Pawnee vessel function and ceramic persistence: Reconstructed vessels from the Burkett, Barcal, Linwood, Bellwood, and Horse Creek sites

Tree-Ring-Radiocarbon Dating at a Late Contact Period Kitkahahki Pawnee Site on the Central Great Plains, Usa

“…The Spanish Colonial government sent military and diplomatic missions to the Central Plains while the French established persistent trading relations with the Pawnee in what is now eastern Nebraska (Hyde 1988). Over the course of the 18th century, metal tools and other trade goods of European and American manufacture increased in prevalence in a variety of contexts and collectively suggest that Pawnee were investing heavily in the bison robe trade (Beck 2020). Though the timing is unclear, Pawnee intensified bison hunting activities on the High Plains sometime after the 1600s leading to the development of the historically documented summer-winter communal hunts (Roper 1992).…”

“…Changes in burial goods to include more metal and glass items after the middle 1700s suggests that ways of signaling prosperity in Loup and Platte River Pawnee communities were shifting to displays of traded commodities (Callahan-Mims 2012). At the same time, archaeologists record major shifts in ceramic vessel and lithic tool manufacture in the Pawnee core area, hypothesized to result from the socioeconomic consequences of intensified bison hunting and processing (Beck 2020;Hudson 1993 data show a clear trend toward aggregation, or higher population densities in larger fortified villages, correlated with increased volumes of metal and glass goods across Pawnee settlements from the middle 1700s to 1850s (Wedel 1936). According to the survey descriptions reported by Wedel (1936), Pawnee villages founded in the 1770s averaged around 7 ha in area, villages founded in the first three decades of the 1800s averaged slightly more than 10 ha in area, while those founded after 1840 averaged more than 15 ha in area.…”

“…Like many Indigenous communities during this time, the Pawnee resisted colonization and genocide; participated in global economic systems as producers, consumers, and middlemen; expanded and contracted their territory; and withstood sociopolitical instability (Wishart 1979;White 1988;Kinbacher 2012;Steinke 2012;van de Logt 2016). Within this context, Pawnee society transformed: intensifying production of trade commodities, aggregating into fortified villages, expanding and contracting residential and hunting territories, and altering ways of signaling sociopolitical status (Wedel 1936;Echo-Hawk 1992;Roper 2006;Callahan-Mills 2012;Echo-Hawk 2018;Beck 2020). However, an objective record of Pawnee movement and cultural change is severely hampered by the lack of a scientific chronology.…”

Finding Archaeological Relevance during a Pandemic and What Comes After

“…Similarly, Sahnish (Arikara) pottery production shifted after smallpox epidemics of the late 1700s to a thicker, less carefully decorated pottery that is attributed to population loss, increasing warfare, and greater labor demands on women (Krause and Hollenback 2016). In another Plains case, Pawnee potters stopped making cooking pots by the mid-1700s, at least in part because of economic decisions to put more labor in bison hide production (Beck 2020). In all three of these examples, pottery production did not disappear.…”

Regional Conflict, Ceramic Senescence, and Pawnee Raw Material Choice in the Late Contact Era

“…By the 1830s, the Pawnee ceramic tradition—never documented in writing by anyone who had seen the Pawnee make or use pottery—had come to an end (Beck 2020; Grange 1968). Pawnee women focused their artistic expression and skills on other media such as hidework, quillwork, and beadwork (Dubin 2003).…”