Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant: Strontium Isotopic Investigation of Population Movement during the Middle Woodland in the Midwestern United States

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Under the supervision of Dr. Barry Lewis, Dana Beehr will study population movement during the North American Middle Woodland time period. The Middle Woodland period lasted from 150 BC to AD 400 in Midwestern North America, and was characterized by a cultural phenomenon known as the Hopewell Interaction Sphere (HIS). A widespread network of trade and exchange of status and ritual goods, the HIS spanned most of Midwestern North America with epicenters in Ohio and Illinois. The exact nature of the HIS was controversial for a long time, with some researchers claiming it was primarily an ideological network while others focused on trade in goods. It is now recognized that the HIS was probably not a centralized phenomenon. Trade happened on the individual level and involved a variety of small-scale processes such as pilgrimages or vision questing. However the scale and direction of these processes are unclear. Recent mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) work has suggested that gene flow, and hence population movement, proceeded from Ohio to Illinois, in opposition to traditional Ohio-centric interpretations of the HIS. This project will attempt to identify the direction of HIS population movements through strontium isotopic analysis, a technique that is applied to human skeletal remains to determine an individual's lifetime migration history.The proposed research is important because population movement is a powerful demographic force that has long been neglected in the study of the Middle Woodland. Given the wide-reaching nature of the HIS, some form of population movement must have been occurring among regions, and this project offers the chance to explore the nature and direction of such movement. The project will concentrate on the two epicenters of the Hopewell phenomenon, Illinois and Ohio, and will examine data from several sites, including the Hopewell site itself, which is believed to be the largest and most influential HIS site. Understanding the relationship between these two regions will contribute to an understanding of the nature of the HIS phenomenon, and may help to evaluate the extent to which the Ohio region was dominant during the Middle Woodland. Broader impacts of this study will include an enhanced understanding of the Middle Woodland period. This will also be the first wide-scale use of strontium isotopic analysis in Midwestern North America, and will provide a database of Middle Woodland strontium values on which other researchers can draw for use in their investigations. The results of the study and a copy of the forthcoming dissertation will be provided to the agencies that have given permission for their collections to be included in this project, including the Ohio Historical Society and the Chicago Field Museum, so that they may incorporate the findings into the information they provide the public. Finally, the funding of this study will assist in training the author and several undergraduate assistants in the technique of strontium isotopic analysis, a complex and valuable new technique that is becoming increasingly important in the field of archaeology today.