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On reconsidering display goods production and circulation in the Moundville chiefdom
Abstract
The "Prestige Goods Economy" model was created to explain ]he rise of political complexity as the result of elite strategies to control access to exotic, finely crafted display goods. This concept is so ingrained in our current understandings of social, economic, and political life in Mississippian chiefdoms that it has become part of the very definition of "Mississippian." The political economy of the Moundville chiefdom, in particular, has long been associated with the prestige goods concept and a highly centralized system of crafting and long-distance exchange. In this paper, I bring together extant data from past excavations at Moundville and surrounding sites in order to test the current model of display goods production and circulation during the peak of the chiefdom's power (ca. A.D. 1300-1450). I find that while the production and circulation of display goods is overwhelmingly associated with elites at the Moundville center, the scale of local display goods production and the quantity of nonlocal display goods relative to locally made display goods at the site does not match the expectations generated by the current model of Moundville's political economy.
... Moreover, the elite-non-elite relationship was marked by elite responsibility for ritual ceremonialism, social observations, and internal and external political obligations (Knight 2010;Knight and Steponaitis 2007b). Elites also appear to have participated in a prestige-goods economy, acquiring exotic raw materials and producing craft goods for mound-top consumption as well as local and long-distance gifting and exchange ( Knighf 2004Knighf , 2010Marcoux 2000;Peebles and Kus 1977; Steponaitis 1991Steponaitis , 1992Welch 1991Welch , 1996; Wilson 2001Wilson , 2005Wilson et al. 2006;Wilson et al. 2010), though the intensity of this production and trade is debated (Marcoux 2000; Wilson 2001Wilson , 2005Wüson et al. 2006). Overall, Moundville society was socially ranked, marking status differences to varying degrees on material, social, political, and ritual planes. ...
... Moreover, the elite-non-elite relationship was marked by elite responsibility for ritual ceremonialism, social observations, and internal and external political obligations (Knight 2010;Knight and Steponaitis 2007b). Elites also appear to have participated in a prestige-goods economy, acquiring exotic raw materials and producing craft goods for mound-top consumption as well as local and long-distance gifting and exchange ( Knighf 2004Knighf , 2010Marcoux 2000;Peebles and Kus 1977; Steponaitis 1991Steponaitis , 1992Welch 1991Welch , 1996; Wilson 2001Wilson , 2005Wilson et al. 2006;Wilson et al. 2010), though the intensity of this production and trade is debated (Marcoux 2000; Wilson 2001Wilson , 2005Wüson et al. 2006). Overall, Moundville society was socially ranked, marking status differences to varying degrees on material, social, political, and ritual planes. ...
This article assesses the health of a sample of the Moundville population before and after population dispersal and resettlement from the paramount site of Moundville (1TU500). Patterns of chronic and acute infections, trauma, degenerative conditions, and generalized health stress are explored. As gauged by these paleopathological indicators, it seems that dispersal had little, if any, effect on health. These results throw doubt on the applicability of a generalizing model which predicted improved health and nutrition in the wake of population dispersal due to improved access to a more diverse diet and reduced exposure to pathogens and parasites. Instead, the conditions of material, social, and political negotiations regarding authority and action within and among the subgroups of the Moundville constituency appear to have mitigated modeled expectations.
... Consequently, the model produces expectations about the distribution of highly crafted stone artifacts at sites in the three-tiered settlement hierarchy identified for the Moundville polity (Welch 1991:176-178). First, non-utilitarian artifacts, variously labeled in Moundville archaeology as superordinate artifacts (Peebles 1974), status goods (Blitz 1993), prestige goods (Welch 1991), or display goods (Marcoux 2000(Marcoux , 2008, are unexpected in nonelite contexts such as small sites without mounds, as are the associated production tools and debris. Second, finished greenstone celts (axes) acquired from elites are the only nonlocal stone artifacts expected at small sites without mounds; artifacts and debris of nonlocal stone are expected to be absent. ...
... Another significant contradiction was the discovery of crafting debris and specialized tool kits for the production of nonutilitarian goods at the three nonmound sites. Moreover, debris and tools from Pride Place and Fitts are connected with the production of items thought to be restricted to ascribed status and elite contexts (Peebles 1978;Welch 1991:56-57), items variously labeled in Moundville literature as superordinate artifacts (Peebles 1974), status goods (Blitz 1993), prestige goods (Welch 1991), or display goods (Marcoux 2000(Marcoux , 2008. Specifically, the Pride Place site yielded approximately fifty thousand grams of ground Pottsville sandstone, grooved, snapped, crushed, and polished pieces of fine gray micaceous sandstone, small and large abraders, and well-used hammerstones, all associated with complete and broken paint palettes, some with scalloped or notched edges, most with pigment residue. ...
... Recent research at Moundville has given us an updated, yet somewhat contested, picture of the history of Mississippian lifeways in the region (compare Beck, 2003Beck, , 2006Blitz, 2008;Jenkins and Krause, 2009;Knight, 2004Knight, , 2010Knight and Steponaitis, 1998;Marcoux, 2007;Maxham, 2000;Wilson, 2001Wilson, , 2008Wilson, , 2010Wilson et al., 2006). For example, our knowledge of non-mound contexts has grown considerably. ...
Theories of the development of complex societies often equate the production of surpluses with centralized political economies. Most descriptions of economic intensification within Mississippian societies of Eastern North America have placed analytical explanation upon a shift from domestic autonomy to elite oversight early in the Mississippian period. This study examines storage locations, through examination of a newly recognized type of oversized ceramic storage technology, within the Moundville region. Data from this research are used to show that surplus production is not best explained using models of economic centralization. Rather, surplus production at early Moundville was organized by various distinct social groups storing and utilizing agricultural resources. Through time, some groups may have enjoyed greater success than others at producing surpluses. Evidence for storage is widely distributed, yet some differences in storage capacities are present. These spatial differences broadly mirror general patterns in the amount of labor invested in mound construction and the diachronic use of mounds across the site. These results allow us to consider the relationship between storage and relative surplus production, as well as the dynamic political-economic relations between distinct social groups through time in early complex agricultural societies.
... Many Southeastern archaeologists seem to see political economy as central to their work and have absorbed these kinds of diverse perspectives. Even if one limits oneself to readings in Southeastern Archaeology, one can see a continued focus on diverse dimensions of production, exchange, and consumption, particularly among Mississippian archaeologists (e.g., Hammerstedt 2005;Marcoux 2007;Pauketat 1997;Wilson 2001). Although Timothy Pauketat has pursued myriad intellectual projects, in the political-economic mode he was one of the first in the Southeast to rely on Gramsci's notion of hegemony to investigate the subjectivity of power among Mississippian groups (e.g., Pauketat 1994;Pauketat and Alt 2003). ...
In North America, historical anthropology is closely linked with political-economic studies. The materialist and comparative emphases of the political economy approach have had a strong impact on archaeological research in the Southeast and elsewhere. The increasing popularity of idealist positions in some quarters of archaeological theory has led to a waning of traditional political-economic research. However, recent trends in postcolonial theory suggest that a neohistorical anthropology can accommodate both materialist and idealist viewpoints. Current research on warfare in the Southeast exemplifies the advantages of multivariate vantage points for investigating the past.
... Botanical (Scarry and Steponaitis, 1997;Welch and Scarry, 1995), faunal (Jackson and Scott, 1995 and ceramic (Blitz, 1993b) data offer substantial support for provisioning of centers by outlying sites, and like large architecture (palisades and mounds) attest to some management over labor (Blitz, 1993b;Jackson and Scott, 2010;Knight and Steponaitis, 2007;Welch, 1991). Recent evidence for production and control over prestige goods at Lubbub (Blitz, 1993a) and Moundville (Marcoux, 2007) demonstrates that all forms of surplus (and subsequently resources and labor) were not dominated by elites as previously hypothesized (cf., Welch, 1991). Differential access to surplus, labor, and safety should thus be reflected in health across the burgeoning Mississippian landscape. ...
Biocultural patterns surrounding the emergence of agriculture from 11 sites in the central Tombigbee River valley (500-1200 AD), 50-100 km west of the emerging Moundville polity, suggest that while food production may have alleviated some ecological stress, it came at a cost. Markers of childhood arrest indicate earlier weaning, likely creating a cycle of rising fertility and competition, but surviving adults appear better off following intensification. Health disparities at farmsteads, including more prevalent anemia, growth defects, lower limb infections, and accidental trauma, are consistent with increasingly competing demands of domestic and corporate modes of production. Although these agricultural settlements in the hinterlands were not severely compromised as predicted by a strictly top down model of provisioning, health risks assumed by farmsteads may have resulted from provisioning to centers and/or corporate lineages while simultaneously mitigating larger risks (e.g., raiding). The greater health risks assumed by farmstead females suggest that they had less control over production and decision-making than women buried at centers, while height and upper body strength at mound centers, in addition to rare but extreme trauma, point to identities that were mapped not only onto the landscape, but onto the bodies of men and women occupying elite spaces.
... 164-165) for the centralized production of utilitarian greenstone celts at Moundville is further criticized by Wilson (2001), who argues that the ubiquity of these artifacts in domestic refuse deposits throughout the Black Warrior Valley suggests instead that they were ''common household possessions.'' Similarly, Marcoux (2007) compares grave goods from contexts associated with the peak of Moundville's power (around A.D. 1300-1450), finding little support for the existence of a prestige goods economy; instead, production of display goods appears to have been a small-scale practice limited mainly to the context of elite households at Moundville. ...
This review highlights archaeological investigations of prehistoric and historic households in southeastern North America.
There are a number of inherent challenges to the archaeology of households in the region, including generally poor preservation
and a long history of relatively insubstantial domestic architecture. An appraisal of the historical development of household
archaeology developed slowly in the Southeast, largely in reaction to trends in other areas of the world. Over the last decade,
however, southeastern archaeologists have been at the vanguard of the application of new approaches to households. From an
early focus on generalizable patterns of domestic activities and behavior, researchers increasingly view households as historical
constructs situated within larger landscapes. Prominent areas of concern include enduring issues such as status variation,
production, and consumption but also newer themes such as gender, identity and ethnicity, agency and power, and ritual and
symbolism. Some of the most innovative studies explore the intersections of these topics. Conceptual and methodological challenges
remain, but the household endures as a practical and productive focus of analysis and interpretation for southeastern archaeologists
more than 30years after household research in the area began.
KeywordsHouseholds-Southeastern United States-Status-Identity-Agency-Ritual-Production
... If the political economy functioned as is currently proposed (Welch 1991), I would also add as a fourth archaeological correlate that, 4) evidence for surplus food storage should be greater in elite mound contexts than in non-elite contexts. Several recent archaeological studies at Moundville and the surrounding region that examined the distribution of crafted items and evidence for elite control over agricultural production have in fact produced evidence contradictory to the current model (Phillips 2006;Marcoux 2000;Maxham 2000;Wilson 2001Wilson , 2005Wilson et al. 2006). Studies examining patterns of surplus food storage locations within the Moundville region are also needed to assess the reliability of the Moundville political-economic model. ...
Typescript. Thesis (M.A.)--University of Alabama, 2007. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 78-90).
Attributes of Mississippian public architecture have been used to infer aspects of social organization and political economy, but the inclusion of artifactual datasets in these interpretations has occurred less frequently. As a result, we often do not know much about the activities actually associated with public buildings and spaces. This article discusses several public contexts at the Town Creek site (31Mg2), a single-mound Mississippian civic-ceremonial center in central North Carolina that was occupied between AD 1150–1400. Architectural remains and multiple artifact classes are used to explore the activities associated with several public buildings in the mound area at Town Creek. Premound and mound-summit public spaces at Town Creek were associated with food consumption at multiple scales, some of which is consistent with feasting, the consumption of special foods, craft production, and ritual activities that included smoking and tattooing. Some of these activities appear to have been integrative and inclusive while others took place in smaller, more inaccessible spaces, which suggests they were more exclusive in nature. Our findings are consistent with the idea that crafting and the performance of rituals in public spaces were important aspects of leadership at Town Creek.
A common feature of successful ancient states was the role of elites in maintaining and regulating socioeconomic structures and, in particular, emphasising their own social difference. The Wari (AD 600–1000) are considered the earliest expansive state in South America, and excavations have demonstrated the rich variety of exotic goods imported from across the region into the polity's heartland. Here, the authors argue that the importation of raw materials, plants, animals and people from distant regions was crucial for defining and sustaining Wari social differentiation and ideology. They emphasise the importance of studying material provenance and their archaeological contexts in order to understand the role of exotic goods in legitimising ruling groups in ancient states.
This paper presents material and spatial evidence on skilled crafting from a series of archaeological investigations at the Fingerhut Tract, located in the western portion of the Mississippian period (AD 1050–1400) Cahokia site in southwestern Illinois. Specifically, skilled crafters at the Fingerhut Tract throughout the Mississippian period resided in distinct household clusters and neighborhoods, were part or members of elite families, and assembled multiple exotic materials into accoutrements used in religious ceremonies. Moreover, the special knowledge of these skilled crafters was likely obtained during journeys to distant locations and was passed down through time within particular family, kin, or social groups. Perhaps most important, the evidence indicates that crafting these items was entangled with religious practice and not solely an economic or political pursuit as suggested in earlier prestige good models.
The human-domesticate relationship has long been a focus of archaeological research, and one recognized as a complex decision-making process with risks and benefits inextricable from the environment. Expectations from behavioral ecology suggest growing human populations, depressed habitats, and the need to produce more food, are potential reasons for husbandry, but the timing, nature, and decision-making processes of this relationship remain unclear. Focusing on the North American turkey (Meleagris gallopavo), why adopt domesticates when hunting is an option, and if husbandry is adopted, what are the dynamics of the human-ecological system? Results of human hunting and foddering models indicate turkey husbandry is not as costly as previously thought, especially if fodder is not the primary food source for turkeys. Comparison between hunting and foddering returns suggest turkey husbandry should be adopted when local (~5 km) habitats are depleted of wild birds and foddering investment is low. Even when foddering costs are high (100% of turkey diet), adoption should take place when habitats are depleted of turkeys within 60-80 km of the community. The model also reveals that when maize and turkey husbandry are viewed as a dynamic, coupled human-agricultural system and foddering costs are low, the returns from the system are higher than either turkeys or maize could produce alone.
In this paper, we examine a Terminal Formative-period (150 bc–ad 250) bundled offering from the site of Cerro de la Virgen, located on the Pacific coast of Oaxaca, Mexico. The offering was emplaced below a prominent public building in the site's ceremonial centre and contained five stone objects, including a rain deity mask, a fragment of a second mask, a figurine of a deceased ancestor and two miniature table altars, as well as nine small ceramic vessels. Considered together as a ‘sacred bundle’, the stone objects collectively reference agricultural fertility, rulership and ancestor veneration, which we interpret to be a metaphorical invocation of a fundamental tenet of prehispanic Mesoamerican religious belief—the sacred covenant. The offering also played an active part in founding the community of Cerro de la Virgen, connecting its residents with the divine, the ancestors and the outside world and constituting differences in status among its members.
The definition of the regional limits of chiefly influence during the Mississippian period in the southeastern United States remains unresolved. In the Gulf Coastal Plain between the Mississippi and Black Warrior rivers, some studies have explored the role that interpolity interactions played in influencing a polity's social and political complexity through time. It has been argued that the larger, more complex polities were able to preempt the development of more complex political structures among the smaller polities. Using research at the Pevey (22Lw510) and Lowe-Steen (22Lw511) mound sites on the Pearl River in Lawrence County, Mississippi, this book explores the social and political mechanisms by which these polities may have interacted with each other and the geographic limit to the effects of inter-polity competition. The Pevey site is a nine-mound Mississippian site and Lowe-Steen is a two-mound site located 18 kilometers to the north of Pevey. These sites provide a "missing link" of sorts to explore questions about inter-polity interactions because of their centrality to the study region and their unusual size. By filling a void in the regional dataset, this study allows us to better understand the capacity of the largest polities to negatively effect the political development of their smaller neighbors. © 2010 by The University of Alabama Press. All rights reserved.
In this paper I highlight the potential of social memory research to enhance our archaeological understanding of Mississippian social organization and identity politics. Mississippian communities commemorated and invoked the past through the creation and manipulation of landscapes,
places, and things. To demonstrate the utility of this approach I examine and discuss Mississippian architectural and mortuary data from the Moundville site in west-central Alabama. On the basis of this examination I argue that social memory played an important role in the negotiation of social
identities and the organization of community space at the Moundville site and the Mississippian Black Warrior Valley.
In recent years the pace of research on the late prehistoric Mississippian societies of eastern North America has accelerated.
New data, methods, and theoretical goals are changing perspectives in Mississippian archaeology. Regional overviews and site
syntheses provide unprecedented insights into the Mississippian phenomenon at local, regional, and continental scales. Traditional
culture history, processualism, historical processualism, iconography, and neo-Darwinian archaeology are active theoretical
orientations. Important research focuses on variability in Mississippian sociopolitical formations over time, organizational
diversity among contemporaneous societies, and sources of political power. The new historicism and iconography place agency,
identity, origins, factionalism, ideology, and meaning at the center of culture change, while many processualists continue
to focus on developmental histories, economy, and control of material resources. Advances in physical and chemical analyses
and the availability of remote sensing techniques are changing how Mississippian archaeology is conducted and expanding the
kinds of data that are recovered. These diverse interests, methods, and goals have created considerable eclecticism in Mississippian
archaeology.
This work is a state-of-the-art, data-rich study of excavations undertaken at the Moundville site in west central Alabama, one of the largest and most complex of the mound sites of pre-contact North America. Despite the site's importance and sustained attention by researchers, until now it has lacked a comprehensive analysis of its modern excavations. Richly documented by maps, artifact photo-graphs, profiles of strata, and inventories of materials found, the present work explores one expression of social complexity; the significance of Moundville's monumental architecture, including its earthen mounds; the pole-frame architecture that once occupied the summits of these mounds; and the associated middens that reveal the culture of Moundville's elites. This book supplies a survey of important materials recovered in more than a decade of recent excavations of seven mounds and related areas under the author's direction, as part of a long-term archaeological project consisting of new field work at the Mississippian political and ceremonial center of Moundville. Visitors to Moundville are immediately impressed with its monumentality. The expansiveness and grandness of that landscape are, of course, deliberate features that have a story to tell and this archaeological project reveals Moundville's monumentality and its significance to the people whose capital town it was. Exactly how the social and political power symbolized by mound building was distributed is a question central to this work. It seems critical to ask to what extent this monumental landscape was the product of a chief's ability to recruit and direct the labor of large groups of political subordinates, most of whom were presumably non-kin. At the onset of the present project, speculations regarding the paired orders of mounds and the timing of the formal structuring of space at Moundville were already suggested but were in need of further testing, confirmation, and refinement. The work reported in this volume is largely devoted to filling in such evidence and refining those initial insights. An excellent chapter by H. Edwin Jackson and Susan L. Scott, "Zooarchaeology of Mounds Q, G, E, F, and R," compliments this research. © 2010 by The University of Alabama Press. All rights reserved.
Research was conducted to determine the origin of the sandstone used to make palettes found at the Moundville site in west-central Alabama. Sandstone samples were taken from two localities: One near Tuscaloosa, Alabama, which contains an abundance of Upper Pottsville Formation sandstone; and one near Guin, Alabama, which contains an abundance of Lower Pottsville Formation sandstone. The sandstone samples were compared petrographically to artifact samples from Moundville. In terms of mineralogy, texture, and color, the Moundville palettes more closely resemble the Upper Pottsville Formation sandstone from Tuscaloosa than the Lower Pottsville Formation sandstone from Guin. This finding supports the conclusion that sandstone palettes were produced locally in the Moundville region.
OUR DEPICTIONS OF MOUNDVILLE tend to emphasize glamorous political, economic, and ritual activities. Considerably less has been said about mundane domestic activities. Recent excavations on the riverbank on the northwest edge of Moundville uncovered residential deposits dating to the Moundville I phase (AD 1050-1250). This chapter first describes the results of the riverbank excavations and then uses the data from the riverbank combined with information from earlier excavations to examine several aspects of domestic life at Moundville.
In west-central Alabama between A.D. 950 and 1100' a number of societal units changed from Late Woodland to Mississippian forms of organization. One of these units built the great Mississippian center at Moundville, with its 40 ha plaza and 20 large platform mounds. Moundville, however, was not the only Mississippian community in the area, and while much has been published about the nature of Moundville society, little information about its neighbors or predecessors has been widely available. This paper describes the Late Woodland-Mississippian transition in the Moundville district and in two other nearby districts, one centered around the Bessemer site and the other extending along the central portion of the Thmbigbee River (Fig. 71). Aside from its culture-historical aspect, the emergence of Mississippian societies is of anthropological interest primarily as an example of the transformation of acephalous tribal organization to hierarchical social organization. Most, and by some definitions all, Mississippian societies were chiefdoms (e.g., Peebles and Kus 1977; Smith 1978; Griffin 1985). Because the theoretical literature on chiefdoms has tended to focus on the characteristics of well-developed, relatively complex chiefdoms (e.g., Peebles and Kus 1977; Carneiro 1981; Wright 1984), the characteristics of simple chiefdoms are reviewed here. My usage of the term 'simple chiefdom' follows Steponaitis (1978:420) and Wright (1984), and is similar to Smith's (1978:494-498) notion of chiefdoms at a "local center level of organization." Ethnographically, simple chiefdoms have only one level of superordinate political offices, for which recruitment is restricted to an ascribed subgroup of the particular sociopolitical entity (for examples see Firth 1957, 1965; Sahlins 1962; Mitchell 1956; Southall 1956 ). Just as in more complex chiefdoms, chiefs in simple chiefdoms act as foci for the religious and ceremonial life of their communities by virtue of their closer connection to the supernatural or more potent supernatural lore. Chiefs also receive tribute and use it to sponsor production of sumptuary goods, establish and maintain external political and economic ties, and support military action. Unlike complex chiefdoms, in simple chiefdoms the chiefly households are expected to be self-sufficient. The archaeological correlates of simple chiefdoms are a subset of the list presented by Peebles and Kus (1977). There must be no more than two levels of settlement hierarchy. Chiefly households or compounds will be distinguished from those of commoners by size, capacity of storage facilities, and quality of facilities for the assemblage of groups. There will also be a distinction between subordinate and superordinate classes of mortuary program. The three Mississippian societies described in this chapter possessed these characteristics, insofar as relevant data are available and our analytic concepts adequate. Despite their proximity and similarity of material culture, these three Mississippian societies differed considerably. This fact alone warrants that the development of each society be considered separately. In addition, the Mississippian societies developed from different Late Woodland precursors, in different environments. After a sketch of these environments, I describe the Late Woodland-Mississippian transition in each area, starting with the area from which the most complete data are available. In a concluding section, the different trajectories of the three cases are compared and suggestions are made for future research on chiefdom origins in west -central Alabama.
Mistaken assumptions about the scale and economic infrastructure of the Cahokian polity have led to a gross misunderstanding of occupational specialization, prestige-goods exchange, and political centralization. New data on the restricted production of igneous-rock axeheads and mollusc-shell ornaments in the Cahokia region indicate the centrally sponsored manufacture of local symbols using exotic raw materials. Cahokian patrons, rather than being involved in an overintegrated panregional economic system, controlled the production and distribution of symbols within their domain and appropriated cultural meanings in the process.
Some archaeologists argue that centralized control over economically vital tools and resources was a common strategy by which chiefs came to power in complex, non-state societies. Other archaeologists argue that relations of inequality were negotiated and produced through the elite control of display goods, rather than utilitarian items. An investigation of the Monndville greenstone industry is particularly relevant to this debate as the raw material known as greenstone, a chlorite schist that outcrops in northeast Alabama, was used to manufacture both elaborate display items and basic subsistence tools. Evidence for centralized production of greenstone display goods contrasts with an absence of. evidence for centralized production of utilitarian celts. Thus, relations of inequality at Moundville appear to have been produced more directly through chiefly control of material symbols rather than utilitarian economic items.
This chapter describes the relationship among settlements of the Moundville phase and the physiographic diversity, biotic productivity, and agricultural potential of the landscape in which the inhabitants of these settlements lived out their lives. The patterns extracted from the covariation of settlement size and location with the natural and social environment are both ideal and conditional in nature. They are ideal because they represent the common and repetitive elements and measures of the remains of a society that spanned some 300 years. They are conditional because they will be modified and refined by new discoveries, new questions, and additional analysis. As Chisholm has noted, the location of an agricultural village is a compromise between (1) a set of resource factors that are weighted on a cost of transport basis and (2) communication links with the wider community outside the village. The locations of Moundville phase sites were chosen to minimize the costs of all these commodities. All these sites were located on the most productive, easily tilled, self-renewing agricultural soils, and the size of the villages varied in relation to the productivity of the soils in their catchments. The chapter explains that the communication links among these sites are accomplished easily either by land or by river.
Identification of probable bighorn sheep representations at Mound City prompts reconsideration of the Rocky Mountain connection to Ohio Hopewell. Following James Griffin's "one-shot" hypothesis, it is argued that the bighorn finds, along with the imported bulk of obsidian from the Hopewell site, are likely to pertain to a single expedition taking place about A.D. 200. /// La identificación de representaciones del borrego cimarrón en el sitio de Mound City reabre el caso de vinculaciones entre los Rocky Mountains y la cultura Hopewell de Ohio. Congruente con la hipótesis de James Griffin, se sugiere que los restos de borrego, además de la obsidiana importada al sitio Hopewell mismo, pertenecen a una jornada singular que occurió cerca de D.C. 200.
This paper discusses the relationship between two types of metal deposit dating from the first millennium BC: finds of elaborate artefacts in rivers and similar locations; and the ‘non‐ritual’ hoards found on dry land, which sometimes contain scrap metal. It seems likely that fine bronzes were being sacrificed at an increasing rate during this period. Since the metal was rarely of local origin, the supply of bronze came under strain and more material had to be recycled to meet the need for everyday artefacts. Ultimately these conflicting claims resulted in a general shortage of metal and encouraged the adoption of ironworking in western Europe.