New Perspectives on the Settlement-Subsistence System of the Late Woodland Western Basin Tradition,ca. 500–1300 A.D.

Abstract

Based on joint efforts by the Williams County Historical Society and the Laboratories of Ethnoarchaeology at the University of Toledo, thirty-six new sites, including six Western Basin Tradition ceramic sites, have been documented in the tri-state region of northeastern Indiana, northwestern Ohio, and south-central Michigan. Also, data collected from throughout the Western Lake Erie region since 1984 has necessitated several revisions in the 1984 settlement-subsistence model proposed for the Late Woodland Western Basin Tradition populations, ca. 1000–1300 A.D. (Stothers, Graves, and Redmond, 1984). Key changes involve the relative sizes of functionally different site types that form component parts of a larger settlement system, a lack of formal village life, and a new perspective on seasonal patterns of population coalescence and dispersal.