Taber Well Site (33HO611): A Middle Woodland Habitation and Surplus Lithic Production Site in the Hocking Valley, Southeastern Ohio, The

Midcontinental Journal of Archaeology, Spring 2008 by Peoples, Nicole, Abrams, Elliot M, Freter, AnnCorinne, Jokisch, Brad, Patton, Paul E

Local Exchange Systems and Tribal Formation

We have shown that this small upland community, at least by the Middle Woodland period, exploited the nearby lithic outcrops to engage in tool manufacture beyond their consumptive needs. At the same time, there were similarly small communities within this and other tributaries, as well as the Hocking River main stem (Hicks 2007; Stump et al. 2005). Therefore, we propose that other communities generated some surplus production; however, many other commodities are less archaeologically conspicuous than lithic tools.

There is a limited but growing archaeological database that supports this reconstruction of surplus production at domestic sites for local exchange. Smith (2006:501), summarizing Midwest Hopewellian economies, argued that there was ". . . considerable variation in the economies of individual household settlements. . ." and that some variation was related to inter-community exchange. Research at the Middle Woodland Dash Reeves site in the American Bottom (Portier 2001) indicates surplus lithic tool production with finished tools, and especially blades, being distributed beyond the site.

We propose that the people of Taber Well made surplus lithic tools specifically as commodities, or items intended for use by people other than the producers. There are many ethnographic models of exchange, barter, and trade which might account for this type of economic movement of goods (e.g., Humphrey and Hugh-Jones 1992). Some possibilities are (1) gift exchange among kin in the context of balanced or delayed reciprocity; (2) direct barter of lithic tools for lowland or riverine commodities scarce or absent in the upper tributaries; and (3) exchange of goods as symbols of political and social connectivity rather than of economic utility.

At this juncture, we can only offer some possibilities for such movement of goods, since dearly more sites must be analyzed to further this line of research. The significance, however, is that a Middle Woodland community in the upper reaches of a tributary has been identified as the source of lithic commodities which moved through some exchange system(s) to communities elsewhere. We suggest that the heterogeneous distribution of natural resources, especially between the upland and lowland zones of the valley, contributed to some variants of inter-community exchange.

One of the organizational hallmarks of Middle Woodland society was a system of alliances among relatively small, dispersed communities, which were anchored spatially to an ideologically meaningful center. Most of the literature currently emphasizes kinship and ideology as playing central roles in forming alliances among these peer communities (Carr and case 2005). Although we cannot presume the specific mechanism of exchange, the empirical data from the Taber Well site point to utilitarian economic connections as a component in the network of inter-connections among Middle Woodland communities in the Hocking River Valley.