Over the hills and far away: Middle to Late Woodland archaeology and toolstone conveyance at Hyre Mound (46RD1), West Virginia (original) (raw)
Related papers
Holocene Land-Use, Settlement Patterns, and Lithic Raw Material Use in Central West Virginia
Archaeology of Eastern …, 2006
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
West Virginia Archaeologist 54(1-2):1-34., 2002
The Watson Farm Phase is a late Middle or early Late Woodland complex found in the Panhandle of West Virginia and southwestern Pennsylvania. Small stone and earth burial mounds with associated villages or hamlets characterize the phase. This paper reexamines materials recovered from the village locality at the Watson Farm site, type site for the phase, during a field school conducted in the Spring of 1971 by the University of Pittsburgh.
Geoarchaeology of a Strath Terrace in the Upper Ohio Valley, West Virginia
Soil characterization and distribution on a narrow ridge strath terrace bordering the Ohio River in the northern panhandle of West Virginia was evaluated to determine the stratigraphic context of the cultural remains of two prehistoric archaeological sites. Five soil map units were delineated in the project area based on the distribution of regolith materials and associated soil characteristics. Shale and sandstone residuum in the central crest of the ridge is covered with a laterally discontinuous mantle of Pleistocene alluvium, 0.25 to >1.2 m thick, and a continuous mantle of Late Pleistocene loess, 0.25 to 1.1 m thick. Hapludalfs formed in the loess over alluvium, or in loess over residuum, indicate moderate to long-term (e.g., 12,000 yr) pedogenesis. On steep shoulder slopes, Dystrudepts in shallow residuum with little to no loess indicate limited pedogenesis and possible early to mid-Holocene erosion. Panhandle Archaic inhabitants of Site 46Br31 (?6090-3400 yr BP) harvested freshwater mussels from the Ohio River below the ridge, and after consumption discarded the shells on the shoulder slopes at the southern end of the ridge. The resultant shell middens, largely disturbed by 20th century relic hunters, form a complex map unit of Dystrudepts and Udorthents. The distribution of soils on this ridge and the associated archaeological remains indicate that the successive occupations of prehistoric Native American inhabitants lived on the same ground surface. The resultant cultural remains were not buried or stratigraphically separated. The modern soil surface is an approximate, although eroded, remnant of the occupied ground surface. The vertical distribution of artifacts refl ects several millennia on a mature soil surface with an evolving biomantle.
Pennsylvania Archaeologist 85(1):2-38., 2015
The Early Woodland period of the northern West Virginia Panhandle and southwestern Pennsylvania is a period when pottery first appears in the region and there is some use of domesticated plants. The period encompasses at least two phases between 3000 and 1500 radiocarbon years B.P. The first has been named the Half-Moon phase. Towards the middle of the period, large burial mounds appear as the local peoples participated in their own version of "Adena," marking the beginnings of the Cresap phase. The mounds appear to be of two forms. One style is for the interment of an important individual or perhaps several individuals in a single, central tomb with accompanying funerary objects. The second type involves the burial of multiple important individuals in separate tombs with accompanying funerary objects within a possible charnel house or structure of some sort. In both cases, people of lesser status may have been buried in the mounds with no or few funerary goods, apparently so they could be near the important individual(s). Does the size of the burial mound also indicate relative status of the interred important individual(s)? These and other questions are addressed. INTRODUCTION The Early Woodland period in the northern West Virginia Panhandle and southwestern Pennsylvania is characterized by the first use of thick, grit tempered pottery in the region. It is also a period when the development of more complex societies first occurs. Burial mounds were constructed to inter high status individuals in central tombs by the latter half of the period. Some form of horticulture was practiced, as tobacco and Cucurbita pepo were cultivated, but it is unclear if subsistence crops were grown in any quantity to supplement diets that were primarily based on wild foods. The area discussed in this paper includes portions of the Pittsburgh Low Plateau and Allegheny Mountain sections of the Appalachian Plateaus physiographic province and portions of the Ohio and Monongahela drainages. The area is characterized as a plateau dissected by many smaller tributaries of these main river systems.
Reports of Investigation, 2017
The Applied Anthropology Laboratories (AAL) at Ball State University conducted a data enhancement project for archaeological resources in Newton County, Indiana for a FY2016 Historic Preservation Fund Grant (Grant #18-16FFY-04). This Historic Preservation Fund grant project investigated the archaeological resources of Newton County, Indiana with a focus on the two central townships, Beaver and Jackson, and under-represented ecological communities within Newton County based on FY2014 and FY2015 surveys. A total of 932.27 acres (377.27 hectares) of agricultural land were surveyed, which includes 5.63 acres of resurveyed area, and 110 new archaeological sites were recorded. The survey recovered 103 prehistoric artifacts and 4,063 historic artifacts from nine parcels of land within Newton County. No human remains were discovered as a result of this grant project. Cultural periods that are represented in the artifact assemblage include precontact era Middle Archaic, Middle-Late Archaic, Late Archaic, and Late Woodland components, in addition to Historic components. The average site density recorded for the project area for precontact sites was one site per 24.53 acres and for Historic sites was one site per 10.02 acres.
Paleoindian Artifacts of West Virginia
Paleoindian era archaeological materials remain significantly understudied in West Virginia. This brief provides the first summary of West Virginian Paleoindian artifacts in 50 years and reports 13 newly identified specimens. Most artifacts derive from the Ohio and Kanawha river valleys but new finds including fluted, Quad, Beaver Lake, and Dalton point types from some of the most mountainous portions of the state suggest that early groups also utilized interior river valleys and uplands.
Throughout most archeological communities, there is a strong abundance of detailed records. UWG-3182.01 is not the typical case as there are no final reports in the collection; however, the collection itself shows a strong indication of a sedentary settlement that has an 1 influx of trade and a focus on tool production. Artifacts include samples of ceramic fragments and stone tools from all over the state of Georgia from the middle to late woodland periods. Three different analyses were used to extrapolate data regarding the site's function, proximity to relevant cultures and the influx of trade. Due to the fact that that there are no relevant records for us to draw from, we hope that through the analyses and writing of this paper we will provide context regarding the importance of this site. We believe that this site was a major settlement site with influences from Hopewell and Swift Creek cultures.
RECENT WOODLAND ARCHAEOLOGY OF COASTAL NORTH CAROLINA
This chapter presents a brief retrospective of Woodland archaeology on North Carolina’s Coastal Plain conducted over the past quarter century with special attention to pottery, ceramic analysis, and future research. It begins with a survey of pottery sequences, reviews the contributions of several projects conducted since 1983, considers the implications of these findings for pottery typology, proposes a few possible solutions to some taxonomic inconsistencies, and identifies challenges and promising directions for future research. Only pottery types for which there is a reasonable amount of chronometric and geographic information are reviewed in the text. Formal type descriptions are referenced, but not provided, so readers are advised to consult original sources for those details. An abbreviated summary of all chronometric data for the Coastal Plain of North Carolina is presented in a table at the end of this chapter (Table 4-1). Much of this information was compiled in collaboration with the late Mark Mathis, NC-OSA. Subsequently I have tried to fill in the details and expand the database to include data published up to the time when this paper was compiled (winter 2009). For radiocarbon dates the contextual information was evaluated, but is included in the table only as a list of associated “target” pottery types. Associations are not always clearly established, and consequently each reader is encouraged to the consult the original contract reports to evaluate the validity of associations. In most cases, it has been possible to include the bibliographic reference numbers for technical reports on file at the NC-OSA; but for a few dates, casually referred to in texts or passed on by personal communications in the distant past, the details remain unknown. The association of pottery samples with luminescence dates obviously requires no evaluation, but the validity of the results of the dating procedure itself appear to strike some researchers as dubious, and a few reject it outright. Here too the reader is advised to consult the literature and come to their own conclusions.