This paper outlines the procedures and equipment necessary for applying a simple flotation technique to recover animal bone, seeds, and other small cultural remains lost in the normal screening of soils from archaeological sites. Soil is initially processed in the field by a water-separation technique. The resulting concentrate is later treated, in the laboratory, by chemical flotation, to separate faunal from plant remains.This simple, inexpensive technique enables processing of soil in quantity, thereby allowing recovery of small plant and animal remains from midden or feature fills where they occur in very low densities.It is argued that, without use of such a flotation procedure, inferences about prehistoric subsistence patterns from faunal and floral remains are sharply biased in favor of larger animals and in favor of hunting, over natural plant food collecting, since conventional screens are not adequate for recovery of most plant remains or small animal bones.

Archaeology has become increasingly concerned with the interpretation of prehistoric subsistence settlement systems. In the area of the major river valleys south of the Great Lakes, a significant example of this concern has been the question o f the role of cultivation in changing subsistence economies from the Late Archaic through Woodland periods. This article assembles all published (and unpublished) archaeological information on the remains o f cultivated plants recovered f r o m Woodland sites in the Midwest-Riverine area. It then reviews current hypotheses for the beginnings of cultivation in light of this evidence.WITH THE GROWING concern of archaeology in recent decades for understanding prehistoric cultural-ecological adaptations, considerable attention has been focused on the problem of the beginnings of cultivation and its role in cultural development. Since prehistoric cultivation in temperate North America involved hoe and digging stick technologies exclusively, cultivation was largely or entirely restricted to lighter soils particularly associated with forested areas and river valley systems. Therefore, a logical area in eastern North America to look for the beginnings of cultivation in prehistory would be the complex of major river valleys lying immediately south of the Great Lakes. Here, the drainages of the Mississippi, Ohio, Missouri, Illinois, Wabash, and lesser streams converge in a complex network of valleys, offering a particularly advantageous situation for initial experiments with cultivation.The study of prehistoric subsistence settlement systems has come into vogue in the past ten years. This has resulted in the excavation of many Early and Middle Woodland Period habitation sites, with special care taken to recover the entire range of faunal

The attempt to delineate the processes underlying cultural evolution has become a central problem for archaeology today. Yet, present attempts to explain prehistoric culture change are based on exceedingly fragmentary archeological evidence, a fact resulting partly from inappropriate research strategies and partly from the “one-man scholar” basis on which archaeological research has been traditionally organized.This paper shows that certain long-held assumptions about the nature of culture which have governed excavation strategy and methods limit the value of currently existing data for attacking processual questions. The paper also examines both the quality of archaeological data required for discovering evolutionary process and the research strategies necessary for recovering these data. It argues that these research strategies cannot be put into effect unless the scale of archaeological staff, facilities, and funding increases greatly, and equally important, unless the concept of how research is organized changes.

There are multiple structural and stylistic differences between local Middle Woodland expressions in the Great Lakes-Riverine area. These reflect not only different cultural systems but also in some cases different levels of cultural complexity. At present these manifestations are grouped into a single Hopewellian culture on the basis of selected artifact commonalities. Variations within Great Lakes-Riverine Middle Woodland are of several kinds: (1) complexes that include diagnostic Hopewellian culture artifacts are concentrated in the major river valleys, while apparently contemporary manifestations in neighboring localities lack Hopewellian forms; (2) if we employ artifact classes other than those used as Hopewellian diagnostics, Middle Woodland regional traditions can be defined that have distributions sharply different from those of specifically Hopewellian complexes; (3) comparison of Hopewellian manifestations in Ohio, Illinois, and elsewhere indicates that these are not local expressions of a homogeneous culture but probably representatives of more than one cultural system; and (4) structural analysis of Middle Woodland mortuary and subsistence-settlement patterns in two regions, Illinois and Ohio, indicates contrasting cultural systems. It is argued that if ceramics of the Havana tradition are classified according to criteria developed in the central Illinois Valley, then potentially significant local style variations will go unrecognized. Tentative definition of four microstyle zones within the Havana tradition illustrates the utility of a system of analysis geared to recognition of small-scale style differences.

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