Violence in the midcontinent : a comparative analysis of Oneota interactions with mississippian and central plains populations

Abstract

Oneota is a name given to groups of Native Americans with a shared material culture originating in the upper midwest around AD 900. Within a few hundred years, objects representing Oneota culture extended from indiana to Kansas and from Mississippi to Canada. This expansion led Oneota peoples to come into contact with Mississippian groups in the Central Illinois River Valley, and up to a few centuries later, with Central Plains populations in Nebraska, an area with less evidence for prehistoric violence than in the Mississippi River valleys where the Oneota developed. This thesis examines direct and indirect evidence of prehistoric violence from archaelogical sites in Illinois and Nebraska that show evidence of intergroup conflict and habitation by Oneota, Mississippian, or Central Plains populations, or some combination thereof. Differences in political systems as well as subsistence and settlement practices may have contributed to varying incidence of violence between cultural groups in these areas.