Identifying household cluster and refuse disposal patterns at the Strait Site: A third century A.D. nucleated settlement in the Middle Ohio River Valley

In this dissertation I examine a problem in the study of Middle-Late Woodland period community re-organization in the Middle Ohio Valley through an analysis of the Strait site, a little known, third century A.D. archaeological deposit in central Ohio. Previous research in the region indicates that during a three-hundred-year period between A.D. 200 and A.D. 500 the organizational structure of settlements---the location and arrangement of households within communities---changed significantly through a process of household nucleation.; I propose that artifact patterning at the Strait site resulted from the secondary refuse disposal behaviors of contemporaneously occupied household areas. To evaluate this proposition, I first develop a working model of household trash disposal patterns using principles of refuse disposal generated from ethnoarchaeological data. The expected pattern of refuse accumulation is then compared to the Strait site archaeological record through an analysis of debris collected during a shovel test survey. Artifact clusters are detected through a distributional analysis of four dimensions of artifact variability: size, function, density, and diversity.; I conclude that the Strait site artifact patterning is consistent with the secondary refuse disposal patterns predicted by the ethnographically derived model. I then identify the possible locations of five to six households at the Strait site. Two of these locations are further examined using geophysical survey and block excavation. The partial remains of structures are identified at both. Assuming that these possible household clusters are contemporaneous, as I argue, the Strait site is the earliest known nucleated settlement in the region.; The presence of a nucleated community at Strait during the third century A.D. indicates that the transition from dispersed to nucleated communities began at the peak time of Hopewell earthwork construction and use---sometime before the Hopewell decline. By the time this process of community re-organization was widespread in the sixth century A.D., the Hopewell ceremonial centers had been abandoned. The new settlement data presented in this dissertation are an important example of early household nucleation in the Middle Ohio River Valley. These data also support the proposition that household nucleation began in locations peripheral to core Hopewell areas.