Anthony Michal Krus

The notions of “emergence” and “becoming” have become widely adopted in relational studies in archaeology, but their definition and application remain nebulous. We advocate a middle-range approach to the incorporation of these related concepts into the study of migration and pronounced cultural shifts. Our study relies on the Bayesian modeling of a significant corpus of radiocarbon dates from Mississippian sites in the Tombigbee Valley of southeastern North America. This investigation has identified the likelihood of two broad migration episodes that we hypothesize are related to cultural rephrasings of landscape and temporality.

The transformation of the Birnirk culture into the Thule culture is essential in reconstructing the emergence of modern Inuit across Alaska and the larger Bering Strait. To this end, two adjacent semi-subterranean houses of late Birnirk and early Thule affiliation, respectively, at the Rising Whale (KTZ-304) site at Cape Espenberg were recently excavated and dated by radiocarbon and tree-ring measurements. We present the Bayesian analysis of the resulting large series of dates, demonstrating the lack of contemporaneity between the two features: the Birnirk house was occupied in the late twelfth to early thirteenth centuries AD, whereas the occupation of the Thule house occurred in the second half of the thirteenth into the early fourteenth century. With the increased precision made possible by coupling dendrochronology with radiocarbon, our results place the Birnirk-Thule transition more that 200 years later than the generally accepted date of AD 1000. A transition in the second half of the thirteenth century has major implications for the timing of Thule presence along the coast of Alaska and for their migration into the Alaska interior. It aligns with a thirteenth-century migration into the western Canadian Arctic and farther east and a brief early or “initial” Thule period.

Mississippian period ceramic assemblages in the Nashville Basin region of Tennessee are traditionally viewed as being overwhelmingly shell tempered. Our petrographic analyses of 30 ceramic sherds from three Middle Cumberland sites have revealed, however, the presence of grog, or crushed potsherds, in shell-tempered pastes in over 40% of our specimens. In our study, serving vessels are often tempered with both shell and grog, with one bowl rim containing solely grog. Cooking vessels tend to be tempered with coarse shell and contain only incidental grog. Grog tempering alongside shell has been only occasionally noted elsewhere in the regional literature, but the lack of its widespread recognition may be due to the difficulty of identification without the assistance of a petrographic microscope. It is not clear whether the addition of small grog particles to a shell-tempered paste offers any immediate functional advantages. Other studies suggest that grog temper could improve the workability of the clay, may reduce thermal shock, and may enhance a vessel's resistance to mechanical stress. The strong correlation of fine grog and shell temper with bowls, however, may constitute a low-visibility horizon marker for an extensive swath of the Late Mississippian culture area.

Archaeological evidence indicates that Birnirk peoples (AD 650 – 1300) are the proposed genetic ancestors of the Thule Inuit (AD 950 – 1400) and are potentially an intermediary population between the Thule Inuit and earlier Old Bering Sea people (AD 1 – 1000). We sequenced the first hypervariable region of the mitochondrial DNA of 22 clearly associated Birnirk individuals from the Piġniq (Birnirk), Kugok, Kugusugaruk, and Nunavak sites on the North Slope of Alaska. Haplotypes A2a, A2a1, A2a3, A2b1, and D4b1a2a1a were identified in this population, demonstrating an expansion of Birnirk maternal genetic diversity. Maternal lineages from these individuals were evaluated with other past and contemporary Inuit populations from the Chukotka Peninsula to eastern Greenland. Our findings confirm Birnirk Inuit as probable maternal ancestors to Thule Inuit and may be among the first peoples possessing these lineages to have moved into the western North American Arctic from the Bering Strait region.

The Middle Mississippian component at Aztalan was a mixed, Late Woodland / Mississippian occupation sited within a heavily fortified habitation and mound center that is located on a tributary of the Rock River in Wisconsin. It represents the northernmost large Cahokian-related village recorded. The Oneota Lake Koshkonong Locality of the Rock River drainage is located approximately 20 km south of Aztalan, and it consists of a 25 km² area along the northwest shore with a small cluster of habitation settlements. Sixty-eight radiocarbon measurements have been obtained from Aztalan, and 52 from Oneota settlements in the Lake Koshkonong Locality. We discuss how to best interpret this dataset, and we use Bayesian chronological modeling to analyze these dates. The results suggest that (1) Aztalan's Late Woodland (Kekoskee phase) occupation began in the AD 900s or early AD 1000s, (2) Aztalan's Mississippian occupation ceased in the AD 1200s, (3) Oneota occupations at Lake Koshkonong began after AD 1050 and were established by the AD 1200s, and (4) Oneota occupations at Lake Koshkonong continued after Aztalan's Mississippian abandonment until at least the late AD 1300s. Additionally, the results demonstrate that Aztalan was fortified with a palisade with bastions for much of the Mississippian occupation, suggesting a contested presence in a multiethnic landscape.

This study provides an assessment of the temporal changes in ΔR, which is the local deviation from the global surface water marine reservoir effect (MRE), in the Point Barrow area of the Alaskan Arctic, a coastal archaeological area that has experienced severe erosion accelerated by global warming. A total of 26 samples were submitted for radiocarbon (¹⁴C) dating from eight secure Thule (AD 1000–1750) archaeological contexts, and specifically from archaeological features with paired processed seal and caribou bones that had been frozenin situ. This new approach towards ΔR estimation provides a best-fit local correction for the¹⁴C dating of human populations by focusing on the marine mammal (seals) predominantly consumed by the Thule (Coltrain et al. 2016). The weighted-mean ΔR value on these pairs is 450 ± 84 yr, which is about 50 years less than the weighted-mean (506 ± 69 yr) for the Point Barrow area calculated through¹⁴C measurements from four known-age bivalves collected in AD 1913 (McNeely et al. 2006). The effects of using this new ΔR value for calibration was assessed through the Bayesian chronological modeling of 54¹⁴C measurements from samples of human skeletons interred in the Nuvuk cemetery at Point Barrow, the largest ancient cemetery in northwest Alaska and traditionally thought to date to the Thule and earlier Birnirk (AD 500–1000) periods.

Geophysical survey and excavations from 2010–2016 at Lawrenz Gun Club (11CS4), a late pre-Columbian village located in the central Illinois River valley in Illinois, identified 10 mounds, a central plaza, and dozens of structures enclosed within a stout 10 hectare bastioned palisade. Nineteen radiocarbon (¹⁴C) measurements were taken from single entities of wood charcoal, short-lived plants, and animal bones. A site chronology has been constructed using a Bayesian approach that considers the stratigraphic contexts and feature formation processes. The village was host to hundreds of years of continuous human activity during the Mississippi Period. Mississippian activity at the site is estimated to have begun incal AD 990–1165 (95% probability), ended incal AD 1295–1450 (95% probability), and lasted150–420 yr (95% probability)in the primary Bayesian model with similar results obtained in two alternative models. The palisade is estimated to have been constructed incal AD 1150–1230 (95% probability)and was continuously repaired and rebuilt for15–125 yr (95% probability), probably for40–85 yr (68% probability). Comparison to other studies demonstrates that the bastioned palisade at Lawrenz was one of the earliest constructed in the midcontinental United States.

(2019). The complexities of dating island and coastal settlements. The Journal of Island and Coastal Archaeology. Ahead of Print.

The originally published version of this article (Hamilton and Krus, 2017) listed the incorrect article type. The correct article type for this article is “Forum.”