The organization of dissonance in Adena-Hopewell societies of eastern North America

Social complexity increased dramatically during the Middle Woodland period (c. 200 bc-ad 500) in eastern North America. Adena-Hopewell societies during this period built massive burial mounds, constructed complex geometric earthen enclosures and maintained extensive trade networks in exotic craft goods. These material signatures suggest that coalition and consensus were sustained through social bonds since clear evidence for top-down leadership does not exist in Adena-Hopewell archaeology. Here, a framework grounded in new understandings of heterarchy is used to explore how coalitions were formed, organized, maintained and/or shifted as a means to coordinate labour and ritual among Middle Woodland Period groups. Through re-analysis of the Wright Mound in Kentucky, and its burial contents, new insights into heterarchical organization are used to achieve a wider, diachronic understanding of how humans in the past reached, realized and rearranged forms of consensus and coalition.