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Part Eight

• Chapter 19
• Chapter 20
• Chapter 21
• Chapter 22

The Terminal Woodland Period in Central

and Northern Minnesota

A.D. 500 to 1750

The Terminal Woodland period (A.D. 500 - 1750) in the northern forests and prairies of Minnesota was also a time of momentous change. New ceramic forms and styles appear, and were replaced by completely different forms and styles; the size of Native American populations substantially increase; palisaded sedentary villages appear in some areas; and the harvesting of wild rice becomes a widespread and intensive seasonal subsistence activity. In Part 8 we change our strategy of organizing chapters for the central and northern sections of the state by area, as in Part 5. We adopt instead an area wide period framework. This framework more adequately reflects the three sequential periods of change that occurred in central and northern Minnesota.

Chapter 19 reviews the transition in central Minnesota from a “Middle Woodland” to “Late Woodland” lifeway. It traces the emergence of the St. Croix complex and the continuation of the Brainerd complex at least in the Headwaters Lake region between A.D. 500 and 800. Chapter 20 reviews the events and processes that occur in this broad region between A.D. 800 and 1200. It was during this period that a continuum of similar appearing ceramic styles (Blackduck-Kathio-Clam River) emerges across the region, that intensive wild rice harvesting and larger, more settled villages become widespread, and a new tradition of burial spreads across the center of the state.

Chapter 21 summarizes subsequent events and processes during the A.D. 1200 to 1750 interval. New ceramic forms and styles (Sandy Lake and Ogechie ware, and the Rainy River Composite) appear in the Northwoods at this time; large regions are abandoned except as hunting preserves, and populations consolidate in a few favored locations. These changes parallel in structure the changes that occurred in the southern section of the state with the appearance of Mississippian and Plains Village lifeways by ca. A.D. 1050.

By the end of the late Terminal Woodland period, the appearance of Europeans, with their written records and trade goods, ended 13,000 years of pre-history in the state.

Contributors to this section: Guy Gibbon

Date of last contribution: December 2008