Langford tradition and the process of tribalization on the middle Mississippian borders, The

Midcontinental Journal of Archaeology, Spring 1999 by Emerson, Thomas E

As Jeske, Bird, and Gibbon have maintained, the social, political, ideological, and economic environment in late prehistoric Illinois presents the archaeologist with a complex and diverse array of interactions to be isolated and interpreted. In approaching this array, the researcher faces the basic problem of recognizing prehistoric societies in the archaeological record.

Problems of Tribalism and Ethnicity

To envision Cahokian interaction with societies to its north we must first understand the political and social structure of those groups. In various discussions they have been generally characterized as tribal or, more recently, as "ethnic" groups (cf. Jeske 1992). Tribalism and ethnicity are concepts that have complex intellectual histories in anthropological and sociological research-histories too lengthy to reiterate here. The ongoing debates over these constructs turn on their essential reality, their origins, and, consequently, their explanative value. (Those who wish to follow these debates will find Ferguson and Whitehead 1992a; Fried 1975; Helm 1968; Jones 1997:40-83; Sahlins 1968; and Shennan 1989a useful entry points.) Despite such critiques, archaeologists have been free in their adaptation of these concepts to the exploration of the prehistoric past. Such archaeological adoptions stem from the practical need for descriptive terms to categorize the multitude of social bodies that fall between more clearly defined (in a relative sense) social organizations known as "bands" and "chiefdoms." Unfortunately, the transference of these terms from the world of the ethnographic present to that of the past has done little to clarify or still the debate. "Tribes" have become visible in controversy pertaining to their origins (e.g., Bender 1985; Braun and Plog 1982; Plog and Braun 1984; Saitta 1983), especially with regard to warfare (e.g., Ferguson and Whitehead 1992b; Haas 1990b). In one of the most prominent archaeological studies, Braun and Plog (1982:504) paint tribes in broad strokes as "social networks integrated by crosscutting panregional institutions, but lacking class structure or full-time segmental specialization ... [in which] decision-making occurs primarily through consensus." In a review of that study, Saitta (1983: 822) correctly asserts that a methodology treating tribes as "nondecomposable" effectively precludes the study of their internal or external dynamics. In addition, Braun and Plog's (1982) concept of "regional" networks incorporates an ambiguity of scalar dimension that hampers the value of their approach when applied to the archaeological record.

The Braun and Plog configuration of tribes and tribal networks is in line with the dominant ethnographic vision that stresses tribal fluidity and heterogeneity. However, other recent assessments of "tribes" tend to be more archaeologically friendly by recognizing them as an "enduring and stable political form" (e.g., Gregg 1991b). Gregg (1988, 1991a:xviii) directs our attention to the dependence on "abundant resources, permanent or semipermanent residential groups, and individually based social networks" that characterize these "small-scale, sedentary, nonhierarchical societies." Following other scholars (Braun 1977:8081; Creamer and Haas 1985; Haas 1990:172), she proposes a suite of characteristics that represent tribal entities as corporate, nonstratified, residential groups of multiple families living together within a territory, who are organized on the basis of kinship and lack institutionalized offices, craft specialization, and inherited wealth (Gregg 1988:24-25). Such groups network through personal and secondary kin ties, cults, sodalities, trade, and marriage alliances.