Garden Hunting, Landscape Theory, and Food at the Range Site, IL

Food and landscape are inherently intertwined in human societies, past and present. This study explores the spatial dimension of food procurement at the Range site, IL, via the archaeobotanical and zooarchaeological remains from its Archaic, Late Woodland, and Emergent Mississippian Dohack and Range phase occupations. By tracking the ecological composition of both floral and faunal remains over time, I assessed whether the garden-hunting model proposed by Linares (1976) could play a role in interpretation of the relationship between hunting and agriculture at the Range site. While my results did not suggest that garden hunting was a significant factor in the Range site communities’ hunting strategies, trends in both ecotope affiliation and in individual taxa indicated that agriculture in the American Bottom had wide-ranging effects on regional ecology. Based on the results of this project, I discussed suggestions for future investigation of the spatial dimension of food procurement in the Southeast.Master of Art

The Jackson Site Is Back! LiDAR-Based Mound Construction and Viewshed Analysis of the Coles Creek Era Poverty Point Landscape

From the Washington University Office of Undergraduate Research Digest (WUURD), Vol. 12, 05-01-2017. Published by the Office of Undergraduate Research. Joy Zalis Kiefer, Director of Undergraduate Research and Associate Dean in the College of Arts & Sciences; Lindsey Paunovich, Editor; Helen Human, Programs Manager and Assistant Dean in the College of Arts and Sciences Mentor: T. R. Kidde

Reimagining the Development of Downtown Cahokia Using Remote Sensing Visualizations from the Western Edge of the Grand Plaza

The distribution of mounds, plazas, and defensive palisades associated with Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site (CMSHS) defines the core urban environment of Eastern North America’s first American Indian city. The large mounds surrounding Cahokia’s centrally located Grand Plaza, including the palisades that enclose them, are referred to as Downtown Cahokia. In this portion of the site, archaeologists have identified material culture (e.g., ceramics), earthen fills to level the plaza, and several earthen mound constructions. These findings suggest an occupational history for the area that occurred over the 9th–14th centuries CE, with the emergence of plaza delineation and earthwork construction beginning in the early 11th century CE. In sum, Downtown Cahokia and its Grand Plaza are considered by archaeologists to be a vibrant space characterized by ongoing American Indian transformations to an early metropolitan landscape. We conducted magnetometer and electromagnetic induction surveys at the western edge of the Grand Plaza. When compared with the LiDAR-derived visualizations we generated from this portion of the site, our aerial and terrestrial remote sensing data offered new information on the nature and sequence of monument construction in Downtown Cahokia, as well as architectural changes in domestic and special-use structures. These multi-scalar and complementary remote sensing datasets allowed us, without excavating, to trace important sequences of change in Downtown Cahokia’s history

Reimagining the Development of Downtown Cahokia Using Remote Sensing Visualizations from the Western Edge of the Grand Plaza

The distribution of mounds, plazas, and defensive palisades associated with Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site (CMSHS) defines the core urban environment of Eastern North America’s first American Indian city. The large mounds surrounding Cahokia’s centrally located Grand Plaza, including the palisades that enclose them, are referred to as Downtown Cahokia. In this portion of the site, archaeologists have identified material culture (e.g., ceramics), earthen fills to level the plaza, and several earthen mound constructions. These findings suggest an occupational history for the area that occurred over the 9th–14th centuries CE, with the emergence of plaza delineation and earthwork construction beginning in the early 11th century CE. In sum, Downtown Cahokia and its Grand Plaza are considered by archaeologists to be a vibrant space characterized by ongoing American Indian transformations to an early metropolitan landscape. We conducted magnetometer and electromagnetic induction surveys at the western edge of the Grand Plaza. When compared with the LiDAR-derived visualizations we generated from this portion of the site, our aerial and terrestrial remote sensing data offered new information on the nature and sequence of monument construction in Downtown Cahokia, as well as architectural changes in domestic and special-use structures. These multi-scalar and complementary remote sensing datasets allowed us, without excavating, to trace important sequences of change in Downtown Cahokia’s history