The American poet Walt Whitman recognized that history has a trajectory: - "For what is the present, after all, but a growth out of the past? / (As a projectile, form'd, impell'd, passing a certain line, still keeps on, So the present, utterly form'd, impell'd by the past.")

The American poet Walt Whitman recognized that history has a trajectory: - "For what is the present, after all, but a growth out of the past? / (As a projectile, form'd, impell'd, passing a certain line, still keeps on, So the present, utterly form'd, impell'd by the past.")

As an archaeologist, I appreciate the power of this poem. In the bits of broken stone tools, pottery shards and ancient fire pits scattered across and beneath the surface of the landscape, we can work out long-term historical trajectories. And from an understanding of those trajectories, we can look back to gain insights into how we got where we are and look ahead to shed light on where that trajectory might carry us.

Guy Gibbon, a professor emeritus at the University of Minnesota, identifies in his recent book Minnesota Archaeology four phases in the unwritten history of the upper Mississippi River region. With some refinements, these same four phases could be used to characterize the historical trajectory of Ohio's pre-contact societies.

Pioneer foragers were the first humans to enter the region. They lived in small family groups and ranged over a large area in pursuit of mostly large game animals. Over time, these groups gradually adapted to the varied opportunities of Minnesota's diverse environments and settled into smaller territories. In the plains of western Minnesota, for example, some groups became pedestrian bison hunters.

That wouldn't have been an option in Ohio at that time.

In the third phase, rising population densities led to intensified efforts to squeeze more and different kinds of food from ever-smaller territories. In central and northern Minnesota, this included intensive wild-rice harvesting, while in the southeastern part of the state, as in Ohio, people began to domesticate local varieties of plants.

The fourth phase marks "the sudden emergence of more-settled, larger tribal-level societies" dependent upon farming for their sustenance, Gibbon wrote.

As in Ohio, this phase ended with the arrival of Europeans in the region, followed by waves of epidemic diseases, warfare and the movement into the region of eastern tribes who had been displaced by encroaching Euro-American settlers.

Gibbon argues that there is inherent value in developing such local histories, but their chief importance might lie in what can be learned when they are connected to a more-comprehensive global history.

Many of the problems we face today are inextricably tied to our histories. Unchecked population growth, increasing social inequality and environmental degradation might be, according to Gibbon, "predictable outcomes of the unfolding of trends in human life-ways through time."

If that's true, then preserving and studying the archaeology of Minnesota, Ohio and everywhere else should become an urgent priority for humanity.

Only archaeology can provide the time-depth analysis necessary for discerning truly long-term cultural trajectories. And if we can discover these trajectories of human history and decide we don't like where we're headed, we might be able to change course.

Gibbon concludes his book by saying that the archaeological record is therefore "an irreplaceable part of world heritage whose close examination seems increasingly to matter."

Bradley T. Lepper is curator of archaeology at the Ohio Historical Society.

blepper@ohiohistory.org