Carved and engraved bone pins from the Koster, Black Earth and Modoc Rockshelter sites have been used by Professor Richard Jefferies to investigate the development of regional-scale interaction between hunter-gatherer groups of the Midwest Middle Archaic. Using that same data, this pilot study suggests that these artifacts may also be representative material embodiments of inherent social contradictions within and between hunter-gatherer societies at an even earlier date. These contradictions and the conflicts that arose from them may rival in importance ecological and demographic paradigms as catalysts for sedentism and territoriality in the Middle Archaic Midwest.

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