Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Award: Cultural Interaction In Hierarchical Contexts

University Of California-Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara CA

Investigators

Abstract

The political expansion of large-scale complex societies is best understood as a dynamic between elite power and local innovation. Earlier studies of culture contact, migration, and political expansion have exaggerated the diffusion of cultural practices from a dominant core polity to its peripheral settlements. However, this emphasis on the core overlooks the experiences of local communities in culture contact situations, and the implications these interactions have on identity and everyday life. Dr. Gregory D. Wilson and Christina M. Friberg of the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) will conduct archaeological research to evaluate how and why the complex Mississippian society of Cahokia (A.D. 1050-1375) extended its influence over the North American midcontinent and how the process of "Mississippianization" unfolded in the Lower Illinois River Valley (LIRV) of west-central Illinois. This research will highlight the complex process of culture contact whereby local peoples do not passively adopt the practices of a more powerful core polity, but engage, or resist engagement, in reference to their own identities. The project will also provide educational opportunities, and hands-on experience in both fieldwork and lab work, to undergraduate students, training them in the practical skills necessary to pursue a career in archaeology. Results will be shared with the scientific community through publication, and with local communities through public talks addressing the prehistory of their hometowns while stressing the importance of context and the scientific method in archaeology, as a means to discourage the widespread practice of looting. Cahokia, near modern-day St. Louis, Missouri, was the largest PreColumbian city in North America and its inhabitants spread aspects of Mississippian culture as far north as northwest Wisconsin. However, little is understood about how Cahokians initiated these distant interactions, and how and why local groups participated in them. Settlements in Cahokia's American Bottom region of southwestern Illinois show evidence of direct political and economic ties with the paramount center of Cahokia. Archaeological research farther north has also shown that the inhabitants of frontier settlements selectively adopted certain aspects of a Mississippian way of life, while maintaining a number of their existing traditions. An analysis of craft production and exchange, subsistence patterns, and community organization at the Audrey North Site in the LIRV will add valuable insight to archaeologists' understanding of the Mississippian phenomenon in Cahokia's immediate periphery. The proximity of the LIRV to Cahokia likely facilitated regular interaction between the two regions, enabling certain social, political, and economic interactions with American Bottom groups that did not transpire with more distant groups. Using magnetic gradiometry data as a starting point, excavation should reveal evidence of the production and exchange of economically important Cahokian crafts. Bayesian statistical analysis of Radiocarbon assays will establish a timeline for the Mississippianization process in the LIRV. Finally, additional analysis of everyday practices such as food processing and storage and community organization will shed light on the degree to which local LIRV people incorporated Cahokian practices and/or maintained traditions with reference to their existing understanding of world order.