Oneota is a designation

archaeologist Archaeology or archeology is the scientific study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of artifacts, architecture, biofacts or ecofacts, sites, and cultural landsca ...

s use to refer to a cultural complex that existed in the eastern plains and

Great Lakes The Great Lakes, also called the Great Lakes of North America, are a series of large interconnected freshwater lakes in the mid-east region of North America that connect to the Atlantic Ocean via the Saint Lawrence River. There are five lakes ...

area of what is now occupied by the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country Continental United States, primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., ...

from around AD 900 to around 1650 or 1700. Based on classification defined in Gordon Willey and Philip Phillips' 1958 book ''Method and Theory in American Archaeology'', the Oneota culture belongs to formative stage. The culture is believed to have transitioned into various

Siouan Siouan or Siouan–Catawban is a language family of North America that is located primarily in the Great Plains, Ohio and Mississippi valleys and southeastern North America with a few other languages in the east. Name Authors who call the ent ...

cultures of the

protohistoric Protohistory is a period between prehistory and history during which a culture or civilization has not yet developed writing, but other cultures have already noted the existence of those pre-literate groups in their own writings. For example, ...

and historic times, such as the Ioway. A long-accepted ancestry to the

Ho-chunk The Ho-Chunk, also known as Hoocągra or Winnebago (referred to as ''Hotúŋe'' in the neighboring indigenous Iowa-Otoe language), are a Siouan-speaking Native American people whose historic territory includes parts of Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iow ...

has yet to be conclusively demonstrated. Oneota is considered a major component of Upper Mississippian culture. It is characterized by globular, shell-tempered pottery that is often coarse in fibre. Pieces often had a spherical body, short necks and/or a flat lip. Sometimes the vessels had strap handles. Decoration includes wavy and zigzag lines, often in parallel. Most decoration was done on the top half of the vessel. Analytically, the culture has been broken down into various stages or horizons. Generally accepted are the following: * Emergent Horizon (c. AD 900-1000), * Developmental Horizon (c. AD 1000-1300), * Classic Horizon (c. AD 1300-1650) (previously called the Oneota Aspect), * Historic Horizon (post-contact, generally after 1650). In addition, the Oneota culture has been divided geographically based on stylistic and socio-economic differences. Some of these traditions are Orr, Langford, and Fisher-Huber. The Oneota diet included

corn Maize ( ; ''Zea mays'' subsp. ''mays'', from es, maíz after tnq, mahiz), also known as corn (North American and Australian English), is a cereal grain first domesticated by indigenous peoples in southern Mexico about 10,000 years ago. The ...

beans A bean is the seed of several plants in the family Fabaceae, which are used as vegetables for human or animal food. They can be cooked in many different ways, including boiling, frying, and baking, and are used in many traditional dishes thr ...

, and squash,

wild rice Wild rice, also called manoomin, Canada rice, Indian rice, or water oats, is any of four species of grasses that form the genus ''Zizania'', and the grain that can be harvested from them. The grain was historically gathered and eaten in both ...

, nuts,

fish Fish are Aquatic animal, aquatic, craniate, gill-bearing animals that lack Limb (anatomy), limbs with Digit (anatomy), digits. Included in this definition are the living hagfish, lampreys, and Chondrichthyes, cartilaginous and bony fish as we ...

deer Deer or true deer are hoofed ruminant mammals forming the family Cervidae. The two main groups of deer are the Cervinae, including the muntjac, the elk (wapiti), the red deer, and the fallow deer; and the Capreolinae, including the re ...

, and

bison Bison are large bovines in the genus ''Bison'' (Greek: "wild ox" (bison)) within the tribe Bovini. Two extant and numerous extinct species are recognised. Of the two surviving species, the American bison, ''B. bison'', found only in North A ...

, varying according to the region and locale.Birmingham, Robert A. & Eisenberg, Leslie E. (2000)
''Indian Mounds of Wisconsin''
p. 166. University of Wisconsin Press. Relationships with Middle Mississippian were present but are not yet clearly understood. Whether Oneota developed ''in situ'' out of

Late Woodland In the classification of archaeological cultures of North America, the Woodland period of North American pre-Columbian cultures spanned a period from roughly 1000 BCE to European contact in the eastern part of North America, with some archaeolo ...

cultures, was invasive, was the result of influence from (proto-)Middle Mississippian peoples, or was some mix of these, is not clear.

Sources

*Gibbon, Guy E. (1982) ''Oneota Studies''. *Green, William (ed.)(1995) ''Oneota Archaeology: Past, Present, and Future''.

References

Iowa. Office of State Archaeologist. 976?''Oneota''. owa City, Iowa: Office of the State Archaeologist,

External links

Uiowa.edu
general material and large annotated bibliography
Angelfire.com
updated bibliography

About.com * ttps://web.archive.org/web/20091215150441/http://www.uwlax.edu/mvac/PreEuropeanPeople/EarlyCultures/mississippi_tradition.html Mississippian and Oneota Traditions
Oneota, Minnesota State University-Mankato

Crescent Bay Hunt Club Site: Oneota in Eastern Wisconsin.
By Robert J. Jeske and Chrisie Hunter. Page produced by Jamie Kelly. {{Pre-Columbian North America Native American history Mississippian culture Archaeology of the United States Late Prehistoric period of North America

See also

Sources

References

External links