The question of who exactly walked the trails of Runkle woods before the Europeans is a long one. The natives encountered by European settlers were the Miami, and more importantly, for that specific area the Shawnee. However, they are in the grand scheme of things, newcomers to the area. The Shawnee arrived in the area around 1650. The Miami came even later, first establishing themselves in the Maumee valley. Arriving in these areas they found purchase in the partially abandoned settlements of the Fort Ancient Culture. The Fort Ancient’s existed within a territory that spanned from Michigan to Virginia. They themselves lived on the territory for roughly 750 years. Though thought to be great builders, the ancient mound for which they get their name was built by their predecessors the Hopewell culture. The Hopewell in turn came to power during the waning of the Adena. The conceived notion of native tribes is often monolithic and stagnant. When people learn of a tribe it’s often with the assumption that one tribe occupied an area in perpetuity. But the precolonial history of Native cultures within the Miami Valley and their relation to the land, is one of migration, movement, and trade. The introduction of new peoples brought new concepts and cultural interaction with the land, alongside the adoption of older practices within the area. Many of the time periods between these cultures interact. Unsurprising, as the water ways that many of these cultures built their homes near, allowed access to the wider Midwest and Southern North America, as well as fertile soil to plant crops. The Adena were the first to experiment with permanent agriculture within the Ohio valley. They were not one unified people, rather the Adena is a name given after the fact to describe the similar practices and lifestyles of the tribes that occupied the territory from roughly 500 BCE to 1000 CE. They were largely migratory, following herds of elk and deer, as well as beaver, turkeys. However, the Adena did two things that tied them, at least temporarily, to the land. First, they kept small gardens near wetland areas, containing, sunflowers, and other weedy plants like mayflower and knotgrass. Secondly, they cleared bits of land to make temporary settlements in which large burial mounds were constructed. The building of these sites was likely a coordinated effort between several different groups, some of whom held more ties, to that particular location than others. The combined building of these sites is often seen as a method to extend cultural and economic ties. It’s an ideology that the Adena would extend even further through trade. At their height, the Adena used the water ways to import copper and shells to use as tools and decoration. However, undoubtedly, the Adena were only the beginning of a sedentary society, and whatever marks they left upon the land are feint now. Only a small number of their mounds remain. The same can not be said for the Hopewell who succeeded them. Like the Adena, the Hopewell tradition is a name for a wide group of people sharing similar traditions. Often the two are grouped together as Adena-Hopewell, with the Hopewell, seen as cultural successors of the Adena, though there are differences. While the Adena built there mounds vertically, stacking their dead, the Hopewell built there’s outward seeing them more as ceremonial centers than graves. This required more space and land clearance and coincided the Hopewell’s further reliance on agriculture. Arriving in the area around 200 BCE, Southwestern Ohio was an important cultural center for the Hopewell, with the highest density of mound ceremonial sites. The Hopewell tradition extended farther than the Adena as well. While the Adena mostly shipped things in from the Great Lakes and parts of present-day New England, archeological evidence of the Hopewell tradition extends as far East as modern-day Kansas and as far South as Florida. Despite their larger reliance on agriculture, the Hopewell mainly consumed the same dietary staples as the Adena. Harvesting reedy plants they used slash and burn techniques to help cultivate them. More abundant food could be found at mound sites, but the average Hopewell native didn’t live nearby. Like the Adena mounds, the Hopewell mounds were a form of cultural unifier, attracting smaller groups. While more sedentary and agriculturally dependent than the Adena, the subsistence on small weedy crops, suggests many of the Hopewell were still migratory, relying on herds of game to supplement their diet. Little evidence exists of a unifying structure or organization other than the mounds which would have taken considerable time and effort to build. Especially since, unlike the Adena, Hopewell mounds weren’t consistently used as burial sites, with them generally cremating their dead. Whatever shape or form, this loose confederation took, it dissolved around 500 CE. During this period, known as the Late Woodland period trade, was still active, and the full introduction of the “Three Sisters” allowed for a population boom. But rather than the dense conglomerations that existed around the ceremonial mounds of the Adena and Hopewell there was an increase in smaller villages, spread out over a larger area. This spread lead to more substantial shifts in both culture and language. However, the emerging Mississippian culture would bleed through into much of the Midwest. The Three Sisters were introduced through trade with Mississippian societies. It wasn’t until 1000 CE that the last pre-colonial mound building society would occupy the Ohio valley and achieve a comparable population density. The origins of the Fort ancient culture are unclear. They could be descendants of the other Early Woodland societies like the Hopewell (As stated the site they take their name from is an older Hopewell site). It is also possible they’re migrants from the Mississippian Culture. Whatever the exact origins of the Fort Ancient Culture they were markedly different from the previous dominant societies within the region. They still maintained the trade networks but gone was the practice of building mounds for cultural unity. They occasionally built mounds themselves, however, these were effigy mounds used for rituals. The Fort Ancients were more likely to use mounds left behind by the Hopewell and Adena for burials. The Fort Ancients were also much more heavily reliant on agriculture than their predecessors Evidence of soil erosion alongside tests for pollen within the soil, showing low amounts of arboreal pollen, suggest heavy use of agriculture. Hunting and meat were still popular, the sedentary lifestyle was often interrupted to move to hunting camps in the winter. All of this combined meant The Fort Ancient Culture occupied a much smaller area than their predecessors. The area they lived in consisted of Southwest Ohio, Northern Kentucky, and Southern Illinois. Just as their origins are contested, their disappearance, is equally contested. It’s thought the arrival of European diseases wiped out the Fort Ancient’s around 1650 CE. However, there’s no definitive proof that this is the cause, and the disappearance of the Fort Ancient’s coincides with the arrival of the Shawnee to the area. The cultural history interesting the Miami valley is one built on unity. Agriculture as a sustainable concept, was a roughly invention. Rather than existing together, the focus was on using the land, to bring people together through trade and combined great works projects. Sitting on a waterfront these ideas could be exported out to the rest of the Eastern North America. Lakomäki, Sami, '“The Greatest Travellers In America”: The Shawnee Diaspora, 1600–1725', Gathering Together: The Shawnee People through Diaspora and Nationhood, 1600-1870 (New Haven, CT, 2014; online edn, Yale Scholarship Online, 22 Jan. 2015), https://doi.org/10.12987/yale/9780300180619.003.0002 Henry, Edward R., and Casey R. Barrier. “The Organization of Dissonance in Adena-Hopewell Societies of Eastern North America.” World Archaeology, vol. 48, no. 1, Mar. 2016, pp. 87–109. EBSCOhost, https://doi-org.ezproxy.libraries.wright.edu/10.1080/00438243.2015.1132175. McLauchlan, Kendra. “Plant Cultivation and Forest Clearance by Prehistoric North Americans: Pollen Evidence from Fort Ancient, Ohio, USA.” Holocene, vol. 13, no. 4, Jan. 2003, pp. 557–66. EBSCOhost, https://doi-org.ezproxy.libraries.wright.edu/10.1191/0959683603hl646rp Redmond, Brian G. “Terminal Late Woodland Mortuary Ceremonialism, Social Differentiation, and Long Distance Interaction in Northern Ohio: New Evidence from the Danbury Site.” Midcontinental Journal of Archaeology, vol. 37, no. 1, Apr. 2012, pp. 99–140. EBSCOhost, https://search-ebscohost-com.ezproxy.libraries.wright.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&db=edsjsr&AN=edsjsr.24571263&site=eds-live
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