Abstract
This research seeks to understand the economic and social interaction patterns among dispersed Piedmont Village Tradition communities in the North American Southeast, AD 1200–1600. Piedmont Village Tradition communities lived adjacent to Mississippian societies and have been categorized as a peripheral society because of this spatial relationship.
Keywords
In the archaeology of southeastern North America, research into the economic activities of post-AD 1200 non-Mississippian societies has been relatively uncommon, but it has been productive when undertaken (e.g., Cobb and Garrow Reference Cobb and Garrow 1996; Rogers Reference Rogers 1993, Reference Rogers 1995; Woodall Reference Woodall 1990, Reference Woodall 1999, Reference Woodall 2009 ).
Background
Beginning around 200 BC and extending to around AD 1200, the general Piedmont Village Tradition cultural pattern was egalitarian, semisedentary forager-farmers living in one-to-five-household communities in larger floodplains and usually aligned linearly and parallel to a river.
Methods
We focused on sites in the upper Great Bend area as a discrete unit because of Jones's ( Reference Jones, Kellett and Jones 2017) findings that this part of the valley was the primary settlement area from AD 1200 to 1600. We hypothesized the following:
Results
Figure 4 shows the combined assemblage sizes from Rogers's ( Reference Rogers 1993) and our work. Chert occurs only in significant concentrations at the Porter and T. Jones sites, which are the latest and two closest to the chert sources to the west (Woodall Reference Woodall 1999, Reference Woodall 2009 ).
Discussion
Our results combined with Woodall's ( Reference Woodall 1990) model for earlier sites suggest a consistent rhyolite gateway acquisition and distribution strategy throughout the Middle and Late Woodland periods.
Conclusion
This research constructed a model for economic and social interaction among Piedmont Village Tradition communities in the upper Yadkin River valley based on a heterogeneous distribution of nonlocal lithic materials across sites and based on patterns of ceramic stylistic similarities that fail to map onto patterns of lithic distribution.