Mississippianization, Religious Conversion and Identity Formation in Pre-Columbian Wisconsin

该奖项由2009年美国复苏和再投资法案(公法111-5)资助。在国家科学基金会的支持下，蒂莫西·波克塔特博士、罗伯特·博斯哈特博士和丹妮尔·本登博士将带领一个专家和学生团队对威斯康星州拉克罗斯附近密西西比河上游一处950年前的文化建筑群进行为期三年的考古调查。该团队包括考古学家、地球物理和地貌学家、一名动物考古学家、一名古民族植物学家，以及土著和非土著美国研究生和本科生。该项目的目标是解释与美洲印第安人城市卡霍基亚(位于伊利诺伊州南部)的建立有关的古代殖民主义、缔造和平和宗教改宗的一段插曲。这些基本事实已经确定：在公元1050年或公元1050年之前，卡霍基亚人或一些相关的侨民/皈依者群体在北部不同地区建立了使团或殖民地前哨。在项目区，殖民入侵似乎改变了许多人的身份、宗教信仰和日常做法，其中一些人可能已经与南方人保持一致。在这种情况下，特派团/前哨定居点似乎是在密西西比河流域建立长达一个半世纪的“和平”的基础。将根据对三个已知遗址的调查，对这一现象的时间、身份、特征和后果进行衡量，项目人员将利用这些衡量标准，推断当地人与侵扰的南方人和平共处或宗教皈依的程度。该项目将决定(1)谁是真正的新来者，(2)他们如何通过谈判进入北方土地(宗教、政治或暴力？)，以及(3)这种关系可能如何与北方人像丘陵文化的终结和卡霍基亚在南方迅速崛起有关。地球物理勘测(使用磁性和电阻率探地设备)将查明费舍尔、特伦佩洛和47-TR-6遗址地下的古房屋、家庭设施、宗教寺庙和仪式残骸的遗迹。随后将进行有针对性的挖掘，利用文物组合和建筑遗迹来产生上述措施。在地区层面，该项目的学术价值包括确定11世纪中大陆普遍存在的文化变化的原因或结果。对卡霍基亚古城和北方肖像丘陵文化的长期解释可能会被推翻。在全球范围内，这项研究将提供一个新的起点，从这个起点来审视世界各地的和平缔造、宗教改宗和文明扩张。了解这种情况是如何以及为什么发生的--也就是说，确定当地和非当地团体是否以及如何通过宗教、联盟或暴力相互接触--将阐明政治和宗教与文化变化的一般关系，这是对古代或现代世界的任何地缘政治理解的核心。该项目的更广泛影响包括完善地球物理技术应用和扩大社会科学家和公众利益攸关方的合作网络。与威斯康星大学麦迪逊分校的美国印第安人研究项目合作，将培训新一代土著和非土著美国考古学家。将扩大公众宣传努力，部分通过一个互动网站，该网站将成为学生、记者和非专业人士的门户。

This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5).With the support of the National Science Foundation, Dr. Timothy Pauketat, Robert Boszhardt, and Danielle Benden will lead a team of specialists and students in a three-year archaeological investigation of a 950-year-old cultural complex in the upper Mississippi valley near LaCrosse, Wisconsin. The team includes archaeologists, geophysical and geomorphological scientists, a zooarchaeologist, a paleoethnobotanist, and Native and non-native American graduate and undergraduate students. The project goal is to explain an episode of ancient colonization, peace-making, and religious proselytization associated with the founding American Indian city of Cahokia (in southern Illinois). Already established are these baseline facts: at or just before the year AD 1050, Cahokians or some related group of expatriots/converts established missions or colonial outposts in various northern locales. In the project area, the colonial intrusion appears to have transformed the identities, religious beliefs, and daily practices of many people, some of whom may have fallen in line with the southerners. In such ways, the mission/outpost settlements seem foundational to the establishment of a century-and-a-half "peace" in the Mississippi valley. Measures of the timing, identity, character, and consequences of this phenomenon will be generated based on investigations of three known sites and, using those measures, project personnel will infer the degree of peaceful cohabitation or religious conversion of the "Effigy Mound Culture" locals vis-à-vis the intrusive southerners. The project will determine (1) who the newcomers really were, (2) how they negotiated their way into the northlands (religion, politics, or violence?), and (3) how such relations might have been connected to the end of the Effigy Mound Culture in the north and to Cahokia's rapid rise to power in the south. Geophysical surveys (using magnetic and electrical resistivity ground-penetrating devices) will identify the remains of ancient houses, domestic facilities, religious temples, and ritual debris beneath the ground at the Fisher, Trempealeau, and 47-TR-6 sites. Targeted excavations will follow, using artifact assemblages and architectural remains to generate the measures noted above. At the regional level, the project's intellectual merits include determining the cause or consequence of the pervasive cultural changes in the eleventh century midcontinent. Long-held explanations of both the ancient city of Cahokia and the northern Effigy Mound Culture may be overturned. At a global scale, the research will provide a new starting point from which to examine peace-making, religious proselytization, and the expansion of civilizations around the world. Knowing how and why this happened - which is to say determining if and how the local and nonlocal groups engaged each other through religion, alliance, or violence - will elucidate the general relationships of politics and religion to cultural change, central to any geopolitical understanding of either the ancient or modern worlds. The broader impacts of the project include refining geophysical-technology applications and expanding the collaborative network of social scientists and public stakeholders. A new generation of indigenous and non-native American archaeologists will be trained, in collaboration with the American Indian Studies program at UW-Madison. Public outreach efforts will be expanded, partly through an interactive web site that will serve as a gateway for students, journalists, and laypersons alike.