The concepts of core, periphery, and margin are employed by the authors to model similarities/differences and changing relations between people living in the northern Ozarks and contemporary peoples living in adjacent regions, but particularly the Mississippi and lower Illinois valleys to the east. Cultural cores are typically those exhibiting the highest level of social, political, economic, technological, ideological, and aesthetic development. For the prehistoric past in the midcontinent, Middle Woodland Havana-Hopewell of the lower Illinois valley and the Mississippian polity of Cahokia in the American Bottom area come readily to mind as cultural cores. The authors argue that the northern Ozarks was on the margin of these cores, whereas the area was occupied at other times by people well within the mainstream of cultural development. -- From Foreword (p. xiii).