The Fort Ancient Regional Movement (FARM) Project

Ohio State University, The, Columbus OH

Investigators

Abstract

With National Science Foundation support, the FARM (Fort Ancient Regional Movement) Project, under the direction of Dr. Robert Cook and a team of colleagues, will gather key data for understanding the development of human societies at interregional scales. This is a problem as relevant to our multiethnic world today as in the archaeological past. The project focuses on determining if, when, and how migration from neighboring regions factored into local Fort Ancient developments in southwest Ohio, a long-standing problem in the prehistory of the Midwest U.S. but with methodological structure of general appeal to many world regions. The project contributes to broader issues on frontiers and cross-boundary flows that have received relatively little attention. Frontier zones at the edges of complex systems (e.g., Mississippian, Mesoamerica, Mesopotamia) have often been relegated to the status of passive receivers of culture from core areas. However, recently archaeologists have become interested in such boundary dynamics. Unlike earlier approaches, however, researchers are now addressing frontier zones as culturally rich and socially dynamic places where social actors make key decisions about long-distance interaction and new hybrid formations are often the result. The theoretical focus recognizes that interregional population movements and interactions are key contributors to the blurry nature of cultural boundaries. The general anthropological significance of the project is to move interregional studies forward by focusing on data relevant to these dimensions, providing key information to then examine why such moves occurred. The key data to be gathered pertain to the proveniencing of human remains. This will be accomplished by temporally examining the strontium content of tooth enamel in a biological and mortuary framework for a sample of individuals from eleven villages. The project will have broader impacts in education, both in university settings and for the general public. Undergraduate and graduate anthropology students will benefit by being trained in lab analyses, resulting in undergraduate honors and graduate level theses. Specific activities for artifact analyses will include basic examination of pottery, projectile points, gorgets, and pipes, including functional, stylistic, and temporal attributes as appropriate to the project. Specific activities for human remains will be to assist in strontium sampling. All student participants will also be mentored during a day-long career workshop in partnership with the Dayton Society of Natural History. The project will also have broader impacts in educating the general public about the types of questions that are answerable with archaeological data, and particularly the high research utility of extant museum collections. By promulgating data about these collections, the project will illustrate the importance of properly curated materials. Additionally, future research projects on the Fort Ancient collections investigated in the present study will benefit from having more solid chronological frames of reference.