Ceramic style, social differentiation, and resource uncertainty in the Late Prehistoric Upper Great Lakes.

Abstract

In small-scale societies, inter-group identification expedites access to alternative resources and places, while boundaries facilitate exchange among socially distant people to offset widespread, severe resource shortfalls. These risk-buffering strategies become critical when subsistence intensification and other strategies are not viable. Nested social networks that progressively encompass larger populations and places compensate for shortfalls occurring on different temporal and spatial scales. The inclusion of ecologically diverse areas provides access to areas subject to different sources of risk. Identification and differentiation that facilitate resource sharing should be expressed in and manipulated through material culture. Inter-group identification and differentiation were critical risk-buffering strategies in the Upper Great Lakes during the Juntunen phase, A.D. 1200 to 1650. Paleo-environmental and archaeological data are used to reconstruct the contexts to which Juntunen phase people adapted. Early historic data on the Ottawa and Ojibwa who inhabited the region at contact provide evidence for local, subregion and regional networks, and alliances with inter-regional populations. The latter became critical after A.D. 1400 with the increased frequency and severity of resource failures of the Little Ice Age. Expectations of ceramic style variability that track identification and differentiation are derived from a hierarchical model of style and considerations of visibility to target populations. Variation among 1097 vessels from 66 Juntunen phase sites are studied. Analysis of well-dated components permit the division of the phase into two 200-year subphases and the isolation of chronologically-sensitive variables used to date other components. Spatial analysis isolates pan-regional stylistic homogeneity at every level of the design hierarchy; clinal variation in a few low-level attributes; a west versus east stylistic division of the region; subregion stylistic markers, many of which derive from inter-regional interaction; and increased intra-regional diversity over time. Stylistic homogeneity and clinal patterning indicates the existence of a stable configuration of groups sharing a common identity. Subregion networks distinguished themselves from each other and constructed alliances across regional borders. Increased intra-regional differentiation indicates that these alliances became more important around A.D. 1400. Social identification and differentiation indicated by these patterns are best understood as responses to the environmental risk faced by Juntunen phase populations.