The Case of the Caldwell Mound: A Woodland Period Mound in the Central Scioto River Valley

ABSTRACT

This article presents a reconstruction and analysis of the Caldwell Mound located in the central Scioto River valley of southern Ohio. The mound contained a log tomb, at least four burials, and associated funerary objects. Four AMS radiocarbon dates place the Caldwell Mound within the last century BC and first century AD, and the mound contains evidence of practices historically associated with “Adena” and “Hopewell.” Few other records exist from this period in the region despite it experiencing perhaps some of the most dramatic socioreligious transformations in precolumbian North America. This analysis documents early evidence for the diversification and segregation of leadership roles based on the interpretation of three buried individuals. It also demonstrates the utility and efficacy of working with amateur-produced records and collections, even when incomplete, to reconstruct and glean insight from important Woodland period sites.

KEYWORDS:

• Adena
• Scioto Hopewell
• archaeological systematics
• diversification and segregation of leadership roles

Acknowledgments

I thank Gary Argabright for curating the notes in his private collection, helping interpret the McBeth’s handwriting in the field notes, and facilitating research access to the collections at the Ross County Heritage Center. Tom Kuhn, the collections committee, and the Board of the Trustees of the Ross County Heritage Center granted permission for the AMS dating. Jamie Bliven facilitated and assisted in collecting samples and analyzing materials from the Caldwell Mound. I appreciate Bret Ruby originally pointing me toward the Caldwell Mound and Jeb Bowen for contextualizing the earlier Caldwell Mound AMS dates. John Klausemeyer helped make Figure 2. Sean Coughlin assisted in confirming the species identification of predator teeth. Kevin Nolan and the SCHoN team graciously provided access to unpublished AMS dates. Bretton Giles provided a useful unpublished manuscript and Christopher Carr clarified the information published on the Caldwell Mound in Scioto Hopewell and Their Neighbors (Case and Carr 2008a). This article was greatly improved by the comments offered by Gary Argabright, Hannah Hoover, Laura Bossio, and five anonymous reviewers. Funding for AMS dating was provided by an Ohio Archaeological Council Grant and the Wes and Shelley Cowan Graduate Fund for Scientific Analysis at the University of Michigan Museum of Anthropological Archaeology.

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, Ann Arbor. 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 central Scioto River valley (CSV) is the region surrounding the confluence of the Scioto River and Paint Creek often used as a unique scale of analysis as “local cultural trajectories of other tributaries . . . are demonstrably different from that of the Central Scioto” (Greber 1991:3).

2 N’omi Greber (1991:18, 2005:30) recognized the type sites as nonmodal.

3 The Dominion Land Company site (33FR12) in the northern Scioto River valley appears to be the oldest and only known Early Woodland earthen enclosure in the whole Scioto drainage (Cramer 2008).

4 At least three other “Caldwell Mounds” exist in the state’s historic preservation online mapping system. One is just north of the Caldwell Mound discussed in this article and within the bounds of the original Caldwell property, though it is likely named specifically for the “Caldwell Cemetery” to which it is immediately adjacent. Another is in the southern portion of the Scioto drainage, and the third is in the Great Miami River drainage.

5 The year following this article’s publication, Dr. Leon Kramer (1951) published his own article within the same bulletin (then renamed Ohio Archaeologist) where he refers to the former article as McBeth’s field report. Dr. Kramer was director of the Ohio Indian Relic Collectors Society when the “anonymous” 1950 article was published, so it is expected he knew the author’s identity.

6 For the sake of clarity and ease of reading, McBeth’s field notes (field notes, 13 July–5 Sept. 1946; Unpublished field notes, 8–9 November 1949, Robert L. Harness Collection within the Private Collection of Gary Argabright, Chillicothe, Ohio) are only cited when quoted. All specifics about mound excavation and materials encountered therein originate from the field notes.

7 Kramer (1951) offers multiple alleged examples of Ross Barbed bifaces from Adena mounds. In these examples, barbs are often weaker when compared to other examples, sometimes looking like oversized Robbins bifaces. Yet, recent reassessments state that strong barbs are not necessary to the type (Case et al. 2008). The McPherson biface from the Lee Mound, found alongside a tubular pipe and two bow-tie gorgets, is the only biface with enough contextual information to reevaluate the cultural affiliation of the mound in which it was discovered (McPherson 1951).

8 The term mica crescent is used specifically to engage comparative objects using the common terminology. In fact, a minority of mica “crescents” are fairly rectangular, especially when examining only short fragments (e.g., Webb 1943:Figure 12a). In all cases of which the author is aware, these less-curved crescents were found with others of the more standard form.