ABSTRACT
This chapter summarizes cultural developments in three major areas, and emphasizes the importance of kin ties, reciprocity, and chieftainship in the development of more complex societies. The human settlement of the offshore Pacific islands occurred rapidly after 2000 BC, with an explosion of settlement of islands as remote as Rapa Nui by AD 1250 by navigators using the heavenly bodies to cross open water. In the American Southwest, maize agriculture and the cultivation of native plants led to the development of Pueblo Indian cultures, including the Hohokam, Mogollon, and Ancestral Pueblo, dated with tree-ring chronologies. In eastern North America, elaborate mortuary cults and ceremonial developed after 2000 BC, with the Adena and Hopewell traditions. These developments culminated in the Mississippian tradition, centered at Cahokia near St. Louis, with a population of about 20,000 people around AD 1250.
