Document Type
Article
Version
Author's Final Manuscript
Publication Title
World Archaeology
Volume
48
Publication Date
2016
Abstract
Social complexity increased dramatically during the Middle Woodland period (ca. 200 BC-AD 500) in Eastern North America. Adena-Hopewell societies during this period built massive burial mounds, constructed complex geometric earthen enclosures, and maintained extensive trade networks in exotic craft goods. These material signatures suggest that coalition and consensus were sustained through social bonds since clear evidence for top-down leadership does not exist in Adena-Hopewell archaeology. Here, a framework grounded in new understandings of heterarchy is used to explore how coalitions were formed, organised, maintained, and/or shifted as a means to coordinate labour and ritual among Middle Woodland Period groups. Through re- analysis of the Wright Mound in Kentucky, and its burial contents, new insights into heterarchical organisation are used to achieve a wider, diachronic understanding of how humans in the past reached, realised, and rearranged forms of consensus and coalition.
Publisher's Statement
This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in World Archaeology on 15/01/2016, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/00438243.2015.1132175.
Citation
E. R. Henry and C. R. Barrier, "The Organization of Dissonance in Adena-Hopewell Societies of Eastern North America," World Archaeology 48.1 (2016): 87-109.
DOI
http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/00438243.2015.1132175