The Woodland-Mississippian Interface in Alabama, Ca. A.D. 1075-1200: An Adaptive Radiation?

Abstract

Was shell-tempered pottery in Alabama introduced by migrants, who also brought with them advanced horticulture, pyramidal mound building, and other trappings of social complexity? Or did it represent a gradual technological change on part of resident hunting and harvesting inhabitants? We present available data pertinent to this issue and argue that discernible patterning justifies a model that posits an adaptive radiation on part of newly arrived food producers whose tenure overlapped with that of indigenous hunters and harvesters. We further argue that in process some hunters and harvesters were transformed into food producers, thus adding to population growth of a social formation whose administrative structure promoted budding off of daughter units that removed themselves from their parent's administrative reach and furthered colonization of areas by indigenous hunters and harvesters. In late 1950s Joseph Caldwell (1958:64-70) interpreted remains of communities in Southeast as site unit intrusions. He considered communities in this region part of a Mississippian Radiation, by which he meant the spread of peoples in exactly same sense that biologist might refer to dispersion of a species of plants or animals over a domain not previously occupied (Caldwell 1958:64). He viewed food producers as immigrants who bag and baggage settled most farmable Southeastern river bottoms, where they were surrounded by and coexisted with resident Woodland hunters and harvesters. The latter he claimed had achieved a productive and harmonious relationship with their environment, a relationship he termed primary forest efficiency. It was this relationship that predisposed resident woodland f oik to initially resist acculturation and when incorporated into a lifestyle to give it a distinct regional expression. By mid-1970s, however, Southeastern archaeologists had achieved a virtual consensus on origin of communities, a consensus that stressed evolution of peoples from diverse and widespread hunting and harvesting inhabitants that preceded tiiem (Knight and Steponaitis 1998:10-12; Peebles 1987:1-61; Smith 1990; Steponaitis 1983, 1991:193-228; Welch 1990, 1994, 1998). This consensus was not based on developmental patterning attributable to chronologicaUy sequent Woodland deposits but on a neo-evolutionist bias that stressed ecologically generated changes. This bias permeated processuatist titerature of day and led those who espoused it to ignore fact that relations among coexisting societies [are] as strong an evolutionary force and as legitimate an object of anthropological understanding as ecologically generated changes (Trigger 1989:336). The prevailing bias against coexisting and Woodland societies was strengthened by practice of organizing archaeological record into periods. Periods are strict serial orders. In abstract terms period A must always precede period B, hence die two cannot co-occur as period AB. In other words die use of temporal periods predisposes die analyst to tiiink in terms of sequent developments. Positing coexistence of Woodland and material remains would require untenable AB solution, that is, identification of materiaUy different social and subsistence regimens within same area and time period. Thus it was and still is uncritical use of period concept that, albeit subtly, predisposes us to think in unilineal terms. We wiU avoid currently popular use of periods because they are strict serial orders that are logicaUy incompatible with coexistence of materiaUy and economically contrastive communities. We wiU, however, need an organizing framework to proceed with our discussion, and therefore we wiU interpret previously introduced WiUey and Phillips phases as multicommunity nodes in material, information, and energy exchange networks (Jenkins and Krause 1986:15; WUley and Phillips 1958). …