates. The measures employed provide a new approach to determining village size beyond traditional methods of using floor area and historic comparison, and can be used in locations where traditional measures are not available, as well as for large, dispersed sites that cannot be fully excavated.

The Upper Mississippian Fisher/Huber occupations of northwestern Indiana are part of the easternmost extension of Oneota. Excavations at the Collier Lodge site (12PR36) found 18 Upper Mississippian features from a seasonal encampment on the edge of the Kankakee Marsh. The ceramic assemblage and radiocarbon dates indicate the site was created during the late fifteenth century, placing it in the northwestern Indiana temporal sequence between the previously known Fifield site occupation and the Huber phase component at the Griesmer site. The ceramic decorative elements include relatively low proportions of medium trailing and cordmarking, with higher proportions of wide trailing and smooth surfaces, suggesting a very late pre-Huber occupation (fine trailing is virtually absent). The assemblage could also reflect a Late Fisher occupation followed after a short period of time by a terminal Fisher/early Huber occupation. Oneota sites in northwestern Indiana appear to have been relatively rare, widely distributed, small, and seasonal.

Interactions with humans impact many aspects of behavior and ecology in nonhuman primates. Because of the complexities of the human-nonhuman primate interface, methods are needed to quantify the effects of anthropogenic interactions, including their intensity and differential impacts between nonhuman primate groups. Stable isotopes can be used to quickly and economically assess intergroup dietary variation, and provide a framework for the development of specific hypotheses about anthropogenic impact. This study uses stable carbon and nitrogen isotope analysis to examine intraspecific variation in diet between five groups of Barbary macaques, Macaca sylvanus, in the Upper Rock Nature Reserve, Gibraltar. Analysis of hair from 135 macaques showed significant differences in δ(13)C and δ(15)N values between a group with minimal tourist contact and groups that were main tourist attractions. Because we observed no overt physiological or substantial behavioral differences between the groups, feeding ecology is the most likely cause of any differences in stable isotope ratios. Haphazard provisioning by tourists and Gibraltarians is a likely source of dietary variation between groups. Stable isotope analysis and observational data facilitate a deeper understanding of the feeding ecology of the Barbary macaques relevant to the role of an anthropogenic ecology for the species.

The study of Near Eastern Neolithic villages provides a unique means of tracing subsistence strategy, population growth, health, and emerging social inequality associated with agricultural origins. However, disentangling these patterns requires a detailed comprehension of the chronological placement of individual households in the site. In this paper, we present a test to determine the reliability and applicability of the fluoride dating method (a relative dating method) on human dentition of 40 samples from 28 Pre-Pottery Neolithic B (or PPNB) burials from the site of Tell Halula, in Syria. This method, applied here for the first time on a Neolithic Near East case study, is an alternative when other dating methods, like radiocarbon dates, do not provide the required temporal resolution to address particular research problems. Nonetheless, the results obtained in the fluoride analysis show how both the age at death of individuals, and the integrity of the burial plug enormously affect the amount of fluoride absorbed by teeth, so that only a small subset of the full dataset was suitable for fluoride dating. Although the distribution of fluoride values of dentine from the small sample of burials from suitable contexts matches the expected chronology, and corroborates the hypothesis that the occupation at Halula extends from the Middle to the Late PPNB, our analysis illustrates the need for a better understanding of the different sources of error in fluoride dating to improve the method itself, and to obtain more reliable fluoride chronologies.

Dichotomies or bipolar scales usually provide the conceptual framework for discussions of historic period Native American cultural change in the western Great Lakes. Archaeological and historical studies of Removal period (A.D. 1795-1840) Potawatomi of northern Indiana and southern Michigan provide challenges to common dichotomous frameworks used to define identity, political affiliation, geographic location, or other attributes of individual Potawatomi. Examples of these classifications include dichotomies such as Catholic vs. Non-Catholic, assimilationist vs. traditionalist, or accommodationist vs. non-accommodationist (among others). Case studies of four Potawatomi, two of whom successfully resisted removal (Pokagon and Benack) and two who did not (Menominee and Ashkum), illustrate the need for multiple lines of evidence that facilitate comparisons between diverse communities living in a rapidly changing world. Relations with the colonizer were the most significant element related to successful resistance. Site location provides a visible signal of these wider social ties extending beyond the local community.

Appreciating variation along the edges of traditional archaeological Culture Historical boundaries requires close consideration of social contexts associated with culture contact. We focus on dietary variation as a function of these concerns through a case study of Fort Ancient populations who, on average, consumed lower quantities of maize than their Mississippian neighbors as determined by stable carbon isotope ratios of bone collagen. However, this dichotomy is not as rigid as initially thought, with some Fort Ancient burials producing stable carbon isotope ratios similar to Mississippian cases. Detailed investigation of internal variation of carbon isotopes for human burials at the SunWatch site provides evidence that contact included small-scale Mississippian migrations to Fort Ancient sites. The main conclusion is that variation in diet and archaeological context can be a useful approach for examining prehistoric migration.

It has been suggested that some animals eaten by late prehistoric populations of eastern North America were pest species that consumed maize. This could lead to over-estimates of amounts of maize that were directly consumed in prehistoric human diets. Stable carbon- and nitrogen-isotope ratios of collagen from white-tailed deer and raccoon bones from the Late Archaic Indian Knoll and Middle Mississippian Angel sites are compared. The stable isotope ratios are used to determine the amount of maize, if any, in Middle Mississippian faunal diets. We find no evidence that deer or raccoon at the Angel site consumed maize.

Changes in the stable carbon and nitrogen isotope ratios of modern bone samples heated to a variety of times and temperatures were used to determine the effect of heating on isotope ratios and the retention of organic matter in charred bones. For organic extracts produced by slow demineralization in weak acid, δ13C values were unchanged, while δ15N values increased by up to 5‰ and were primarily determined by heating temperature. Changes in the electron spin resonance (ESR) g-value of whole bone and organic extracts were also measured. For organic extracts from charred bones, the g-value was well-correlated with δ15N and temperature, suggesting that g-values could be used to estimate the charring temperature and original δ15N values of charred bones. Thus, g-values from demineralized extracts could be very useful in forensic investigations where it would important to reconstruct the thermal history of burned bones. Isotope ratios and g-values of demineralized extracts from four prehistoric components at three sites that produced cremated human bone were used to test whether the same approach can be applied to archaeological materials. While carbon isotope ratios of the prehistoric samples were similar to those of uncharred specimens, nitrogen isotope ratios were increased and the g-value corrections for nitrogen isotope ratios were not effective.

The Removal period is the time between the Treaty of Greenville in A.D. 1795 and the final expulsion of most Potawatomi from Michigan and Indiana by 1840. It was a time of rapid social change, when Native Americans developed many different adaptive strategies that are revealed by great cultural diversity in time and space. Archaeological investigations of the Pokagon Village site (20BE13) have provided new insights into the strategies that the wkama Leopold Pokagon and his associates used to avoid the removal of their band. The faunal assemblage from two middens at the site is compared with assemblages from other early nineteenth century Native American sites in the region, showing that the development of economic self-sufficiency through the adoption of European domesticated animals was an important part of the Pokagon Band’s anti-removal strategy.

Earlier weaning has often been suggested as a cause for population growth after the evolution of food production. However, evidence for weaning-time reduction is largely circumstantial. Collagen stable nitrogen- and carbon-isotope ratios from juvenile and adult burials from four sites in eastern North America were measured to estimate weaning onsets and durations before and after the appearance of intensive food production. Two preagricultural Late Archaic sites (Indian Knoll and Carlston Annis) are compared with two highly agricultural Middle Mississippian sites (Angel and Tinsley Hill). Isotopic data and paleodemographic measures of birth rates provide no evidence for changes in weaning behavior or fertility with the development of food production in the prehistoric Lower Ohio Valley. Birth rates and weaning behavior appear to have been roughly the same at all four sites. These results indicate that models attributing population growth after the appearance of food production to earlier weaning are not universally applicable. Am J Phys Anthropol, 2004. © 2004 Wiley-Liss, Inc.

This is an interim report on the second season of fieldwork and post-excavation analysis on the Pottery Neolithic and Pre-Pottery Neolithic site of Dhra', near the southern end of the Dead Sea in Jordan. Excavations to date have produced rich assemblages of pottery and lithics. In addition sets of features that can be attributed to each phase have been identified. Those from the PPNA are generally better preserved than those of the Pottery Neolithic period, which mainly survive as a series of negative features. Analysis of the environmental background to the site, and more detailed research on certain aspects, including micromorphology and microwear have begun. Preliminary results of this work are presented, indicating the significance of the site for each period.

It is often assumed that cremation produces highly oxidised bone fragments that are little more than inorganic ash, but this is not the case for most prehistoric cremations. Bone fragments often display a gradient of thermal alteration, ranging from calcined through blackened to apparently unaltered. Many cremations produce bones that still contain organic matter in the form of thermally altered organics or reduced carbon. Charred bones from archaeological contexts can be expected to contain more organic carbon than uncharred bones from the same context, because reduced carbon in charred bone is more resistant to diagenetic change than uncharred collagen and other organic fractions of bone. Cremated burials would provide an abundant and promising source of paleodietary data through isotope studies if limits for applying these methods can be established. We test these ideas in two ways. Experimentally, charred bone yields carbon isotope signatures similar to unburned bone, but nitrogen isotope signatures are altered. This result was evaluated using charred bone from the three sites in the American Midwest from which data on isotopic signatures of unburned remains is available: Klunk Late Archaic, Yokem Late Woodland and Mississippian and Angel Mississippian. We find evidence for age-dependent decrease in carbon isotope ratios, suggesting diagenesis. Samples for dietary reconstruction from cremated remains should be drawn from elements showing the least thermal alteration.

When the fluoride content of bone is measured with an ion-selective electrode, and when the technique is correctly applied, fluoride dating is a very economical method for developing fine-scale relative chronologies. It has been successfully used to develop relative chronologies for prehistoric human burials and fossilized bones throughout the world, but its much greater potential for the dating of unfossilized faunal materials has been neglected. The fluoride contents of 889 lagomorph and 16 artiodactyl bones from 183 contexts at Los Pozos, an Early Agricultural period site in Arizona, illustrate how fluoride measurements can be used to date features. Fluoride dating offers a temporal resolution capable of distinguishing between features separated by as little as 20 to 40 years.

Electron spin resonance (ESR) can be used to determine the thermal history of charred organic material. Maize seeds were heated under controlled conditions in order to produce calibration curves relating g-values (the rate of electron splitting) and spin intensities (the number of spin centres) to heating temperatures, times and conditions. These experiments reproduced results that had been previously obtained by other laboratories, with some minor exceptions. The calibration curves were then used to reconstruct the thermal histories of charred maize kernels from several prehistoric sites in eastern North America. At these sites, the differing thermal histories of maize kernels are correlated with depositional contexts.

Several different methods have been used to explore weaning behavior in past populations, including demographic profiles, non‐specific osteological indicators of stress, and bone chemistry studies. Stable nitrogen‐isotope ratios of prehistoric bone proteins provide an especially useful method for reconstructing the weaning patterns of archaeological populations. A demographic measure of fertility (the D30+/D5+ ratio) is compared with age‐related changes in stable nitrogen‐isotope ratios for human burials from one historic cemetery and two prehistoric ones. The stable nitrogen‐isotope ratios show that each population had a characteristic and distinctive combination of weaning time and rate, and that neither the timing nor tempo of weaning was clearly correlated with the demographic measure of fertility. These results demonstrate the feasibility of using stable nitrogen‐isotope ratios to compare weaning patterns and fertility in past populations. This example also shows that the relationship betwee...

Stable N-isotope ratios are used to estimate the age of weaning in the prehistoric ( ad 1300–1450) population that inhabited the Angel site, a Middle Mississippian civic–ceremonial centre in the lower Ohio Valley. The high proportion of infants in the Angel skeletal series appears to reflect high rates of infant mortality associated with weaning within this sedentary society of maize agriculturalists. Age-related variations in stable N-isotope ratios of 23 juveniles are used to measure changes in childhood diet associated with breast-feeding after birth, weaning, and with the onset of adulthood. A pronounced peak in the stable N-isotope ratio prior to age 2 and a rapid decline in early childhood is used to estimate the age of weaning. The isotopic data are compared with estimated mortality rates to evaluate the consistency and precision of isotopic and mortality profiles as measures of weaning age. At Angel, weaning was not directly correlated with peak infant mortality. Non-linear equations that model prehistoric weaning behaviour are described. These equations produce estimates of both the timing and rates of juvenile dietary change that are amenable to statistical comparisons between archaeological sites. The non-linear models provide an approach that is more realistic and more informative than determining a single age of weaning.

Geophysical techniques offer many advantages and should be part of the common practice of field archaeology. However, geophysical instruments are useful only when they are operated correctly and efficiently. New or potential users want to obtain effective results as rapidly as possible and experienced users are constantly seeking to improve the results of geophysical surveys. The concept of the learning curve can be used to develop techniques and approaches that increase both the effectiveness of geophysical surveys in archaeology and the speed with which geophysical techniques are learned and applied. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Many different theories have been advanced to explain the existence of non-state complex societies (often described as chiefdoms). Explanations of the appearance or decline of chiefdoms have historically emphasized the relations between a society's productive base and its social organization, but more recently, studies of the dynamics of chiefdoms have shifted away from economic or material explanations. This study examines the relationship between social complexity and human stable carbon-isotope ratios as a measure of agricultural intensification for late prehistoric (after A.D. 1000) tribal and chiefdom-level societies of the Ohio Valley of eastern North America. We show that there is a strong association between social complexity and agricultural intensification (reflected in increased maize consumption) in this region during the late prehistoric period.

Stable-isotopic studies of prehistoric diet have usually confined discussions of isotopic variability within populations to sex-related differences in diet and have rarely considered other social or cultural sources of dietary variation. Extant data from eastern North America suggest that isotopic variation (and hence dietary variation) may have been greatest within the relatively complex Middle Mississippian societies of the late prehistoric period. Correlations between isotopic variability and mortuary variability (an indication of social position) were identified in a sample of burials from the Angel site, a Middle Mississippian (A.D. 1200-1450) civic-ceremonial center in southwestern Indiana. These correlations demonstrate how contextually informed isotopic studies can be used to examine the relations between social position and diet. This approach may be especially useful for studies of social interactions between different populations.

Publisher Summary Cremations, whether accidental or deliberate, are difficult to work with because they are usually fragmentary. However, cremation is rarely complete, and cremated burials often provide bone fragments suitable for many types of osteological investigations. Morphological analyses of cremated bones can provide information about sex, age, health, and cause of death. It is often assumed that cremation produces highly oxidized bone fragments that are little more than inorganic ash, but this is not the case for most prehistoric cremations. Bone fragments often display a gradient of thermal alteration, ranging from calcined through blackened to apparently unaltered, sometimes even on the same bone. Burned bones can also be subjected to chemical studies, although these are rarely done. Many cremations produce bones that still contain organic matter in the form of thermally altered organics or reduced carbon. This is especially true for prehistoric cremations, where the large amount of fuel necessary for a total cremation may not have been readily available to nonindustrial societies. In many cases, charred bones from archaeological contexts can be expected to contain more organic carbon than uncharred bones from the same context, because reduced carbon in charred bone is more resistant to diagenetic change than uncharred collagen and other organic fractions of bone. Cremated burials would provide an abundant and promising source of paleodietary data through isotope studies if correct techniques were available.

The fluoride contents of prehistoric bones can be used to determine the relative ages of the specimens with ease when fluoride content is measured using an ion selective electrode. Measurements of fluoride contents of ribs from prehistoric burials from the Angel Site, a large prehistoric village and ceremonial center in southwestern Indiana, demonstrate that fluoride dating can be used to determine the occupational chronology of a prehistoric site where other methods of dating are inapplicable.