A chronology of middle Missouri Plains village sites

Johnson, Craig; Ahler, Stanley A.; Haas, Herbert; Bonani, Georges

doi:10.5479/si.00810223.47.1

Cited by 22 publications

(28 citation statements)

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“…Settlements range from a few to more than 100 earth lodges. The occupation spans of these villages vary, and some were rebuilt and reoccupied multiple times (Johnson 2007). Fortunately, when this occurred, houses were often rebuilt on the foundations of old ones (Fenn 2014), and it is often possible to distinguish distinct occupations (Kvamme and Ahler 2007).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Settlement Scaling in Middle-Range Societies

Ortman

Coffey

2017

Am. Antiq.

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The contemporary relevance of archaeology would be greatly enhanced if archaeologists could develop theory that frames human societies of all scales in the same terms. We present evidence that an approach known as settlement scaling theory can contribute to such a framework. The theory proposes that a variety of aggregate socioeconomic properties of human networks emerge from individuals arranging themselves in space so as to balance the costs of movement with the benefits of social interactions. This balancing leads to settlements that concentrate human interactions and their products in space and time in an open-ended way. The parameters and processes embedded in settlement scaling models are very basic, and this suggests that scaling phenomena should be observable in the archaeological record of middle-range societies just as readily as they have been observed in contemporary first-world nations. In this paper, we show that quantitative scaling relationships observed for modern urban systems, and more recently for early civilizations, are also apparent in settlement data from the Central Mesa Verde and northern Middle Missouri regions of North America. These findings suggest that settlement scaling theory may help increase the practical relevance of archaeology for present-day concerns.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Settlement Scaling in Middle-Range Societies

Ortman

Coffey

2017

Am. Antiq.

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“…The bodies lay unburied for months before being interred in the unfinished fortification ditch and then covered with a layer of clay, perhaps by relatives from neighboring villages. In 1978 archaeologists excavated and studied the victims prior to reburial, providing a wealth of information on the massacre and the nature of violence in the northern Plains ( Johnson 2007a;Willey and Emerson 1993;Zimmerman 1985;Zimmerman and Bradley 1993). The warriors' ability to take advantage of unfinished defensive system provided them a decided tactical advantage.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Excavations at one Initial Middle Missouri site-the Fay Tolton site in South Dakota-produced graphic and unambiguous evidence of a massacre that appears to have terminated occupation at the site; certainly, the victims of this massacre were never formally buried and occupation of the site seems to have been very short (Hollimon and Owsley 1994;Wood 1976). There are reports of a similar pattern at the thirteenth-century Tony Glas site (Howard 1959;Johnson 2007a;Pringle 1998), but osteological evidence of this remains unpublished. Apparent trophy skulls in at least one Mill Creek site (Hollinger 2005;Miller 1994) also suggest violence.…”

Section: What Is the General Course Of War On The Plains?mentioning

confidence: 89%

“…At this time, along the Missouri itself, a cluster of sites in South Dakota corresponds to the distribution of the Caddoan-speaking Arikara observed by Europeans a century or two later. An empty area-perhaps a buffer zone-separates this cluster from a second cluster that corresponds to the Contact-period distribution of the Siouanspeaking Mandan and, later, the Hidatsa ( Johnson 2007a;Mitchell 2013). This kind of site distribution and postcontact records of Siouan/Caddoan hostilities have suggested ethnic warfare between these two tribes.…”

Section: Who Was the Enemy?mentioning

confidence: 98%

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Alliances, Clusters, and Spatial Analysis: A Multiscalar Approach to Studying Warfare in the Middle Missouri

Clark¹

2018

Archaeological Perspectives on Warfare on the Great Plains

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ContentsThe archaeology of the Great Plains provides some of the clearest and most dramatic archaeological documentation of warfare anywhere in the world: there has been violence on the grasslands for millennia, and there is no doubt that this affected many aspects of human lives in the region. This volume brings together work on major aspects of Plains warfare that have important implications for studies of warfare in general. The topics we consider here include artistic evidence of the role of war in the lives of indigenous hunter-gatherers on the Plains prior to and during the period of Euroamerican expansion, archaeological discussions of fortification design and its implications, and archaeological and other information on the larger implications of war in human history on the Plains. My goal here is to offer a bird's-eye view of warfare on the Plains as a frame for the chapters that follow. What Is War and Why does It Matter?LeBlanc (2003) has argued that war is essentially a constant in human history: it is always present in some form. This is likely true, at least in the sense that human groups always are, and always were, capable of choosing to go to war. But it is also true that human groups do not always make this choice, and seeing where in human history they did and did not make it is important. Anthropology in general, and archaeology in particular, has paid varying amounts of attention to social DOI: 10.5876/9781607326700.c001 4 D O UGLAS B. BAMFORT H conflict. Keeley (1996), for example, argues that archaeologists have often pacified the past, creating romanticized views of idyllic periods in human history; widespread denials that war existed in Neolithic Europe and in North America prior to European contact are particularly well known. As we have become more willing to grapple with the reality of war, we also encounter the trap of assuming that all societies are equally warlike and engage in war in more or less the same ways. Should we worry about this? Or, more precisely, do either of these equally false perspectives compromise our ability to see the past accurately, in North America, Neolithic Europe, or elsewhere? It is difficult to argue they do not. Archaeology's value lies in its potential for telling human history as it really happened, not as we wish it happened. As Keeley (1996) notes, "the weight of the evidence" has a literal meaning in our field that requires us to attend to that evidence, and war can leave dramatic traces that demand our attention if we are to approach a truthful account of the human past.In part, understanding human choices about war and peace depends on what we mean by "war." Formal war in the modern sense-organized violence sanctioned by explicit government decisions and involving combat between standing armies-reflects the organization of modern state societies and thus does not necessarily help us to understand organized social violence in other times and places. If we use a definition like this, we can simply define war out of existence for many past societ...

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“…The Sakakawea Village, previously considered part of the Knife River Phase (1780-1845) of the Post-Contact Coalescent or Disorganized Coalescent Tradition [24], has more recently been designated the Knife River Complex with four separate phases [25,26]. The Hidatsa are part of the Northern Plains lifeway focused on growing staple crops-maize, beans, and squash, hunted bison, lived in compact fortified villages made up of anywhere from 20 to 100 circular earthlodges that used four main support posts.…”

Section: Awatixa Hidatsa and The Sakakawea Villagementioning

confidence: 99%

Cutbank Geophysics: A New Method for Expanding Magnetic Investigations to the Subsurface Using Magnetic Susceptibility Testing at an Awatixa Hidatsa Village, North Dakota

Dalan

Sturdevant

Wallace³

et al. 2017

Remote Sensing

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Magnetic susceptibility investigations were conducted at an Awatixa Hidatsa village (32ME11, also known as Sakakawea Village) along a cutbank at the Knife River Indian Villages National Historic Site (KNRI) in central North Dakota, USA. This extensive exposure provided a superb opportunity to correlate magnetic susceptibility measurements with a variety of subsurface features. These features were visible in the cutbank, and also recorded in cutbank profiles completed in the late 1970s in work supervised by Robert Nickel and Stanley Ahler. The susceptibility studies are part of a larger program of geophysics at KNRI that commenced with pioneering surveys of John Weymouth and Robert Nickel, also in the 1970s, and continued with extensive surface-based magnetic surveys over the interior portion of the site in 2012 by the National Park Service. Our magnetic susceptibility study differs from other geophysical efforts in that measurements were collected from the vertical cutbank, not from the surface, to investigate different feature types within their stratigraphic context and to map small-scale vertical changes in susceptibility. In situ measurements of volume magnetic susceptibility were accomplished on the cutbank at six areas within the village and a control location off-site. Samples were collected for use in soil magnetic studies aimed at providing an understanding of susceptibility contrasts in terms of magnetic mineralogy, grain size, and concentration. Distinctive susceptibility signatures for natural and cultural soils, different feature types, and buried soils, suggest that down-hole susceptibility surveys could be usefully paired with surface-based geophysics and soil magnetic studies to explore interior areas of this and other KNRI sites, mapping vertical and horizontal site limits, activity areas, features, and perhaps even earlier occupations. This study showcases the potential of cutbank studies for future geophysical survey design and interpretation, and also underscores the importance of information gained through pioneering studies of the past.

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A chronology of middle Missouri Plains village sites

Abstract: Smithsonian Institution Scholarly Press s m i t h s o n i a n c o n t r i b u t i o n s t o h i s t o r y a n d t e c h n o l o g y • n u m b e r 5 7

Cited by 22 publications

References 13 publications

Settlement Scaling in Middle-Range Societies

Settlement Scaling in Middle-Range Societies

Alliances, Clusters, and Spatial Analysis: A Multiscalar Approach to Studying Warfare in the Middle Missouri

Cutbank Geophysics: A New Method for Expanding Magnetic Investigations to the Subsurface Using Magnetic Susceptibility Testing at an Awatixa Hidatsa Village, North Dakota

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