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

Returning to O’Shea’s (1989) comparison, the
Pawnee were located on the plains. They planted
diverse varieties of maize in scattered fields, with
interannual storage. Fallback wild plant foods; the
coordinated, cooperative hunting of buffalo that
could be cured for storage; and social obligations for
sharing within the village were employed to minimize
or buffer the risks associated with maize farming.
The Huron, by contrast, were Eastern Woodlands
maize farmers who planted diverse crops in large
contiguous fields and utilized above ground storage
facilities. Shortfalls were buffered by exploiting wild
plants and animals, especially white-tailed deer,
anadromous fish, and exchange between Huron
villages and between the Huron and other tribes for
animal protein. Winterhalder and Goland (1997:150)
suggest that unlike the situation for the Pawnee, the
patchy soils in the Eastern Woodlands forced the
Huron to clear more area for planting and thus
increased their labor costs; this factor made field dispersion
more costly. Because large communal fields
were planted among the Huron, intravillage sharing
was not as helpful for buffering shortages, because
household harvests were all synchronized.
While Winterhalder and Goland’s thesis seems reasonable,
we disagree with their belief that soil conditions
and suitability for maize cultivation compelled
the Huron to concentrate their fields. The Huron were
in a situation in which they could utilize riverine settings
as well as uplands. The Pawnee, however, would
have been limited to only riverine areas because they
did not possess the technology to effectively utilize
prairie soils, which have an especially thick sod. Even
burning would not have made prairie soils any more
usable for the cultivation of domesticates.
Since the Huron, often referred to as a confederation,
practiced intervillage sharing and intergroup
exchange to obtain needed resources to both supplement
their diet and/or buffer perceived shortages, a
high degree of coordination was needed. Boone
(1992:317) attributes such coordinated effort to the
existence of social hierarchies that arise when population
emigration and dispersal are not logistically
viable options to offset population growth.
Based on the above discussion, some of the strategies
and tactics employed prehistorically to mitigate
perturbations associated with farming, population
growth, sedentism, and population aggregation
should be detectable in subsistence residues and
archaeological settlement patterning data (Rafferty
1994). For example, temporal and spatial variability in
storage facilities can be monitored in conjunction with
an examination of subsistence remains. The size and
spatial arrangement of settlements over time may also
reveal responses to resource selection and the subsequent
risks of those decisions. Another usable measure
for examining issues of dietary decisions, labor
organization, and population density is any spatialtemporal
variability in dwelling size. An examination
of these variables is attempted using the Late
Woodland and Late Prehistoric databases (ca. A.D.
400 to 1400) for the central Ohio Valley.
THE LATE WOODLAND DATABASE
Within central Ohio, a small number of late Late
Woodland sites have been excavated or systematically
surveyed. Within the northern Scioto drainage
(Figure 2.4), data are available from the Walter S. Cole
(Potter 1966), Ufferman (Barkes 1978), DECCO
(Barkes 1982), and the Hartley Farm and Scioto
Woods sites (Church 1992). In the central portion of
the Scioto drainage data are available from Sabre
Farms (Nass et al. 1990), Continental Construction
(Pacheco 1987), Peters Cave (Prufer and McKenzie
1966), and Harness-28 (Otto 1983). Located to the east
in the Muskingum River drainage are Philo II and
Longacre (Morton 1984, 1989), Locust (Seeman 1985),
and the Hunter 1 (Church 1991) sites, and the
Childers and Woods sites (Shott and Jefferies 1990;
1992) in West Virginia (Figure 2.4).
During the early Late Woodland period (ca. A.D.
400-700), sites were nucleated, multihousehold settlements
(1-3 ha in size) located on bluffs of major rivers
or streams, and frequently surrounded by an earthwork
or ditch feature (Church 1987; Dancey 1988).
This pattern stands in contrast to the preceding
Middle Woodland pattern of dispersed household
units (Dancey 1988, 1991, 1992). Mounds are not present
at these sites (e.g., Water Plant [Dancey et al.
1987], Zencor/Scioto Trails [Otto 1982], and
Highbanks in Franklin County, Ohio). However, during
the succeeding late Late Woodland period (ca.
A.D. 700-950/1000), the settlement pattern changed in
three ways. First, site location shifted predominantly
to river and stream terraces or floodplains. Second,
the area of a site occupied at any one time decreased
in size. Third, site types varied considerably, as evidenced
by structure and associated features (Table
2.1). For example, in the northern Scioto drainage,
sites like Walter S. Cole, Ufferman, DECCO, and
Hartley Farm vary between 0.1 and 0.4 ha in size and
are scattered along the terrace and floodplain of the
16 Church and Nass