Subsistence, health and emergent inequality in late prehistoric interior Virginia.

Abstract

This dissertation focuses on the bioarchaeology of small-scale, sedentary or mostly sedentary, village societies. I examine how subsistence and health are involved in the workings of middle range societies and emergent inequality. This study also addresses a specific set of questions about the biocultural adaptations of late prehistoric Native American peoples of interior Virginia. The foundation of this study is the macroscopic skeletal analysis of several hundred individuals from four burial mounds constructed and used in the Piedmont and Ridge and Valley provinces of Virginia from approximately AD 1000 until at least the 15<super>th</super> century. Colonial documents describe the coastal Powhatan chiefdom in detail, but the Jamestown English did not travel to Virginia's interior. Recent archaeological research has substantially increased our understanding of the history of the interior Monacan peoples, but many critical issues have remained unresolved, especially those relating to human demography, subsistence economy, health, and political organization in the Late Woodland period. Large accretional earthen and earth-stone burial mounds are a defining characteristic of Late Woodland interior Virginia. These mounds were constructed and used over hundreds of years, and most originally contained the remains of more than 1000 individuals. Many different burial treatments are represented, including primary, secondary, cremation and large collective secondary burial features. Analysis included examination of dental caries and wear; periodontal disease; systemic infection; enamel hypoplasia and other skeletal indicators of growth interruption; degenerative disease processes and violent trauma. Similarities and differences in mortuary patterning at the sites are also examined. I find a pattern of broad similarity across interior Virginia, but with local variation in dietary and health patterns consistent with localized resource exploitation and subsistence preferences. The overall pattern is one of sufficient and varied dietary resources, good health, and longevity, though with possibly intermittent periods of violence. These patterns encompass hundreds of years, suggesting the stability of these small-scale, sedentary, horticultural societies from at least AD 900 through the 15th or 16th century. There are, however, significant changes through time, including increasing emphasis on collective secondary burial, improvement in health and an increase in hostility in late prehistory. I suggest that the skeletal data presented here are consistent with the presence of kin-based sedentary village societies dominated by one or more of the type of leaders we label bigmen, or aggrandizers, and I argue that the changes seen are correlated with the emergence of increasingly formalized sociopolitical inequality toward the end of the Late Woodland period.