USDI/NPS NRHP Multiple Property Documentation Form Woodland Tradition in Minnesota (Page 3) SECTION E: STATEMENT OF HISTORIC CONTEXTS The archaeological record of the Woodland tradition in the state of Minnesota spans the time period from 1000 B.C. to A.D.1750 and is presented here as a series of eleven complexes. The Woodland tradition is considered to include components that have pottery but lack intensive maize agriculture, thus distinguishing it from the Archaic tradition that precedes it and the Plains Village, Mississippian, and Oneota complexes that follow or are contemporaneous with the end of the Woodland tradition. Although the geographic boundaries of this Multiple Property Documentation Form (MPDF) correspond to those of the State of Minnesota, the boundaries of individual complexes might either encompass a single region within Minnesota or extend into adjoining regions of Iowa, Wisconsin, North and South Dakota, Manitoba, or Ontario. Several terms are used here in the sense proposed by Ahler (1993). A component is the smallest unit of taxonomic study, and “consists of the remains from a single occupation or series of physically inseparable and stylistically indistinguishable occupations at a single site” (1993:59). The term complex (1993:61) refers to: a group of components which lies within a single cultural tradition and which exhibits a common dominant stylistic trait or a common set of recurring, nondominant stylistic traits or other traits, with such traits or trait complexes being sufficiently distinctive to distinguish the complex from all other similarly defined units. By dominant traits is meant a single typological group or stylistic variant or attribute state which constitutes the majority of all such occurrences in a component….The actual temporal and spatial limits of a complex are determined by the range exhibited by member components. Ahler (1993:61–62) goes on to say that the complex is a higher-level taxonomic unit than a component or phase defined by only a small series of shared stylistic or typological attributes thought to be especially important for differentiating subunits within a tradition. Multiple culturally and ethnically distinct groups of people can be involved in a complex, but they all share a dominant style or other narrow range of material culture. Since a complex is defined without temporal or spatial characteristics, it is less desirable than other types of integrative units. The complex is considered a temporary, provisional unit linking components with dominant stylistic and typological characteristics. With additional study, the complex will be replaced by other taxonomic units in line with Willey and Phillips’ (1958) emphasis on time, space, and content. The use of the complex as a provisional taxonomic unit for Woodland archaeology in Minnesota is thought to be appropriate given the current state of knowledge. Although most if not all complexes in Minnesota can be identified based almost exclusively on ceramic types, their temporal ranges are very provisional, with few closely associated radiocarbon dates that are accepted by the broader archaeological community. Likewise, the geographic distributions of many complexes are ill-defined, with major gaps in spatial data or past problems with identifying ceramic types. Besides these spatial and temporal problems, the range of material culture that can be unequivocally associated with most of the complexes is largely unknown, due to lack of excavations or mixture of components assigned to different complexes. 1 STATEWIDE OVERVIEW This MPDF first presents general information about Minnesota’s environment and resources, the history of archaeological research in Minnesota, the precontact traditions defined for the state, and research themes applicable to all Woodland complexes. Individual complexes then are considered. 1.1 Environment and Physical Setting Landscape position and environmental setting are especially important in the interpretation of archaeological sites because they are directly related to factors that affected human occupation, such as available resources (including both plants and animals), availability of water, and communication routes and ease of travel. They also relate to site- formation processes and the potential for buried sites. USDI/NPS NRHP Multiple Property Documentation Form Woodland Tradition in Minnesota (Page 4) ECS Provinces and Archaeological Regions Minnesota’s complex, ever-changing biotic and physiographic communities (Ojakangas and Matsch 1982) have been classified and described through a number of different systems, including those based on parameters of the physical and biotic environment, such as the Ecological Classification System (ECS) prepared for Minnesota by the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (DNR), U.S. Forest Service, and University of Minnesota. Mn/Model, the archaeological predictive model of the Minnesota Department of Transportation (Mn/DOT) (see section 1.2), adopted the ECS as a regionalization scheme of systematically classified “biotic and environmental factors, including climate, geology, topography, soils, hydrology, and vegetation” for modeling archaeological site potential (Gibbon et al. 2005). In Minnesota the ECS lists four provinces, 10 sections, and 26 subsections (Minnesota DNR–Division of Forestry 1999). Archaeologists have also implemented environmental classification systems to examine the relationships between site locations and environmental variables (e.g., Gibbon et al. 2005; Johnson 1969b; Minnesota Historical Society 1981; Wilford 1941). The Minnesota State Historic Preservation Office (SHPO) uses a framework of nine archaeological regions, originally defined by Anfinson (1990), that are based on the assumption that the physical environment and the distribution of natural resources affect the distribution of precontact sites. Of prime importance in this system are the distributions of lakes, vegetation communities, and mounds. The nine archaeological regions are (1) Southwest Riverine, (2) Prairie Lake, (3) Southeast Riverine, (4) Central Lakes Deciduous, (5) Central Lakes Coniferous, (6) Red River Valley, (7) Northern Bog, (8) Border Lakes, and (9) Lake Superior Shore. Except for 1 and 8, each region is also divided into subsections (east, west, south, north, or central). The following summarizes the ECS provinces and sections and the corresponding SHPO regions. Figure 1 shows the counties in Minnesota. Figure 2 shows the ECS subsections and SHPO archaeological regions. Laurentian Mixed Forest Province This province covers central and northeastern Minnesota and extends into Ontario, Wisconsin, and Michigan, and east to New England. In Minnesota, the province includes conifer forests, mixed hardwood and conifer forests, and conifer bogs and swamps. The landscape in this province was shaped by glacial action and ranges from areas of thin glacial drift with many lakes, to hummocky or undulating areas with deep glacial drift, to large flat areas that are poorly drained and include peatlands. The climate varies from relatively warm and dry in the southwestern part of the province to cooler and moister in the northeast. This province includes five sections and fourteen subsections: Northern Superior Uplands section. In the northeast, this section coincides with the Canadian Shield, an area where glaciers removed most of the sediments, leaving bedrock covered with thin, patchy areas of coarse loamy till, outwash plains, glacial moraines, many lakes, and occasional bedrock outcrops. The rugged terrain reflects the nature of the underlying bedrock. Vegetation consists of fire-dependent forests that in precontact times included a mixed conifer- hardwood forest of red and white pine with aspen, paper birch, spruce, and balsam fir. Pollen and charcoal records indicate that the importance of fires in maintaining the native vegetation extended well into the past. Peatlands and wet forests were found as patches within the forests. Windthrows are significant sources of disturbance in this region. This section has five subsections: The Border Lakes subsection borders Ontario and includes portions of the Superior National Forest. It has over 300 lakes and portions of several rivers, including the Vermilion and the Sioux. The Laurentian Uplands subsection consists of coniferous- and deciduous-forest till plains, outwash plains, and peatlands with rolling topography. These two subsections generally correspond to SHPO region 8 (Border Lakes), distinctive for its numerous lakes in bedrock, as compared to glacial till elsewhere. Two other subsections, the Nashwauk Uplands and Toimi Uplands, fall within SHPO region 5 (Central Lakes Coniferous), which is characterized by many lakes, often deep, and river systems that include the Mississippi and St. Croix. The final ECS subsection, North Shore Highlands, follows a moraine along Lake Superior, with a lake-moderated microclimate that supported sugar-maple forests with white pine, yellow birch, and white cedar; this subsection overlaps SHPO region 9 (Lake Superior) as well as the eastern edge of region 5. Northern Minnesota and Ontario Peatlands section. This section is flat and poorly drained. About half consists of clayey deposits formed by Glacial Lake Agassiz; other areas have uplands of glacial till eroded by Glacial Lake USDI/NPS NRHP Multiple Property Documentation Form Woodland Tradition in Minnesota (Page 5) Agassiz and shoreline beach ridges that supported mesic and wet-mesic forests, including aspen-birch