February 13th, 2013

Post date: Feb 16, 2013 1:53:14 AM

On Wednesday, February 13^th, 2013, Mr Jon Carrol was kind enough to cross the border and give our membership a presentation on Stimulating Springwells: a complex systems approach toward understanding late prehistoric social interaction in the Great Lakes region of North America

The abstract that Jon provided us with is a very good description of what he spoke on, he wrote: This presentation examines the nature of Springwells phase (defined here as ca. A.D. 1160 to 1420) sociopolitical interaction and integration during the Late Prehistoric period in the Great Lakes region of North America. Ceramic analysis and computer simulation supports previous interpretations that Springwells phase communities were organized in a form of sociopolitical integration recognized by the anthropological community as a tribal confederacy. The interpretations presented here differ from previous work in that it describes tribal sociopolitical organization as the embodiment of a specific type of complex system as outlined by the complexity science literature. A revised ceramics typology expands the resolution of the original Springwells phase ceramic typology, thus giving a more fine-grained understanding of common stylistic design elements. This expanded taxonomy allows for increased understanding relating to the geographic distributions of Springwells stylistic motifs. Agent Based Modeling (ABM) is then used to explore changes in relationships between cultural transmission (CT) and interactional exchange scenarios. This research advocates that Springwells communities were participating in social networks integrated through tribal social mechanisms. Late Precontact tribalization is seen as a social response to widespread political developments in the region.

The one thing to note is that we (in Ontario) call this period the Western Basin Tradition and just to add to the confusion in central Indiana this same time period is known as the Castor Phase. There is a lack of information on this period because there really is not a lot of sites or artifacts discovered from this period creating a very small data set from which to work from. To give you an idea of the situation, we know a fair bit about the Late Woodland period and we have hundreds of pots from many sites while from the Western Basin/Springwells we only have 96 pots from about 20 sites. Therefore we have very little information on this period in this area.

One of the biggest changes Mr Carrol was able to implement was that he expanded the Springwells pottery phase types from three to ten. This shows that the Springwells were much more complex than was previously demonstrated by previous archaeologists. He also demonstrated that the typology, surprisingly, did not depend on geography. Some of the farthest sites had the most similar typology.

He also showed that social causes, rather than environmental influences, helped the spread of the different pottery styles. It is often argued that it was spread with the agricultural spread of maize. Mr. Carrol does not believe this to be true and given his examples he appears to be correct. He believes that the patterning helps define a social identity and is a reinforcement of that identity in the face of other peoples and their cultures around located them.

We would like to thank Mr. Jon Carrol for taking the time to come to our chapter and make this presentation. This was not your first visit to our chapter and hopefully will not be your last! Look forward to seeing what you have for us next Jon!