Scioto Situations and the Steel Group Monument Assemblage

ABSTRACT

Scholars have offered various approaches to create a synthetic view of the Middle Woodland period that integrates geographically expansive and heterogenous material remains. Situation theory offers a synthetic analytical approach to the multiplicity of Middle Woodland ceremonialisms, allowing us to conceive of how people and communities across the midcontinent got caught up in shared conditions. Scioto situations—the Middle Woodland situations occurring within the central Scioto River valley of southern Ohio—have long been famous for their earthen monuments and ornate material symbols. This article analyzes Scioto situations through an examination of the monument assemblage of the Steel Group—an earthwork site with at least 13 earthen enclosures. In doing so, it offers an approach to monumentality that grounds interpretations of the aesthetic and physical nature of monuments within the complicated historical entanglements from which they emerged.

KEYWORDS:

• monumentality
• situation
• assemblage
• Scioto Hopewell

Acknowledgments

Thank you to G. Logan Miller and Edward Henry for inviting me to take part in the symposium Ceremonial Situations in the North American Midcontinent: Perspectives from the Middle Woodland Era, at the 2019 annual meeting of the Midwest Archaeological Conference. Research access to the Steel Group was provided by the Archaeological Conservancy and the Arc of Appalachia. Data collection over the last three summers was possible due to the untiring support of field crews of graduate and undergraduate students and local volunteers, to whom I am forever indebted. Identification of the deer femur fragment was provided by Sean Coughlin. This article was considerably improved by the comments offered during the symposium by Sarah Baires and James Brown and additional feedback offered on the manuscript by G. Logan Miller, Edward Henry, Hannah Hoover, Laura Bossio, and three anonymous reviewers. Thanks also to John Klausmeyer for assistance in creating Figure 3.

Note on the Contributor

Timothy D. Everhart is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Anthropology and Museum of Anthropological Archaeology at the University of Michigan. His research focuses on craft production and monumentality in small-scale societies, with a particular interest in the Scioto Hopewell of south-central Ohio.

Notes

1 The confidence of type identification is limited by the size of this sherd. In Prufer’s (1968) typology, it appears to be a well-executed Turner Simple Stamp A (similar to Prufer 1968:Plates 4c, 7b and Prufer and McKenzie 1965:Figure 3.8). In Brown’s (2012) new typology, it appears to be Type 14 (CCR, Simple Stamped). Simple stamped sherds are not all too common at Scioto Hopewell sites, leading to earlier speculation that these were somehow related to simple stamped types of the Southeast (e.g., Deptford, Cartersville, and Connestee simple stamped; see review in Brown 2012:55–56, 235–236). This sherd’s coarse crushed crystalline rock temper, as opposed to a finer or sand temper, makes it unlikely it was produced in the Southeast, though petrographic or chemical composition analysis would be necessary to make this assertion with confidence.

2 Two units were 4 m², one unit was 6 m², one was 8 m², and six units were 9 m² or larger.