Early Woodland and the Adena Complex (3000-1900 B.P.)
The Early Woodland period (c. 1000 BC-AD1) is an elaboration of Archaic trends. A
greatly increased use of earthen burial mounds and pottery making make Early Woodland
sites more visible to the archaeologist than most Archaic sites.
A. Archaic-Woodland trends include:
(1) More intensive exploitation of diverse food sources in highly localized environments
(partof'primary forest efficiency').
(2) More sedentary living.
(3) More clearly recognizable territorial boundaries.
(4) More intensive exchange of scarce materials.
(5) More complex social orders.
(6) Increasing cultivation of native and foreign plants.
(7) Larger populations living in more geographically and socially circumscribed
territories.
B. Traditionally, the Early Woodland was separated fiom the Late Archaic by the
association with Early Woodland sites of pottery containers, earthen burial mounds, and
cultivated plant foods. But, as we have seen, these innovations have deep roots in the
Archaic in some areas. The difference between Archaic and Woodland cultures, then, is
more a matter ofconvention.
C. Woodland pottery is generally grit-tempered and cord-marked. In general, it becomes
thinner through time.
(1) Although the origins of Woodland pottery remain unclear, it does closely resemble
some northern Eurasian pottery.
(2) The widespread appearance of pottery is thought to be related to a "container
revolution" associated with an increased exploitation of wild and domesticated seed
crops.
D. Many native and foreign plants were cultivated by the Early Woodland period (with
some appearing in the Middle Archaic period).
(1) Most forms of gourds, pumpkins, and squashes (and later tobacco, maize, and beans)
are southern plants introduced through Mexico after c.2500 BC.
(2) Indigenous cultigens include sunflower, Jerusalem artichoke, sumpweed, goosefoot,
knotweed, maygrass, and little barley. These form both oily and starchy seed complexes.
They are recovered through water flotation.
(3) Cultivated plants remained a supplementary food in the Eastern Woodlands until after
AD 800.
E. Two Early Woodland characteristics that separate it from the Archaic are an
elaboration of archaeologically visible burial customs and an intensification of local and
inter-regional exchange.
The Adena complex (c. 1000 BC-AD 100) was a mortuary-ceremonial complex centered
in the central Ohio Valley that was shared by many local cultures.
A. Earlier Adena burial centers are marked by a basically egalitarian burial program,
utilitarian grave goods, and smaller earthen burial mounds.
B. Later (aRer c.AD 1) Adena mortuary-ceremonial centers have more elaborate, special
burials; exotic grave goods; and much larger mounds often associated with circular
enclosures ("sacred circles") thought to be ceremonial gathering places.
C. Many grave items are very finely made. Examples of centers are the Robbins Mound
in Kentucky and the Grave Creek Mound in West Virginia.
Early Woodland Life in Northern Sections of the Eastern Woodlands:
A. Adena is only one, if the most spectacular, of a series of northern mortuaryceremonial
complexes. Others are the Red Paint in the Northeast and Glacial Kame in the western
Great Lakes. What's going on?
B. A popular model for Early Woodland subsistence, exchange, and burial ceremony
suggests that population growth led by the Early Woodland in northern parts of the
Eastern Woodlands to better defined and more circumscribed local territories, more
visible "stylistic boundary markers" (e.g., projectile point and pottery styles), and more
formal exchange mechanisms that structured the bartering of essentials and prestigious
luxuries from one area to another in a web of reciprocal obligations and formal
giftgiving.
(1) Exotic items may have served as 'systemic regulators.
(2) A similar elaboration of stylistic boundary markers didn't appear to the south because
seasonal contrasts were much less marked, and food resources were not so highly
localized and short-lived throughout the year.
C. It' s possible that membership in lineages, clans, and other social groups was
becoming more important, for it was the group that controlled access to food and
other resources, and group leaders who organized work efforts and secured exchange
with neighboring groups. A growing sense of corporate identity was reinforced by
regular burial ceremonies at earthworks, where important social leaders had been
buried for many generations.
D. Exchange helped maintain rights of access to outside resources, and to resources, in
general, during times of stress.
E. This model contains mechanisms for fostering inter-group relationships and for
ameliorating food shortages. It shows how the system could have provided increasing
social and economic stability, reinforced sedentary living and the specialized
exploitation of local resources, and population increases.
(1) A main question: Is the model true? Were social or ideological factors more
important?
F. Whatever the answer, the trends described above were intensified even fUrther in the
following Middle Woodland period.
from big-game hunting to a more diversified subsistence economy as groups of other
cultural traditions entered the Canadian Plateau from adjacent regions.
Further readings
Cybulski, J. S., D. E. Hones. J. C. Haggarty, and M. Eldridge. 1981. An Early Human
Skeleton from South-Central British Columbia: Dating and Bioarchaeological Inference.
Canadian Journal of Archaeology 5:~~--j~.
Chisholm, B. S., and D. E. Nelson. 1983. An Early Human Skeleton from South-Central
British Columbia: Dietal? Inference from Carbon Isotopic Evidence. Canadian Journal
ofArchaeology 7:85--86.
Rousseau, Mike K. 1993. Early Prehistoric Occupation of South-Central British
Columbia: A Review of the Evidence and Recommendations for Future Research. BC
Studies 99:140--183.
Stryd, Arnoud H., and Michael Rousseau. The Early Prehistory of the Mid FraserThompson River Area of British Columbia. In Early Human Occupation ofBritish
Columbia, edited byR Carlson and L. Dalla Bona. University of British Columbia Press,
Vancouver, in press.
Middle Woodland and the Hopewellian (2200-1600 B.P.)
A. The middle period or stage of the Woodland tradition in eastern North America. Many
trends that began thousands of years earlier in the Archaic reach their climax in the
Middle Woodland in some resource rich regions. Among these were tendencies towards:
1) an increasing ef~iciency in harvesting a wide variety of productive and nutritious wild
food resources;
2) an increasing emphasis on the gathering and gardening of seed-bearing plants;
3) an intensitication of food procurement;
4) smaller, better defined, and more circumscribed group territories;
5) more sedentary lifeways;
6) "packing" in resource rich emironments caused by increasing population sizes, group
fissioning, and inward migration;
7) a sense of corporate, or "ethnic," identity;
8) increasingly conspicuous group boundary markers to legitimize a corporate right to
local resources;
9) more elaborate burial rites;
10) more complex intra- and intercommunity social arrangements; and 11) increasingly
formal inter-group exchange mechanisms. The most spectacular archaeological evidence
of this climax is associated with the Hopewell phenomenon in the heartland of the culture
area.
B. Middle Woodland archaeological complexes include:
1) Ohio Hopewell in southern Ohio;
2) Havana Hapewell in the Illinois Valley and adjacent Mississippi Valley;
3) Crab Orchard in southern Illinois;
4) Kansas City Hopewell;
5) Swift Creek, Copena, Deptford, Miller, and Marksville in the Southeast;
6) Laurel in the western Upper Great Lakes;
7) and Point Peninsula in the Northeast.
8) Most of these complexes participated to varying degrees in what has been called the
Hopewell Interaction Sphere; some in mostly spatially peripheral areas did not
participate at all.
C. Dates for the Middle Woodland time period vary widely across the Eastern
Woodlands, for archaeologists do not agree on which traits are diagnostic of the period or
stage. In addition, some events, such as the appearance of new ceramic forms, occurred at
different times in different areas.
1) For some archaeologists, the "Middle Woodland" is that period between 200 B.C. and
A.D. 400 when most of the Eastern Woodlands was dominated by the Hopewell
culture.
2) For others, it is defined by the presence of "Middle Woodland" ceramic complexes,
which, according to some interpretations, ranges from about 300 B.C. to A.D. 300 in
the Illinois Valley, ca. A.D. 1-600 in the Southeast, and ca. A.D. 1--900 in the
Northeast.
3) In the southeastern Deptford and Swift Creek complexes, pottery was check,
complicated, and simple stamped.
4) Classic Ohio Hopewell and Illinois Havana Hopewell decorated pottery had rockeranddentate stamp and incised designs arranged largely in zonal patterns.
5) In general, Middle Woodland ' ceramic vessels tended to have more complex and
sophisticated shapes and designs than Early Woodland pottery. They also had thinner
walls that were more resistant to breakage when heated.
C. The most spectacular Hopewell ceremonial sites are in the Sciota Valley near
Chillicothe, Ohio.
1) These religious and political centers typically contain a burial mound and geometric
earthwork complex that covers 10 to hundreds of acres and sparse;
2) evidence of large resident populations is lacking. Larger mounds can be up to 12 m
high, 150 m long, and 55 m wide.
3) Multiple mortuary structures under the mounds were often log tombs that contained
the remains of skeletons that had been cremated, bundled, or interred in some other
manner.
4) Exotic raw materials and "art" objects, the diagnostic artifacts of the Hopewell
Interaction Sphere, accompanied some of the burials.
5) Included were Lake Superior copper, galena, obsidian ~om Wyoming, Knife River
nint from North Dakota, pipestone, silver, meteoric iron, mica, chlorite, quartz
crystal, petrified wood, foreign nodular flints, both large and small marine shell
(Cassis, Busycon, Farrciolaria, Marginella, Oliva, OliveNa), ocean turtle shells,
alligator and shark teeth, barracuda jaws, clay figurines, platform effigy pipes, and
two-dimensional representational art cut from sheets of copper or mica, among other
items.
6) Small villages where people hunted and gathered wild food resources and tended
small gardens presumably surrounded these large centers. However, the intense focus
on the larger centers and their exotic contents has detracted until recently from
investigations of year-round subsistence-settlement patterns.
7) Smaller amounts of Hopewell Interaction Sphere items are found in Havana graves in
Illinois and in other Hopewellian complexes.
8) Differences in regional burial practices, ceramics, settlement pattern, and other
aspects of the archaeological record suggest that these items and presumably their
associated ritual practices were grafted onto local cultures.
D. Just what the Hopewell phenomenon represents remains a focus of investigation.
1) Some researchers view the increase in burial mound and earthwork construction, the
elaboration of burial ceremonialism, and the presence of "powerful" exotic substances
and manufactured items as the archaeologically visible manifestation of a climactic
expression of a cosmology whose roots extend deep into the Archaic.
2) According to this view, the spirit world had to be propitiated to ensure an abundance
of food, a successful raid on a traditional enemy, and so on, and these items
functioned within that process of communication.
3) Others regard the florescence as evidence of the emergence of regional social
ranking. In this view, heads of high ranking lineages legitimized their positions in
part by obtaining interaction sphere symbols of power from other high ranking
lineage heads in distant communities.
4) Still another interpretation considers the aspirations of "Big Men" as responsible for
moving interaction sphere items through an extensive intertribal network. Here, a
potential "Big Man" would attempt to build his own reputation and a political blee
within the segmented tribal organization by exchanging locally available items for
interaction sphere raw materials and ritual items.
5) Presumably, aspects of all three interpretations were important to varying degrees in
different Middle Woodland complexes. What seems apparent, however, is the value
of viewing the Hopewell phenomenon from a social rather than a strictly material
perspective.
See also Copena Culture, Crab Orchard, DeptTord Culture, Havana Hopewell, Hopewell
Interaction Sphere, Kansas City Hopewell, Laurel Culture, Miller Culture, Ohio
Hopewell, Point Peninsula, Swift Creek Culture
Further Readings
Prose, David S., and N'omi Greber (editors). 1979. HopaueNArchaeology. Kent State
University Press, Kent, Ohio.
Caldwell, Joseph R, and Robert L. Hall (editors). 1964. Hopewellian Studies. Illinois
State Museum, Springfield, Illinois.
Mason, Ronald J. 1981. Great LakesArchaeology. Academic Press, New York. Seeman,
M. F. 1979. The Hopewelllnteract'on Sphere: The Evidenceforlnterregional Trade and
Structural Complexity. Indiana Historical Society, Indianapolis.
Smith, Bruce D. 1986. The Archaeology of the Southeastern United States: From Dalton
to de Soto, 10,500 to 500 B.P. Advances in WorldArchaeology 5:1--92.
Steponaitus, V. 1986. Prehistoric Archaeology in the Southeastern United States 1970-1985. Annual Reviav ofAnthropology 15:363-404.