Composing Complexity in the Eastern Woodlands
Alice P. Wright, Cameron Gokee
Abstract
The archaeological record of the American Eastern Woodlands has been the subject of research on the origins and organization of complex societies for decades. Much of this research, ultimately grounded in political-economic theories of accumulation, underscores how foraging, horticultural, and agricultural societies manifested complexity in different ways belying their similar signposts of complexity, including monumental architecture, long-distance exchange, and craft specialization. Here, we contend that aspects of these material practices, which span the Late Archaic, Middle Woodland, and Early Mississippian periods, are essential for sketching a historical ontology of social complexity in indigenous eastern North America. Drawing on political-economic theories developed in sub-Saharan Africa, we propose that the deep time ebb and flow of complex social formations in the Eastern Woodlands relied less on the quantitative accumulation of wealth in things and people and more on the qualitative composition of the diverse knowledge embedded in people and things. We discuss Poverty Point, Ohio Hopewell, and Cahokia from this vantage point in an effort to begin telling a “big history” of the Eastern Woodlands outside the frame of social evolution.