A Household Approach to Reconstructing the Townsend Sites in East Tennessee, U.S.A.: Foodways and Daily Practice Within a Mississippian Settlement
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University of Tennessee, Knoxville TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange Doctoral Dissertations Graduate School 8-2017 A Household Approach to Reconstructing the Townsend Sites in East Tennessee, U.S.A.: Foodways and Daily Practice within a Mississippian Settlement Jessie Luella Johanson University of Tennessee, Knoxville, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_graddiss Part of the Archaeological Anthropology Commons Recommended Citation Johanson, Jessie Luella, "A Household Approach to Reconstructing the Townsend Sites in East Tennessee, U.S.A.: Foodways and Daily Practice within a Mississippian Settlement. " PhD diss., University of Tennessee, 2017. https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_graddiss/4630 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. It has been accepted for inclusion in Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized administrator of TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. For more information, please contact [email protected]. To the Graduate Council: I am submitting herewith a dissertation written by Jessie Luella Johanson entitled "A Household Approach to Reconstructing the Townsend Sites in East Tennessee, U.S.A.: Foodways and Daily Practice within a Mississippian Settlement." I have examined the final electronic copy of this dissertation for form and content and recommend that it be accepted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, with a major in Anthropology. Kandace D. Hollenbach, Major Professor We have read this dissertation and recommend its acceptance: David G. Anderson, Barbara J. Heath, Sally P. Horn Accepted for the Council: Dixie L. Thompson Vice Provost and Dean of the Graduate School (Original signatures are on file with official studentecor r ds.) A Household Approach to Reconstructing the Townsend Sites in East Tennessee, U.S.A.: Foodways and Daily Practice within a Mississippian Settlement A Dissertation Presented for the Doctor of Philosophy Degree The University of Tennessee, Knoxville Jessie Luella Johanson August 2017 Copyright © 2017 by Jessie Luella Johanson All rights reserved. ii DEDICATION To my husband, Erik and our daughter Lilia iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would first like to thank my advisor, Dr. Kandace Hollenbach, for her steady support and mentoring throughout the completion of my MA and PhD at the University of Tennessee. Dr. Hollenbach’s genuine passion for the disciplines of archaeology and paleoethnobotany inspired me to pursue this path. She spent countless hours across the table at the microscope with me to teach and discuss the intricacies of macrobotanical identification. She also gave me many opportunities to become involved in research projects, both in the laboratory and field, that financially supported my academic career. I thank her for her encouragement to move beyond a specialization and to become a balanced archaeologist. I am also grateful for her willingness to work with me to meet deadlines that seemed impossible at times. The other members of my doctoral committee provided guidance throughout my academic career at the University of Tennessee. Dr. David Anderson, in addition to providing immeasurable insight into Mississippian period archaeology, was always a friendly conversation away. Drs. Barbara Heath and Sally Horn provided a refreshing perspective on my research, providing comments and suggestions that greatly improved this dissertation. There are many people at the Department of Anthropology and Archaeological Research Laboratory (ARL) with the University of Tennessee who helped me along the way. The Townsend Archaeological Project was an undertaking that involved years of field and laboratory analysis. This dissertation research owes much to the previous iv work that it was built upon, especially that of the Mississippian period team, Shannon Koerner and Dr. Lynn Sullivan. I would also like to thank Mike Angst, director of the ARL, for frequently answering questions about the Townsend project and selflessly assisting me with accessing curation materials that were always on the highest shelf. I couldn’t have completed this dissertation without the dedication and infinite support of my family. My parents, Marilyn and Bob, and my mother-in-law Sandra provided countless hours of loving babysitting that allowed me to complete my work knowing that Lilia was in the best hands. My sister Sarah was an especially supportive friend and person to talk with throughout the process. I would also like to thank Jubal, Curtis, Karna, Derrick, Ella, and Emmett. Most importantly, the final years of my dissertation research I gratefully got to share with my husband, Erik, and our baby girl, Lilia, both of whom made a challenging time the happiest point of my life. Lilia, thank you for the giggles and smiles. Erik, thank you for your encouragement and advice and for being there for “all” of the moments as a partner and friend. v ABSTRACT This study examines how foodways differences between the multiple Mississippian settlements that were occupied circa 900 to 1300 CE at the Townsend sites (40BT89, 40BT90, and 40BT91) in East Tennessee, U.S.A., reflect the distinct choices people made in response to variation in the social conditions they faced in a boundary location. Located in a narrow valley cove at the foothills of the Smoky Mountains, these sites lie between two physiographic provinces, the Ridge and Valley Province to the west and the Blue Ridge Mountains Province to the east, as well as between two cultural traditions, the Hiwassee Island to the west and the Pisgah to the east. The location of the sites can be viewed as an opportunity to escape regional social pressure, or alternatively as a strategy to place a community as a point of contact between diverse natural resources and cultural groups. I contribute to the growing body of work in the Southeast that challenges the construction of Mississippian lifeways as driven by elites and large Mississippian polities. I use foodways as a lens to understand how the actions of everyday life, the performance of daily activities, reflect group decisions made in response to social and/or environmental circumstances. Using the multiple settlements, both farmsteads and villages, across the sites, I perform a household analysis to identify differences in the use and placement of features, as well as the distribution and spatial patterning of plant taxa and ceramic vessels with different temper and surface treatments. vi Variation in foodways traditions between the different settlements indicate that people responded to their social circumstances in various ways, particularly growing and processing corn in different places. At Village 1, I suggest that residents used infield instead of outfield cultivation, which is an indication of increasing social pressure in the region. Multiple lines of evidence at Village 1 also point to the occupation of this single settlement by both Hiwassee Island and Pisgah related people, which I argue is evidence of a unique instance of cultural solidarity in this highland location. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................. 1 CHAPTER 2 ARCHAEOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES ON MISSISSIPPIAN IDENTITY: WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE MISSISSIPPIAN? .................................................................. 9 2.1 Introduction ....................................................................................................................... 10 2.2 A Construction of Mississippian Identity in the Southeast: from the Traditional to New Approaches ..................................................................................................................... 12 2.2.1 The Mississippian Emergence .................................................................................. 12 2.2.2 Where Do Sites fit Within the Chiefdom Model: How to Define Complexity? 15 2.2.3 What is the source of power and inequality and how is it expressed? .............. 19 2.3 Situating Mississippian foodways at the Townsend Sites ......................................... 21 2.3.1 Agent-Oriented Archaeology and Foodways ........................................................ 22 2.3.2 The Benefits of the Household as a Comparative Lens at the Townsend Sites 24 2.4 Summary ............................................................................................................................ 28 CHAPTER 3 THE NATURAL AND CULTURAL LANDSCAPE Of TUCKALEECHEE COVE: THE TOWNSEND ARCHAEOLOGICAL SITES IN CONTEXT ............................ 30 3.1 Introduction ....................................................................................................................... 31 3.2 The Natural Landscape .................................................................................................... 32 3.2.1 Physiography .............................................................................................................. 32 3.2.2 Hydrology of the Little River ................................................................................... 34 3.2.3 Geology and Soil Morphology ................................................................................. 36 3.2.4 Climate ......................................................................................................................... 39 3.2.5 Surrounding Plant and Animal Communities