What happens when two populations with differing cultural identities interact and cohabitate? Coalescence, or the cultural reorganization and formation of multiethnic and multilingual communities, is one possible outcome (Birch 2012; Kowalewski 2006). In archaeological contexts, material culture can help determine the level of integration or coalescence between distinct groups that interacted or cohabitated. However, it should not be assumed that a one-to-one relationship between cultural materials and people exists. In many contexts of interaction, a mixture of materials attributable to differing groups of people may be found. How then can the mixing of archaeological materials be used to identify the degree of coalescence? Beyond archaeological contexts, understanding prolonged, spatially based interactions and coalescence has larger implications for understanding today’s cultural groups who find themselves cohabitating with other groups (e.g., post migration or as refugees) and possibly affecting policy and practice that could promote integration of these migrant or refugee groups into the larger society.This doctoral dissertation will add to the scholarship of coalescence by examining the understudied spatial dimension of cultural reorganization within an archaeological context. I employ a multiscalar spatial approach to identify processes of coalescence within the Morton Village archaeological site, integrating data from the community, household, and landscape spatial scales. Morton Village (11F2), located near Lewistown, Illinois, serves as the case study for this multiscalar spatial analysis. Dating to a single occupation, ca. late AD 1200 to 1400, the site provides clear evidence for the cohabitation of Middle Mississippian and Bold Counselor Phase Oneota groups (Conrad 1973; Conrad and Esarey 1983; Hollinger 1993; Santure et al. 1990). However, the level of cultural integration at the site is under-explored. Varying ceramic attributes and architectural styles have typically been used to discern Oneota and Mississippian contexts within the village. Material culture provides a valuable line of evidence for examining coalescence, but how people organize themselves within their landscape, community, and household can provide important data as well. Furthermore, analysis of space will allow an innovative and finer contextualization of the distinctions and the merging of material culture. The evidence for interaction, coupled with the number of excavations and analyses already performed at the site, makes Morton Village a prime case study for analyzing coalescence. Coalescence changes the social, political, ideological, and economic fabric of societies, bringing groups together in new spaces, where specific social strategies for social integration or collective defense are adopted to quell tensions that arise. These strategies are visible archaeologically through changes in infrastructure, including transformations in the size/organization of settlements and alteration of the structure of domestic and public spaces (Birch 2012; Gerritsen 2004:151; Hodder 1986:7-8; Thomas 2004:34). I hypothesize that the processes of coalescence between Oneota and Mississippian cultures occurred at Morton Village. To investigate this hypothesis and to determine the level of coalescence present, I create a dichotomy between total separation (cohabitation of site, but no coalescence) and total integration (integration of both groups at every level, i.e., in households, intermarrying and ethnogenesis), although I expect a spectrum of social arrangements exist within the spatial organization of the site. If Morton Village is a coalesced village, it should show distinct signs of this integration in its spatial organization at the landscape, community, and household levels.
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