Fort Ancient - Contemporaries and Neighbors

Contemporaries and Neighbors

The people of the Fort Ancient regions were surrounded by other groups, some similar in their lifestyles and some not. To their northeast in present-day Western Pennsylvania, Eastern Ohio and West Virginia were the peoples of the Monongahela culture, who inhabited the Monongahela River Valley from 1050 to 1635. They had a similar lifestyle to the Fort Ancients; they were also maize agriculturalists and lived in well laid out palisaded villages with central oval plazas, some of which consisted of as many as 50-100 structures. To the northwest of the Fort Ancients were the people of the Oliver Phase who lived along the east and west forks of the White River in central and southern Indiana from 1200 and 1450. Their villages were also circular with palisades. Although their sites began in central Indiana, over the years they spread to the southeast toward the Fort Ancients. The Oliver Phase people were part of the Western Basin Tradition which also includes the Springwells Phase, the Younge Phase, and the Riviere au Vase Phases of Northern Ohio and Indiana. The colder weather of the Little Ice Age may have caused inter-group battling over food and other resources, according to some scholars. The crops did not prosper as well during this colder period, causing food shortages for populations that had grown after their introduction. Some studies show that the culture began failing due to poor health conditions.

These groups, along with others such as the Oneota, were once classified as Upper Mississippian cultures under the assumption that they were either Mississippian peoples intruding into these areas or they were heavily influenced by the Mississippian peoples to their south and east. Today it is thought that these groups were local in situ developments of Late Woodland peoples.

Located 95 kilometres (59 mi) down the Ohio River to the southwest of the western most Fort Ancient settlements were the Middle Mississippian culture peoples of the Prather Complex. This stretch of river was an empty buffer zone, possibly for social or political reasons, although it may also been because the narrowing of the alluvial valley between the Falls of the Ohio region near Louisville, Kentucky and the mouth of the Miami River at Cincinnati, Ohio made it less suitable for the intensive maize agriculture practiced by both societies.