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Climate change is today's news, but it isn't a new phenomenon. Centuries-long cycles of heating and cooling are well documented for Europe and the North Atlantic. These variations in climate, including the Medieval Warm Period (MWP), AD 900 to 1300, and the early centuries of the Little Ice Age (LIA), AD 1300 to 1600, had a substantial impact on the cultural history of Europe. In this pathfinding volume, William C. Foster marshals extensive evidence that the heating and cooling of the MWP and LIA also occurred in North America and significantly affected the cultural history of Native peoples of the American Southwest, Southern Plains, and Southeast. Correlating climate change data with studies of archaeological sites across the Southwest, Southern Plains, and Southeast, Foster presents the first comprehensive overview of how Native American societies responded to climate variations over seven centuries. He describes how, as in Europe, the MWP ushered in a cultural renaissance, during which population levels surged and Native peoples substantially intensified agriculture, constructed monumental architecture, and produced sophisticated works of art. Foster follows the rise of three dominant cultural centers-Chaco Canyon in New Mexico, Cahokia on the middle Mississippi River, and Casas Grandes in northwestern Chihuahua, Mexico-that reached population levels comparable to those of London and Paris. Then he shows how the LIA reversed the gains of the MWP as population levels and agricultural production sharply declined; Chaco Canyon, Cahokia, and Casas Grandes collapsed; and dozens of smaller villages also collapsed or became fortresses.

This study uses the theoretical concepts of agency, power, and ideology to explore the development of cultural complexity within the hierarchically organized Cahokia Middle Mississippian society of the American Bottom from the 11th to the 13th centuries. By scrutinizing the available archaeological settlement and symbolic evidence, Emerson demonstrates that many sites previously identified as farmsteads were actually nodal centers with specialized political, religious, and economic functions integrated into a centralized administrative organization. These centers consolidated the symbolism of such 'artifacts of power' as figurines, ritual vessels, and sacred plants into a rural cult that marked the expropriation of the cosmos as part of the increasing power of the Cahokian rulers.During the height of Cahokian centralized power, it is argued, the elites had convinced their subjects that they ruled both the physical and the spiritual worlds. Emerson concludes that Cahokian complexity differs significantly in degree and form from previously studied Eastern Woodlands chiefdoms and opens new discussion about the role of rural support for the Cahokian ceremonial center.

Critical new discoveries and archaeological patterns increase understanding of early Mississippian culture and society The reasons for the rise and fall of early cities and ceremonial centers around the world have been sought for centuries.In the United States, Cahokia has been the focus of intense archaeological work to explain its mysteries.

This dramatic and controversial new interpretation of Cahokian leadership strategies examines the authority a ruling elite exercised over the surrounding countryside through a complex of social, political, and religious symbolism. This study uses the theoretical concepts of agency, power, and ideology to explore the development of cultural complexity within the hierarchically organized Cahokia Middle Mississippian society of the American Bottom from the 11th to the 13th centuries. By scrutinizing the available archaeological settlement and symbolic evidence, Emerson demonstrates that many sites previously identified as farmsteads were actually nodal centers with specialized political, religious, and economic functions integrated into a centralized administrative organization. These centers consolidated the symbolism of such 'artifacts of power' as figurines, ritual vessels, and sacred plants into a rural cult that marked the expropriation of the cosmos as part of the increasing power of the Cahokian rulers. During the height of Cahokian centralized power, it is argued, the elites had convinced their subjects that they ruled both the physical and the spiritual worlds. Emerson concludes that Cahokian complexity differs significantly in degree and form from previously studied Eastern Woodlands chiefdoms and opens new discussion about the role of rural support for the Cahokian ceremonial center.  

In the following response to Hart and colleagues (2021) we clarify our interpretations of the archaeological record for maize use from western Illinois. The robust archaeological record, newly obtained AMS dates, and evaluations of enamel apatite combine to support a late date for maize cultivation in this region. We reiterate that maize histories in the Eastern Woodlands may vary among different regions.

Population growth in the American Bottom after A.D. 1050 may have outstripped agricultural productivity. It has been suggested that farmers expanded agricultural practices into previously unused upland prairies to expand production. Historic accounts describe the difficulty that early settlers had with prairie, making this supposition questionable. However, experiments with replica Mill Creek hoes suggest that these tools were capable of converting prairie into farmland.

Population growth in the American Bottom after A.D. 1050 may have outstripped agricultural productivity. It has been suggested that farmers expanded agricultural practices into previously unused upland prairies to expand production. Historic accounts describe the difficulty that early settlers had with prairie, making this supposition questionable. However, experiments with replica Mill Creek hoes suggest that these tools were capable of converting prairie into farmland.

More than three decades of systematic archaeological research in the American Bottom region of southwestern Illinois have produced a continuous flow of new archaeobotanical information. Pioneering syntheses by Sissel Johannessen (1984 and 1988) offered the first insights into rich and complex relationships between prehistoric humans and plants in this region. Since that time, our appreciation for the depth and intricacy of prehistoric plant use strategies has grown along with the increasing specificity of new geographic and chronological botanical data. However, along with an enhanced appreciation, there is also the realization that some of the previous models of prehistoric cultural continuity were in error. Pre-Late Woodland Period occupations in the American Bottom area, especially, are best understood as a series of pulses rather than products of in situ cultural evolution. The non-continuous model has proven helpful in assessing apparent anomalies or inconsistencies in early prehistoric, Archaic through Middle Woodland, plant use patterns. Understanding of post-Late Woodland adaptive strategies has benefited generally from the sheer wealth of data, and also from greater attention given to context of that data. Although subsistence must continue to be a central focus of interpretive efforts, plant remains have also proven useful for examining broad issues of prehistoric economics, technology and ritual. In this paper, we present a revised synthesis of American Bottom archaeobotanical data, explore the revisions in terms of previous interpretations, and outline some ideas for new directions.

The FAI-270 Project represents one of the most extensive Cultural Resource Management (CRM) undertakings in North America, resulting in the publication of dozens of site reports and, in 1984, a benchmark synthetic volume that presented a new chronology and culture history of the American Bottom region of the Mississipppi River (Bareis and Porter, eds. 1984). This sequence was based on material assemblages and radiocarbon dates from extensive excavations. The ongoing FAI-270 Project continues to invigorate local and regional research, transforming the American Bottom sequence into one of the most detailed Eastern Woodlands chronologies available. Since the Bareis and Porter (eds. 1984) volume, the quantity of archaeological data and available published reports have increased exponentially, with ten new phases identified. Our understanding of both diachronic and synchronic cultural relationships have undergone major transformations. In general we find that the earlier neoevolutionary model no longer ''explains\" the archaeological evidence. This article presents a newly revised calibrated sequence using some 300 radiocarbon dates from over 100 sites and examines significant changes in the chronological sequence. We present a new perspective on American Bottom cultural historical development that stresses cultural discontinuities, historical contingencies, local abandonment, population movement, and social and political continuities and disruptions.

[...] the biggest thanks go to the authors who submitted manuscripts for consideration and especially to the more than 160 reviewers who took the time to carefully read papers and to offer thoughtful and reasoned comments to the authors and to the editors.