Ritual, resources, and regional organization in the Upper Great Lakes, A.D. 1200--1600.

Abstract

This study examines the role of ceremonial monuments within tribal social and territorial organization. A model of intra-tribal integration and inter-tribal interaction and exchange, and the role of monuments in these processes, is developed. It is argued that the use and character of monuments for the processes of intra- and inter-tribal integration is sufficiently distinct to produce monuments with contrasting scales, positions, and roles in the landscape. A series of anthropological and archaeological expectations for these differing monument types is formulated. This framework is applied to the late Late Woodland/Late Prehistoric period (ca. AD 1200-1600) in Northern Michigan, the period prior to European contact. This time period was marked by dramatic economic and social changes. An increased reliance on maize agriculture by established foraging populations along the coasts of the Great Lakes resulted in the formation of territorially demarcated regional tribal systems with exclusive social boundaries and strong social identities. With these changes, communities living inland from the Great Lakes were circumscribed to the interior of the Lower Peninsula, where maize agriculture was unfeasible. I propose that inland groups developed a regional network with an intricate ritual system entailing both inter- and intra-tribal monument centers as the answer to the unique social and environmental challenges of the late Late Woodland/Late Prehistoric period. The model was tested through archeological excavations at three habitation sites and two sites with monumental constructions in the interior of the Lower Peninsula, a region that had never been systematically investigated. Data from a series of previously documented interior sites, ethnohistoric information, and a multi-criteria GIS model of macro-regional movement patterns, were also utilized. The results of this study expand understandings of tribal systems and contribute to challenges to the long-standing anthropological assumption that monuments were constructed solely by cultures that were socially complex and organized around institutionalized hierarchical leadership.