Late Woodland Zea Mays at the Vintroux Site

Putnam County, West Virginia

Charles M. Niquette

Cultural Resource Analysts, Inc.
143 Walton Avenue
Lexington, Kentucky 40508
CMNIQUETTE@aol.com
and

Gary D. Crites

Crites and Associates
640 Mize Circle
Seymour, Tennessee 37865

Abstract

The contents of a freshly plowed out feature at the Vintroux site (46PU69) produced cultural materials diagnostic of the late Late Woodland period. A pair of radiocarbon dates obtained from the feature were consistent with the artifacts recovered. Significantly, the feature also produced over 33 grams of Zea mays. The maize is described and metric attributes are presented. The single feature at Vintroux produced a greater quantity and better preserved maize than has been recovered from all other Middle Ohio Valley Late Woodland sites combined.

Introduction

During the Spring of 1990, Jim Guthrie and Bill Williams of the Lower Kanawha Chapter of the West Virginia Archeological Society walked the Vintroux site after it had been plowed. They discovered a feature which had been freshly plowed out. It contained burned plant material, a few lithics and some pottery. Guthrie and Williams collected and delivered the feature contents to Robert F. Maslowski, editor of the West Virginia Archeologist and “mentor in residence” for the Society, in hopes that he might be able to date the feature. Maslowski forwarded the collection to Niquette for analysis. The purpose of this brief paper is to present the results of this analysis.

Site Description and Cultural Affiliation

The Vintroux site is located in Fraziers Bottom on a first terrace of the Kanawha River. Recorded by Maslowski (U.S. Army Corps of Engineers 1976), the 7,200 square m site was described originally as “a series of scattered camp sites” on the south bank of the river. Cultural material collected from the site by Maslowski included one chert and quartz tempered, cordmarked sherd and a handful of chert debitage, all of which was found in a two-track dirt road that bisected the site (1976:5). The site has been surface collected heavily by members of the West Virginia Archeological Society for years. Craig Ferrel, an active member of the Society, has suggested that all pottery that has been found at the Vintroux site is grit tempered, and that no shell tempered pottery has ever been found there. In addition, triangular arrow points and notched dart points such as Jacks Reef and Raccoon Notched are common (Craig Ferrel, personal communication 1994).

The feature encountered by Guthrie and Williams at the Vintroux site produced nine grit tempered (siltstone/sandstone), cordmarked body sherds that compare favorably to Parkline Cordmarked defined at the nearby Parkline site (46PU99) (Niquette and Hughes 1990). Nevertheless, no rim sherds were recovered from the feature and none of the decorative attributes that are so diagnostic of the Parkline phase were present on the sherds recovered. Parkline phase body sherds that do not display these attributes can be confused with Woods phase (O’Malley 1992) sherds, particularly when only a small collection of sherds is available for study. Therefore, the precise cultural affiliation of the feature remains somewhat ambiguous, and the radiocarbon dates discussed below merely confirm a late Late Woodland origin for the feature.

Two radiocarbon dates were generated from organic materials recovered from the feature. The first date, A.D. 1050 +/- 60 (Beta-67011) (CAMS-9548), was assayed from wood charcoal. A subsample of this wood included ash (Fraxinus spp., N=2), honey locust (Gleditsia triacanthos, N=5), walnut (Juglans spp., N=8), pine (Pinus spp., N=5) and ring porous (N=8). The calibrated age for this date is A.D. 1160 as determined using the University of Washington’s Radiocarbon Calibration Program (Rev. 3.0). The second sample submitted for absolute dating consisted entirely of carbonized Zea Mays. The conventional, C13 adjusted, radiocarbon age assayed was A.D. 800 +/- 50 B.P. (Beta-72568). The calibrated result (2 sigma, 95% probability) was A.D. 1170-1290.

The Maize

The Vintroux site feature yielded 1,069 fragmentary and whole maize kernels weighing 33.01 g. Almost all of the kernels were fragmented and some of the kernel fragments were clumped, perhaps indicating a sudden conflagration or a processing fire that got out of control.

A few kernels were complete enough to provide good metric data on kernel morphology. Twenty-three kernels yielded information on width, thickness and/or length of the grains and row angle measurements. Five of the kernels yielded angles with somewhat problematic row number determinations, i.e., swelling made it difficult to determine angles as indicative of 8 versus 10 row. In computing the mean row number, the higher row number determination was used where two different determinations could be made. The metric observations are as follows: 

Mean:   Width           Thickness       Length            Row #
        8.5 mm          5.4 mm          6.95 (7.0)        10.2(10)

        (N=23)          (N=23)          (N=12)            (N=23)

Range:  7.4-9.5 mm      4.5-7.0 mm      5.9-7.6 mm        8-12

These kernels are not particularly wide relative to length, and they do not compare well with Eastern 8-row. The size and proportions of the Vintroux site kernels suggest a well-developed flint that resembles the historic land race called Northern Flint. Like the kernels from the Woods site, those in the Vintroux site botanical assemblage are somewhat crescent- shaped. Moreover, the Vintroux kernels are deeper relative to width in comparison to 28 loose kernels reported from the Fort Ancient occupation at the Roseberry Farm site in Mason County (Wagner 1988:56).

Summary and Conclusions

The Vintroux site maize kernels are not aberrant for the time frame, but the geographical location and cultural context of this material makes its occurrence potentially significant. Maize occurs in Late Woodland contexts in the Middle Ohio River Valley region but in small quantities. This being the case, the quantity of maize recovered from the single pit at the Vintroux site is remarkable, especially when viewed in a regional context. The region as it is defined here extends up the Ohio River from Louisville, Kentucky, to Point Pleasant, West Virginia, and along the Ohio’s major tributaries.

During the early Late Woodland (A.D. 350-750) maize is rare. For example, no maize was recovered at Dow Cook (15LA4) (Wymer 1989a), Hansen (15GP14) (Lopinot 1988), Waterplant (33FR155) (Wymer 1987a, 1987b) or at Zencor (Wymer 1987b). Wymer (1990:503) reported very small amounts of maize (0.08 g) at the early Late Woodland Childers site (46MS121). Similarly, the early Late Woodland component at Sand Ridge produced 0.51 g of maize (Featherstone 1977).

After about A.D. 750, the archeological visibility of maize increases in the region, but there is no indication that maize played a major role in the subsistence practices of the area’s Late Woodland populations. For example, Wymer (1989b) reported a total of 0.25 g of kernels, cupules, cob segments, glumes and embryos at the Niebert site (46MS103). The late Late Woodland component at Sand Ridge, a site located near Cincinnati, yielded 1.04 g of maize (Featherstone 1977). Rossen (n.d.) reported a total of 0.6 g of maize, nearly all of which was kernels, at the Watson Gravel site (15BE249). Crites (1990:160-176) reported three maize fragments, totaling 0.01 g, in a late Late Woodland, Parkline phase pit (Feature 8) at the Parkline site (46PU99). Similarly, the late Late Woodland Woods site (46MS14) produced 2.09 g of whole and fragmented kernels and cupules, glumes and unidentifiable cob fragments. Nevertheless, only 10 whole or nearly complete kernels were recovered at Woods, and most of these were too distorted for further assessment (Wymer 1990:518). None of the specimens recovered from any of these sites were complete enough to provide information on kernel or cob morphology. Based upon the occurrence of Jacks Reef Corner Notched (and triangular arrow) points and grit tempered pottery with folded rim strips, cordwrapped paddle edge impressions placed on vessel collars and lip notching and/or cord wrapped dowel impressions, it seems clear that the Woods site also contained a Parkline phase component that was not distinguished from the Woods phase materials by O’Malley (1990). At this time, it is unknown whether or not the Woods site maize came from Parkline phase or Woods phase pits, or from both.

The source of the Vintroux site maize remains a mystery at this time; obviously, the maize was either grown and processed by the site’s inhabitants or it was obtained by them through trade, most likely with indigenous, Parkline phase, Woods phase or Fort Ancient populations. To date, there are no well-documented, West Virginia, Fort Ancient sites that have been dated to the time period bracketed by the Vintroux site dates. Instead, the indigenous population at this time period appears to be represented by Woods phase populations. These people occupied terrace and levee formations where their sites consisted of linear, dispersed household groups. As noted above, only a small quantity of corn was recovered at the Mason County type site where the Woods phase was defined. Concomitant with Woods phase occupations, Parkline phase peoples were also present in the region during the late Late Woodland period. Currently, no intensively occupied Parkline phase sites have been identified. Instead, Parkline phase sites tend to be rather ephemeral and are thought to be inhabited for very brief periods of time by highly mobile, nuclear family groups. Parkline components occur very frequently on Woods phase sites suggesting that Parkline peoples may have been frequent visitors to Woods phase camps. Whatever the source, the single feature at Vintroux produced a greater quantity and better preserved maize than has been recovered from all other Middle Ohio Valley Late Woodland sites combined.

References Cited

 
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Acknowledgments

Far too often, avocational archeologists do not receive the recognition they deserve for making contributions to the discipline, and the West Virginia Archeological Society is replete with members whose work goes unacknowledged. We would like to reverse this trend and are most grateful that Jim Guthrie and Bill Williams had the foresight to collect the material reported here, and also to make it available for study. We also appreciate the friendly encouragement and information about the Vintroux site provided by Craig Ferrel. The authors would like to acknowledge and thank C. Wesley Cowan and Dee Anne Wymer for their comments on earlier drafts of this paper. The Huntington District Corps of Engineers is gratefully acknowledged for paying for one of the dates reported here. Finally, we would like to thank Dr. Robert F. Maslowski for his interest and encouragement. Any errors of omission or commission remain our own.
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