文摘
During the Middle Woodland period (ca. 300 B.C. - A.D. 500),indigenous people across eastern North America participated - to varying degrees - in long distance networks of material and ideological exchange. This study examines the relationship between these interregional interactions and the emergence monumental architecture among groups of seasonally sedentary,egalitarian hunter-gatherer-gardeners in western North Carolina's Appalachian Summit. Using the results of multi-method geophysical survey,targeted excavation,radiocarbon dating,and analyses of museum collections and newly excavated materials,I argue that the record of geometric enclosure and platform mound construction and use at the Garden Creek site points to a complex and shifting history of interregional interaction and local response. These findings underscore how social relationships and identities at multiple scales structure local historical trajectories among complex hunter-gatherers,and encourage the further development of theories of culture contact in pre-Columbian contexts.