This research revisits the debate surrounding Late Woodland subsistence practices in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. The Late Woodland period in the Upper Great Lakes region (ca. A.D. 600 to 1600) is often characterized through models emphasizing the intensive use of a single, primary key resource, particularly maize, fall spawning fish, or wild rice. For example, current Late Woodland subsistence models for northern Michigan focus on the intensive harvest, creation of surplus, and consequent storage of fall spawning fish as the cornerstone of the settlement and subsistence strategy. New data suggests that the dominant settlement and subsistence model is incomplete, lacks explanatory value, and requires revision. This study tests the hypothesis that a suite of potential resources was both present and utilized, allowing for a more flexible set of strategies, i.e. one based upon multiple rather than a single primary resource. Archaeological evidence, ethnographic data, and pilot study results reveal that acorns, maize, and wild rice are likely resources to be incorporated into such a strategy; all can be harvested and stored in the late summer or fall as a buffer against a poor fish harvest. Each, however, also has spatial, environmental, and temporal constraints with implications bearing on archaeological site locations as well as the evidence from the sites themselves. A spatial analysis of site locations and resource distributions, as well as the composition of site assemblages was conducted to determine what relationships, if any, can be found between resources and site locations. The results identified site location patterns relating to the exploitation of fish as well the potential use of wild rice and acorns, and also revealed changing patterns of site location over time including an emphasis on coastal settings in the early Late Woodland and an increase in interior setting sites in the late Late Woodland. In addition, the study examines strategies for subsistence risk buffering and decision making by Late Woodland peoples and provides new perspectives on resource scheduling, patterns of mobility, social organization, and social interaction. The nature of the data sets employed in the research, as well as the temporal and spatial scales involved led to the adoption of Resilience Theory as an organizing framework for this study. The application of Resilience Theory is relatively new in archaeology and in this case provides a useful contribution to this line of scholarship in a context which has need of greater theoretical diversity. While an important outcome of the research is a synthesis of our current understanding of the regional Late Woodland, it also contributes a robust understanding of the interaction of hunter-gatherers/marginal horticulturalists with their environment.
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