Holocene Hunter-Gatherers of the Lower Ohio River Valley

By Richard Jefferies

By the Early Holocene (10,000 to 8,000 B.P.), small wandering bands of Archaic hunter-gatherers began to annually follow the same hunting trails, basing their temporary camps on seasonal conditions and the presence of food. The Pleistocene glaciers had receded by this time, making food more plentiful in some areas and living conditions less hazardous. Although these Archaic peoples have long been known from their primary activities as hunters and gatherers of wild food resources, recent evidence has been found that indicates they also began rudimentary cultivation sometime during the Middle Holocene.
Richard Jefferies—an Archaic specialist—comprehensively addresses the approximately 7,000 years of the prehistory of eastern North America, termed the Archaic Period by archaeologists. Jefferies centers his research on a 380-mile section of the Lower Ohio River Valley, an area rife with both temporary and long-term Archaic sites. He covers the duration of the Holocene and provides a compendium of knowledge of the era, including innovative research strategies and results. Presenting these data from a cultural-ecological perspective emphasizing the relationships between hunter-gatherers and the environments in which they lived, Jefferies integrates current research strategies with emerging theories that are beginning to look at culture history in creative ways

• Language: English
• Publisher: University Alabama Press
• Release date: Jun 28, 2009
• ISBN: 9780817382414

Book preview

HOLOCENE HUNTER-GATHERERS OF THE LOWER OHIO RIVER VALLEY

HOLOCENE HUNTER-GATHERERS OF THE LOWER OHIO RIVER VALLEY

RICHARD W. JEFFERIES

THE UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA PRESS

Tuscaloosa

Copyright © 2008

The University of Alabama Press

Tuscaloosa, Alabama 35487-0380

All rights reserved

Manufactured in the United States of America

Typeface: AGarmond

∞

The paper on which this book is printed meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Jefferies, Richard W.

Holocene hunter-gatherers of the lower Ohio River Valley / Richard W. Jefferies.

p.    cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-8173-1658-7 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-8173-5541-8 (paper : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-8173-8241-4 (electronic) 1. Paleo-Indians—Ohio River Valley. 2. Hunting and gathering societies—Ohio River Valley. 3. Ohio River Valley—Antiquities. 4. Excavations (Archaeology)—Ohio River Valley. 5. Land settlement—Ohio River Valley—History. 6. Landscape—Social aspects—Ohio River Valley—History. 7. Paleo-Indians—Agriculture—Ohio River Valley. 8. Paleoecology—Ohio River Valley. 9. Human ecology—Ohio River Valley—History. 10. Social archaeology—Ohio River Valley.

I. Title.

E78.O4J44 2009

977.1′01—dc22

2008050481

To Parker, Lucy, Harper,

and those who come later. . . . follow your dreams!

Contents

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgments

1. Introduction

2. Physical Landscape

3. Hunter-Gatherer Archaeological Research in the Lower Ohio Valley

4. Peopling of the Valley: The Late Pleistocene–Early Holocene Transition

5. Early Holocene Foragers

6. The Middle Holocene: Settling Into the Valley

7. The Late Holocene: Filling the Landscape

8. Hunter-Gatherer Landscapes in Space and Time

References

Index

Illustrations

1.1. The Lower Ohio Valley region

1.2. Core of the Lower Ohio Valley study area

2.1. Physiography of the Lower Ohio Valley

2.2. Photograph of the Falls of the Ohio

2.3. Map of the Falls of the Ohio by Henry McMurtrie (1819)

3.1. Important Green River sites

3.2. Plan view of Chiggerville (Oh1) excavations

3.3. Excavations at Chiggerville

3.4. Excavations at Indian Knoll

3.5. Important Falls area sites

4.1. Examples of Lower Ohio Valley Paleoindian hafted bifaces

4.2. Distribution of Paleoindian sites

4.3. Important Lower Ohio Valley Paleoindian sites

4.4. Distribution of Early and Late Paleoindian sites

5.1. Distribution of Early Archaic sites

5.2. Important Lower Ohio Valley Early Archaic sites

5.3. Examples of Lower Ohio Valley Early Archaic hafted bifaces

6.1. Important Lower Ohio Valley Middle Archaic sites

6.2. Examples of Lower Ohio Valley Middle Archaic hafted bifaces

6.3. Aerial photograph of the Black Earth site midden

6.4. 1978 excavations of Black Earth site—Area A

6.5. Artist's interpretation of a Middle or Late Archaic hunter using an atlatl

6.6. Probable Middle Archaic bannerstone/atlatl weights

6.7. Distribution of Middle Archaic sites

6.8. Lower Ohio Valley floodplain lake

6.9. Environmental setting of the Black Earth site

6.10. Black Earth site (Area A) carved and engraved bone pins

7.1. Important Lower Ohio Valley Late Archaic sites

7.2. Ground stone grooved axes, cylindrical pestle, mullers/manos, and bell-shaped pestle from the Green River region of Kentucky

7.3. Examples of Lower Ohio Valley Late Archaic hafted bifaces

7.4. Middle Green River shell beads

7.5. Probable Late Archaic bannerstones/atlatl weights from the Indian Knoll and Read sites

7.6. Bone artifacts from the Chiggerville site, Middle Green River region

7.7. Middle to Late Archaic bone pins from Indian Knoll

7.8. Distribution of Late Archaic sites

7.9. Aerial photograph of the Ward site midden

7.10. Depression-era excavations at the Ward site

7.11. Three Late Archaic stone hearths exposed during WPA excavations at the Read site

7.12. Late Holocene hunter-gatherer activities at a Kentucky rockshelter

7.13. Artist's rendering of Read site Burial 66 and associated artifacts

8.1. Distribution of Lower Ohio Valley Paleoindian and Archaic sites

Tables

3.1. Comparison of Archaic Period Chronologies for Eastern North America

5.1. Lower Ohio Valley Early Archaic Projectile Point Types

6.1. Lower Ohio Valley Middle Archaic Projectile Points Types

7.1. Lower Ohio Valley Late Archaic Projectile Point Types

Acknowledgments

Holocene Hunter-Gatherers of the Lower Ohio River Valley reflects the efforts of hundreds of people who have studied the archaeological remains of the Lower Ohio Valley's earliest inhabitants. This work has spanned almost 200 years, starting with nineteenth-century settlers who found interesting spear points and axes as they cleared their fields and built their roads, canals, and towns. It continues today through the scientific investigations of dozens of highly trained professional and interested avocational archaeologists. I discuss the deeds and accomplishments of many of these people in the following chapters; however, the contributions of many others are not documented and need to be publicly acknowledged. This book is dedicated to all those who have contributed to this effort. Many colleagues, students, and friends have directly contributed to this book. Foremost among these are Kenneth E. Sassaman (University of Florida) and Marvin T. Smith (Valdosta State University) who provided valuable comments and suggestions in their reviews of my manuscript for the University of Alabama Press. Brian M. Butler (Southern Illinois University Carbondale), C. Russell Stafford (Indiana State University), William H. Marquardt (University of Florida), and Christopher R. Moore (University of Kentucky) provided additional comments and recommendations at various times during the editing process. I greatly appreciate the time and effort they spent wading through the lengthy manuscript.

Dick Gilbreath, Jeff Levy, Eric Truesdell, and Jacob Wasilkowski (University of Kentucky Department of Geography) prepared many of the maps. I greatly appreciate their extreme patience and professionalism. Sheldon R. Burdin (University of Kentucky) and Christopher R. Moore provided additional assistance with the graphics. Scott Hutson (University of Kentucky) greatly assisted in the production of the photographs. George M. Crothers (Kentucky Office of State Archaeology), Michael Wiant (Illinois State Museum), and Rick Jones (Indiana Department of Natural Resources) provided the site location data used in many of the site distribution maps. Philip Mink (Kentucky Archaeological Survey) compiled the site location data and created the databases used to make many of the maps. George M. Crothers, Donna Butler (Southern Illinois University Carbondale), and David Pollack (Kentucky Heritage Council) assisted in getting permission to use many of the figures. Frank R. Ettensohn, Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Kentucky, provided valuable assistance in the writing of the section dealing with the geology of the Lower Ohio Valley. I deeply appreciate Mr. Rex Robinson giving me permission to use his artwork for the book cover and for figure 7.12. Special thanks go to the Dean's Office, College of Arts and Sciences, University of Kentucky for providing the funds to pay for producing the maps.

Some of the contents of this book incorporate and expand on earlier discussions of the Kentucky Archaic and Lower Ohio Valley hunter-gatherers published by the Kentucky Heritage Council (Jefferies 1990a), the University Press of Kentucky (Jefferies 1996a), and the State University of New York Press (Jefferies 2008).

Finally, without the support and encouragement of my family, I never would have completed this book. I am particularly indebted to my wife, Zanne, who kept me going when things got discouraging, and my grandchildren, Parker, Lucy, and Harper, who were constant sources of inspiration. My strong interests in the past stem from lengthy discussions about history and family genealogy with my parents, William and Virginia Jefferies, and in-laws, Woodrow and Mary Parker.

1

Introduction

The Ohio River, one of the longest rivers in North America, extends nearly 1,600 km from the confluence of the Monongahela and Allegheny rivers at Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to the Mississippi River at Cairo, Illinois. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the Ohio River served as an important transportation and communication route for pioneers and settlers seeking access to the interior part of eastern North America. Once they cleared the land and built their towns, Ohio Valley farmers and merchants shipped their crops and goods down the Ohio to markets in St. Louis, Memphis, New Orleans, and beyond. In the mid-nineteenth century, the Ohio River divided the warring Confederate states to the south and the Union states to the north. Even today, the Ohio River serves as a cultural boundary between distinctively different Southeastern and Midwestern ways of life.

Clearly, the Ohio River has played important roles in the historical development of the United States, serving as both a corridor through which people, goods, and information moved and as a border or boundary dividing distinct regional cultures. Given the social, economic, and political significance of the Ohio River in the history of the United States, it should not be surprising that it maintained just as prominent a role in the lives of the valley's prehistoric Native Americans.

Based on more than 100 years of archaeological research, we now know that the ancestors of modern Native Americans lived in the Ohio River Valley for at least 12,000 years prior to the arrival of Euroamerican settlers in the mid-eighteenth century. This book focuses on the earliest Native American inhabitants of the valley—those groups that practiced what anthropologists call a hunter-gatherer way of life. Very simply, the valley's earliest people subsisted by exploiting the naturally available plants and animals that once lived in and on the rivers, floodplains, and uplands of what is now the Ohio Valley.

In eastern North America, including the Ohio Valley, ancient Native Americans pursued this hunter-gatherer way of life for at least 9,500 years, starting more than 12,500 years ago and continuing to about 3,000 years ago, or before present (B.P.). After that time, domesticated plants, first native (goosefoot, sunflower, etc.), then tropical species (maize, beans) introduced from Mexico, became increasingly important parts of the subsistence base of Woodland (3000 to 1000 B.P.) and Mississippian (1000 to 400 B.P.) groups. Despite the increasing dietary significance of cultivated plants, however, later people continued to use and modify many aspects of hunter-gatherer technology and organization first developed by the valley's early inhabitants. In many ways, the hunting and gathering way of life never disappeared from the region—it was simply a matter of adding other subsistence strategies to the hunting and gathering core that already existed.

The Region

Along its ca. 1,600 km course to the Mississippi River, the Ohio River flows through numerous environmental and physiographic zones that once supported highly diverse plant and animal communities. Just as diverse were the hunting and gathering societies that populated this extensive and highly variable landscape, making it difficult to discuss the full range of their cultural variability. Therefore, this book focuses on one part of that vast river system—the section known as the Lower Ohio Valley.

The Lower Ohio Valley region consists of the western one-third of the Ohio River watershed, extending from the Falls of the Ohio River near Louisville to the Ohio-Mississippi River confluence (Figure 1.1). Previous archaeological research indicates that even within this portion of the valley, considerable cultural variability existed during much of the prehistoric past (Muller 1986:ix). The region's rich and diverse archaeological record provides an excellent opportunity to explore patterns of diachronic change and synchronic variability associated with the development of culturally complex hunting and gathering societies that lived in parts of the valley by about 5,000 years ago.

I selected the Falls of the Ohio River, known locally as the Falls, as the upriver or eastern boundary of my study area because, prior to the construction of nineteenth-century dams and canals, it represented the only natural impediment to peoples' movement up or down the river. In addition, the Falls appears to have marked some kind of social boundary throughout much of prehistory (Burdin 2004; Griffin 1978:551; Jefferies 1997:483), suggesting some degree of cultural difference among groups that lived up- or downriver of this prominent landscape feature. The Ohio-Mississippi River confluence, some 650 km downriver from the Falls, marks the western end of the Ohio.

The study area's northern and southern boundaries are more broadly defined, being the limits of the Ohio River watershed. However, since the watershed covers such a large part of the North American Midcontinent, I emphasize that portion within 80 to 160 km of the Ohio's main channel. Figure 1.2 shows the portion of the Lower Ohio Valley that forms the core of my research area. Most archaeological examples I use come from this region, but occasionally, I draw on research conducted farther afield.

The Lower Ohio Valley's physical landscape is highly diverse, ranging from the relatively rugged Knobs of west central Kentucky and the Shawnee Hills of southern Illinois to the low, marshy Coastal Plains near the Mississippi River (Pollack 1990:7). Not surprisingly, the plants and animals that inhabited the valley's uplands and wetlands included species native to both the southern and northern parts of eastern North America. Today, for example, cypress and pecan trees, commonly found in more southerly climates, thrive in the western part of the Ohio Valley, while species more typical of the Northeast can be found near the Falls of the Ohio.

The study area includes the lower portions of many of the Ohio River's major tributaries like the Salt, Green, Wabash, Saline, Tradewater, Cumberland, Tennessee, and Cache rivers. The network formed by these rivers linked scattered hunter-gatherer groups together, facilitating transportation, communication, and exchange at many different levels. River confluences were particularly important places within this far-reaching river system (Muller 1986:25). The rivers and the diverse habitats flanking them provided hunter-gatherers with critical plant and animal resources that they used for food and to make clothing, shelters, and tools.

The book's temporal focus extends from approximately 12,500 to 3,000 years ago, representing nearly 75 percent of the Lower Ohio Valley's documented prehistory. Regional archaeologists refer to the early part of this era as the Paleoindian period (prior to 10,000 B.P.), while the remaining millennia constitute what is called the Archaic period (10,000 to 3000 B.P.). During much of this time, the Lower Ohio Valley was home to scattered groups of hunter-gatherers that survived by hunting, fishing, and collecting the region's abundant natural resources. While these groups shared a common reliance on the region's plants and animals, over time they developed increasingly distinctive ways of coping with the changing physical and cultural landscapes on which they lived.

Many of the plants and animals the earliest hunter-gatherers encountered were substantially different from those of later times. The earliest inhabitants dealt with a physical landscape that still contained remnants of colder Pleistocene conditions. Megafauna, like mammoths, mastodons, and large bison, roamed parts of the Lower Ohio Valley when the earliest humans arrived. By that time, however, these large animals, along with many other Pleistocene mammals, were well along the road to extinction. The role humans had in their disappearance is still, however, open to question (Dillehay 2000; Grayson 1991; Grayson and Meltzer 2002). The physical landscape continued to evolve over the next 10,000 years. Gradually, as the climate warmed, Holocene plant and animal communities similar to today's replaced those of the Late Pleistocene.

For purposes of this book, I have divided the Holocene into temporal units (Early, Middle, and Late) conforming to the chronological framework used by Smith (1986) in his archaeological overview of the Southeastern United States. The beginning of the Early Holocene (12,500–8000 B.P.) is marked by the climatic moderation that followed the retreat of the Laurentide glacier; the beginning of the Middle Holocene (8000–5000 B.P.) coincides with the start of the warmer, drier Hypsithermal interval; and the start of the Late Holocene (5000 B.P. to the present) coincides with the end of the Hypsithermal (Smith 1986:6).

Along with environmental change, the increasing intensity of human activity also helped to shape the landscape's appearance and character. Like the physical environment, the cultures and traditions of the region's hunter-gatherer societies also changed over time, producing a rich and complex cultural landscape. Subsequent generations continually altered these landscapes, each modifying what earlier groups established, while at the same time adding their own touches.

The People

Current archaeological evidence suggests that prior to about 12,500 years ago, few, if any, people lived in the Lower Ohio Valley. If people were present before that time, their impacts to the landscape were so slight that, at least so far, they remain archaeologically invisible.

The first hunter-gatherers to enter the Lower Ohio Valley in significant numbers were Paleoindian groups that began to filter in at the end of the Pleistocene (ca. 12,500 B.P.). The style and distribution of their fluted projectile points suggest that these people were organized into small, highly mobile, and widely scattered groups that shared a generally similar cultural tradition based, at least in part, on the pursuit of late Pleistocene megafauna (Tankersley 1990a:91, 1996:38).

The arrival of Paleoindian groups coincided with major changes to the physical landscape associated with the end of the Pleistocene. These groups adapted to the rapidly changing landscape by altering how and where they hunted and gathered. Early Paleoindian people focused their subsistence efforts on areas of low relief and open vegetation that attracted game. They also frequented places where they could monitor game movement and collect high-quality lithic material needed to make hunting and butchering tools (Tankersley 1996:37–38). Later Paleoindian groups adjusted their subsistence strategies to the rapid extinction of megafauna by focusing on a wider variety of game and plants (Tankersley 1990a:91). In parts of the Lower Ohio Valley, this shift in landscape use is marked by the first regular occupation of upland rockshelters (Tankersley 1996:35; Walthall 1998b).

During the Early Holocene, sometime after 10,000 years ago, the Lower Ohio Valley experienced a significant population increase as small hunter-gatherer groups filled the riverine and upland landscapes (Milner 2004:28), continuing the trend started by Late Paleoindian groups. During the succeeding 7,000 years, Lower Ohio Valley hunter-gatherers followed variable cultural trajectories, resulting in a diverse cultural landscape filled with groups having similar, but regionally distinct, cultural traditions. This regional variability is reflected by the differential distribution of stylistically distinct projectile points across the North American Midcontinent (Justice 1987).

During the Middle Holocene (ca. 6000 B.P.), the archaeological records of some parts of the Lower Ohio Valley suggest that hunter-gatherers were becoming more sedentary, repeatedly occupying strategic spots on the landscape, increasing in population, and participating in more interregional interaction, collectively pointing to an overall increase in cultural complexity (Brown 1985; Marquardt 1985). In contrast, other regional hunter-gatherer societies appear to have remained relatively mobile, maintaining a less complex way of life comparable to that of the past (Sassaman 1995:181). As with modern societies, these hunter-gatherers did not live in isolation, but maintained social connections of variable intensity with other nearby and distant groups. Sometimes these relationships were cooperative; other times they were confrontational.

By the Late Holocene (ca. 3000 B.P.), these variable cultural trajectories, reflecting thousands of years of interaction between hunter-gatherers and their evolving physical and social worlds, produced a diverse cultural landscape occupied by groups of variable size and complexity. Some of these groups were even experimenting with plant cultivation and domestication, a pursuit that would eventually contribute to even more significant cultural changes (Smith 1989, 1995; Watson 1989).

The Research

The material remains of the Lower Ohio Valley's hunter-gatherer societies are well represented in the archaeological record, but the vast majority occur as surface artifact scatters having no stratigraphic integrity. Sites with intact cultural deposits are rare, mostly deeply buried beneath more recent alluvial deposits or under thick colluvial sediments at the bases of bluffs and slopes. Fortunately, important exceptions do exist (Bader and Granger 1989; Collins 1979b; Jefferies 1982b; Nance 1987; Stafford 2004).

Our present understanding of hunter-gatherer settlement in the Lower Ohio Valley suggests that people were differentially distributed across a dynamic, evolving landscape. Butler's (2009) study of Archaic site distributions in southern Illinois demonstrates some of these trends. For example, hunter-gatherer settlement in the southern Till Plain along the northern margin of the study area is marked by numerous small sites, but few large ones. Here, major rivers and streams developed in poorly drained glacial lake basins resulting in repeated flooding and very wet conditions. However, hunter-gatherer activity was more common on higher areas adjacent to the wetlands and a few rockshelters were available for short-term habitation.

Sites are much more common to the south in the Hill Country where hunter-gatherers frequently occupied ridgetops, slopes, and rockshelters; however, thick alluvial and colluvial deposits cover many valley bottom sites. Farther to the south, hunter-gatherers frequently occupied ridges in the Cache River lowlands, but cultural deposits at most sites are unstratified. Evidence of hunter-gatherer activity seldom occurs on or near the ground surface in the Mississippi River floodplain because the constantly meandering Mississippi River has destroyed or buried many of the sites that once existed (Butler 2009).

In contrast, sites are relatively common on high terraces and ridgetops near the Ohio-Mississippi River confluence. Unlike in Kentucky (Nance 1987), archaeologists have not documented any deeply stratified sites along the Illinois side of the Ohio River, probably because of the lack of extensive floodplain settings. However, hunter-gatherers occasionally occupied floodplain ridges as evidenced by the Fitzgibbons site (Robison 1986) situated on a prominent alluvial ridge (Butler 2009).

Hunter-gatherer site distributions also varied throughout other parts of the Lower Ohio Valley. The specifics of these are discussed in subsequent chapters. The point to be made here is that many different cultural and natural processes, both ancient and modern, affect our knowledge of hunter-gatherer site distributions and, therefore, hunter-gatherer societies. Understanding these processes is critical to explaining the synchronic and diachronic variability observed in these distributions.

The rich archaeological record left by nearly 10,000 years of hunter-gatherer activity has attracted archaeologists to the Lower Ohio Valley for nearly 100 years (Schwartz 1967). However, the intellectual motivation behind this interest has varied considerably. Untrained antiquarians who were primarily interested in the artifacts as antiquities and curiosities did some of the earliest work. Gradually, scholars became more interested in what those artifacts could tell them about human activities and how those activities varied temporally and spatially. The development of new field techniques made data recovery more controlled and systematic, while more rigorous laboratory procedures helped ensure that the resulting data were of the highest possible quality.

Throughout the early and mid-twentieth century, archaeological investigations, particularly those associated with the federal work relief programs, like the Works Progress Administration (WPA), yielded abundant data on the Lower Ohio Valley's hunter-gatherers (Jefferies 1988a, 1988b; Milner and Smith 1986). Collectively, this research provided the basic chronological, technological, subsistence, settlement, and social information for a fundamental understanding of the region's early culture history. In addition, many of these studies also contributed to the development and refinement of the proposed Archaic concept in eastern North American prehistory (Ritchie 1932).

More recent investigations, many conducted as part of state or federally mandated cultural resource management studies, have added to this growing database, helping to identify and clarify patterns of culture change and variability. Some projects focused on deeply stratified floodplain and/or midden-bearing sites that yielded detailed chronologies and fine-grained data on culture change (Collins 1979a; Jefferies 1982b; Marquardt and Watson 2005; Milner and Jefferies 1998; Nance 1987). Others surveyed areas or investigated sites in the uplands adjacent to the Ohio River, along tributary streams and rivers, or in interfluvial settings between the rivers. Although upland sites seldom had deeply stratified deposits like some floodplain sites, they yielded complementary information on activities that took place away from the main course of the Ohio River (Canouts et al. 1984; Driskell et al. 1984; Granger 1985; Hargrave and Butler 1994; Munson 1980a; O'Malley et al. 1980; Smith 1997). Large-scale archaeological surveys provided important insights on regional settlement strategies and how they changed over time (Jefferies et al. 2005; Stafford 1994).

The combined efforts of archaeologists working in southern Illinois, southern Indiana, and western Kentucky during the past 100 years have produced literally thousands of books, technical reports, monographs, book chapters, journal articles, and meeting papers on different aspects of Lower Ohio River valley hunters and gatherers. Some of these publications are widely accessible to researchers, scholars, and the public. Others appear in professional journals found only in university libraries or are part of the extensive archaeological gray literature. Because of funding and/or temporal constraints, the results of many projects remain unintegrated into our view of the Lower Ohio Valley's prehistoric past. The goal of Holocene Hunter-Gatherers of the Lower Ohio River Valley is to synthesize the more than 100 years of archaeological research on regional hunting and gathering societies and to provide a better understanding of their temporal, spatial, and cultural variability.

Hunter-Gatherer Landscapes

As highly mobile hunter-gatherers initially filtered into the Lower Ohio Valley at the end of the Pleistocene, they encountered a highly diverse physical environment created by millions of years of climatological, geological, hydrological, and glacial activity. The number, diversity, and distribution of plants and animals on which they depended were closely linked to the region's environmental character. As hunter-gatherers spread throughout the region, they superimposed the technological, organizational, and cosmological aspects of their cultures on the physical landscape. Over time, they gradually transformed physical spaces into meaningful places, beginning the construction of an ever-changing landscape that reflected processes of behavioral change across space and over time (Anschuetz et al. 2001:161).

In recent years, a growing number of archaeologists have adopted a landscape approach to investigate how humans interact with the environment (Ashmore and Knapp 1999; Tilley 1997). Landscapes are seen as products of interaction between culture and nature, not simply a superficial imposition of culture on nature. Each inhabiting group superimposes its own patterns of material and nonmaterial occupation, adding layers to the material remains of earlier cultural groups (Anschuetz et al. 2001:185).

According to Anschuetz et al. (2001:188), the archaeological landscape consists of a palimpsest of cultural material attributable to both cultural and natural processes that operate at different temporal and spatial scales. Therefore, the archaeological landscape represents a patterned, if somewhat convoluted, distribution of archaeological traces across space. The natural environment consists of the sum of the geological and biological elements in a specific space. The elements' spatial and temporal distributions determine the structure of the physical environment, which influences people's decision-making and behaviors that ensure their survival.

The temporal and spatial distributions of archaeological materials left by a region's inhabitants can be used to study and evaluate variation in the patterning of cultural traditions as realignments of human behavior. Such a research approach helps to identify and explain the interactive economic, social, and ideational strategies that people used to ensure their continued existence in lieu of constantly changing environmental conditions (Anschuetz et al. 2001: 187–191).

Three areas of research appear to be particularly relevant to the study of landscape archaeology—settlement ecology, ritual landscapes, and ethnic landscapes (Anschuetz et al. 2001:176). These three approaches share the view that people are more than passive recipients of change dictated from outside the cultural system. Collectively, they contribute useful, relevant insights into a society's past behavioral dynamics and patterns of change (2001:181).

When dealing with mobile hunter-gatherers, some of these concepts are more clearly reflected in the archaeological record than others. We can garner information related to the study of settlement ecology from the distribution and variation of hunter-gatherer activity loci and the material correlates of their associated behaviors. In contrast, insights into hunter-gatherer ritual and ethnic landscapes may be more difficult to discern than for more complex late prehistoric societies. For example, architectural data from Mississippian mound centers and the stylistic attributes of Mississippian pottery have the potential to provide important insights into late prehistoric ritual and ethnic landscapes (Lewis and Stout 1998). Similar indicators of hunter-gatherer ritual practices and ethnicity are much more difficult to detect in the archaeological record. Nevertheless, careful examination of various hunter-gatherer cultural characteristics, such as mortuary practices and the spatial distribution of artifact styles (e.g., bone pins, atlatl weights, shell items, etc.) may provide clues about the ritual and ethnic aspects of hunter-gatherer societies. I will return to the concept of hunter-gatherer landscapes in the final chapter of this book.

2

Physical Landscape

Introduction

The first hunter-gatherers to enter the Lower Ohio Valley encountered a world unmodified by human activity. The physical landscape consisted of a variety of environmental features that included climate, landforms, plants, animals, mineral and lithic resources, and water. At the time the first hunter-gatherers arrived, their physical world was strongly influenced by the retreating Pleistocene glacier. Over time, the climate gradually ameliorated with Holocene environmental conditions becoming more prevalent. Changes in the kind, number, and distribution of the region's natural resources created new opportunities for people to make choices about how to best respond to those changes.

Today, most people would agree that the environment did not determine the nature of these societies; however, the distribution and frequency of the region's natural resources did influence where people lived, what they did there, and how long they stayed. As hunter-gatherers spread across the Lower Ohio Valley landscape, they gradually modified their physical world, creating a cultural landscape that reflected their particular cultural preferences and beliefs. The Lower Ohio Valley's cultural landscape continued to evolve throughout the period covered by this book (and long after) as its Native American inhabitants slowly changed the physical landscape into a place that reflected their technological, social, and ideological worlds.

If we are to understand how hunter-gatherers created their cultural landscape, we need to know about the physical world in which they lived and how it varied temporally and spatially. This chapter discusses the character of the late Pleistocene and Holocene environments, drawing on information from geology, geography, paleoecology, and the historical record.

Landforms and Topography

The Ohio River flows south and southwest for nearly 1,600 km before joining the Mississippi River at Cairo, Illinois, making it the one of the longest rivers in eastern North America. Although shorter than the Mississippi River, at their confluence, the Ohio typically carries a much greater volume of water than does the Mississippi. The Ohio River system (including the Tennessee and Cumberland rivers) drains nearly 520,000 km² of eastern North America, including parts of New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, North Carolina, Ohio, West Virginia, Kentucky, Indiana, Illinois, Tennessee, Virginia, Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi (U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service 1999).

The Ohio River basin is often subdivided into three units based on its physiographic variability. The eastern portion lies within the Appalachian Plateau. The region's rugged topography is largely attributable to the erosion of thick beds of sandstone and shale. The Central Lowlands comprise the basin's middle one-third. Its flat to slightly rolling topography was created by repeated Pleistocene glaciation. Finally, the Lower Ohio River valley, comprising the western one-third of the river, is dominated by sandstone and limestone formations of the Interior Low Plateau province. A small area of the Gulf Coastal Plain province is located near the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers (U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service 1999).

For much of its course, the Lower Ohio River flows along the northern edge of the Interior Low Plateau. Bedrock geological formations, consisting of thick beds of Mississippian and Pennsylvanian limestone, sandstone, and shale, underlie the river, dipping gently to the northwest from the Appalachian highlands in the east to the coal basin of western Kentucky, Indiana, and Illinois in the west (Fenneman 1938:411–413). Much of the bedrock valley floor lies below deep deposits of alluvial and glacial clays, sands, and gravels of Holocene or Pleistocene age. Bedrock is exposed only where the river flows against the valley wall, and at the Falls of the Ohio River (Powell 1999:9).

Geological processes that spanned millions of years created the landscape of the Lower Ohio Valley. Between the Falls of the Ohio and the Mississippi River, the Ohio flows through at least four major physiographic regions containing geological formations dating from the Ordovician (ca. 490 million years ago) to the Quaternary (ca. less than one million years ago) geological periods (McGrain 1983:Figures 9 and 10) (Figure 2.1). Pleistocene glaciers and their melt waters shaped or modified many of the valley's river and stream channels. In addition, thick layers of windblown glacial silt, known as loess, cap ridgetops and hilltops throughout the western part of the region.

The Falls of the Ohio River, located at Louisville, Kentucky, was perhaps the most impressive natural feature of the Lower Ohio River (Figure 2.1). Now inundated by waters impounded by twentieth-century dam construction (Figure 2.2), the rapids that formed the Falls once extended for 3.2 km over which river elevation fell 8.0 m (Figure 2.3). Like much of the Ohio Valley topography, the Falls' origin is attributable to glacial activity. Floodwaters from the melting glaciers filled an earlier river channel with thick sand, gravel, and clay deposits, forcing the river to find a new route across the underlying limestone formations, thereby creating the rapids. The previous channel is now buried under modern-day Louisville (Indiana Geological Survey 1998; McGrain 1983: 17–21).

As the Lower Ohio River flows toward its confluence with the Mississippi River, it passes through a constantly changing landscape (Figure 2.1). The eastern portion of the Lower Ohio flows through a gently rolling region characterized by extensive outcrops of Ordovician and Silurian limestones and shales. In Kentucky, this region is known as the Outer Bluegrass and has a generally low to moderate relief. Erosion has cut numerous steep valleys, resulting in little flat land (McGrain 1983:66). Much of the western Outer Bluegrass is drained by the Salt River, which flows directly into the Ohio River.

The geological formations forming the Outer Bluegrass extend north of the Ohio River into southeastern Indiana where they are known as the Muscatatuck Regional Slope. To the west, an area of relatively little topographic relief, known as the Scottsburg Lowlands, developed on soft shales. Much of this part of southern Indiana is covered by as much as 45 m of glacial outwash deposits. The East Fork of the White River drains much of this part of southern Indiana (Hall 1989:19–29).

The western edge of the Outer Bluegrass region is marked by a 16 to 24 km wide band of uplands known as the Knobs. Hundreds of isolated, steep conical hills that are detached erosional outliers of the Mississippian Plateau to the west dot the landscape (McDowell 1986:66–67; McGrain 1983:46–48). In southern Indiana, this geologic feature is known as the Norman Uplands (Braun 1950: 136) and is demarcated by the Knobstone Escarpment. Just to the west of the Scottsburg Lowlands, the knobs rise to up to 190 m in elevation. The escarpment gradually decreases in height to the north, eventually disappearing below thick glacial deposits (Hall 1989:27).

The topography of the Mississippian Plateau region dominates much of south central Indiana and west central Kentucky. The region's Mississippian-age limestone plain is covered by thousands of sinkholes, sinking streams, springs, and caves, creating karst topography with a poorly developed surface drainage system. In Kentucky, the Muldraugh Hills separate the Mississippian Plateau region from the Knobs region (Kentucky Geological Survey 2002). Before the introduction of modern agricultural practices, portions of the Mississippian Plateau were covered by barrens, a pioneer-era term for grassland prairies. Much of the Mississippian Plateau is drained by the Green River and its tributaries (McDowell 1986:67). Considerable debate exists over whether barrens represent static intermediate habitats or relic prairies in the process of being reforested (Braun 1950:483).

In south central Indiana, the Mitchell Plain, also characterized by sinkholes and karst valleys, marks the northward extension of the Mississippian Plateau across the Ohio River. The Mitchell Plain is flanked by the Norman Uplands on the east (Hall 1989:27–28). To the west, the Chester Escarpment separates the Mitchell Plain from the Crawford Uplands, a belt of relatively rugged limestone and sandstone hills (Gray et al. 1983:175). Much of south central Indiana is drained by the East Fork of the White River. Many rivers and streams in the southernmost areas, like the Blue River, flow directly into the Ohio River (Hall 1989:27–28).

Kentucky's Western