Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant: Woodland Period Mortuary Practices, Ancestorhood, and Ideology in West-Central Illinois

University Of New Mexico, Albuquerque NM

Investigators

Abstract

Under the supervision of Drs. Suzanne Oakdale and Jane E. Buikstra, Jason L. King will investigate the relationships between mortuary practices, biological and social relatedness, and socio-political ideology during the Woodland period (50 B.C. - A.D. 1000) in the lower Illinois River valley. Research is centered on the Middle and Late Woodland periods. Beginning near 50 BC, migrant peoples settled into this rich, riverine environment and began to construct earthen mounds on the bluff crests for the burial of their dead and in the floodplain for broader ceremonial purposes. These sites served Woodland communities at multiple scales. For this project, ancestorhood is hypothesized as an important set of relationships within Woodland period society and culture. Kinship ties are posited to be the basis for political organization within and between communities. This basis is expressed as an ancestor ideology under which only a subset of the population is socially recognized as ancestors within Woodland society. The project will investigate these relationships via analysis of mortuary practices, biological relatedness, and cemetery structure. Interrelationships across time are analyzed using newly gathered radiocarbon (14C) assays of Middle and Late Woodland cemeteries. Mortuary practices will be analyzed as a medium through which genetic and social relatedness between individuals are represented and created. Relatedness between individuals will be measured using discrete traits of the skull, which serve as a proxy for genetic relationships. The structure of biological relationships is then tested for correlation with disposal patterns, as well as archaeological and biological variables such as type of burial, location of burial within mound (cemetery), associated grave good, and sex and age of individual. The interaction of ritual and relatedness is explored as an avenue through which socio-political ideology is created and maintained. Change in mortuary practices and biological relatedness is thought to reflect changing of ideas about ancestorhood and community membership. This project will generate new anthropological knowledge of prehistoric and pre-state mortuary practices, social relationships and ideology. The project also seeks to clarify the nature of change across the currently enigmatic Middle to Late Woodland transition in the American Midwest, providing a new framework in which to understand cultural change in the region. Results will be disseminated in both professional and non-professional arenas. All research results and new data will be made freely available on the Internet. Publication will include the final dissertation, teaching plans, and multimedia presentations in various formats (PowerPoint, Keynote, PDF, etc). Finally, this study will provide further insights into the means through which ritual and ideology are utilized to provide normative models for organizing society. Understanding the development of ideology and the means by which segments of society's access to power and autonomy are limited allows us to understand the emergence of stratified society and social conflict in both the prehistoric and modern world.