Emergent Tribal Formations in The American Midcontinent

Society for American Archaeology
Emergent Tribal Formations in the American Midcontinent

Author(s): Barbara Bender
Source: American Antiquity, Vol. 50, No. 1 (Jan., 1985), pp. 52-62
Published by: Society for American Archaeology
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/280633
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EMERGENT TRIBAL FORMATIONS IN THE
AMERICAN MIDCONTINENT
Barbara Bender
Archaic societies in the American midcontinent tend to be viewed as "archetypal" egalitarian, subsi
oriented, gatherer-hunters. The strong techno-environmental orientation of most recent studies makes it
understand how and why increasingly socially differentiated gatherer-hunter societies emerged during
Woodland period. In this article I attempt a social perspective on gatherer-hunters in general and thos
Archaic in particular. I suggest that alliance and exchange are universal hominid strategies and that, wh
may have ecologically or biologically adaptive features, they are primarily about social relations a
reproduction.
Gatherer-hunter reciprocity has been stressed in the literature, but the opposite side of the coin is d
debt is about inequality, however slight or well masked. The internal socialfeedbacks embedded in all
exchange that might exacerbate social differentiation, and the feedback between social demand and pr
intensification are explored. The divide between the midcontinental Archaic and Woodland begins to cr
In the late 1960s Howard Winters inveighed against the prevailing view that depicted A
gatherer-hunters as "idiot-savants capable only of changing styles of artifact production, a
sionally nicely ground piece of stone ... in general doing little beyond surviving as noble
unspoiled savages," and, instead, in his reworking of the Kentucky Indian Knoll material, e
sized Archaic social interaction, social exchange and social differentiation (Winters 1968).
theme was taken a step further by Struever and Houart in their analysis of the later Hope
interaction sphere (Struever and Houart 1972). But these studies seem to have been prematu
the Culture History points-and-pottery listings were replaced by a focus, not on social relati
on the ecological-subsistence interface. The "noble savage" became the rational, cost-consc
adaptive strategist (Reidhead 1980; Keene 1982). This mirage was conjured up by the Proc
insistence upon General Laws, which involves a quite unnecessary rejection of both specific
and of principles of social structure in favor of an assumed ecological common denominator
1982).
But Homo economicus appears, theoretically speaking, to have been amazingly maladapt
sooner proposed than exposed and deposed, via a couple of passionate auto-critiques (Jochim
Keene 1983). In the last few years exchange has re-emerged, site-catchment and apparent
group autonomy have been re-located in a larger regional and inter-regional framework (Br
Plog 1982; Braun 1984). But so far it has been a grafting operation: exchange has been ga
into the ecological fold and has become no more than another mechanism for coping with ri
1974, 1979; Braun and Plog 1982).
This article is about ecological constraints, but more importantly, about social imperative
about adaptation, but adaptation in terms of social reproduction, which is often differen
biological reproduction. It is about social strategies that may run counter to the Law of Least
strategies that are often internally contradictory and therefore open to change.
A SOCIAL PERSPECTIVE
A short digression seems apposite in order to place this "social perspective"

eralized contemporary British Marxist analyses. This both stakes a genealogy
that the approach is very different from that of the American Historical Mate
Barbara Bender, Department of Anthropology, University College, Gower Street, Lond
American Antiquity, 50(1), 1985, pp. 52-62.

Copyright ? 1985 by the Society for American Archaeology
52
Bender] TRIBAL FORMATIONS 53
Marx, it is true, dealt only marginally with Non- or Pre-Capitalist formations. He thus l
of scope for different "interpretations" of his writings in these contexts. Marvin Harris, for
concentrated on Marx's more technologically determinist writings, as did, in different w
Stalinist writers, and, in Britain, Gordon Childe (Legros 1977; Kohl 1981). In the late 19
the Stalinist embargo on the discussion of Marx's writings was lifted and his works be
published and translated, some of the French anthropologists attempted to weld Marxist t
Structuralism together. This seemed a potentially fruitful combination, except that they
lose sight of Marx's insistence on historical process, and thus offered a somewhat static, a
analysis (Kahn 1978). Moreover, in trying to achieve a Marxist anthropology, they reta
traditional anthropological methodology, using participant-observation and taking the
society as the focus of study (Kahn and Llobera 1981; Wallerstein 1976).
More recently, anthropologists and archaeologists have tried to grapple with these incon
and have also questioned and reformulated some important analytical concepts in Marx's
abandoning, for example, the dichotomy between base and superstructure (Kahn and Llob
Gledhill 1981; Rowlands 1982; Tilley 1982). Das Kapital is not the bible, Marx's every wo
sacrosanct (and anyway his later words often contradicted his earlier ones); one can be cr
additive without undermining the power of Marx's historical analysis and his ability to e
fundamental questions of societal change.
Among the essential concepts built upon in this article are the following:
1. Technology in the larger sense of the word-that is, not only implements, but also work
organization-is structured by social relations. There is no simple response to the environment:
what is extracted, the degree of productive specialization and intensification, the division of labor,
and the form of distribution and circulation are all socially mediated and are all reproduced by
symbolic and ideological means.
2. All activity involves labor; all labor is socially construed. There is labor invested in apparently
straightforward productive activity (for example, gathering and hunting), and labor invested in the
most apparently esoteric ritual, which-appearances not withstanding-has a major effect upon the
simpler activity. There is labor (two sorts!) involved in apparently straightforward biological re-
production, which, again, is not so straightforward but is embedded in multiple strategies of social
reproduction. It follows from all this that labor is not likely to be uniformly evaluated. At the very
simplest there will be social evaluationsong lines of sex or age or kin affiliation. So societies,
however incipiently, will be marked by differences in aspiration, in ability to make and meet
demands, in perceptions of the social order, all of which may create intra-societal tension.
3. Not only labor, but the products of labor are socially and thus differentially evaluated, so there
is the potential for discrete and perhaps unequal exchange relations.
4. There is no reason why social demands on production should be "reasonable," or ecologically
or technologically "adaptive." They may, or may seem to be, socially adaptive, but they may run
counter to productive capability.
5. Socio-political differentiation may be obscured or masked. The ideological "rationale," the
framework of meaning, may run counter to the socio-political configuration. Ideology and ritual
may enhance long-term stability by obscuring differences, or may exacerbate tension (Tilley 1982;
Kus 1983).
6. There is no need to assume an inevitable "drive" towards inequality. Changing relations,
exacerbated tensions, may simply result from attempts to maintain the status quo, to consolidate
socio-political or economic positions (Gledhill 1978). It must also be recognized that social actions
have unintended consequences, that there is often a lack of correspondence between intention and
material effect (Friedman 1982).
7. Given the complexity and particularity of economic, social, and ideological interaction, any
analysis must be historically contextualized. Tension, and the resolution of tension within a given
society, cannot be understood except in terms of its specific historical trajectory (Friedman 1974).
8. Moreover, the past trajectory, or present development, of a particular social configuration
cannot be viewed in isolation. The social, ideological, and economic relations that reproduce that
54 AMERICAN ANTIQUITY [Vol. 50, No. 1, 1985
configuration-particularly the relations of alliance and exchange-may extend well beyond the
individual society. Thus some element of Wallerstein's "World System" has to be incorporated in
the analysis (Adams 1977; Gledhill 1978).
These are generalized statements and no doubt they appear overly didactic. They are simply
"principles" that dictate that any study of any social configuration will have to be spatially and
temporally open-ended and will have to deal with both historical particularities and structural
uniformities. Such "principles" refer, in embryo at least, to all societies. Gatherer-hunters cannot
be treated as some curious, less social phenomenon.
THE LATE ARCHAIC OF THE AMERICAN MIDCONTINENT, 3000 to 1000 B.C.
Although my main concern within this article is to understand developments within th

Archaic of the midcontinent, the coverage will be much wider. This is partly because of the limi
of the data and the need, therefore, to make inferences based on structurally similar develop
in other parts of eastern North America, but also because the Late Archaic developments a
grounded in an earlier historical sequence and in a wider system of interaction.
Initially the action unfreezes in the third millennium B.C., in the midcontinental Late Arc
The major post-Pleistocene fluctuations are over. The macro-vegetational belts of eastern N
America are discernible: the mixed coniferous-deciduous forests of the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence
Upper Mississippi drainage. But minor climatic fluctuations, corresponding vegetational adjust-
ments, and processes of alluviation continue (Bernabo and Webb 1977). One aspect of the earlier
environmental changes is that the coverag the coverage of the Early and Middle Archaic is certainly incomplete.
The annual territories of the earlier Archaic groups (8000 to 2500 B.C.) have often been only
partially recovered (Brose comment on Stoltman 1978; Griffin 1967). Thus the evidence that begins
to show up in the Late Archaic of increasingly intensive subsistence strategies-in terms of labor
invested in durable long-term facilities, or in harvesting and processing difficult foods-may in part
simply reflect improved archaeological retrieval (see Clarke 1976 for comparable problems in the
European Mesolithic). However, it seems likely that at least some of this evidence is a genuine
reflection of an improved visibility that results from longer site occupation, more intensive strategies,
and greater investment in durable facilities.
Not only do there appear to be changes in Late Archaic subsistence strategies, but there are also
indications of changing social relations: more elaborate burial ritual, increased production of socially
valued artifacts, and far-flung material exchanges.
Theoretical Considerations
The first step, then, is to examine the relationship between intensifying technology and changin
social relations. Long before the New World was peopled, back in the Old World Middle Paleolithi
there is material evidence of increasing group- and self-identity (Leakey and Lewin 1979: Chapter
8 and 9). Such conceptualization has its roots, its being, in the long process of hominid developmen
in which social and "economic" strategies for survival are totally interlocked, whether in terms
an omnivorous diet, of some degree of food-sharing and division of labor-not necessarily along
strictly male/female lines, but according to age, reproductive cycle or varied patterns of dominance-
or of home base strategies and associated transport logistics, or longer infant dependency, and th
increased transmission of learned skills. These social and economic interactions are in effect ex-
changes, and one might reasonably suggest that what distinguishes hominid development is the
importance of the social strategies of exchange built into the adaptive repertoire. Baudrillaud put
it more poetically: ". . . eating, drinking and living are first of all things that are exchanged," and,
he continues, "exchange is symbolic, based on the fragile mechanism of reciprocity" (Baudrillaud
1975).
Exchange extends communication beyond everyday interaction to encompass a larger network,
but so long as population densities remain very low there is no possibility of discrete
each group forms the center of its own universe, and this militates against social exclu
social variation (Wobst 1976). Once population densities permit (probably, in the Old World,
sometime during the Middle Paleolithic), the potential for group- and self-identity engenders a
degree of societal closure, and a more stable network of contacts is superimposed upon somewhat
more fluid mating networks. Archaeologically, this more systematic interaction shows up as stylistic
closure, although, if a sufficiently close-grained analysis were possible, this would dissolve into a
series of stylistic sets signaling different, and not entirely coterminus, levels of interaction (Moore
1983).
This social consolidation may have subsistence pay-offs, facilitating flexibility and closer coop-
eration. It also permits more varied social configurations, and the form of alliance and exchange
can be constituted in different ways to reproduce different socio-political relations. Yengoyan, often
cited for his discussion of how aboriginal alliance aids subsistence flexibility (Gamble 1981; Godelier
1978), was equally insistent that alliance and exchange were strategies of social and ideological
reproduction: "(they) combine spatially distant groups into meaningful groups for marriage and
ceremonial functions" (Yengoyan 1979; echoed in Woodburn 1980). There is a duality in alliance
strategies, and neither the socio-political nor the economic relations are independent or determinant.
Exchange and movement of people are validated within a context of social gathering and feasting,
of exchanges of ritual, myth, and dance, all of which demand material provisioning. Such exchanges,
moreover, make demands on time, which also has to be created by increased productivity. And
since the alliance bonds are fragile and, insofar as they involve the exchange of marriage partners,
often temporarily asymmetrical, reciprocity will be strengthened by the exchange of valued items
(Berthoud and Sabelli 1979). All these socially engendered material demands run counter to a notion
of individual group autonomy and immediate consumption-to the "Domestic Mode of Production"
as outlined by Sahlins (1974:Chapters 2 and 3). And they put pressure on production.
Alliance and exchange systems also create an arena for processes of social differentiation. They
are constituted on a notion of delayed return-in people and things-and of debt, the less benign
face of reciprocity. Debts can be accumulated; debts must be repaid; repayment requires a labor
input. And debts can be institutionalized via the alliance and exchange system, thus institutionalizing
inequality. One way to do this is by controlling access to social or ritual knowledge deemed essential
for initiation into adulthood and hence into marriage and economic independence. Another way is
by controlling access to socially valued material items, also considered essential in social discourse.
"In all egalitarian economies there is a germ of redistribution and this can develop even in an area
with only one resource, if services are substitutedfor products" (Fried 1967, emphasis added), or
again: "Goods appear to give them power: in fact because they have power, or because they have
the power(s), they can monopolise them" (Servet 1981).
By such institutionalized and ideological means the conditions of production and reproduction
are indirectly controlled. Moreover, this social control may also extend to a more direct manipulation
of production, by making use of initiates' or wives' labor (Bender 1978, 1981). Different forms of
labor (wives', juniors', elders') may then be socially evaluated and may come to be associated with
differentiated spheres of production and exchange. Only on the outer edge of a given society may
the qualitative difference be diminished and goods be given an alternative value (Rowlands 1979;
Sahlins 1972; Servet 1981). The manipulation of such external relations may further underwrite
"inequality," and is seemingly a more likely reason for establishing and maintaining fragile inter-
societal exchange links than is the "distribution of unequal resources/homeostatic regulator" ex-
planation of the ecological-functionalists.
Other writers have discussed the significance of "delayed return" but have tended to concentrate
on the social effects of technologically delayed return (Meillassoux 1972 in terms of the development
of farming; Woodburn 1980 with regard to gatherer-hunter investment in long-term facilities). I
have tried to stress the importance of social delay and suggested that the resultant demands on
production might well lead to technological intensification. This is not to deny that the properties
of different technologies affect and often constrain the social form. There are undeniable feedbacks.
The Data
Returning once more to the data and re-thinking the developments of the Late Archaic-does
the above analysis help? It is perhaps best to state right away that the available data do not rea
answer the sorts of questions this perspective imposes. But at least asking the questions permit
re-evaluation of the data and clarifies possible areas of future research.
There has been a tendency to draw parallels between the Old World Upper Paleolithic/Mesolith
and the New World Paleo-Indian/Early Archaic. But the New World colonization was a far more
recent phenomenon. It may well be that the very low population densities associated with early
North American colonization necessitated a reversion to a rather different and more open allian
and mating network, and that the Paleo-Indian/Early Archaic configuration is closer to an earl
period of Old World development. The early New World colonists were certainly involved in
exchange networks: witness the wide circulation of high quality jasper, chert, and flint in the Northeast
(Goodyear 1979). But the lack of societal closure would limit the intensity of reciprocal long-term
relations. At some time during the Archaic a further degree of closure would have become practicable
in terms of population densities, and given the social and economic advantages of more stable
relations, may have been fairly rapidly adopted. This ties in with widespread evidence from eastern
North America of increased regional stylistic variation in the Middle and Late Archaic, and with
of alliance and exchange. Obviously the numerous Archaic societies of eastern North America
develop along many different trajectories but there aree broad similarities.
Thus, beginning in the fifth millenning, and escalating in the third/secon millennia, highly
prized materials circulate over very extensive areas. These include western Great Lakes native
copper and haemetite, Upper Mississippian galena, Atlantic steatite, eastern Pennsylvanian jasper,
Canadian chalcedony and black slate, New York State chert, Riverine striped slate and hornstone,
and shells from the Atlantic and Gulf coasts (Granger 1978). At one small, fourth millennium
midcontinental site alone-Koster, in southern Illinois-there copper, galena, shell, bauxite from
Arkansas, fluorspar from southern Illinois, and Dongola chert from southern Illinois, Indiana, and
Kentucky (Cook 1976).
These materials may have circulated in raw or finished form. Certainly from the fifth/fourth
millennia, labor is increasingly invested in socially valued items, sometimes made of these exotic
materials. In the Atlantic province finely ground bannerstones and birdstones appear early. In the
same area, by the third millennium, steatite gorgets and bowls, and, in the second millennium,
pipes are made. In the Maritime province and in New York State very finely ground and often very
delicate slate objects are fabricated in the third millennium, and a similar range of objects are made
from copper farther to the west. Finely incised bone pins are made in many different areas (Atlantic
province, New York State, Riverine province). More work is needed on regional and inter-regional
distributions and on the social context of production and use of these different objects.
There is some indication of differential evaluation across societal borders. Goad (1980) notes that
most of the native copper circulates within the Great Lakes-Laurentian province (a radius of
approximately 560 kilometers) and that the copper is initially used for a range of utilitarian items,
widely dispersed through the settlements and burials. Beyond this region, within a radius of about
900 kilometers from source, copper becomes something rare and highly valued and is made into
ornaments, placed only in graves. Again with the Florida Busycon shells, the producing societies
use them for gouges and celts, the receiving societies evaluate them differently, make them up into
a different range of objects and place them in different contexts (Griffin 1967). The flourishing
Kentucky Green River groups (Indian Knoll, Carlston Annis, etc.) and the even more favorably
placed Middle Mississippian and Ohio communities, may well have exploited their position on the
distant interface between the copper and shell exchange zones (Goad 1980; Marquardt and Watson
1983).
Increasingly during the Late Archaic the exotic objects were placed in graves, and certain indi-
viduals were singled out. These placements were part of a ritual elaboration that must have occurred
within a context of social gatherings and exchanges. This elaboration may have been a comm
endeavor, and the individual singled out may have achieved "status" only in death. Alternativ
the more elaborate ritual undertakings may represent a body of knowledge to which access
limited-was to some degree institutionalized and controlled-and the differentiated graves an
grave-goods may signal slight social variation played out in life as well as death. Messages fro
grave are equivocal, rich endowments take their meaning from specific social contexts, and
interpretation of the Late Archaic material is hampered by the relative dearth of settlement evid
that could provide a cross-check on social variation.
The evidence of funerary elaboration is found in many parts of eastern North America: in
midcontinent (the Titterington and Riverton of Illinois; the Indian Knoll of Kentucky), in the
Lakes-St. Lawrence area (the second millennium Old Copper culture of the western Great Lake
the Red Ochre of southern Lake Michigan, the Glacial Kame of Ohio and Michigan), and in t
Maritime (the second millennium "boneless" cemeteries of Maine) and Atlantic (Susquehanna
culture) provinces. In all these areas the graves, individual pit inhumations or more rarely cremations,
are usually grouped. Sometimes they are placed within a natural elevation, sometimes below low
artificial mounds. Thus a ritual locus has been created, a place that people return to, even if during
most of the year they move around, disperse and aggregate following the seasons and resources.
The graves often contain red ochre, and the grave-goods include objects made of non-local materials,
ritual objects, and objects made specifically for the burial context. Often they are differentially
distributed, both in terms of quantity and of specific items (Fitting and Brose 197 1). So, for example,
in the later (second millennium) Old Copper culture, copper goes out of general circulation and
instead is made up into "prestige" items that are placed only in certain graves.
In the midcontinent the changes in funerary ritual can be charted with some precision. During
the fourth millennium, in the Helton society of the Lower Illinois valley, the old and infirm are
buried with little ceremony within the settlement at Koster; while the young and middle-aged are
buried in more carefully prepared graves on the bluff-tops above the settlements (for example at
Gibson, Elizebeth, and probably Godar and Hemphill). But although more carefully prepared, neither
the burial mode nor the grave-good deposition suggest "status" differentiation (Charles and Buikstra
1983). The same lack of status is observed in the burials from Carrier Mills, Illinois, a contemporary,
Helton-equivalent site (David Braun, personal communication 1982). A greater degree of social
differentiation begins to appear within this Riverine province in the second millennium in the Late
Archaic Titterington and Riverton, and in the Kentucky Indian Knoll societies. The evidence from
Indian Knoll suggests that women get fewer and different prestige items placed in their graves. It
may also be that in this society status is associated not just with an individual but with lineages or
families, for the more elaborate grave-goods cross-cut both age and sex distinctions (Winters 1968).
The degree of social differentiation in the various Late Archaic societies should not be exaggerated.
For many of the groups it might be something comparable to the elder/junior dichotomy of many
ethnographically documented societies; social positions that are eventually achieved by most of the
men, although perhaps not so often by the women.
The social manipulation witnessed in burial ceremonial must also have been played out in life.
One glimpse of this is afforded by the huge caches of ceremonial blanks made of high quality cherts
and flints found in certain of the Old Copper and Red Ochre, and later New York Meadowood
graves. These seem to indicate that access to certain highly prized materials was controlled. The
blanks are also found widely distributed within settlements, made up into a variety of utilitarian
objects. The situation is perhaps comparable to the redistribution of obsidian in Middle Formative
Oaxaca and the Valley of Mexico, where control by certain households of intra- and inter-community
distribution has been documented (Winters and Pires-Ferreira 1976; Sanders et al. 1979:305-334).
In eastern North America the colossal numbers of blanks that are buried-sometimes in the
thousands-is perhaps a way of ensuring that their rarity value is maintained (Granger 1978).
So far the emphasis has been on the evidence of social organization. What then of subsistence?
While the settlement evidence has rarely been used to answer questions on social configuration, it
has been used to reconstruct subsistence strategies. There seems to be a general consensus in the
literature that subsistence strategies intensified in the second millennium Late Archaic. How
evidence from Koster in southern Illinois to some extent contradicts this. Already in the four
millennium a fairly prolonged seasonal occupation drew intensively upon a wide range of res
culled from a number of closely packed micro-environments, and, inter alia, utilized labor-int
resources such as shellfish and hickory nuts (Houart 1971). Indeed hickory nut and acorn utiliz
is recorded even earlier from Tennessee (House and Ballenger 1976), and Dunnell (1972) docum
an equally wide-based subsistence including acorns, fish, and mussels from Fishtrap, Kentuck
3000 B.C. If there is greater intensification in the Late Archaic it may register as the more wides
use of shellfish (particularly noticeable in Kentucky, Tennessee, and on the coastal Piedmont)
acorns, which, at least for those varieties that require leaching, are very labor intensive. Occa
finds of exotic plant species, such as gourd-like squash and true bottlegourd, are probably
significant as indicators of tenuous contacts with Mesoamerica, and the former, found alread
Koster at 5000 B.C. and at Napoleon Hollow at 4000 B.C. probably indicate use as contai
rather than as food (Chomko and Crawford 1978; Marquardt and Watson 1983). Perhaps mo
important in terms of intensification is the evidence that native seed-bearing plants, both oil
starchy varieties, began to be more widely used in the second millennium and that some of t
for example sumpweed and sunflower, were transplanted and tended (Ford 1974; Asch and
1977; Asch et al. 1979). In some instances these were important subsistence items. In the Ken
Salts and Mammoth caves, in feces dating to the first millennium B.C., they made up 50% or
of the diet. Such small-seed harvesting would certainly be labor intensive. In some areas labo
also have been invested in long-term facilities. Fish-weirs have been found at Bolyston Str
Boston, Massachussetts, and at Atherley Narrows, Ontario (Johnson and Cassavoy 1978). Th
may also have been more extensive use of storage pits.
The evidence, while not conclusive, suggests a degree of labor intensification and a move
strategies that constrain mobility. Yet population numbers remain low, and while some subsi
changes, for example the more intensive shellfish exploitation, may simply reflect increased a
ability or predictability, this is not a convincing argument for the majority of the "new" res
or strategies. The possibility, therefore, that intensification is a response to social demand
production, or to social processes that encouraged longer-term aggregation, should be conside
On the one hand, the increased ceremonialism of the Middle/Late Archaic, the social gathe
and exchanges, the ritual provisioning of the burials -all interactions essential to the reprodu
of the society-had to be fueled, directly or indirectly, by a more intensive exploitation of reso
On the other, the burial area and meeting ground were both the physical and symbolic manifesta
of the social delays on labor invested in these undertakings, delays that drew the group back
same place. Since these gatherings were also the context for ritual and social mediation by the
or ritual leaders, this mediation could be used to counteract the quarrels and tensions assoc
with larger group interactions. It was perhaps also in the interest of the elders to encoura
such gatherings. Longer or larger aggregations put more pressure on resources, but also facil
more sedentary strategies-labor inputs into facilities (fish-weirs, storage etc.) or the land (fi
transplanting etc.). These technological investments further encouraged longer-term residence
social and technological delays on labor interlocked and favored greater permanence. Settle
evidence is limited but at Koster, ca. 4000 B.C., there was a base-camp with permanent she
while in the later Riverton phase houses were more substantial, with prepared floors (Brown
With greater residential permanence, it might become easier for leaders to assert control over
to certain resources (cultivated patches, tree stands, fishing facilities, even storage facilities).
over, many of the more labor intensive strategies, such as getting in nuts, seeds, and shellfish
not technically difficult and could be undertaken by both the young and old. Increase in "hous
size to meet social demands on production might become a viable option, particularly since dec
mobility would permit a relaxation of constraints on birthspacing, and facilitate storage to o
seasonal shortage. Again, this extended household labor might be used by household leaders
augment their authority. There are clearly a series of important feedbacks in the causes and i
cations of intensifying subsistence.
CONCLUSION
In Archaic times many of these social and technological changes are embry
are vital to our understanding of the longer-term developments. To dismis
recently done, the evidence of Archaic ritual as mere "flashes of ceremoniali
less epiphenomenal is to fail to recognize the significance of this ritual as in
exchange and to ignore a possible locus for increasing social differentiation.
A system in which social position is achieved through the manipulation of s
"naturalizes" that power by associating it with the general well-being of the
ization" may both mask potential inequality and create conditions of relative
(Tilley 1982). But ritual power (the control of social knowledge) is embedded
configurations and the way in which it might be used or extended will vary
communities within eastern North America personal accumulation and power
constrained by strict notions of reciprocity. In others, there may have been
associated with an extension of what had been purely ritual authority to the c
material items or even more basic resources. A degree offriction, exacerbated by
demands on labor, might lead to group fissioning. There might thus have bee
pattern of cyclical escalation and collapse (Friedman and Rowlands 1979; Fried
is the possibility of a different historical trajectory in which inequalities deepen
forms. An attempt to follow out such a trajectory in the later Woodland Adena and Hopewell
societies of the midcontinent forms the topic of another paper (Bender 1984).
Acknowledgments. I'm very grateful to the British Academy for an award that made it possible for me to
study in eastern North America in the Spring of 1982. I would like to thank all the people who gave me
hospitality, advice, and help in Chicago at Amher, Massachusetts, and at the University of South Carolina.
The initial formulation of this paper was in r re quest from Stan Green and Marek Zvelebil to
participate in the SAA symposium Bridging the Atlantic at Minneapolis. There were good discussions the
I'd also like to thank David Braun, Nan Rothschild, and Danny Miller for putting critical pen to paper. M
the trans-Atlantic dialogue long continue!
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Emergent Tribal Formations in The American Midcontinent

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Emergent Tribal Formations in the American Midcontinent

A short digression seems apposite in order to place this "social perspective"

Barbara Bender, Department of Anthropology, University College, Gower Street, Lond

American Antiquity, 50(1), 1985, pp. 52-62.

THE LATE ARCHAIC OF THE AMERICAN MIDCONTINENT, 3000 to 1000 B.C.

Although my main concern within this article is to understand developments within th

Braun, D., and S. Plog

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