This column includes a portion of New York State lying near the Great Lakes, to show the earliest cordmarked Woodland pottery that has been securely dated (Ritchie, 1962, 1965). It also takes in northern Kentucky to include early Adena (Webb and Snow
1945; Webb and Baby, 1957). In the centuries before and after the beginning of the present era, the prin- cipal attention is directed to the Classic Hopewell Phase of central Ohio (Mills, 1907, 1909, 1916, 1922;
Moorehead, 1922; Shetrone, 1926; Magrath, 1945;
WUloughby, 1922). Information from the Hopewell sites near Grand Rapids, Michigan, is also considered here (Quimby, 1941; Prahl, 1966).
Griffin (ed., 1952) has been used extensively, but the best recent summary of the archeology of the Midwest is Griffin, 1964. This the writer has tried to follow in both relative and calendrical chronology for both the Ohio and Illinois column.
Forty-seven radiocarbon assays are listed here that are applicable to the Ohio chronological column. Of these 38 or 81 percent agree with the phase dating shown on our charts (table 1, pp. 24-25).
The Late Archaic cultures of the Ohio region apparently were based on a hunting and gathering economy; there is no evidence that agriculture was practiced. T h e greatest concentrations of people were
near river shoals where shellfish were avaUable.
Bannerstones (atiati weights), adzes, and grooved stone axes are typical tools. Mound buUding was not practiced and the dead were placed in round pits in the refuse deposits. A curious phase of the Late Archaic is the "Old Copper Culture" that centers in Wisconsin. Tools manufactured from native free copper were widely traded.
A more complicated burial complex appears in this area about 1000 B . C This includes cremation (pop- ular in the later Adena Phase), red ochre scattered over the remains, and deposits of grave goods includ- ing tubular pipes, plummets, gorgets, birdstones, etc.
A thick, crude pottery with cord wrapped paddle impressions on both exterior and interior surfaces and straight sided amphoras with conoidal bases, were being manufactured in small quantities in the region from Minnesota to New England about 1000 B . C Ritchie (1962) has described this as Vinette i ware, the name that is used here.
The Adena Phase begins about 800 B . C The nature of the territory chosen for occupation suggests a dependence on agriculture, but there is no direct evidence. Ceramics are rare, and feature a plain ware that contrasts with the textured conoidal base Wood- land pottery. T h e Adena people had brachycephalic skulls and practiced cranial deformation, a decided contrast to the more slender long-headed population of the Late Archaic. Some cultural items continue on from the Late Archaic, but new ones were added.
The Adena population and culture are quite clearly intruders into the Ohio-Kentucky region where they are found. Central America has been suggested as a possible origin. It appears more probable to the present
writer, however, that, whUe the original population and basic elements for the phase (such as burial mound building) probably came from the Mississippi Valley from a culture related to the Poverty Point variety of early Formative, most of the development of Adena occurred in the Ohio-Kentucky region. From early to late in this phase, the burial mounds became larger.
Although Adena was replaced by the Hopewell Phase in Ohio about 200 B.C., it continued to thrive in Kentucky.
The HopeweU Phase (200 B . C - A . D . 300) Is the earliest of the two cultural climaxes in eastern North America, and occurred in its most elaborate form in southern Ohio. It seems to have been a fusion of the local, already well-developed Adena traits, with ceramics and other features that came in from Illinois or the Mississippi Valley to the south. It is character- ized by large geometrical earthworks, mound burial in elaborate log tombs, use of exotic stone such as obsidian, art forms made of copper, sUver, and mica, copper helmets and breast plates, beautiful realistic carvings of animals and birds particularly on platform pipes, a core and blade industry, and ceramics dec- orated with line-bordered areas of rocker stamping depicting birds. Domestic pottery continued the cord- marked Woodland tradition.
Basic elements of the Hopewell culture extend over a large portion of the Mississippi Valley, from central Michigan to Louisiana and Florida, and from New York State weSt to the vicinity of Kansas City.
By A.D. 300 the Hopewellian traits have disappeared from the Ohio area, and the population reverted to a rather drab Woodland type of existence with a sud- denness that suggests a relaxing of the social control that had produced the great earth monuments.
T H E I L L I N O I S C H R O N O L O G I C A L C O L U M N
The alignment of the Illinois column is based upon Griffin's (1964) comparison of cultures and evaluation of radiocarbon dates. This column wUl be particularly difficult for the regional specialist to accept, for the somewhat different sequence in southern Illinois (Cole, et al., 1951; Fowler, 1959a, b ; Griffin, 1941, 1952a, c, 1964; Maxwell, 1951; McKern, Titterington, and Griffin, 1945) is presented in the same frame as the chronology for the lUinois River Valley, where early phases of HopeweU are found (Cole and Deuel, 1937;
Deuel, ed., 1952; McGregor, 1957; Bluhm, ed., 1960;
Caldwell and Hall, 1964). T h e information from the
Hopewell phase sites on Cedar River in Wisconsin (McKern, 1931) is also incorporated.
Of the 43 radiocarbon dates listed on chart 1, 35 or 81 percent agree with the temporal alignments used here (table 2, pp. 26-27).
The Illinois chronology is based on chance dis- coveries of superposition, and does not have a quanti- tative base. The contents and dating for the Early Woodland phases are not entirely clear. Some heavy crude cordmarked pottery similar to Vinette i of New York State has been found, and it is thought that this is associated with red ochre burials, but direct evi- dence is lacking. The earliest pottery in the southern
12 SMITHSONIAN CONTRIBUTIONS TO ANTHROPOLOGY VOLUME 11 part of the state consists of flat-base jars marked with
plaited fabric impressions, the Baumer ware. Along the Illinois River the early Black Sands ware is deco- rated with straight line designs incised over cord malle- ated surfaces. This often has a rim decoration of nodes raised by punching from the interior.
A continuing but changing ceramic tradition in Illi- nois seems to lead directiy to the Classic Hopewell Phase (300 B . C - A . D . 300). T h e Central Basin Phase of early Hopewell is found in Illinois, but not in Ohio.
Dentate and oval-shaped stamping are typical pottery
decoration. Rims frequentiy have separate designs, and nodes are common. Late Hopewell in Illinois is simUar to that in Ohio: log tomb burial In mounds, copper earspools, copper jacketed panpipes, effigy plat- form pipes, and pottery decorated with bird motifs formed by zoned rocker stamping are characteristic.
Illinois appears to be the center from which Hope- well diffused not only to Ohio, but also to Wisconsin, and southward down the Mississippi Valley. About A.D. 300 Illinois Hopewell disappeared, and Woodland
culture replaced it.
T H E G E O R G I A C O A S T C H R O N O L O G I C A L C O L U M N
T h e Georgia coast column rather specifically refers to the region around Savannah. The Stallings Island data are based on Moore (1897), Claflin (1931), Fairbanks (1942), Stoltman (1966), and Waring (in WUliams, ed., 1968). Reference information for in- terior Georgia is Wauchope (1966), and for North Carolina, J . L. Coe (1964).
T h e radiocarbon dates for early periods on the Georgia coast have been evaluated by Bullen (1961), and the alignments in the column given here are those he has suggested both in print and verbally. Fifteen dates are avaUable (table 3, p. 28). Of these, thirteen or 87 percent fall within the temporal limits cisslgned the several phases and are shown in chart 1.
T h e fiber-tempered pottery fi-om the shell heaps near Savannah, Georgia, has long been a puzzle to archeologists, and the problem became more complex when radiocarbon showed that this was the earliest pottery in North America, dating back to more than 2000 B.C. Several writers have cited this as an example of the independent invention of ceramics (Bullen,
1960). Eight of the sites are doughnut-shaped shell
rings, and excavation has shown that the oldest pottery is plain and is followed by drag-and-jab decorated ceramics. T h e balance of the culture content is typical of the Late Archaic sites of the Southeast:
bannerstones, grooved axes, stemmed projectUe points, etc.
Stallings Island seems to have been a long phase, ending about 500 B . C It is succeeded by the Deptford Phase, which has not been thoroughly described, but is known from Its ceramics. These are paddle marked, as is the early Woodland pottery to the northward, but the designs are large checks or check patterns in which the bands on the paddle are cut deeper in one direction than the other. Four feet appear on these vessels after 500 B . C T h e inland location of Deptford sites suggests a degree of dependence on agriculture.
At about A.D. 100 the Deptford Phase is succeeded by the Swift Creek, in which the characteristic paddle stamped designs become curvUinear as well as rec- tangular and much more complex. Hopewellian traits are found in early Swift Greek burial mounds.
T H E N O R T H F L O R I D A C H R O N O L O G I C A L C O L U M N
This is another example of combining distinctive regional chronologies: the St. Johns area on the east coast at the base of the Florida Peninsula, where the early fiber-tempered Orange ceramic complex is followed by the rather colorless St. Johns phases (Wyman, 1875; Moore, 1894; Griffin and Smith, 1954; Goggin, 1952; Bullen, 1955, 1959; Bullen, A.
and R., 1961), is lumped with the corresponding
stretch of the Gulf coast, where the more spectacular Crystal River site is located and the Weeden Island complex existed several centuries after A.D. 1 (Moore,
1903, 1907; Greenman, 1938; WUley, 1949a; Sears, 1962; Bullen, 1953, 1966). Rouse (1951) and Ferguson (1951) have served as supplementary information for the Orange complex.
13 Time changes within the span of the early fiber-
tempered ceramics on the St. Johns are rather well controlled by good vertical stratigraphy, and the radiocarbon dating discussed by BuUen (1961) is consistent. Bullen's dating has been followed for the early St. Johns phases, but the Transititional Phase he has proposed (1959) has been left out because simUar transition is also found in other chronologies.
T o record them all would cut up our diagram to an excessive extent.
Fourteen radiocarbon runs are avaUable for the north Florida chronology (table 4, p. 29). Of these, twelve (86 percent) conform to the phase dating used here.
T h e Orange complex of ceramics, most character- istic of the large shell mounds on the St. Johns River, also begins with a plain fiber-tempered ware, but it appears to start a century or so later than does the Stallings Island complex. Decorations, which start about 1600 B.C., are completely different from Stallings, as are the vessel shapes. By about 400 B.C.
there has been a gradual change in the ceramics, and the untempered pottery of the Early St. Johns has be- come dominant. Some decorations continue from the
Orange, but Influence is also apparent from the Deptford pottery to the north and Tchefuncte from the west.
At A.D. 1 attention wUl turn from the St. Johns phases to the Gulf coast, where Crystal River and related sites were being buUt. Sears (1962) has been followed in dividing the data into Yent and Green Point Phases. The Yent Phase (A.D. 1^00) has typical Hopewell features, including cut animal jaws, copper jacketed panpipes, and bi-cymbal copper earspools.
In addition to vessels with four feet, plain rocker and zoned rocker stamped decoration, and some unique vessel forms, there are several examples of negative painted pottery. The burials are in what Sears calls
"continuous use" mounds, in contrast to the Green Point custom of making a central deposit of bones with a pottery deposit to the east and covering this with a small mound. The crude stele at Crystal River were also erected in the Yent Phase.
The Green Point Phase has less distinctive traits and some of the ceramics show relationship to the early Swift Creek Phase of Georgia and TroyvUle of the Lower Mississippi.
M O B I L E B A Y - F L O R I D A N O R T H W E S T COAST C H R O N O L O G I C A L C O L U M N
The geographical area represented by this chrono- logical column Is fairly restricted, being confined to the region of Mobile Bay on the Alabama coast, and adjacent Florida. Early description of cultural con- tent is provided by Moore (1901, 1902), and the first chronological alignment was by WUley (1949a). More precise chronology, running from several centuries after the beginning of the Christian Era untU almost the time of the arrival of the Europeans, has been worked out by Trickey (1958). Wimberly (1960) has described the ceramics of the Bayou La Batre and succeeding periods. Trickey and his associate Holmes have provided much additional unpublished data, in- cluding the new radiocarbon dates used on chart 1.
Wimberly and Tourtelot (1941) have described the contents of the McQuorquodale Burial Mound, which has Hopewellian affiliations.
Sound vertical stratigraphy and seriation provide good control for the relative chronology. Continuity appears to exist in the data, except for a possible break
between the early plain fiber-tempered pottery and the beginning of the Bayou La Batre.
Four radiocarbon dates are avaUable for this column (table 5, p. 29). Of these, three or 75 percent agree with our phase dating. Assay M-824, 2150
±250 B.C. is from preceramic levels at the stratified Bryant's Landing site. M-823, 1140±200 B . C is from the Bayou La Batre cultural level. This has only one decorated pottery type, which features stamping with a large scallop shell.
The Santa Rosa Phase is dated from 100 B . C to A.D. 400. This is the time of arrival of Classic Hope- well traits, including the construction of burial mounds, zoned rocker stamped ceramics, panpipes, platform pipes, copper earspools, etc. These traits were diffusing out of the Mississippi Valley Hopewellian centers. In western Florida and the Lower Mississippi Valley, the Santa Rosa-MarksvUle Phases are suc- ceeded by the widespread Weeden Island-TroyvUle Phases about A.D. 400.
14 SMITHSONIAN CONTRIBUTIONS TO ANTHROPOLOGY T H E LOUISIANA C H R O N O L O G I C A L C O L U M N
VOLUME 1 1
For the purpose of this study, the Louisiana or Lower Mississippi Valley chronological column wUl include information that extends geographically from the Gulf coast to about the latitude of Memphis, Tennessee.
It is quite true that there is considerable regional varia- tion in the prehistory over this wide expanse of terri- tory, but most of it developed after the close of the MarksvUle-Hopewell Phases about A.D. 400. In the earlier centuries in which we are interested here, there was considerable cultural homogeneity.
T h e Lower Mississippi comparisons wUl be based on Ford (1936, 1951, 1952, 1963); Ford and Quimby (1945); Ford and Webb (1956); Ford, PhUlips, and Haag (1955); Ford and Willey (1940); PhUlips, Ford, and Griffin (1951); Gagliano and Saucier (1963); and Mclntire (1958). In addition, data from extensive new private collections from the Poverty Point site wUl be used.
From the beginning of the Tchefuncte Phase (400 B.C.) to the period of aboriginal contact with the Euro- pean settiers, there is a detaUed quantitative ceramic chronology based on both stratigraphy and seriation.
The priority of the Poverty Point Phase is well demon- strated by vertical stratigraphy at the Jaketown site (Ford, PhUlips, and Haag, 1955), but there is as yet littie time control within this long phase.
T h e radiocarbon dates for the Lower Mississippi Valley are more inconsistent and contradictory than for any other of the chronologies under consideration here. Of a total of 46 dates that supposedly apply to the phases shown on chart 1, only 23 (50 percent) fall within the time ranges assigned (table 6, pp. 30-32).
Why this should be true is difficult to determine. Some of the charcoal specimens that were supposed to date the Tchefuncte Phase were selected from museum storage some ten years after excavation, so that contamination may have occurred. Other specimens, particularly those submitted to the Humble OU Company Labora- tory from the delta of the Mississippi River, are not from excavated sites. Their association with ceramics and thus their cultural significance was determined by surface collections, and there may be errors in these identifications.
Ford and W e b b (1956) were inclined to accept a date of about 800-600 B . C for the Poverty Point Phase, despite the fact that the radiocarbon results range from about 1200 to 400 B.C. Gagliano and Saucier (1963) have obtained dates ranging between 1800 and 1500 B . C for what appear to be preceramic Poverty Point culture sites near Lake Pontchartrain.
For this reason it now seems more logical to accept the dates from the Jaketown and Poverty Point sites at their face value.
T h e Poverty Point site is a complex geometrical earthwork, which If the datmg is correct (1200-400 B.C.) stands out as a startiing contrast to other sites and cultures in the eastern United States at that time.
T h e site and culture bear precisely the same relation to their rather primitive neighbors as do the Olmec ceremonial centers of southern Veracruz and the coastal and highland Chavin sites of Peru.
T h e Poverty Point ceramic complex wUl be de- scribed in the following pages. There is a small pro- portion of fiber-tempered pottery, but most is clay- tempered and soft. Four feet, crude unzoned rocker stamping, and nodes around the rim are characteris- tic. It seems to be another Formative ceramic complex younger than, but comparable to Stallings, Orange, and Bayou La Batre.
T h e Tchefuncte Phase (400-100 B.C.) has simple burial mounds. Some sites are located in the interior, where agriculture may have been practiced, but others are coastal shell middens. T h e ceramic com- plex includes nearly all of the decorative techniques and motifs that were in the earlier Stallings, Orange, Bayou La Batre, and Poverty Point complexes.
T h e Marksville Phase (100 B . C - A . D . 400) is the Lower Mississippi Valley version of Classic Hopewell.
T h e features that characterize this horizon are so simUar that it seems likely that the complex was developed in a fairly restricted geographical area and diffused from there. MarksvUle burials were in log tombs at the base of conical mounds buUt in two stages. Instances of two or more babies or chUdren accompanying the bones of an adidt are frequent enough to suggest child sacrifice. Some cremation was practiced.
T H E V E R A C R U Z C H R O N O L O G I C A L C O L U M N An excellent relative chronology on the Mexican coast
of the Gulf of Mexico has been left out of this com-
parison, both for lack of space and because on the Formative time level this region seems to be somewhat
15 on the periphery of events This is the Tampico se-
quence in the Huasteca developed by Ekholm (1944), and added to by MacNeish (1954).
T h e Veracruz column on chart 1 represents the area from the vicinity of Zempoala in the central part of the state southward to the Coatzacoalcos River in the heart of the Olmec country. T h e northern part of the area includes the work of Garcia-Payon (1966) at the sites of El Trapiche and Chalahuites, and recent unpublished excavations made by Ford, Medellin, and Wallrath at Chalahuites, Viejon, and Limoncito.
For the southern portion there is avaUable the work of the Smithsonian Institution group at La Venta (Drucker, 1947, 1952; Drucker, Heizer, and Squier, 1959); Cerro de las Mesas (Drucker, 1943b, 1955);
and Tres Zapotes (Drucker, 1943a; Weiant, 1943).
In addition, Michael Coe has provided unpublished data from excavations under way at the San Lorenzo site.
As with most of our columns, this one covers two closely related but distinctive ceramic provinces on the Formative level: the Zempoala region in the north, and the Olmec region in the south. In neither part of this region has an accurate relative chronology based on ceramics been established, but the general outiines of the sequence seem clear enough. Here the writer has followed the interpretation of M. D. Coe (1965) for the Olmec region, and his verbal advice during the 1966 GainesvUle conference. This is already modified, however, by new radiocarbon dates.
The mounds built on this portion of the Gulf coast of Mexico from approximately 800 to 400 B . C are not placed In any apparent order and have almost every shape except that of the rectangular flat-top pyramid.
There are flat top L-shaped mounds, steep cones with pointed peaks, and elongated mounds with long ridge tops so narrow that they could not possibly have served as buUding foundations. T h e purpose for which these mounds were constructed is not clearly under- stood.
T h e phase names used in our Veracruz column are those that apply to the southern end of this region in the Classic Olmec country. As a result of the first year of work and new radiocarbon dates, M. D. Coe (1966) has defined a San Lorenzo Phase that dates 1200 to 900 B.C.
Michael Coe (1966, pp. 4—5) says
T h e bulk of San Lorenzo pottery is extraordinarily close to that of the Cuadros and Jocotal phases on the Pacific coast of Guatemala, where it has been radiocarbon dated to 1000-800 B.C. Shared here are brushed or striated tecomates, the dominant type at both Salinas La Blanca and San Lorenzo Tenochitlin;
the use of interior finger punching or dimpling on the upper wall of these tecomates; tecomates slipped in a 7.5 R 4/4 red color;
red-rimmed tecomates; plain rocker stamping (rare in San Lorenzo); a b u n d a n t white-rimmed black ware; and deep
bowls with exteriorly bolstered rims. These ceramic traits are also shared with the Chiapa i or Gotorra phase.
A more 'typically' Olmec pottery is also found in the San Lorenzo phase, a flat-bottomed bowl in black, grey, or white- rimmed ware with excised designs in the form of X's or stylized jaguar paws. This kind of pottery is well known at such Olmec influenced highland sites as Tlatilco or Las Bocas and has usually been thought to be Middle Formative. However, Gareth Lowe informs me that these excised designs occur with the type Pampas Black-and-white at the site of Altamira on the Pacific coast of Chiapas; this type belongs to the Cuadros phase there and at Salinas La Blanca in Guatemala. I now believe that the entire complex represented by Las Bocas (including the large hollow baby face figures), and present in the earlier graves at Tlatilco, belongs on an Early Formative horizon.
T o return to the San Lorenzo phase, in the same deposits as these ceramics are many fragments of hollow and solid pottery figurines; the heads are in the purest Olmec style.
It should be noted, however, that the style of eyes is very different from the usual La Venta or Conchas (Middle Forma- tive) type, no punching being evident.
A notable feature of the La Venta Phase (1100-800 B.C.) is the formal arrangement of the mounds and ridges symmetrically about a center line that bears S° west of north (Drucker, Heizer, and Squier, 1959, fig. 4). T h e Laguna de los Cerros site near Acayucan, Veracruz, has simUar arrangement and orientation (Medellin, personal communication). These people were very good engineers.
T h e extremely rich content of Olmec culture is impossible to summarize in these pages. T h e ceramics are not too well known due to poor preservation at La Venta, but parallel the complex briefly described for El Trapiche. The characteristic representations of baby-faced dwarfs range in size from large stone heads seven feet in diameter to small jade figures with a typical bent-knee stance. Some clay figurines show individuals with simUar features. Particularly Im- pressive is a lapidary industry: the manufacture of beads and other small ornaments of jade. When it was first discovered, many Mesoamerican archeolo- gists thought this sophisticated culture must date in the Classic Period. An early date, however, has now been demonstrated and most investigators agree that Olmec culture is the principal ancestor of later high cultural developments (M. D. Coe, 1963).
The naming of a Tres Zapotes and Cerro de las Mesas Phase is quite arbitrary. The two sites appear to overlap considerably in time. T h e "Tres Zapotes Phase" is principally what Coe has called "Tres Zapotes I," Weiant (1943) "Middle Tres Zapotes A," and Drucker (1943a, pp. 118-120) "Lower Tres Zapotes." M. D. Coe (1965, p. 694) places this in the Late Pre-Classic Period and says:
Strong continuities with the Middle Preclassic of the area are evident, but in general most resemblances lie with other Late Preclassic phases of Mesoamerica, such as Chicanel of the lowland Maya area, Chiapa iv and v at Chiapa de Corzo, and