A Critique of Late Prehistoric Systematics in the Middle Ohio River Valley

Abstract

Most extant classification schemes for the Late Prehistoric period (LP) in the Middle Ohio River Valley (MORV) are typological and extensionally derived. Typological schemes create artificially sharp breaks among types. Implicitly constructed types rely on an essentialist ontology and a belief in a discoverable, emic reality. Most LP classificatory units in the MORV are inherited from James B. Griffin's early Culture-History work. These units, and others similarly based on the Southwestern Type-Variety system, are not designed for any particular purpose yielding unknowable relations among classes and to proposed explanations. Further, absence of explicit conditions of class membership and conflation of description of empirical groups with definition of ideological classes hampers comparisons and the study of change. Review of extant type descriptions illustrates these and other failings. Classification is necessary, but each class needs an explicit definition and purpose. We suggest that explicit, paradigmatic classes (sensu Dunnell, 1971b) need to replace types, phases, and other units that have been the norm.