What Four late Late Woodland Sites Reveal about Tribal Formation Processes in Iowa

David W. Benn, 203 S. Germantown Rd., Chattanooga TN 37411, [email protected] B. Thompson, Bear Creek Archeology Inc., PO Box 347, Cresco IA 52136, [email protected]

©2014 Illinois Archaeological Survey, Inc., Illinois Archaeology, vol. 26, pp.1–55

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What Four Late Late Woodland Sites Reveal About Tribal Formation Processes in Iowa

David W. Benn and Joe B. Thompson

The time and place to search for the origins of tribal social formations in the Oneota tradition is during the post-A.D. 800 Late Woodland period in the upper Midwest. Four excavated sites in eastern Iowa display aspects of house form, village organization, pottery production, symbolic presentations, maize horticulture, and trade (gift giving) that are the hallmarks of “tribal” organizations and became the basis for the indigenous formation of Oneota culture. The processes of tribal formation, which developed parallel with, but as a form of resistance to, the Cahokian chiefdom, are viewed as having originated from the Siouan mythical world view.

This paper sifts through evidence from four late Late Woodland sites (ca. A.D. 800–1050) in eastern Iowa seeking indications of the origins of “tribal” social formations (Friedman 1975; Zeidler 1987) that were fully developed in Oneota communities in Iowa (i.e., Ioway Indians of the Historic period). This is perilous theoretical territory balanced between the empirical stages of neo-evolutionary development (i.e., band, tribe, chiefdom, state; see Service 1962; Sahlins 1961, 1968) and critiques of various modes of production in segmentary societies (e.g., Fried 1966; Friedman 1975; Godelier 1978; Kahn 1981; Wolf 1982; Upham 1990; Marcus 2008). Both schools agree that in “tribal” (i.e., segmentary, middle-range, corporate) societies, kinship, which is the system of social reproduction linked to mythical origination, takes on control of the means of production and so dominates the mode of production as an economic system (Godelier 1978:94–95; Kahn 1981:83–85; Kahn and Llobera 1981) with expansionist tendencies (Sahlins 1961). Beyond this theoretical baseline, authors differ about how tribal societies develop, how they create and redistribute surplus production, and how social ranking functions within them. This divergence of opinions leaves little analyti-cal groundwork for investigation of tribal origins in late Late Woodland societies in the way Godelier warned:

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All empiricism has a tendency to reduce the analysis of societies to a dem-onstration of their visible functioning traits, then regrouping the societies under various concepts, according to the presence or absence of some of these traits chosen as points of comparison. In this way we get ‘abstract’ concepts made up of descriptive résumés of traits abstracted from the whole to which they belong. Such concepts are neither completely empty nor useless…in that they avoid useless repetition, but they do not constitute scientific concepts. They are simply legal currency for rational thought. They only become truly negative on another level when invested with an ‘explanatory’ value, that is, a demonstrative value, within the framework of the theoretical analysis of a precise problem, for example, the evolution of forms of society. [Godelier 1978:90]

Taking Godelier’s admonition under advisement, and because the exact kinship structure of late Late Woodland societies is not known, this analysis will focus on empirical comparisons between Sahlins’ (1968) characteristics of tribal societies and the archeological evidence from Late Woodland societies of the Prairie Peninsula. Our ultimate goal is to winnow the evidence and identify where the impetus for the tribalization process was founded, but not to explain how it happened. We begin with a brief review of the end product of tribal formation, the Oneota tradition.

Oneota Origins

The Oneota tradition was one of the Mississippian period horticulturalist/hunter-gatherer societies populating the Midwest by cal. A.D. 1200 (Figure 1). Tribal Oneota societies (Benn 1989) expanded rapidly across the midwestern prairies (Boszhardt 1994; Brown et al. 1967; Faulkner 1972; Fishel 1995; Gibbon 1969, 1972, 1983, 1995; Hall 1962; Henning 1961, 1970, 1995, 1998a; Mason 1976; Moffat 1998; Overstreet 1995; Wedel 1959) onto the Great Plains (Henning and Thiessen 2004) and into the Ca-hokian heartland where paramount chiefs had ruled (Milner et al. 1984). Not so certain are Oneota origins, which have been debated vociferously and sometimes obdurately (Boszhardt 2004b; Gibbon 1974; Gibbon and Dobbs 1991; Green 2014; Griffin 1966; Overstreet 1998, 2001; Rodell 1997; Stoltman 1986, 1991; Stoltman and Christiansen 2000; Theler and Boszhardt 2000, 2006). There is little doubt that the advent of the Cahokian chiefdom and its Upper Mississippian offshoots preceded the development of full-fledged Oneota culture, according to new data from southwestern Wisconsin and southeastern Minnesota cal. A.D. 1000–1050 (Benden 2004; Boszhardt 2004a; Christiansen 2003; Stoltman et al. 2008). Recall Robert Hall’s (2004) prescient advice on this matter by imploring us to look into Late Woodland societies for incipient ex-pressions of an Upper Mississippian lifestyle. The larger question behind these data explorations is the question of the theoretical development of tribal social formations in central North America (Bender 1985).

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Efforts to trace the origins of the Oneota cultural system usually are rolled into discoveries of Cahokian-inspired habitations, mounds, and artifact types north of the St. Louis region. Stoltman (1991:350–351) provided a classification system to rate these manifestations according to probable population origins and trait content. Four of his Culture Contact Situations range from trait-unit intrusions into an indigenous culture in various forms to the instance of a “pure” Middle Mississippian assemblage appearing in a region formerly occupied by Late Woodland peoples. His Culture Contact Situation V recognizes local populations living “just beyond the active interface” of Cahokian influence and copying particular Mississippian styles, technology, and iconography, and

Figure 1. Excavated sites, place names, and Oneota Group Continuities in the Midwest.


this is where he placed the earliest Oneota enclaves in southern Wisconsin (Stoltman 1991:351). Christiansen (2003:238–241) built on this classification system to analyze theories about the origin of the Aztalan site in southeastern Wisconsin, concluding it was founded by local Late Woodland people who subsequently transformed their culture with artifact types and organizational structures of Cahokian origin and inspiration. As an afterthought, Christenson (2003:241) stated that “Developmental Oneota represents the outcome of Late Woodland Effigy Mound groups that chose not to, or were not allowed to, participate in the Middle Mississippian sphere of influence in southern Wisconsin.” Boszhardt (2004a) followed a similar scenario by tracing development of Upper Mississippian culture out of the indigenous Late Woodland Lewis phase in south-western Wisconsin during the period of the Cahokian Lohmann (ca. A.D. 1050–1100) and Stirling phases (ca. A.D. 1100–1200) (see Green 2014).

In Iowa, Developmental Oneota appeared earliest as the Moingona phase ca. A.D. 1250 in the central Des Moines River valley (Gradwohl 1974; Moffat 1998). Almost at the same time, there were additional Oneota “group continuities” (sensu Hall 1962) including the Correctionville phase ca. A.D. 1300 (Fishel 1999) in the Little Sioux River valley of west-central Iowa, the Burlington phase ca. A.D. 1300 (Henning 1995) in the Upper Mississippi River (UMR) valley in southeastern Iowa, and the Pammel Creek phase dating prior to ca. A.D. 1470 (Benn 2005) in northeastern Iowa (La Crosse region). Three of these four phases cannot be traced to immigrant sources, as proponents of the “Mississippian radiation” theory (Caldwell 1958:64) have tried to portray a variety of upper midwestern cultural intrusions. For instance, the theory that the Correctionville phase was a migration out of the Blue Earth phase in southern Minnesota (Henning 1961; Gibbon 1983; Fishel 1999) is discredited by pottery dissimilarities and a lack of a developmental sequence at Correctionville (Henning 1998a), and the Upper Iowa River valley (Benn 2005) was occupied as early as the LaCrosse region (Sasso 1993; Boszhardt 1994) presumed to have been its “source.” However, it is clear from ceramic evidence that the Burlington phase grew out of migration from the Moingona phase (Henning 1995; Benn 2004), while there is no immigrant source for the Moingona phase. In any case the Late Woodland Minotts phase and Great Oasis1 variant occupied central Iowa prior to the appearance of Oneota villages (see Moffat et al. 1990; Moffat 1998:187).

No Cahokian-inspired Mississippian villages or villagers have turned up in central Iowa sites, and we doubt that there were sufficient numbers of “Emergent” Oneota people in the Red Wing locality (Gibbon 1983; Gibbon and Dobbs 1991) or the Fox River corridor in eastern Wisconsin (Overstreet 1998) to emigrate into the Iowan prairies (not to mention to the mouth of the Chariton River in central Missouri). Even if we grant that the Cahokian juggernaut ca. A.D. 1050 had significant political influence on wide swaths of terminal Late Woodland period (A.D. 1050–1200) populations in the upper Midwest (Rodell 2003) and probably inspired formation of Oneota culture in southeastern Wisconsin (Christiansen 2003), one still has to look within Late Woodland societies to explain the appearance of Moingona (see Benn 1995) and to account for

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the rise of Oneota communities across the central Prairie Peninsula, where only Late Woodland people had lived. Green (2014) calls this process “ethnogenesis.”

Lack of evidence for Cahokian-inspired Upper Mississippian enclaves in most of Iowa forces a shift in our analytical paradigm with regard to culture change during the late Late Woodland period (A.D. 800–1050). The old processual-diffusionist explanation that “mississippianization” of Late Woodland cultures (e.g., diffusion of shell-tempered pottery, maize, wall-trench houses, sun symbolism, etc.) fostered the development of horticultural village life in the UMR basin becomes untenable, because we cannot rely on “abstract notions of how people everywhere behaved” (Pauketat 2001:86) in place of actual evidence of established practice in historical context. A more insightful ap-proach is to invoke agency (practice) theory (Bourdieu 1977; Dobres and Robb 2005; Dornan 2002) by considering how the actions of individuals within their own societ-ies contributed to changes in social and economic relations. Agency encompasses two phenomena, materiality and social reproduction, such “that material culture actually constitutes social relations and meaning making” (Dobres and Robb 2005:162; emphasis original). Put simply, Sahlins (1981:8), addressing the process of intentionality, asked “How…the reproduction of a structure becomes its transformation.” Agency is revealed by studying the process of the creation of materiality (objects) and discovering the combination of things depicted by those objects (Latour 1987:21), which often leads to recognizing “explicit justifications for linkages with other objects that tell us the logic behind representations” (Martin 2005:285). Pauketat (2001:86–87) named this paradigm shift as “historical-processual archaeology that adopts elements of a theory of practice (emphasis added),” wherein culture change is recognized in the way people acted out or represented their conduct in social contexts (cf. Sahlins 1985). Pauketat (2001) pre-sented the archeological evidence that Cahokians acted intentionally (through power relations and ritual actions) to construct a monumental ritual space in the American Bottom and focus the regional population around those symbols of power. The lesson we take from Pauketat’s particular application of agency theory is that just as Cahoki-ans “caused” their own history in part by pursuing northward hegemonic projections, so did the Late Woodland peoples on the prairies act at the same time for their own fulfillment but in spite of Cahokian hegemony.

We will investigate five predominant Oneota characteristics because they can be compared with hard data traced from Late Woodland origins. Those characteristics are: 1) shell temper in pottery vessel paste, 2) chevron motifs depicted in trailed deco-rations on vessel shoulders, 3) quartered-circle motifs, 4) village organization, and 5) maize horticulture. The hypothesis of this paper is that these characteristics (or absence thereof) can be viewed contextually as evidence that late Late Woodland period societies developed directly into the Oneota tradition in Iowa, i.e., the formation of a “tribal” mode of production, in the absence of actual Mississippian intrusions and in spite of a Cahokian presence in the UMR valley.


Four Late Woodland Sites

Most of the comparative data for this paper comes from four late Late Woodland period sites—Cross (13LA309), Union Bench (13DB497), Osage Orange (13LE648), and Horseshoe (13LA27)—situated along the margins of the Upper Mississippi River valley in eastern Iowa (Figure 1). Bear Creek Archeology, Inc. (BCA) investigated all four sites by Phase III data recovery excavations between 1998 and 2008. The following site summaries present the data and cultural contexts that we can evaluate for indica-tions of agency processes.

Cross Site 13LA309

The Cross site of the Louisa phase was discovered in the Lake Odessa Bottomland of the UMR valley in 1987 (Benn et al. 1988), tested in 1996 (Benn 1998), and subjected to data recovery in 1998 (Benn et al. 2001) with funding provided by the Rock Island District Corps of Engineers. The artifact assemblage and physical setting mark the Cross site as typical of post–A.D. 700 habitation sites on the floodplains of the UMR valley. The Odessa bottomland is a riverine lowland intertwined with sloughs and wet-lands and covered by mesic forest (Figure 2). Recovered plant taxa indicate the Cross occupation was largely year-round with high ubiquity indices for thick shell hickories (Carya spp.), acorns (Quercus spp.) and species of domesticated and encouraged native seed plants like chenopod (C. berlandieri), erect knotweed (P. erectum), maygrass (P. caroliniana), sunflower (H. annuus), amaranth (Amaranthus sp.), and panic grass (Panicum sp.). Data recovery produced about 0.5 g of maize fragments (“caps,” embryos, cupule fragments, and one glume). Poorly preserved, calcined faunal remains included a few unidentifiable fish and catfish (Ictaluridae), whitetail deer teeth (O. virginianus), small amounts of freshwater mussel shell, shattered bones from large and small-medium sized mammals, and birds (probably duck and turkey). The chipped-stone tool assemblage employed local Burlington chert for butchering, fabrication of wood and bone tools, hide working, fiber processing, and other domestic chores. The ground-stone assem-blage of 35 mostly expedient tools included V-shaped and flat abraders, one hand-held grinder (mano), one grinding slab, hammerstones, scrapers, and choppers.

The Cross site yielded flake points typed as Madison, Scallorn, Koster-style, and four side-notched arrow points typed as Reed, Klunk, and probably Webster (Figure 3; Bell 1958; Justice 1987; Morrow 1984; Perino 1968, 1971). The pottery assemblage was the “early” version of Burris ware tempered with grit, crushed igneous rock, and occa-sionally crushed chert. Burris vessel body exteriors are completely covered by vertically oriented, low-relief cord roughening (92 percent–Zss, 8 percent–Szz). Jars (no bowls were found) have a full-bodied, sub-globular shape with gently rounded shoulders and corded rim decorations. Decorations define two types: Burris Cord Roughened (CR; Figure 4) and Burris Cord/Fabric Impressed (CFI), which is by far the most common type (90 percent) characterized by cord/fabric impressions in horizontal-line and chev-ron motifs supplemented by cord-wrapped-stick or reed impressions forming a band

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around the interior upper rim and exterior rim surfaces (Figure 5). Common to both types are four lip peaks that lend a slightly-squared or “quartered” format to the lip surface (Figure 4). A ceramic pipe bowl also has four peaks on the rim edge (Figure 6).

The Cross site was a typical hamlet with enough space for three to four houses within at least 2,400 m2 (Benn 1998:42). Excavation exposed almost 350 features including hearths, roasting pits, shallow and deep basins, some bell-shaped pits, and post molds (Figure 7). Two excavated houses were robust domiciles with rectangular plans (43.5 m2 and 41.5 m2) and south-facing covered entryways. The rear corners of each house were indented about 75 cm, creating a cross-shaped floor plan, an architectural plan

Figure 2. Cross (13LA309) and Horseshoe (13LA27) sites in the Lake Odessa bottomland,


Figure 3. Hafted bifaces and projectile points from the Cross site (13LA309): a-c) Madison flake-points; d) Scallorn/Koster; e-g) dart point fragments; h) Steuben; i) Gibson; j) Madison biface; k) Scallorn/Koster; l-o) Reed/Klunk; p) Webster.

Figure 4. Burris Cord Roughened Vessel 2 with four lip peaks from the Cross site (13LA30).

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Figure 5. Examples of Burris Fabric/Cord Impressed rims from the Keithsburg house site (11He378).

Figure 6. Ceramic pipe from the Cross site (13LA309) with four-cornered bowl.


Figure 7. Cross site (13LA309) houses.

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that occurs in Mississippian contexts (Hall 1996; Holley and Koepke 2003). Substantial wall posts augmented by interior posts likely supported a gabled roof. Thatch, reed mats, and/or bark (no daub) probably covered the roof and walls. A large post mold 63 cm diameter and 90 cm deep with a shallow ramp on one side may have functioned as a “symbolic” post erected beside one of the houses.

Four wood samples and one maize kernel, all from intact pit fills prone to rodent intrusions, were submitted for radiometric dating (Stuiver and Reimer 1993; Stuiver et al. 1998; 2007 calibrations). Aside from one near-modern result (180 ± 60 B.P.; Beta-137623) and another that was at least 500 years too early, other samples of wood charcoal from two separate features produced dates of 1280 ± 150 B.P. (Beta-96655) and 1270 ± 60 B.P. (Beta-144951) that calibrate to an intercept of A.D. 765 (1s A.D. 633–897) at the early end of the Louisa phase. Given much of the charcoal came from oak species, this early age may logically reflect an “old wood” effect (Schiffer 1986). On the other hand a maize kernel yielded a date of 880 ± 40 B.P. (Beta-141042; cal. inter-cepts A.D. 1065, 1130, 1180; 2s A.D. 1035–1225). The projectile assemblage includes Scallorn points generally predating the eleventh century, thus the Cross site either was occupied for about 200 years or was reoccupied by Louisa phase people, who took up maize cultivation at the end of their site tenure cal. A.D. 1050. Finding the expansion of maize cultivation happened during the late Late Woodland period has been a theme of other authors (Asch and Green 1992; Fortier et al. 2011).

Union Bench 13DB497

The setting for the Union Bench site is a high terrace remnant at the mouth of Union Park Hollow where it enters Couler Valley, a former route of the Little Ma-quoketa River behind the Mississippi River bluff line in the Paleozoic Plateau region of northeastern Iowa (Figure 8). This setting—back from the main Mississippi River channel—is similar to other terminal Late Woodland sites (e.g., Fred Edwards, Hartley Fort, 11CA44). The site was identified and tested by the Highway Archaeology Pro-gram at the University of Iowa (Perry 1997, 1999), and BCA excavated the site in the late summer of 2000 (Benn et al. 2007). Although Union Bench was a multicomponent historic and prehistoric site, this text focuses on the terminal Late Woodland/Upper Mississippian component, the most archeologically visible occupation on the terrace.

This fortified village covered about 0.4 ha and consisted of 10 houses, which ap-peared to have been contemporary because they were well-spaced and enclosed by a fortification trench. Also part of the village was a special-purpose structure, a small open area (“commons”), and partially preserved fortification trenches (Figure 9). When compared with other sites of a roughly similar age in the region, e.g., the Fred Edwards site in Wisconsin (Finney 1993) and Hartley Fort in Allamakee County (Tiffany 1982a; Finney 1992), Union Bench contained a lower density of pottery (average 1–2 vessels for each household) and probably was occupied for a brief period. Lacking evidence for prepared house basins and substantial posts, the 10 houses consisted of irregular oval organic stains (within the E soil horizon) and likely were light structures such as bark


wigwams. No animal bone was preserved, and flotation samples yielded poorly pre-served plant remains but produced maize fragments from 28 percent of the samples. A linear stain about 0.5 m wide traced on both sides of the village habitation zone was the remains a partially constructed palisade consisting of 20–30-cm diameter post molds in a shallow trench. Possible entryways, indicated by a pronounced widening of the linear trench stain, were found on the northern and southern palisade walls near mid-village.

A burned circular basin (Structure 8) 2.75 m in diameter flanked by exterior post molds was uncovered in the “commons” in the southeastern quadrant of the village (Figure 10). This structure had a north-facing entry ramp, creating a “keyhole” shape that appears in ethnographic sources as representing the “earth navel” for historic Plains tribes (Hall 1985:185–187). The structure’s floor was slightly fire reddened and

Figure 8. Location of the Union Bench site (13DB497) at the opening of Union Hollow in the Couler Valley (U.S.G.S. 7.5 min. Dubuque North Quadrangle).


Figure 9. Union Bench (13DB497) site map showing piece-plotted distributions of Late Woodland and Upper Mississippian pottery.

Figure 10. Structure 8 at Union Bench (13DB497) with associated rectangular pits and clay caps.


littered with a scatter of burned branches representing species of willows, oaks, hickory, maple, cherry, black walnut, and coffee tree/honey locust. The charred branches likely formed a 3.6-x-4-m arbor that was supported by four flanking posts oriented 17° east of magnetic north. The branches produced a radiocarbon date of 1050 ± 80 BP (Beta-148981; cal. A.D. 1000, 1s range A.D. 900–1030). Three other oak charcoal samples from Features 15, 18, and 36 produced identical assays of 870 ± 60 BP (Beta-152120, Beta-152121, Beta-152122; cal. A.D. 1180; 1s calibrated ranges A.D. 1050–1100 and A.D. 1140–1240). Therefore either the village was occupied between ca. A.D. 1050–1150 during the terminal late Woodland period or the special structure had been created prior to the occupation.

Artifacts resting on the Structure 8 floor included one cobble hammerstone/anvil, one cobble abrader, two hide sidescrapers, one wood sidescraper, three scraper/gravers for hard material, two hard-material gravers, one meat knife, one spokeshave, three bifaces/fragments, one Madison point, five cores, flaking debris, and a large rim section of Potosi Plain Vessel 25 (Figure 11d).

Two rectangular pits roughly 85 x 100 cm had been excavated into the Structure 8 fill. One of these pits at the western edge near the basin floor was lined with sev-eral burned and unburned limestone cobbles resting on skiffs of charcoal. The other rectangular pit was a clay-capped, clay-lined hearth containing several burned and

Figure 11. Upper Mississippian pottery from Union Bench (13DB497): a) Grant Plain; b) Grant Cordmarked; c) Hartley Plain; d,e) Potosi Plain.


unburned dolomite cobbles. An oblong pit (#19) near the center of the filled basin was filled with dark midden and was capped by a rectangular layer of mixed yellowish and burned-reddish clay. This combination of burning and rapid backfilling of the round basin with subsequent digging and clay capping of rectangular pits is an unusual if not unique at late Late Woodland sites in the UMR valley. About 97 percent of the maize remains from the site were recovered from two other pits close to Structure 8. Emergent Mississippian communities in the southern American Bottom (Dohack phase, ca. AD 750–900; e.g., Kelly 1990a, 1990b) have internal village organization around a cluster of four pits with a central post and an adjoining large structure containing an interior hearth. Squared, oriented buildings and round and squared pits are characteristic forms in these communities (Holley and Koepke 2003). Such facilities, exhibiting evidence for refurbishing and likely associated with communal activities, functioned as the ceremonial precinct of the village, and similar patterns were greatly expanded in the organization of Cahokian ceremonial facilities during subsequent centuries.

Union Bench yielded Madison, Fresno, Hamilton Incurvate, fragmented notched triangular points similar to the Cahokian styles, and examples of Des Moines, Washita, and Nodena Elliptical point types, a typical “late” prehistoric assemblage (Figure 12).

Figure 12. Union Bench (13DB497 projectile points: a-f) Madison triangular; g-i) Fresno; j-n) Cahokia cluster; o-p) Nodena Elliptical.


Most of the Upper Mississippian pottery sherds were from grit-tempered Potosi Plain and Grant Plain vessels (Figure 11) distributed in households in the northern and eastern parts of the village as well as Structure 8 (Figure 9). A few shell-tempered body sherds are part of this assemblage. Late Woodland Madison ware and Grant Cord Impressed sherds with chevron designs were scattered among escarpment households on both sides of the village (Figures 9 and 13). These pottery distributions are suggestive of two scenarios. A) Union Bench was co-occupied by groups with differing ethnic or politi-cal backgrounds, so Madison ware and Mississippian styles were produced by different potters for domestic and ritual use in the whole village. B) All potters were the same ethnic background, but this was a time of rapid cultural change when Madison ware and new Mississippian styles were being manufactured with clays from the same local sources for different uses (confirmed in the contract report by thin-section analysis; see Benn et al. 2007). However, Potosi Plain sherds were concentrated in the vicinity of Structure 8, which could indicate one potter made Potosi vessels for “ritual” purposes, while Madison ware sherds were scattered among houses in domestic areas of the village.

Figure 13. Madison Fabric Impressed rims from Union Bench (13DB497).


Osage Orange 13LE648

The Osage Orange site (13LE648) is a single-component prehistoric village of 22 structures on the summit and upper shoulder slopes of a loess-mantled interfluve about 4 km north of the Mississippi Valley bluff line in southeastern Iowa (Benn et al. 2011). BCA identified this 0.8-ha site in unplowed, pastured forest and part of a cultivated field during the survey of the U.S. Highway 61 Fort Madison bypass. Subsequent data recovery by shovel-skimming about 3,300 m2 and piece-plotting all artifacts exposed the entire village of organically stained house loci with features clustered in domestic artifact activity areas (Figure 14).

The 20 house structures had similar orientations (average 19.6° from cardinal north), although the directions of house entryways varied (Figure 14). Co-occupied houses were clustered and arranged around a public space (“commons”). It is not dif-ficult to view the house clusters as having been organized in two divisions, with the

Figure 14. Osage Orange site (13LE648) village map.


northern division including clusters H1-5-6-21, H8, H2-7, H3-4 and H18-20, while the southern division consisted of clusters H13-14, H15-16-17, H9-13, and H19-22. The northern division included a possible “special use” House 2 that had been lightly occupied, two purported sweat lodges (loci 10, 11), and two of the most intensively occupied households (H8, 18). The southern division was comprised of nine houses averaging slightly larger floor areas (north = 24.6 m2, south = 27.6 m2). The only large storage pit was situated on the “commons” northern periphery. The “commons” covered about 708 m2 and appeared to open to the southeast. An eastward opening in the “camp circle” is a common arrangement for Plains settlements (Wilson 1995:186). There is no evidence that this “commons” functioned as a “plaza” in a Cahokia-Mississippian sense, since no mound fronts this space, no large post mold was found, and no public structures, grouped features, or evidence of human burials occurred within the space.2

The village plan at Osage Orange surely reflected the residents’ world view (i.e., how people see themselves with respect to “others”), because we know Native Americans

Figure 15. Upland location of Osage Orange (13LE648); the Mississippi River bluffline is two miles south of the site (U.S.G.S. 7.5 min Ft. Madison IA-IL Quadrangle).


literally lived within mythical and ritual space (cf. Hall 1997). The village was laid out with respect to the cardinal directions and perhaps in northern and southern halves. We speculate that residents viewed their home base as a reflection of the ritual universe of at least six directions (i.e., cardinals, above, below) and four seasons, all divided into halves like kinship moieties (Hall 1997, 2005:122). Osage Orange people made Bur-ris pottery, grew maize and native seed cultigens, and occupied an oak opening in the upland prairie-edge habitat. They lived at the site during the late winter through sum-mer seasons (Powell in Benn et al. 2011). Slash-and-burn horticulturalists presumably need forested habitat for fields, but around Osage Orange the forested valleys are too narrow with shaded, relatively steep, sinuous valley walls (Figure 15) that afforded little contiguous space for slash-and-burn farming. Therefore, the residents likely platted maize fields in upland oak openings around their village, where heavy groundcover could be burnt in the spring and none of the widely spaced burr oak and other nut-bearing trees would have to have been removed to plant corn hills, squash, and native seed crops. Hall (1980:440) once observed that well-drained, upland loess soils, which warm fast in the spring, are more conducive for germinating squash and maize seeds than heavier sandy loam soils of the valley floor that remain cold longer in the spring. For comparison, in eastern Wisconsin, Oneota villages were situated in the oak open-ings (O’Gorman and Goldstein 2008; Jeske 2008), and the historic Sauk-Fox townsite of Saukenak at Rock Island was documented on military maps to have had “miles” of cornfields on broad (west-facing) valley terraces and bluff-line oak openings (Ferrel Anderson, 2009 personal communication).

Pieces of spongy maize kernels (“caps”) from basin Feature 48 yielded an AMS date of 1075 ± 15 B.P [ISGS-A1343; cal. A.D. 890-(905)-920 (2s 23.6 percent) and cal. A.D. 950-(985)-1020 (2s 71.8 percent)]. Charcoal from roasting pit Feature 58 yielded an AMS date of 1050 ± 20 B.P. [ISGS-A1056; cal. A.D. 960-(995)-1030, 2s 91.2 percent]. A large Burris ware body sherd from roasting pit Feature 25 produced a thermoluminescence reading of A.D. 1028 ± 62 (UW-1850). Mirror image intervals of cal. A.D. 960–1030 and cal. A.D. 950–1020 encompass 91.2 percent and 71.8 percent (respectively) of variation on the dating curve and are favored for dating the site’s oc-cupation because the luminescence date of A.D. 1028 corresponds with the younger end of this interval. Taking mean dates of cal. A.D. 985 and 995 for both intervals, the Osage Orange village probably was inhabited during the late Late Woodland period between cal. A.D. 990–1025.

Horseshoe Site 13LA27

The Horseshoe site (Benn et al. 1999), type site for the Louisa phase, was a heavily occupied sand ridge on the bank of a slough about 800 m from the Cross site in the Odessa bottomland of the UMR valley (Figure 2). Two feature clusters were exposed in the 100 m2 excavation block, including most of a rectangular, single-post house ba-sin oriented northeast-southwest with an exterior activity area as well as a second pit cluster from a previous occupation. The house was a 7-x-4.8-m rectangle in a shallow


basin, and the presence of multiple expedient and finished tool types of local Burlington chert, including hide scrapers, indicate objects were fabricated and expended during an extended period of habitation that suggests a seasonal base camp. The inhabitants subsisted on wild resources available within the valley (i.e., hickory nuts, fish, mussels, deer, small-medium-sized mammals), maize, and cultivated sunflowers and maygrass. They used Burris ware cooking jars decorated with cord/fabric impressions on rims with lip peaks in a style that is indistinguishable from earlier Burris ware at the Cross site (Benn and Green 2000). Arrow points from the site are notched and unnotched triangular and flake styles, including several Reed points, one Cahokia-like form (without basal notch; Figure 16) and Washita, Scallorn, Koster, Klunk, Madison, and as many as three Nodena points/performs, all of which are associated with the late prehistoric period. Conspicuously absent from the site are dart points and any shell-tempered pottery or other influences (e.g., Potosi Plain pottery, castellated vessels, everted or rolled rim forms) from terminal Late Woodland populations farther north in the Up-per Mississippi Valley or farther east in the central Illinois River valley. These aspects make dating the Horseshoe site important.

Five radiocarbon dates were run on Horseshoe samples. Feature 2, a large basin pit, likely was superimposed by the rectangular house, and wood charcoal from floated soil assayed at 1160 ± 60 B.P. (Beta-125164; cal. A.D. 885, 1s A.D. 800–976). Wood charcoal from the bottom of Feature 25, a deep pit that was superimposed by another pit, produced a date of 1100 ± 50 B.P. (Beta-125167; cal. A.D. 975, 1s A.D. 890–1000).

Figure 16. Reed arrowpoints with one Cahokia-like form (d) from the Horseshoe site (13LA27).


These two dates represent the earlier occupation during the late Late Woodland period. Wood charcoal from Feature 6, a roasting pit in the house basin midden, dated to 970 ± 60 B.P. (Beta-125165, cal. A.D. 1035, 1s A.D. 1010–1165). The 1s range for this date overlaps with two more terminal Late Woodland period dates from Feature 8, a deep pit containing house basin fill. Feature 8 gave a charcoal date of 860 ± 70 B.P (Beta-125166, cal. A.D. 1205, 1s A.D. 1055–1090 and 1150–1260), and six maize kernels gave an AMS assay of 830 ± 50 B.P. (Beta-127679, cal. A.D. 1220, 1s A.D. 1175–1260; C4 -22.5). The two thirteenth century results are the latest dates (by 150 years) for Burris ware in the Upper Mississippi Valley.

Pottery Decoration as Window to the Late Woodland World View

First, consider the distribution and age of cord pottery decorations in the central prairie region. The cord- and fabric-decorated pottery with the longest research history is Madison ware, which is associated with the Effigy Mound tradition across southern Wisconsin and northeastern Iowa (Benn 1978; Stoltman and Christiansen 2000). This ware (ca. A.D. 700–1000; Stoltman and Christiansen 2000) is distinguished by completely cord roughened exterior surfaces; impressions of twined fabrics with decorative cords in parallel horizontal bands, chevrons, and triangular motifs cover the exterior rim surface, lip, and often the interior upper rim (Benn 1978). There is a minority cord roughened type of this ware, Madison Plain, but neither Madison Cord/Fabric Impressed (CFI) nor Madison Plain possesses peaks on the lip or rim castellations. Various collars and castellations appear on other types after ca. A.D. 900, such as Hartley Cord Impressed, Pt. Sauble Collared, and Aztalan Collared (Stoltman and Christianen 2000). Burris CFI pottery, with its peaked rims and parallel horizontal decorative cords in combination with nested triangles (Figure 5), was a contemporary and close cousin of Madison ware. Rim peaks on Burris ware may be its only distinguishing characteristic from Madison CFI in portions of northeastern Iowa. Somewhat “simpler” corded decorations occur on types named Kuhlman Coarse and Scenic Vista Thin of the Sny Cord Impressed series (O’Gorman and Hassen 2000) at sites in the Sny bottomlands south of Quincy, Illinois. These sites belong to the Poisson phase dating ca. A.D. 800–1100 (Morgan 1985; Morgan and Stafford 1986; O’Gorman and Hassen 2000:289). Peaked Burris CR rims are very similar to the Sny Cordmarked series, which includes Fall Creek Cord-marked (O’Gorman and Hassen 2000) of the Fall Creek phase ca. A.D. 600–800. All of the corded pottery wares discussed in this paragraph are tempered with grit, crushed rock, sand, or sometimes crushed chert but no trace of shell.

This kind of corded pottery showed up three decades ago in Henderson County, Illinois, in a bipartite ceramic sequence from the Schroeder Mounds site (11HE177; Riggle 1981), where the cord roughened cornered/peaked vessels (now called Bur-ris CR; Figure 4) were stratigraphically superimposed by a second horizon of vessels with cord decorations and robust castellated rims now known as Maples Mills Cord Impressed (Figure 17). The Maples Mills phase of the central Illinois Valley has cord


impressed and castellated pottery with plain rim surfaces that is dated between A.D. 750–1000, but the ware does not include undecorated rims or a cord roughened type (Esarey 2000:391). The only shell-tempered vessel with Burris form (and plain surface) was recovered from an isolated rectangular house place dating cal. A.D. 1250 at the Cochran site (13LE634) in extreme southeastern Iowa (Blikre et al. 2011:34).

Minotts Cord Impressed in eastern Iowa (Logan 1976; Benn and Thompson 1977) also has grit or crushed rock temper and corded decorations (fabric and single-cord impressed) in parallel horizontal and chevron motifs over mostly plain surfaces. Unlike Burris ware, Minotts orifices often are distinctly squared and have more robust castel-lations, globular vessel bodies with broad shoulders and high, everted rims (Benn and Green 2000), exactly the vessel form of Oneota ware. The companion type, Minotts Plain (Tiffany 1986), exhibits tooled lip notches also like Oneota ware. Minotts has a poorly dated time range but certainly postdates A.D. 850. Like Burris ware, Minotts ware occurs in the Upper Mississippi Valley of Iowa from Clinton to the mouth of the Des Moines River in the south (Blikre 2008; Benn et al. 2011). Minotts also extends westward throughout the central Des Moines River valley (Benn and Rogers 1995), where it was locally named Saylor ware (Osborn et al. 1978). To the east in the cen-tral Illinois River valley, the contemporary was Maples Mills CI (Esarey 1988, 2000), formerly part of Canton ware (Fowler 1955; Sampson 1988). Minotts CI and Minotts Plain rims were recovered from mixed contexts at the Sand Run West site (13LA38) in

Figure 17. Selection of Maples Mills Cord Impressed rims from the Liverpool Lake site 11Mn163 (collections at Dickson Mounds Museum).


Lake Odessa (Benn et al. 1987:66) only 0.4 km north of the Horseshoe site, and Mi-notts Plain and CFI were found in mixed contexts with rims like Burris ware at nearby Michaels Creek (13LA56; Fokken and Finn 1984:Plates 5.2g, 5.11b). Farther south, the Lost Creek site (13LE8; OSA cat. 160–1, 160–31) at the mouth of the Skunk River yielded a rim with a single cord impressed longitudinally on the thickened lip in the style of Caldwell Cord Impressed, a braced rim type from central Illinois (Esarey 2000). Rim sherds from Des Moines County (13DM116; OSA cat. 929–116-1 to 929–116-25) also have this thickened lip. Braced rims could represent trade pots from the Mossville phase, a terminal Late Woodland complex of Lohmann phase (Cahokian) age in the central Illinois Valley (see Esarey 2000).

The notable finding at the Horseshoe site is its late component dating ca. A.D. 1200 (Benn et al. 1999). This age postdates the period of panregional interaction of the Stirling and Lohmann phases at Cahokia (Bareis and Porter 1984; Stoltman et al. 2008) and falls at the end of the period of Upper Mississippian/terminal Late Wood-land interactions at the Fred Edwards site (Finney and Stoltman 1991) and at Hartley Fort (Tiffany 1982a) in the UMR basin. Yet, there is no shell-tempered pottery in the Horseshoe assemblage, and the last occupation at this site barely predates the ca. A.D. 1300 arrival of Burlington phase Oneota people at the Kingston and Wever sites of southeastern Iowa (Henning 1995; Tiffany 1979). Horseshoe was less than a half mile from the Mississippi River channel, one of two river trade routes between Cahokia and the Upper Mississippian enclaves in the Quad States region (the other being Middle Mississippian villages in the central Illinois River valley). Also remarkable at Horseshoe is that “peaked” Burris pottery had been manufactured for ca. 450 years, but in the meantime the castellated Minotts style had developed as well. That the Louisa phase may have engendered cultural changes is demonstrated by the presence of “late” Nodena and Cahokia cluster point styles at Horseshoe (Figure 16) and the presence of Klunk and Scallorn types, which turned up with several recycled stemmed and notched dart points at the pre-A.D. 1000 Cross site (Figure 3). Two interpretations may be derived from these facts. A) At least some Late Woodland potters (women) in the UMR basin remained aloof from or resistant to Middle Mississippian influences during the ca. 150 years of the Cahokian florescence, while the lithic technology, especially arrow points made by men, shows influence from southerly styles. Might those differences have been a reflection of kinship/residency patterns such as matrilocality? (see Benn 1995) B) Burris and Minotts styles were made during the latter half of the Louisa phase by potters of the same tradition, but Minotts decoration represented the florescence of an iconographic system that emphasized partitioning of the vessel orifice to reflect the “circle of life” combined with thunderer decorative symbolism—a precursor to Oneota decorative motifs. Burris and Minotts orifices also differ in shape: Burris (and Madison ware) orifices are round (even with four peaks; Figure 4); Minotts tends to be squared at the castellations or the orifice (Figure 18).

Arguably, one reflection of the Late Woodland world view during the eighth-tenth centuries A.D. was the addition of “cornering” to the orifice by adding low rim peaks,


bending the horizontal curvature of the rim, or by adding rim castellations to effect a partitioning of the vessel rim into quadrants (Figures 4, 5b and 19). The round/square dichotomy is one of the major themes of “Mississippian” iconography (Holley and Koepke 2003:158), and this fundamental dichotomy of shapes dates back at least to the Middle Woodland period. That round/square formats came to the visual forefront during the late Late Woodland period (e.g., at Structure 8 and its associated rectangular pits at Union Bench as well as the orifices of domestic vessels) may be a harbinger of ritual embedded in a major economic shift toward reliance on maize horticulture. Four peaks on a round vessel rim and the cross-shaped house at the Cross site are unmistakable expressions of the quartered-circle motif, a fundamental concept of Native American beliefs manifested in many forms, such as the sacred hoop or wind center design of the Lakota sun dance, the Mayan symbol for the earth divided into four quadrants, the path of the four winds for the Pawnee, the sacred fire (hearth and logs) of Mississippian iconography (see Hall 1996; 1997:98–100), or the Lakota medicine wheel with its four “elementals” (Goodman 1992:32)—water from the west, air from the north, fire from the east, and earth in the south. A counterpart of the four castellations on Minotts and Maples Mills wares could be the castellations on Iroquois vessels that represented the fecundity of maize and its spirit protectors such as the mythical “cornhusk people,” who were associated with “prodigious food crops” (Fenton cited in Wonderly 2005:83).

Positioning of the chevron motifs with regard to rim peaks is inconsistent on early Burris ware rims but shifted to be synchronized with the peaks (i.e., directly below) on

Figure 18. Minotts Cord Impressed rim (13JH42) with squared orifice and alternating chevron motifs (OSA collections, Iowa City).


late Burris rims and with the castellations or corners on Minotts and Maples Mills wares (Figures 5b, 17, 18, 19 and 20). Benn (1995) interpreted corded chevron decorations and incised chevrons on Developmental Oneota potteries (e.g., Perrot Punctate, Mid-way Incised; see Link 1995) to be depictions of the breast and/or wings of the northern Thunderer/Thunderbird (Figure 21), a ubiquitous mythical being and iconographic image associated with late prehistoric tribes throughout the UMR basin (e.g., Berres 1998:182–190; Boszhardt 2003; Hall 1997; Lothson 1976; Stanley 1993). The attribu-tion of the chevron motif as a Thunderbird is supported by more realistic depictions on castellated Maples Mills vessels that have bird motifs modeled in nested cord impres-sions and mounted on panels that alternate with corded castellation motifs (Sampson 1988:172–173). Less realistic depictions of Thunderer attributes (or a metonym for the Thunderer’s tail, wings or breast; see; Benn 1989; Berres 1998:187; Hall 1991:29; Link 1995:20; Whiteford 1977) are expressed in endless varieties of nested chevrons, diamonds, panels of oblique lines, double-line triangles, zigzag motifs, and alternating (up and down) chevrons that are ubiquitous in late and terminal Late Woodland pot-tery wares of the High Rim horizon across the entire Prairie Peninsula: e.g., Madison ware and some Hartley Fort potteries on the northeastern edge of the prairies (e.g., Tiffany 1982a), Burris ware in the east-central prairies (Benn and Green 2000), Minotts ware in the east and central prairies (e.g., Osborn et al. 1978; Benn and Green 2000), Loseke ware in the western prairies and eastern plains (Benn 1990), Great Oasis wares (Figure 20) in the western prairies and eastern plains (Lensink and Tiffany 2005), and Lake Benton Cord-Wrapped Stick (Benn 1990:Fig. 6.11) and Cambria pottery wares (Knudson 1967) in the southwestern prairies of Minnesota (Figure 1). Less obvious is the prevalence of quartered partitioning of these Thunderer motifs, but clear examples of quadrants can be viewed on the largest rim sections of peaked rim Burris CFI (Fig-ure 5b), castellated Minotts CI (Figure 19), castellated Maples Mills CI (Figure 17), castellated Saylor Cord-Impressed [(Osborn et al. 1978 (1989:Fig. 8)], and Great Oasis Forman ware with handles (Figure 22). Partitioning in Late Woodland and Great Oasis rim designs without handles, lugs, or squaring is more difficult to visualize even with large rim sections3, but pendant chevrons and nested/blank “box” motifs (Lensink and Tiffany 2005:Figs. 4.6, 4.7) viewed by this writer occur on Great Oasis High rims in base numbers of 4, 5, 6, and 7 or multiples thereof (e.g., 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, 18; Figure 20).

Designs with alternating motifs and castellations or handles merge into a symmetri-cal pattern dividing vessels into halves, quadrants, and sometimes six segments, with multiples of these basic divisions perhaps being attenuated expressions of mythological constructs (i.e., metonyms). This framework is an unmistakable representation of the earth and sky divisions within the quartered circle—the oldest, most common theme in Native American mythology (Hall 1996, 1997:98–99) and basic iconographic themes in late prehistoric Native arts (e.g., Emerson 1995; Hudson 1976; Knight 1986; Pauketat and Emerson 1991:929). Regarding the whole vessel, the orifice becomes the “center” or “navel,” the source of all mammalian conception (Hall 1997:99), while the quadrants variously represent the four directions or four winds (seasons), to which can be added


Figure 19. Minotts Cord Impressed rim (13JK63) with four castellations and associated chevron motifs (OSA collections, Iowa City).

Figure 20. Well preserved Great Oasis High Rim motifs from 13WD88: a) panels, b) chevron, c) diamonds, zigzag over horizontal lines (OSA collections, Iowa City).


Figure 21. Petroglyph expressions of the northern “Thunderer” or “Hawkman” and possibly “Red Horn”: a) after Lothson (1976); e) after Bray (1963); h) after McKusick (1969) and Stanley (1993).

Figure 22. Reconstructed Great Oasis Forman ware vessel from 13PM91with unusual trailed “hawk” motif, lugs, and opposing handles (OSA Keyes Collection, Iowa City).


the two more “directions” of the sun during solstices and equinoxes or the “above” and “below” worlds (see Hall 1996). Pauketat and Emerson (1991:932–934) extended this metaphor complex to visualize Cahokian Ramey pots as representations of “culturally modified earth” (Knight 1981:55), wherein the user reaches through symbols of the Up-perworld and Underworld cosmos around the rim to retrieve the nutritional contents of the vessel, thus validating the social ideology and mode of production of society. More broadly, Goodman (1992:18, 31) tells us that for the Lakota Sioux the pendant chevron is a two-dimensional depiction of a three-dimensional wind-generated vortex pointing down (i.e., a cone) representing “the stars and sun,” which is an effective mandala for all the powers emanating from “above.”

For Native Peoples in the upper Midwest, Thunderer spirits brought all sources of life-giving power (Walker 1983:206–235; Goodman 1992:27). Prairie horticulturalists, who raised maize on upland loess soils like the Osage Orange inhabitants and other terminal Late Woodland villagers living on sandy outwash terraces, needed periodic rains especially at mid-summer tasseling time. Thus, the essential elements of thunderer symbolism, quarterly partitioning of the world, maize horticulture, and village organi-zation—what archeologists have always seen as “Mississippian” elements—were part of the Late Woodland world view across the Prairie Peninsula by cal. A.D. 900. The florescence of this world view must have been part of a quickening of cultural change amid population growth and reorganization. Coincidently, the Late Woodland period is the timeframe that Springer and Witkowski (1982:74) and others (e.g., Rankin 1997) predicted (glottochronologically) would have been the period for differentiation of Proto-Siouan languages into Proto-Dakota, Proto-Dhegiha, and Proto-Chiwere, the languages of historic Oneota tribes.

Whence Tribalization

More than 60 Late Woodland sites have been recorded on practically every landform and bluff on both sides of the UMR valley in southeastern Iowa and western Illinois (Benn et al. 1988:152; Benn and Green 2000), and especially on natural levees and along the edges of the elevated terraces (e.g., Benn et al. 1989; Benn 2002; Benn and Lee 2002). The smallest (100–200 m2) sites, termed bivouacs or resource-procurement sites (Benn 1987), consist of very light scatters of any combination of sherds, flaking debitage, heating rocks, or a Madison projectile point. Such sites resulted from brief stays on the shores of backwater lakes and sloughs for the purpose of collecting and initially processing wild resources—an indication of territorial “rights” around base camps. Larger late Late Woodland habitations along the shores of sloughs and lakes in the same region have relatively dense, compact (<1,000 m2) debris scatters comprised of overlapping pit features, organic middens, and tools of a wide range of functional types such as were found at long-term base camps like the Cross site (Benn et al. 2001), Horseshoe (Benn et al. 1999), and other agriculture-season camps (e.g., 11He378; Benn and Lee 2002).


There is a fleshed-out model of this Late Woodland settlement pattern already available for comparison. The Bauer Branch phase in west-central Illinois (Green 1987, 1993; Green and Nolan 2000:363; Trader 2011) was described as loose clusters of dis-persed households occupying the uplands and head slopes of tributary drainages that flow into the central Illinois River and to the UMR mostly south of Warsaw, Illinois. This pattern of dispersed households and small communities filling all upland and valley niches is a familiar pattern for late Late Woodland sites throughout the UMR valley (Hall 1980; Theler and Boszhardt 2000) and seemingly to the west across Iowa (Benn and Green 2000). Many of the excavated sites of this pattern have produced at least some maize remains, although upland sites of the pre-A.D. 1000 Bauer Branch phase have not (Green 1993; Trader 2011). The pervasiveness of late Late Woodland house places indicates the upper Midwest was “packed” with band territories, borrowing the concept from Theler and Boszhardt (2000). Late Woodland “territorial packing” must have lent a competitive outlook to regional interactions that archeologists sense in the increased frequency of warfare indicators and widespread use of the bow and arrow after ca. A.D. 800 (Blitz 1988; Nassaney and Pyle 1999). Prior to ca. A.D. 950, the network of social and economic relationships between the kin groups of dispersed households and hamlets must have involved person-to-person contacts by both genders, because a) the clan-based social system connected males and females of otherwise unrelated families and b) all of the corded potteries are so similar. Yet, “Big Men” are not created from person-to-person contacts. Recall that the prevailing world view as represented in late Late Woodland pottery designs (corded on Burris and Minotts wares, fine-trailed on Great Oasis) was the Thunderer motif (Figure 21) often depicted in quartered vessel symmetries (Figures 18, 19 and 22). This was a “power above” perspective of human interactions sublimated to the spiritual forces of Nature, not the “power over” mythol-ogy that appeared with the sun motifs of the emerging Cahokian chiefdom.

By cal. A.D. 1050, significant portions of the Late Woodland population in the UMR (and central Illinois River) valleys had largely abandoned isolated houses and hamlets to concentrate in planned villages with adjacent maize gardens like Osage Or-ange, Union Bench, and Fred Edwards (the excavated sites, so far). Some of these late Late Woodland villagers became enmeshed in, or at least peripherally influenced by, the ideological trajectory of Cahokian chiefdoms during the eleventh-twelth centuries, while most populations across the Prairie Peninsula eschewed these initial chiefly pre-dations from the American Bottom. For instance, we see terminal Late Woodlanders, like people at the Horseshoe site cal. A.D. 1200, ignoring potential marriage ties and exchange relations with aggrandizer chiefs at Cahokia.

The subtext about the Cordage horizon (ca. A.D. 750–900) in the upper Midwest is the instrumental role women likely played in determining the Late Woodland mode of production (see also Berres 1998:216–218). Their most sophisticated craft, spinning cordage and twining fabrics, was the vehicle for prominently displaying cultural ideolo-gies like Thunderer and seasonal cycle motifs on the necks of pottery vessels [and twined bags (see Skinner 1921) and possibly clothing] as representations of reproductive success


for the kin group. Benn (1980, 1995) presented the case for women in Iowa directing the seasonal subsistence cycle by their gathering and gardening activities in woodland and riparian habitats (see Watson and Kennedy 1991). Women must have been responsible for the proliferation of maize in their gardens after ca. A.D. 800, a technical achieve-ment that would not have been possible if they had not had a hand in adapting this plant to the northern hemisphere (Fritz 1992:29). Consider other late Late Woodland characteristics, such as the use of expedient flake technology, the bow and arrow, and building small (less labor-intensive) mounds, and there is a clear basis arguing for a profound shift in the allocation of male and female production, from surplus-production of corporate groups during the Middle Woodland period to subsistence production by small kin-based units of the late Late Woodland period, with women carrying the bulk of the work. The purported fissioning of Late Woodland producer groups has been described by many researchers (e.g., Hall 1980; Kelly et al. 1984; McConaughy et al. 1985; Asch and Asch 1985; Benn and Rogers 1985; Green 1987:207, 322; Mark-man 1991; Trader 2011), but the role played by women in determining the vectors of economic change has not been factored. We argue in this paper that women played a pivotal role in the persistence of traditional technologies and egalitarian principles of the Late Woodland economy even as the Mississippian system of surplus production emerged to the south. Resistance to intensified maize agriculture (i.e., centralization of surplus products), the promotion of the band-level mound-building tradition, which preserved the balance of the upper (sky) and lower (earth/water) divisions of society (see Hall 1993:44; Birmingham and Rosebrough 2003), and resistance to the spread of shell-tempered pottery technology (see O’Brien et al. 1994) can be cited as examples of behaviors that protected the traditional roles of women in Woodland societies. Resis-tance to the codification of warfare, which is antithetical to the reproduction paradigm engendered by women, is another behavior for which we should seek evidence in Late Woodland contexts. Resistance to increasing social inequality is a universal paradigm of human society, or as Flannery and Marcus (2012:563) wrote about the formation of Mexican states, “each escalation of inequality required overcoming of resistance.”

Almost all discussion about panregional interactions has focused on trade networks, particularly what kinds of goods passed between Stirling phase Cahokia and its satellite communities in the central Illinois Valley and outlying populations in northwestern Iowa, southern Minnesota, and southern Wisconsin cal. A.D. 1000–1100 (Gibbon 1974; Tiffany 1991a; Kelly 1991; Henning and Toom 2003). Pitifully little material evidence exists for the movement of bulk commodities through the Cahokia trade network (see Gibbon 1974; Kelly 1991; Tiffany 1991b; Rodell 2003), although small quantities of exotic materials (e.g., copper, galena, marine shell, freshwater snail shells, Mill Creek chert) and numerous Ramey Incised pots (or motifs) were exchanged (Kelly 1991). Exotics trade is assumed to have been conducted by men to reinforce the status and inter-relationships of warrior chief lineages, although there is virtually no evidence that commodities (tribute) were shipped downriver to Cahokia as happened at the Richland Complex in western Illinois (Alt 2010).


Considerably less ink has been spilled detailing connections within an upper mid-western Late Woodland (“Woodfordian Late Woodland” in Richards 1992:400) trade network that flourished for hundreds of years (thousands of years if one looks into the Archaic periods) and established the routes for Cahokian interactions (Tiffany 1982a, 1986:245, 1991a). The late Late Woodland communication network, both pre- and postdating the Stirling phase, crossed east-west between the Missouri and Mississippi River basins, the same direction as the diffusion of pottery decorative motifs during the Cordage horizon (A.D. 700–900), and has yielded this kind of archeological evidence: e.g., Leptoxis beads and salt water shell, few shell-tempered and red-slipped vessels, and Ogalalla orthoquartizite and Nehawka chert (from Plains sources) on Great Oasis sites (Henning 1998a:97–98; Henning and Toom 2003:202–203; Henning 2005); Mill Creek pottery styles (Anderson ware) at Hartley Fort in northeastern Iowa, at Fred Edwards in Wisconsin, at Dickson Mounds in central Illinois, and sites in eastern Iowa (Logan 1976; Tiffany 1982a, 1991a, 1991b; Finney and Stoltman 1991; Dale Henning personal communication 2013); Glenwood pottery at Lake Red Rock (Iowa); and Maples Mills pottery in Mississippi Valley sites in the Three Rivers region (Benn and Green 2000). Additionally, high-quality cherts (e.g., Burlington), bison scapulae, probably meaty perishables (Tiffany 1991b), and marine shell coursed along the east-west trade routes, and artifact templates were transferred and copied locally in form and function (e.g., Henning and Toom 2003:214).

Instead of using the term “trade” for all the material that was exchanged long distance, employ instead the Native concept of gift giving. Gifts (cf. Gregory 1982) of exotic pots or pottery styles have interesting implications, because women make most potteries where there is no craft specialization (Murdock and Provost 1973; Nelson 1997:106; Rice 1991; Wright 1991), and in kin-based societies all things are “engen-dered.” Pottery vessels likely were “female,” just as all things and humans in the Native American cosmos were spiritually charged and interrelated with human society (Hall 1997; Holm et al. 2003; Miller 2008; Walker 1983). Rather than focusing on objects per se, should we not ask, what actually was moving through this interaction network and why? Is it not likely that women (as wives, potters, weavers, and hide makers) were moving along trade routes to concretize marriage alliances between influential lineages (see Collins 1993; Trader 2011:146–148)? Marriage alliances are the preeminent means for establishing lines of communication and gift exchange between distant kin groups (Levi-Strauss 1949; Gregory 1982:63–66), because women-gifts establish indebtedness for which thing-gifts cannot compensate (Gregory 1982:67). Since women made most of the potteries in prehistoric North America and pots could be considered “female” gender, are not gifts of pottery (or pottery styles) symbolic of indebtedness in the cycle of gift and wife exchange? If pottery (or pottery style) exchanges moved in both directions, this must be an indication of symmetrical relations among political peers of the Late Woodland leadership across the Prairie Peninsula. But, with quantities of the Cahokian pottery or its stylistic equivalents moving northward in the UMR valley and very little Woodland or Mill Creek pottery and their stylistic equivalents moving


southward toward Cahokia, it appears that the Cahokian leadership was more active in sending potential wives into the “hinterlands” (cf. Emerson and Lewis 1991) than the reverse. Others have argued that Cahokian leaders were pursuing resource extraction in the northern Midwest (Gibbon 1974:136; Rodell 2003:191–192) and western prairies (Tiffany 1991b), but the uneven flow of pottery (and symbolic motifs) suggests that political relationships between Cahokians and Woodlanders were asymmetrical and fragile. Only Cahokian “chiefs” would have gained status from cultivating such distant trade relations (sensu Flannery and Marcus 2012:553). This may be why Cahokian-UMR Woodland trade relationships were spotty and lasted less than a century, perhaps only a generation or two (see Boszhardt et al. 2012:88).

Political contacts, either through gift exchange or marriage alliances, tend to occur between population concentrations marked by the “village” settlement type. Candi-dates for the village site type in and around Iowa date back to the late Middle Archaic period (e.g., the Archaic Osceola phase McNeal Fan site 13MC15; Thompson 2006), the late Middle Woodland period (e.g., Millville village in southwestern Wisconsin; Freeman 1969; Stoltman 1979), and the beginning of the Late Woodland period (e.g., Weaver variant Oak Village site, 13LA582, in eastern Iowa; Benn 2012), but none of these village formations had a permanent impact on the development of regional po-litical economies. Creation of horticultural villages during the late and terminal Late Woodland periods did (see the “two climax” model in Hall 1980). Completely excavated villages in Iowa include the fortified Union Bench site and the Osage Orange village, both with a “commons.” Other examples include the post–A.D. 1000 Mill Creek villages in northwestern Iowa with thick middens, permanent rectangular houses, and some fortifications (Henning 1967; Tiffany 1982b:28–32). Mill Creek houses were arranged in rows at the Wittrock site (Alex 2000:154–155), but no Mill Creek village has been thoroughly excavated to demonstrate house spacing or the presence of a “commons.” The village settlement pattern culminated in Iowa with the Oneota tradition, but the only nearly complete excavation site is the Wever site (13LE110; Henning 1995; With-row 2004) at the confluence of the Skunk and Mississippi rivers in southeastern Iowa. This village (cal. A.D. 1300–1400) consisted of several longhouses apparently arranged in a C-shaped arc around the western side of what appears to have been a “commons” containing some human burials and post holes that might have been a large communal structure. There are numerous Oneota villages in Iowa (e.g., Howard Goodhue in the central Des Moines River valley; Gradwohl 1973:17–20) and in southwestern Wisconsin (e.g., Tremaine; O’Gorman et al. 1995) where the (long)houses and “commons” may have a pattern, but none of these have been thoroughly excavated. The “empty” ter-ritory detected in archeological regions around Developmental Oneota communities, like the Moingona phase in central Iowa and the Burlington phase in southeastern Iowa, represents a substantial shift away from the dispersed settlement pattern of the Late Woodland period in the same regions. This settlement pattern of Oneota villages clustered in localities (i.e., group continuities; Hall 1962; Henning 1998b) surrounded


by vast territories containing small seasonal sites may be viewed as a reflection of tribal hegemony (Benn 1995).

Village patterns, whether organized in halves (i.e., moieties) and/or corresponding to the cardinal directions (i.e., quartered circle; see Hall 1997:92–93, 99; 2005), are hallmarks of the Mississippian period in the eastern United States and tribal societies in general throughout the Americas. No site better represents the quartered world structure than Cahokia with its grand plaza, mound complexes, ceremonial posts, woodhenges, and residential precincts (Fowler and Krupp 1996; Hall 1996; Kelly 1996). Kelly (1990b) outlined the developmental processes starting with house clusters around a courtyard with ritual posts and four pit features in late Late Woodland and Emergent Mississippian communities, eventually leading to the village and plaza arrangement of Cahokian towns. This pattern became established around the American Bottom as leaders centralized their power (Pauketat 1994) and was subsumed to varying degrees by regional populations such as the upland Richland Complex (Alt 2002), where villagers maintained complex commodity-producing relationships with Cahokian lords (Alt 2010 ; Emerson and Pauketat 2002:110). The quartered-world format of Mississippian vil-lage organization (Hall 1996; Holley and Koepke 2003) is presumed to have developed throughout the upper Midwest after ca. A.D. 1050, although it is remarkable that so few sites, except Aztalan (Barrett 1933; Richards 1992) and perhaps the site complex at Trempealeau (Boszhardt et al. 2012), have received sufficient excavation coverage to demonstrate any combination of oriented buildings, house clusters, a plaza, and mounds to justify the designation of “Mississippian town” (Lewis et al. 1998; Edging 2007). The same must be said for the presence of shell-tempered pottery and rectangular single-post or wall-trench houses at “townsites.” The Mero sites (a.k.a. Diamond Bluff in Rodell 1997) and the Fred Edwards site (Finney 1993) in southwestern Wisconsin, the Lundy, Mills, and John Chapman sites of the Bennett and Mills phases (Emerson et al. 2007) in northwestern Illinois, the Langford tradition habitations of the middle Rock River basin (Emerson 1999), and the Spoon River culture of the middle Illinois River valley (Harn 1978; Conrad 2010) are prominent examples of traditions presumed to have been some type of Upper and Middle Mississippian “towns” due to the presence of specific house plans.4

We are not denigrating the concept of Mississippian “towns” in the upper Midwest, since they obviously exist even as we know most through tiny excavation windows. But, because the site excavations are largely incomplete and town formation unknown, and because the historical process of “Mississippianization” did not move by diffusion along trails or up rivers, it is premature to accept the hypothesis that townsite locales in the UMR valley represented “simple chiefdoms” (Emerson 1999:19) where Mississippian ideology was grafted into terminal Late Woodland cultures. Part of this paper’s focus is on the “timing” of Upper Mississippian village development in the upper Midwest, which probably dated closer to cal. A.D. 1100 when radiocarbon corrections are con-sidered (see Emerson et al. 2007:170–180). This was the period of the “Big Bang” in the American Bottom when a paramount chiefdom is purported to have risen to power


at the onset of the Lohmann phase cal. A.D. 1050–1100 (Pauketat 2002) and pushed or delegated minor chiefs northward. Maize growing and planning for the Osage Orange village at cal. A.D. 990–1025 likely predated the emigration of dissidents or emissaries from the Cahokian chiefdom, but in any case there was no shell-tempered pottery or any other “Mississippian” items to indicate Cahokian influences or its representatives had arrived at Osage Orange or anywhere else in eastern or central Iowa. There is a discoidal (“chunkey stone”; see Hudson 1976:423) from Osage Orange but no other indications of power and prestige that was the context for discoidal use during the Lohmann and Stirling phases at Cahokia (Emerson 1997:38). The “cross-shaped” single-post houses at the Cross site (13LA309) dating cal. A.D. 850–950 (Benn et al. 2001) also predate the Lohmann florescence not to mention the preceding Edelhardt phase. Trade in Leptoxis shell beads from the southeastern United States that commenced by ca. A.D. 900 in the Late Woodland Great Oasis variant in central Iowa (Henning 1991:2; 2005) also preceded the Lohmann phase. Stoltman et al. (2008:333) recently produced evidence from thin sections of red-slipped, shell-tempered pottery recovered near Trempealeau and Stoddard, Wisconsin, showing these imported vessels date as early as the Edelhardt phase (cal. A.D. 1000–1050) in the American Bottom. The Union Bench village also dates to this horizon. But while the Wisconsin data, including discoidals, imported Mill Creek chert, and shell tempering (Benden 2004:19–20), may push back by ca. 50 years the intrusion of Cahokian influences in the UMR valley, the age of such artifacts does not support the timing of agency processes by prairie peoples who established Cross, Osage Orange, and many other terminal Late Woodland habitations (e.g., Webster Village & Mounds, 11Ca44; Benn 1997). These late Late Woodlanders propagated their own world view partitioned by the four seasons, succored by maize horticulture, and overseen by Thunderer spirits.

Summary

Marshall Sahlins (1961, 1968) analyzed the essential attributes of the tribal social formation by tracing the steps of many ethnographers, who had described tribal societ-ies in the Caribbean, Amazonia, sub-Saharan Africa, interior Asia and Siberia, Pacific islands, the hinterlands of Southeast Asia, and the Americas. The tribal characteristics Sahlins isolated are more than classificatory devices; when contextualized they reach into the processes of the development and reproduction of tribal formations. Here is a brief accounting of his tribal characteristics.

• Almost all tribal societies are horticulturalists or herders with local groups independent in terms of subsistence. The Neolithic revolution enabled the “dominance” of the tribal mode of production (Sahlins 1961:324) because slash-and-burn field expansion and herding lead to competition for land (Sah-lins 1961), putting pressure on segmentary lineages to expand (Sahlins 1968).

• Segmentary kinship consists of descent groups composed of economically independent households aggregated into lineages, villages, subtribes, and


the tribe (Sahlins 1968). Economically self-sufficient local communities are composed of individual families (+2 nuclear groups), and communities are politically equal with alliances being in flux. Descent lines tend to be traced only about three generations.

• Tribal relations are dominated by kinship and affinity, with military and reli-gious societies cross-cutting clans and communities (Sahlins 1968)

• Kin groups are territorial, and clans and tribes are associated with specific domains (Sahlins 1968).

• Exchange (gifts, trade) is for honor and interpersonal/political relationships, usually not for surplus accumulation (Sahlins 1968).

• Preparations for war and interpersonal coercion suffuse tribal societies; lin-eage segments are pressured by the presence of outside competitors to pursue predatory strategies (Sahlins 1961).

How do the evidence and arguments in this paper align with Sahlins’ tribal charac-teristics? Multifamily bands exploiting communal resources and growing crops most of the year at semi-permanent residences (see Sahlins 1968:6, 21–22; Godelier 1978:80) are evidenced archeologically by established villages of terminal Late Woodland hor-ticulturalists (e.g., Hartley Fort, Fred Edwards, Osage Orange, some Great Oasis sites, Mill Creek villages) at the same time small hamlets (e.g., Horseshoe site) and individual households (e.g., 11He378; Benn and Lee 2002) filled the rest of the space in territorial niches. In Iowa, horticultural villages, hamlets, and house places ca. A.D. 1000 were widely scattered and provisioned by local resources, yet their residents maintained distant alliances, a common world view, and probably clan memberships.

Another characteristic of a tribal formation is that kinship relations “function simultaneously with economic relations, political relations, [and] ideological relations” within each community (Godelier 1978:81; emphasis original). While this characteristic is difficult to delineate with archeological evidence because it is behavioral, it is implied by the creation of communal cemeteries at Developmental Oneota villages, a village “commons” at Osage Orange, ceremonial structures at Union Bench, communal stor-age facilities (e.g., bell-shaped storage pits) at most village sites, and the uniformity of chevron iconography on all late and terminal Late Woodland potteries. Historic Oneota kin groups, e.g., the Ioway, were not connected strongly to “place” across generations; it seems likely this trend originated when the mound-building tradition waned during the terminal Late Woodland period (Benn 2009). The slash-and-burn horticultural mode of production was fully developed by the terminal Late Woodland period, and this economic pattern inspired the Oneota to expand their territorial influence to gain new members, to find tillable land, and to perpetuate access to specific natural resources. Regarding regional exchange, the late Late Woodland period witnessed the movement of fine cherts (Burlington), exotic shells (for beads), some pottery vessels, and certainly pot-tery iconography. We suspect the stimulus for gift giving was to form marriage alliances between tribal leaders. Gift exchange seems to have expanded into food commodities (e.g., seed corn, dried bison meat), personal items (e.g., pipestone, shell, copper), and


tongues, skins, and scapulae (buffalo) during the Oneota tradition (Gibbon 1995), but there never was accumulation of surplus production that supported an “elite” within late and terminal Late Woodland and Oneota societies. Little archeological evidence exists for Late Woodland warfare prior to ca. A.D. 900, although conflict is indicated by sporadic occurrences of traumatic injuries in skeletal remains (e.g., Benn et al. 1992; Chacon and Mendoza 2007), and endemic violence surely increased with the appear-ance of the Oneota tradition (Milner et al. 1991; Strezewski 2006) as it was prevalent during the Historic period (Skinner 1926).

All of the terminal Late Woodland and Developmental Oneota villages in eastern and western Iowa depended on a localized subsistence base consisting of ungulates, garden produce, and wild resources. Neither the Osage Orange village or the Union Bench community, nor Oneota villages for that matter, incorporated “elite” housing or monumental ceremonial structures. Indeed, special structures at both of these terminal Late Woodland sites showed evidence of having been communal facilities. No other Late Woodland or Oneota sites contain evidence of monumental religious structures, a clear indication that religious practice was locally organized and communal, yet symbols for revered spiritual beings (e.g., Thunderers, serpents, four winds/seasons) were widely shared across the Midwest. Theirs was a pragmatic, ethnocentric world view where universal nature symbols of “power over” (i.e., Thunderers) were employed to adopt/capture/coerce new members and to expand the hegemony of a tribal lifeway ingrained in the Oneota tradition. Only personalized power could be achieved within the Oneota tribal system (and other Siouans as well). There is no direct archeological evidence for the existence of fraternal or maternal societies in terminal Late Woodland societies, although we assume there was continuity between totemic structures of the late Late Woodland Effigy Mounds culture (Mallam 1976; Birmingham and Eisenberg 2000; Birmingham and Rosebrough 2003) and totemic clans and fraternal societies that were integral structures of historic Oneota societies (Radin 1923; Skinner 1926). Possible archeological indicators of fraternal organization include evidence like the discoidal and sweat lodges from the Osage Orange site. In sum, although the archeological evidence is porous, most of Sahlins’ tribal criteria appear to manifest in artifact or iconographic formats in terminal Late Woodland societies in Iowa, and none of his tribal criteria are denied by the evidence.

The technical inspirations for making shell-tempered pottery did not spread gradu-ally through the Late Woodland trade network in Iowa but, according to the evidence, appeared abruptly with representational (Thunderer) iconography on Oneota pots. No “transitional” forms of Late Woodland pottery types with shell tempering, like the assemblage at the Fred Edwards site (Finney 1993), have been found in central Iowa, although extremely few late Late Woodland sites have been excavated. Technical analyses of shell-tempered pottery have demonstrated that pots with shell are lighter than those with mineral tempering (Morse and Morse 1983:208–210), shell paste is easier to shape (Million 1975), vessels walls with shell are more resistant to stress cracking (Bronitsky and Hamer 1986) and catastrophic failure (O’Brien et al. 1994:288), and shell-tempered


pots probably required less fuel to adequately vitrify (O’Brien et al. 1994.:289). Least-cost theorists and evolutionists have cited these “advantages” for shell-tempered vessels and wondered why such technology spread so gradually northward from the Central Mississippi Valley (e.g., Morse and Morse 1983; O’Brien et al. 1994:287–289). Across the Prairie Peninsula of Iowa, Late Woodland women were already making very thin-walled (4–6 mm), mineral-tempered pottery with globular body forms (e.g., Burris, Madison, and Loseke wares; Benn and Green 2000), and they continued to produce Minotts, Great Oasis, and Mill Creek potteries with mineral tempers ca. A.D. 900–1200+. We doubt those potters were following a “least-cost” vessel manufacturing and use model. To reiterate, late Late Woodland women held to “traditional ways” until that lifeway was overwhelmed by the regional politics of tribalism, the demands of more intensive maize-complex horticulture, and an ideological paradigm that transferred “power-above” to “power-on-earth.”

No doubt the leadership of Late Woodland villagers ca. A.D. 1000 on the prairies had heard through the “grapevine” about powerful warrior chiefs in flourishing Mis-sissippian towns around St. Louis and in the central Illinois River valley. A sense of awe/consternation may have swept through eastern Iowa inhabitants as they witnessed canoefuls of Cahokians bedecked in feathered finery paddling northward on the Mis-sissippi River. But, we doubt that a handful of Edelhardt or Lohmann phase travelers intimidated local Woodland (proto-Oneota) tribal leaders, who were already engaged in territorial and population reallocations through marriage alliances by force of their own personalities. Subsequent alliances between Cahokians and local Upper Mississippi Woodland leaders undoubtedly charged the political landscape with more competitive relations and resulted in ethnogenesis (cf. Green 2014) of some leading to the emergence of an indigenous Oneota tribal system.

Why did late Late Woodland people resist and eventually reject the influence of Cahokian lords, and why did Oneota culture emerge in spite of the Middle Mississip-pian presence north of Cahokia? The explanation is in competing ideologies, but we as westerners can never know on what basis other peoples’ ideologies have been derived from myths because we cannot “know” their mythical/spiritual beings. In the words of Good Seat, one of James Walker’s (1980:70) Lakota informants, any spiritual thing or being is essentially unknowable (Wakan in the Lakota language). But we can use oral histories to explain mythical relationships (cf. Hall 1997). Here is an example from ethnographic and archeological sources. The Winnebago and Ioway semi-divine culture hero, Red Horn (He-Who-Wears-Human-Heads-As-Earrings; Hall 1997:148–150; Radin 1923; Salzer 1993; Skinner 1926), probably was a “thunderer,” at least he acted like one as he fought the Giants with his companions, Turtle and Storms-as-he-walks, a thunderbird (Hall 1997:148). No living Siouan speaker, e.g., the historic Lakota (Walker 1980, 1983), would ever take on (become) the persona of such a powerful spirit being, although shaman and warriors routinely enticed such spirits to assist in their endeavors on earth. Siouan speakers in general humble themselves before the powers of Nature. The “Beaded Burial” (Burial 13) with the “bird-wings” cape in Mound 72


(Fowler 1991:10–11, 1996:40) also must have been a “thunderer,” but he clearly had taken on that persona because he had power over his retainers, power enough to have them buried with him. This was the essential ideological divide between the Siouan speaking Oneota (Winnebago, Ioway, etc.) and the Cahokians: Spiritual power “above” accessible to all Siouans versus spiritual powers embodied in living persons (the divine persona) for the benefit of Cahokian political leaders.

Acknowledgments

Site data used in this paper came from excavations conducted by Bear Creek Arche-ology, Inc., whose founder and president is David G. Stanley. Data recovery excavations at the four sites were funded by the Iowa Department of Transportation, for which we thank Randy Faber and Judy McDonald for their solid support, and by the Rock Island District Army Corps of Engineers, where Ron Pulcher deserves recognition for his past support. We remember Art Hoppin, who functioned as crew chief or field supervisor on all four BCA excavation projects and made them successful. At BCA, Patricia Halvorson edited and produced the excavation reports for the four sites, and Derek Lee created all the graphics for the BCA reports and the figures in this paper. Dale Henning offered valuable comments on an earlier version of this paper, and he has generously shared unpublished facts, personal experience and opinions about related subjects with the senior author. Thanks also go to Bill Green and Jim Collins for offering helpful com-ments on the draft paper. John Cordell (Iowa Office of the State Archaeologist) assisted with pottery photographs and access to state collections. The authors of this paper are responsible for its facts, interpretations, and unintended omissions.

Endnotes

1Tiffany (1991a:187) identified Great Oasis as a “regional Late Woodland period pot-tery complex,” while Henning (1996:96) regarded Great Oasis “as part of the early Initial Middle Missouri Tradition.” Both authors see Late Woodland and Great Oasis “cultures” as having developed into Mill Creek, therefore this taxonomic issue has little significance for the purpose of this paper.2The unexcavated fence lines totaling about 240 m2 hid one-third of the “commons” area from scrutiny by excavation, but the center of the village commons was excavated. No distinct artifact scatter or prehistorically disturbed zone was found to extend into unexcavated areas.3The orifice diameter is calculated, then the length of the dominate decorative motif is measured and that number is divided into the rim circumference to determine how many times that motif is repeated around the rim. The uncontrollable variable in this calculation is the varying lengths of each of the motifs, which are free-form decorations.


4The Orendorf site of the Spoon River culture is the one thoroughly excavated Middle Mississippian townsite with mounds, arranged orientation, and a plaza in the central Illinois River valley (Conrad 2010).

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