A Bioarchaeological Overview of the Late Woodland Period Gooden Mound Group, Fulton County, Illinois
Graduation Term
Fall 2024
Degree Name
Master of Science (MS)
Department
Department of Sociology and Anthropology: Archaeology
Committee Chair
Maria O. Smith
Committee Member
G. Logan Miller
Committee Member
Michael Strezewski
Abstract
Extensive research in paleopathology has documented adverse effects accompanying a shift in subsistence strategy from largely nomadic, hunting and gathering lifestyles to those of more sedentary, agrarian systems. Comparative assessment of the human skeletal remains of early foragers and later farmers recovered from archaeological sites around the world have consistently demonstrated a decrease in average age at death in the latter.
Across the pre-Columbian North American Midwest, the transitional period between the Late Woodland and Mississippian periods, sometimes referred to as the terminal or Mississippian Acculturated Late Woodland, portended establishment of semi-permanent to permanent hamlets, increasingly reliant upon the adoption and development of large-scale horticultural and incipient agricultural practices. The resulting sedentary lifestyle in more aggregated communities facilitated increased fertility and growth within respective populations, but also a proliferation of physiological stressors, especially infection and disease.
The present study serves as a bioarchaeological evaluation of health of people recovered from the Late Woodland Gooden Mounds cemetery located in Fulton County, Illinois, thought to date more specifically to AD 700-900. The community health survey presented here endeavors to supplement existing research into peoples undergoing periods of major transitions in settlement and subsistence patterns, especially those of the Central Illinois River Valley. In order to do so, it presents an assessment of both specific and non-specific indicators of health stress and manifestation of disease, as they occur in human dental and skeletal remains, and further extrapolates the results to better determine, understand, and communicate how the interred of Gooden Mounds once lived, and postulates as to their temporal and cultural affiliation to those of proximal sites across the region.
Taken together, the evidence collected in the present study suggests the people of Gooden Mounds were semi-sedentary horticulturalists and supports the prior classification of the site as a Late Woodland burial ground. The site demographics reflect a relatively high presence of subadults among the interred, and further comparative assessment of the overall demographic profile with the pathological indicators observed consistently demonstrates results which could be characteristic of pre-maize, agricultural (e.g., Eastern Agricultural Complex) subsistence-driven sedentism. Chance discoveries, such as clear evidence of conflict-related trauma and potential variation in lifestyle between individuals buried in the respective mound units, alongside known distinction between elements of the Gooden Mounds cultural assemblage argue for further study and comprehensive synthesis of the site’s pathological data and its mortuary archaeology.
Access Type
Thesis-Open Access
Recommended Citation
Durchholz, Aaron M., "A Bioarchaeological Overview of the Late Woodland Period Gooden Mound Group, Fulton County, Illinois" (2024). Theses and Dissertations. 2007.
https://ir.library.illinoisstate.edu/etd/2007
