Ohio Hopewell Ceremonial Bladelet Use at the Moorehead Circle, Fort Ancient
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Ohio Hopewell Ceremonial Bladelet Use at the Moorehead Circle, Fort Ancient THESIS Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Arts in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Gregory Logan Miller Graduate Program in Anthropology The Ohio State University 2010 Master's Examination Committee: Richard Yerkes Advisor Kristen Gremillion Robert Cook Copyright by Gregory Logan Miller 2010 Abstract In the past twenty years, lithic use-wear studies have been used to determine the function of Hopewell bladelets from the Middle Woodland period in Eastern North America. These studies have uniformly shown that bladelets were multipurpose, utilitarian tools in domestic contexts. Bladelets found in mounds and at earthworks also were used for many different tasks, but some have argued that bladelets took on special symbolic functions in these ceremonial contexts. The question of bladelet function in ceremonial contexts remains unanswered because use-wear studies of bladelets have not been extensively applied to well provenienced ceremonial assemblages. Recent excavations at the Moorehead Circle within the Fort Ancient Earthwork (33WA2) in Ohio provided a sample of 66 bladelets from within a well defined ceremonial feature. A microwear study of these bladelets found that they were used for a wide variety of tasks. Analysis indicates that the Moorehead Circle bladelets represent the same range of tasks as bladelets found in Hopewell domestic contexts. The results are compared to expectations from several theories about Hopewell bladelets. The results of this study best fit the argument that bladelets were given as gifts during aggregations at earthworks. ii Acknowledgments Special thanks to Richard Yerkes of The Ohio State University for patiently teaching me the microwear process as well as granting me access to his lab, equipment, and reference collection. Bill Pickard of the Ohio Historical Society, like a good Hopewell gift giver, was incredibly generous in providing scores of expertly crafted bladelets in order to allow me to produce an experimental reference collection. Thanks to Bob Riordan of Wright State University and Brad Lepper of the Ohio Historical society for granting me access to the materials from the Moorehead Circle. Robert Cook, Kristen Gremillion, Clark S. Larsen, and Richard Yerkes provided invaluable insights on earlier drafts of this paper that were greatly appreciated by a young writer. Lastly, thanks needs to go to Lindsey Kahle for her help with experiments as well as her loving support throughout the entire process. iii Vita 2008............................................................................B.A. Anthropology, Wright State University 2010 ...........................................................................Graduate Teaching Associate, Department of Anthropology, The Ohio State University Fields of Study Major Field: Anthropology iv Table of Contents Abstract ............................................................................................................................... ii Acknowledgments.............................................................................................................. iii Vita ..................................................................................................................................... iv Table of Contents ................................................................................................................ v List of Tables ..................................................................................................................... vi List of Figures ................................................................................................................... vii Introduction ......................................................................................................................... 1 Fort Ancient and the Moorehead Circle.............................................................................. 4 Materials ............................................................................................................................. 9 Methods............................................................................................................................. 10 Results ............................................................................................................................... 14 Discussion ......................................................................................................................... 21 The Moorehead Circle Bladelets in Context ..................................................................... 27 Conclusion ........................................................................................................................ 30 References Cited ............................................................................................................... 31 v List of Tables Table 1. Calibrated Radiocarbon dates from the Moorehead Circle, two sigma calibration ranges using the Calib 6.01 program and the IntCal09.14 curve. ....................................................7 Table 2. Definitions and descriptions of motions identified by microwear analysis. .................. 11 Table 3. Description of the evidence left by different materials on stone tools. .......................... 11 Table 4. Summary of microwear study of bladelets from the Moorehead Circle ......................... 15 Table 5. Moorehead Circle microwear summary sorted by excavation level .............................. 23 Table 6. Materials worked at the Moorehead Circle and other Ohio Hopewell sites ................... 23 Table 7. Number of tasks performed by bladelets at Hopewell sites........................................... 26 vi List of Figures Figure 1. Map of Fort Ancient (33WA2).. ...................................................................................... 4 Figure 2. Interpretation of the Structure of the Moorehead Circle based on geophysical data .................................................................................................................................................. 6 Figure 3. Photomicrographs of dry hide polishes ......................................................................... 16 Figure 4. Photomicrographs of bone/antler polishes. ................................................................... 17 Figure 5. Photomicrographs of bone/antler polishes .................................................................... 18 Figure 6. Photomicrograph of wood polishes .............................................................................. 19 Figure 7. Photomicrographs of soft plant, shell, and stone polishes ............................................. 20 vii Introduction As one of a limited number of blade core industries in prehistoric North America (Parry 1994), the use of bladelets by the Middle Woodland Hopewell culture in the eastern United States has drawn considerable research attention. A great deal of this attention focuses on the function of Hopewell bladelets (Pacheco and Pickard 1992:12- 13: Genheimer 1996:94-95). It was not until the early 1990s (Kimball 1992; Odell 1994; and Yerkes 1990, 1994) that systematic use wear studies were undertaken to explicitly determine the function of bladelets in the form of use-wear studies. Lithic use-wear studies are based on the observation, first documented by Semenov (1964), that different motions and contact materials produce distinctive wear traces on stone tools which can be recognized under magnification. Use-wear studies of Hopewell bladelets have employed two basic methods: high- power (microscopic) and low-power (macroscopic). The high-power approach, based on Semenov (1964) and modified by Keeley (1980), uses incident light microscopy, with magnifications up to 500x, to identify micropolishes and edge damage scars associated with specific motions and specific materials. Using the high-power approach, Yerkes (1990, 1994, 2009; Lepper and Yerkes 1997) argues that Ohio Hopewell bladelets were used as multipurpose tools similar to expedient retouched and unretouched flakes in many different site contexts. Using the same high power approach, Lemons and Church (1998) and Kimball (1992) reach the same conclusion by studying bladelets from Ohio, 1 North Carolina, and Tennessee. The low-power approach, developed by Odell (1979, Odell and Odell-Vereecken 1980), uses stereo-microscopy, with magnifications up to 160x, to identify edge damage patterns associated with specific motions and categories of materials. Using the low-power approach on Illinois bladelets, Odell (1994) reports that, while bladelets were used for a similar range of tasks in both domestic and ceremonial contexts, bladelets were mostly used for a restricted number of tasks in the latter context. Odell uses this information to argue that the Illinois bladelets from ceremonial sites were used in mortuary preparation activities. It does not appear that the differences in findings between the high-power and low-power approaches can be attributed to differences in method as Snyder et al. (2008) also have identified Ohio bladelets as multipurpose tools using the low-power approach. The majority of use-wear studies on bladelets focus on domestic contexts. All investigations in this regard conclude that bladelets had unspecialized functions (Kimball 1992; Lemons and Church 1998; Odell 1994; Snyder et al. 2008; Yerkes 1990). In order to determine if bladelet