university alabama press caborn-welborn constructing a new society after the angel chiefdom collapse aug 2004

[...]... population density, the dispersal of the regional population, or the abandonment of the region Nor was collapse always associated with a decline in intersocietal interaction and access to nonlocal goods A case in point: the cultural developments that occurred after the ca a. d 1400 collapse of the Angel chiefdom near the northern edge of the Vacant Quarter, in the vicinity of the mouths of the Green and... all, of the Angel phase (a. d 1000–1400), the site was the focus of social, political, and economic life for the Angel population Calibrated radiocarbon dates from the Angel phase site have midpoints that range from the midtwelfth to the early-¤fteenth century (table 2.1) These dates yield a calibrated mean date of a. d 1300(1309,1355,1384)1400 The bulk of the Angel population appears to have lived at... the nature of the continuities and changes that de¤ne Caborn-Welborn vis-à-vis Angel Pre a. d 1400 Mississippian developments in the lower Ohio valley are described ¤rst The sociopolitical organization of the Angel chiefdom is outlined, and the factors that may have contributed to its collapse and the abandonment of the Angel site and its associated farmsteads, hamlets, and small villages are discussed... ¤rst Caborn-Welborn villages and the total abandonment of Angel and its associated settlements (Hilgeman 2000; Pollack 1998) Regardless of the causes, by ca a. d 1400, the power and prestige of the Angel elite had diminished to such an extent that the social and political hierarchy that had been in place for at least two hundred years was no longer able to sustain itself But instead of abandoning the. .. explanations that rely on local environmental change to explain the collapse of a particular regional chiefdom and the dispersal of the population that comprised it is that such explanations do little to explain the processes involved in the widespread and contemporary collapse of regional Mississippian polities throughout the area encompassed by the Vacant Quarter (Williams 1990) Similarly, explanations... burials or cemeteries at associated farmsteads, hamlets, and villages, suggests that Angel served as the primary burial locale for the whole chiefdom The Angel polity appears to have been a nucleated, simple (two-tier) chiefdom (Hilgeman 1992; Schurr 1992) Nucleated simple chiefdoms are characterized by a concentration of population at a regional center (Blitz 199 3a) , with the remainder living at smaller... maintained; the elite had lost their power to command; and the regional center at Angel, as well as the surrounding villages, hamlets, and farmsteads, was abandoned Identifying the factors that contributed to the collapse of the Angel chiefdom can help explain how the Caborn-Welborn population reconstructed social, political, and economic relationships following its demise But identifying these factors... very limited archaeological data While the sites that he examined lack early Mississippian components, the absence of such a component at a particular site cannot be equated with the lack of habitation in an entire portion of the valley, unless it can be shown that other sites in the region also lack early Mississippian components The abandonment of the lower Ohio valley and the collapse of the region’s... collected materials from Ries-Hasting and collections from Murphy and Ashworth, which she had on loan from the Glenn A Black Laboratory at Indiana University Cheryl provided me laboratory space to analyze these materials and a place to spend the night Most important, she was always willing to listen to my ideas, to discuss and critique them, and at times was willing to agree to disagree Over the years I have... Mississippian chiefdoms situated throughout the Midwest and Southeast The remainder of this book is organized as follows In chapter 2, basic descriptive information is presented about the Angel and Caborn-Welborn phases in order to provide a context within which to understand what may have occurred following the collapse of the Angel chiefdom In particular, the sociopolitical organization of the Angel chiefdom .