Northeast Subsistence-Settlement Change: A.D. 700 –1300

during the early Late Woodland time period (Halsey
1976; Halsey 1981; Stothers et al. 1994) provides the
vehicle for the transmission of maize, and an impetus
for its intensification.
Just when western Lake Erie populations became
dependent on maize production is thus more a question
of perspective. We must continually ask “dependent
upon maize for what?”. If maize was a significant commodity
used in early Late Woodland political
economies, then a dependence on maize for social
reproduction may have come quite early and contributed
to the choice of local populations to commit
their labor resources nearly exclusively to maize production.
When dependence on maize production
became a matter of survival is an interesting question.
The commitment of labor to maize production conflicted
with seasonal harvesting activities, and also
required longer periods of aggregation that disrupted
mobile subsistence patterns and traditional mechanisms
of social reproduction involving contractual
trade. Social interaction seems to have been increasingly
reoriented around the schedule of maize production,
which made it the new arena for peer polity interactions.
With food production, however, came exponentially
increased labor requirements and increased
sedentism, which made settlement mobility much
more difficult. This not only strained subsistence
economies, but it also restructured interregional communication
and surplus redistribution. The feasting rituals
became more intensively localized as interregional
communication decreased. At this juncture they
ceased to be competitive, and became more a mechanism
of local solidarity.
Lacking mechanisms for regional trade interaction,
groups likely resorted to raiding in order to compensate
for crop failures and shortages. The increasing
need for defense, we argue, provided a further impetus
behind village formation and contributed to community
solidarity through the middle Late Woodland period
(A.D. 1250-1450). The outward channeling of aggression,
in addition to a regular pattern of village fission,
alleviated internal community stress caused by a host
of circumstances. In the southwestern Lake Erie region,
“no man’s lands” were established between competing
ST and WBT tradition community groups, creating distinct
settlement areas. Village fortifications were elaborated
with ditch enclosures, earthworks, and palisades.
During the Late Prehistoric period (A.D. 1450-1550),
villages fused once again, and were moved to defensively
superior hogbacks and bluff-edge peninsulas. By
the Protohistoric period in the region (A.D. 1550-1650),
feuds escalated into endemic warfare, which united
neighboring groups including the Sauk, Fox,
Mascouten, and Kickapoo into a Fire Nation confederacy
that survived in the western Lake Erie region into
recorded history.
A model of competitive feasting involving maize
provides one explanation for numerous early Late
Woodland phenomena, foremostly, the long period of
maize utilization prior to its intensification around
A.D. 1200. Considering the evidence in the region for
the long existence of communal aggregation, extraregional
exchange, and elaborate burial, the transition to
maize horticulture cannot be viewed as simply the
product of dietary needs. These phenomena alternatively
suggest a long period of relative affluence and
peer polity interaction among western Lake Erie populations,
which came to an end only after the intensification
of maize production. A reliance on maize was
the cause for resource unpredictability and stress
among Late Woodland populations, not its solution.
Rather than requiring elaborate explanation, it was
perhaps simply the overwhelming desire for control of
an exotic food delicacy that laid the foundations for the
developments of the Late Woodland period.
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Chapter 4 The Early Late Woodland in the Southwestern Lake Erie Littoral Region 93