Evidence of interaction between Indian tribes

[The Caspian Hare]

https://phys.org/news/2019-10-early-hunter-gatherers-interacted-sooner-previously.html

Quote

 

A nearly 4,000-year-old burial site found off the coast of Georgia hints at ties between hunter-gatherers on opposite sides of North America, according to research led by faculty at Binghamton University, State University of New York.

A research team led by Matthew Sanger, assistant professor of anthropology at Binghamton University, analyzed human remains, stone tools and a copper band found in an ancient burial pit in the McQueen shell ring on St. Catherine's Island, Georgia. The burial at the shell ring closely resembles similar graves found in the Great Lakes region, suggesting an exchange network between the Great Lakes and the coastal southeast United States. Similarities in mortuary practices suggest that the movement of objects between these two regions was more direct and unmediated than archaeologists previously assumed.

"Our excavations revealed remarkable parallels between the shell ring in the coastal Southeast and in broadly contemporaneous sites in the Great Lakes including: the use of cremation to handle the dead, cremating the dead in an area separate from where the bones were eventually buried, the use of copper as a burial item, the burial of multiple people at the same time, and the use of ocher in the burial," said Sanger. "Not only are these practices very similar, our analyses clearly show that the copper found at the shell ring originated in the Great Lakes and was therefore traded between the two regions. Notably, all of these practices are rare, or entirely absent, from the regions between the Great Lakes and the southeast, which suggests that there was not some sort of general diffusion of traditions, but rather a direct "transplant."

 

@Piney

[Piney]

Read the first reports several months ago. We knew the vast trade network existed during the Archaic and the fact Indians were serious wanderers, but to find the actual trader was pretty cooll 

For people who want to look more into them they were called the Meadowood Culture, they originated in Canada, were related to the later Adena and probably spoke Algonquian but there isn't a whole lot online about them.

http://www.projectilepoints.net/Points/Meadowood.html  Here's their point spread but it was far more extensive. 

......and why is there a glam shot of Matthew Sanger in the article? Does he think he's gonna get pegged for a modeling/acting job from a science news site?