Glossary

Adze A hafted wood-shaping tool used to, among other things, hollow out dugouts.

American Bottom A 120-km-long expanse of floodplain

Wherein sits the Cahokia site, between present-day St. Louis and Ste. Genevieve, Missouri.

Archaic In eastern North America, the Early Holocene period during which food collectors settled into regional landscapes, residing at least part of the year in base camps, and, later in the period, built the first mounded centers (c. 8000-500BC). band A social and economic group of hunter-gatherers who tend to be united by kinship and marriage ties. base camp A semi-permanent or seasonally reoccupied settlement of hunter-gatherers from which smaller groups of hunters or collectors organize more focused forays. biface A chipped-stone tool with opposing flat sides and one or more sharp cutting edge.

Chiefdom A small centralized society with a government based on hereditary chiefs whose power is believed legitimate by most of the population.

Confederacy A loose political alliance of formerly autonomous societies lacking a strong central government. corporate kin group People related by blood who identify with each other and share in work activities. geoglyph A nonportable symbolic motif of monumental proportions, such as an effigy mound. gorget A two-holed ornament worn suspended around the neck or sown onto a garment.

Mississippian A cultural complex and time period denoted by historically contingent territorial and hierarchical societies,

Maize agriculture, monumentality, and readily identifiable political-religious imagery (AD 1050-1500s). monumental architecture Any construction of earth, wood, or stone built for public or religious - not domestic - reasons. mortuary center A place that owes its cultural significance to its use in interring the dead.

Palaeo-Indian In North America, the Late Pleistocene period during which Clovis-making people hunted big game and filled up the continent (c. 10 200-10 000BP). proto-state An urban or urbanizing centralized society characterized by a division of labor, cultural pluralism, and a complex central government. sedentism The condition of living in single permanent settlements for an entire year, year after year. shaman A religious specialist or medicine man or woman able to communicate with the spirit world. tumuli Elevated earthen constructions.

Woodland A period of time, usually subdivided into early, middle, and late subunits, following the Archaic in eastern North America that saw the widespread adoption of pottery technology, the domestication of native cultigens, the efflorescence of Hopewellian mortuary cults, and, later, the adoption of the bow and arrow and maize agriculture (c. 500 BC-AD 1050/1500s (depends on location)).