Smithsonian Institution

Scholarly Press
smithsonian contributions to anthropology number 47

A Chronology
of Middle
Missouri Plains
Village Sites
Craig M. Johnson
with contribution by
Stanley A. Ahler, Craig M.
Johnson, Herbert Haas,
and Georges Bonani

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smithsonian contributions to anthropology number 47

A Chronology
of Middle
Missouri Plains
Village Sites
Craig M. Johnson
with contribution by
Stanley A. Ahler, Craig M.
Johnson, Herbert Haas,
and Georges Bonani

Washington,
D.C.
washington, D.c.
2007

ABSTRACT

Johnson, Craig M. A Chronology of Middle Missouri Plains Village Sites, with contribution by StanleyA. Ahler, Craig M. Johnson, Herbert Haas, and Georges Bonani. Smithsonian Contributions to
Anthropology, Number 47, 344 pages, 69 figures, 34 tables, 2007. A comprehensive and systematic
research effort focusing on refining the chronology of individual Plains Village tradition sites from the
Middle Missouri subarea of the Great Plains relies on a number of absolute and relative dating techniques. Seventy-four conventional and AMS radiocarbon dates from short-lived materials (seeds, corn)
and charred ceramic pot residues are used in conjunction with ceramic ordinations of 225 components
assigned to nine cultural variants or phases. Site stratigraphy, Euro-American trade materials, historic
documentation, oral traditions, historical linguistics, and craniometric distance are also employed to
help interpret temporal information derived from the ceramic ordinations and radiocarbon dates. The
emphasis of this research is on the southern part of the Middle Missouri subarea, namely that portion
along the Missouri River that flows through South Dakota and southern North Dakota. This area is
the ancestral homeland of the Mandan and Arikara. The existing chronology of the Hidatsas who occupied the Knife region in north-central North Dakota is integrated into the Mandan and Arikara cultural sequence. Other cultural chronologies from the Northeastern (Cambria, Mill Creek, Great Oasis,
lower James River) and Central Plains (Lower Loup/Historic Pawnee) are also related to the Middle
Missouri and Coalescent tradition sequences of the Dakotas. This information is used to reconstruct
the settlement history of the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara in the Middle Missouri subarea, which is
divided primarily into 50- and 100-year time segments. Areas of future research that would improve
the Plains Village chronology or would benefit from a refined chronology are also reviewed. The results of the radiocarbon dating, which reviews 301 extant dates and the 74 Plains Village Dates (PVD)
obtained during this study, suggest that 50 percent of the existing dates can be accepted, whereas 76
percent can be accepted for the PVD dates. A limited number of dates from the same site contexts also
indicate that charred residues from ceramic vessels date 100 to 250 years earlier than their AMS counterparts on seeds and corn. The results also suggest a revision in the time span of the cultural variants
to the following ranges: (1) Initial Middle Missouri, ad 10001300; (2) Extended Middle Missouri,
ad 12001400; (3) Terminal Middle Missouri, ad 14001500; (4) Initial Coalescent, ad 13001500;
(5) Extended Coalescent, ad 1400/14501650; and (6) Post-Contact Coalescent, ad 16501866. The
distribution of sites along the Missouri River from ad 1000 to 1866 is complex and dynamic, reflecting
multiple Late Woodland origins, locally available resources, cultural continuities and discontinuities,
village consolidations and dispersals, widespread warfare, and the exposure to epidemic diseases and
to Euro-American trade.

Published by Smithsonian Institution Scholarly Press

P.O. Box 37012
MRC 957
Washington, D.C. 20013-7012
[Link]
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Johnson, Craig M.
A chronology of middle Missouri Plains village sites / Craig M. Johnson ; with contribution by
Stanley A. Ahler ... [et al.].
p. cm. (Smithsonian contributions series. Smithsonian contributions to anthropology ; no. 47)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Indians of North AmericaGreat PlainsAntiquities. 2. Indians of North AmericaGreat
PlainsHistoryChronology. 3. Excavations (Archaeology)Great Plains. 4. Radiocarbon dating
Great Plains. 5. Great PlainsAntiquities. I. Ahler, Stanley A. II. Title.
E78.G73J583 2007
930.1dc22

2007022132

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard
for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials Z39.481992.

Contents
list of Figures

ix

list of Tables

xiii

Preface

xv

1 Introduction

Objectives

Environmental and Cultural Setting

Previous Culture-Historical Reconstructions

Description and Early Classification Period (18831945)
Salvage Archeology and Culture History Period (19451970)
Contract Archeology and Cultural Ecology Period
(1970Present)
Methods of Dating
Ceramic Ordination
Applications in the Middle Missouri Subarea
Initial Middle Missouri
Extended Middle Missouri
Initial Coalescent
Extended Coalescent
Post-Contact Coalescent
Knife Region and Related Areas
Methodological Considerations
Theoretical Considerations
Correspondence Analysis
Dendrochronological Dating
Radiocarbon Dating
Site Stratigraphy
Euro-American Trade Materials
Historic Documentation
Oral Traditions
Historical Linguistics
Craniometric Distance

2
3

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Data Acquisition
Descriptive Rim Sherd Categories
Radiocarbon Samples
Field Sampling Strategies

5 Radiocarbon Dating Results

Stanley A. Ahler, Craig M. Johnson, Herbert Haas, and
Georges Bonani

Review of Criteria for Sample Selection

Mechanics of Sample Selection and Processing

Evaluation of Results of the Radiocarbon Dating Program

Sites with Complex or Extensive Date Series

Helb (39CA208) (Extended Middle Missouri)

Jake White Bull (39CO6) (Extended Middle Missouri)

Lower Grand (39CO14) (Extended Coalescent)

Walth Bay (39WW203) (Extended Coalescent)

Sommers (39ST56) (Initial Middle Missouri)

Huff (32MO11) (Terminal Middle Missouri)

Other Dated Initial Middle Missouri Sites

Jones Village (39CA3) (Initial Middle Missouri)

Fay Tolton (39ST11) (Initial Middle Missouri)

Jandreau (39LM225) (Initial Middle Missouri)

Dodd (39ST30) (Initial Middle Missouri)

Pretty Head B (39LM232) (Initial Middle Missouri)

Cattle Oiler (39ST224) (Initial Middle Missouri)

Jiggs Thompson B (39LM208) (Initial Middle Missouri)

Other Dated Extended Middle Missouri Sites

Havens (32EM1) (Extended Middle Missouri)

Paul Brave (32SI4) (Extended Middle Missouri)

Vanderbilt Village (39CA1) (Extended Middle Missouri)

Calamity Village (39DW231) (Extended Middle Missouri)

Sully School (39SL7) (Extended Middle Missouri)

Cheyenne River (39ST1) (Extended Middle Missouri)

Black Widow Ridge (39ST203) (Extended Middle Missouri)

Terminal Middle Missouri Sites

Shermer (32EM10) (Terminal Middle Missouri)

Initial Coalescent Sites

Arzberger (39HU6) (Initial Coalescent)

Lynch (25BD1) (Initial Coalescent)

Other Extended Coalescent Sites

Demery (39CO1) (Extended Coalescent)

Potts Village (39CO19) (Extended Coalescent)

Meander (39LM201) (Extended Coalescent)

Hosterman (39PO7) (Extended Coalescent)

Sully (39SL4) (Extended Coalescent)

Overs La Roche (39ST9) (Extended Coalescent)

Sites Not Dated by the Plains Village Dating Program

Broken Kettle West (13PM25) (Initial Middle
Missouri-Great Oasis)

Williams (13PM50) (Initial Middle Missouri-Great Oasis)

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45
49
51

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number 47

Larsen (13PM61) (Initial Middle Missouri-Great Oasis)

Cambria (21BE2) (Initial Middle Missouri-Cambria)
Jones (21BE5) (Initial Middle Missouri-Cambria)
Price (21BE25) (Initial Middle Missouri-Cambria)
Great Oasis (21MU2/17) (Initial Middle Missouri-Great
Oasis)
Packer (25SM9) (Initial Middle Missouri-Great Oasis)
Crow Creek (39BF11) (Initial Middle Missouri,
Initial Coalescent)
Swanson (39BR16) (Initial Middle Missouri)
Arp (39BR101) (Initial Middle Missouri)
Mitchell (39DV2) (Initial Middle Missouri)
St. John (39HU213) (Initial Middle Missouri-Great Oasis)
Bloom (39HS1) (Initial Middle Missouri)
Twelve Mile Creek (39HT1) (Initial Middle Missouri)
King (39LM55) (Initial Middle Missouri)
Antelope Dreamer (39LM146) (Initial Middle Missouri)
Langdeau (39LM209) (Initial Middle Missouri)
Heath (39LN15) (Initial Middle Missouri-Great Oasis)
Overs La Roche C (39ST9) (Initial Middle Missouri)
Breeden (39ST16) (Initial Middle Missouri,
Post-Contact Coalescent)
Eagle Feather (39ST228) (Initial Middle Missouri)
Stony Point (39ST235) (Initial Middle Missouri,
Post-Contact Coalescent)
Clarks Creek (32ME1) (Extended Middle Missouri)
White Buffalo Robe (32ME7) (Extended Middle Missouri)
Bendish (32MO2) (Extended Middle Missouri)
32MO291 (Unclassified/Transitional Extended Middle
MissouriTerminal Middle Missouri)
Cross Ranch (32OL14) (Extended Middle Missouri)
Fire Heart Creek (32SI2) (Extended Middle Missouri)
Ben Standing Soldier (32SI7) (Extended Middle Missouri)
South Cannonball (32SI19) (Extended Middle Missouri)
Travis I (39CO213) (Extended Middle Missouri)
Indian Creek (39ST15) (Extended Middle Missouri)
Ketchen (39ST223) (Extended Middle Missouri)
Durkin (39ST238) (Extended Middle Missouri)
Whistling Elk (39HU242) (Initial Coalescent)
Elbee (32ME408) (Extended Coalescent-Related)
Molstad (39DW234) (Extended Coalescent)
McClure (39HU7) (Extended Coalescent)
Little Pumpkin (39HU97) (Extended Coalescent)
Bowman (39HU204) (Extended Coalescent)
39SL24 (Extended Coalescent)
Eagle Feather (39ST228) (Extended Coalescent)
Bowers La Roche (39ST232) (Extended Coalescent)
Rattlesnake Keeper (39LM160) (Post-Contact Coalescent)
Ghost Lodge (39ST20) (Post-Contact Coalescent)

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Summary of Carbonized Sherd Residue Dating

Summary of Plains Village Dating Program Results
Dates from Plains Village Dating Sites
Dates from NonPlains Village Dating Sites

Ceramic Ordination Results

Great Oasis
Taxonomy
Origins
Internal Development
Demise
Radiocarbon Dates
Analysis
Craniometric Distance
Initial Middle Missouri
Taxonomy
Origins
Internal Development
Demise
Radiocarbon Dates
Analysis
Craniometric Distance
Extended and Terminal Middle Missouri
Taxonomy
Origins
Internal Development
Demise
Radiocarbon Dates
Analysis
Craniometric Distance
Initial Coalescent
Taxonomy
Origins
Internal Development
Demise
Radiocarbon Dates
Analysis
Craniometric Distance
Extended Coalescent
Taxonomy
Origins
Internal Development
Demise
Radiocarbon Dates
Analysis
Craniometric Distance
Post-Contact Coalescent
Taxonomy
Origins
Internal Development

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Demise
Radiocarbon and Dendrochronological Dates
Analysis
Craniometric Distance
Post-Contact Microstylistic Variation
Dating the Plains Village Pattern Variants

7 Settlement History

Period 1 (ad 10001100)

Period 2 (ad 11001200)

Period 3 (ad 12001300)

Period 4 (ad 13001400)

Period 5 (ad 14001500)

Period 6 (ad 15001550)

Period 7 (ad 15501600)

Period 8 (ad 16001650)

Period 9 (ad 16501700)

Period 10 (ad 17001750)

Period 11 (ad 17501785)

Period 12 (ad 17851830)

Period 13 (ad 18301886)
8 Future Research

Chronological Issues

Great Oasis

Initial Middle Missouri

Extended and Terminal Middle Missouri

Initial Coalescent

Extended Coalescent

Post-Contact Coalescent

Woodland to Plains Village Transition

Subsistence-Settlement Systems

Lithic Technology

Ceramic Technology

Bone Tool Technology

Cultural Interaction

Euro-American Trade Impacts on Native Tool Technologies

Subtribal Ethnic Identities

Human Skeletal Remains

Mitigation of Continuing Site Destruction

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Acknowledgments

223

Appendix A: Ceramic Data Matrices

227

Appendix B: Cross Reference of Descriptive

Rim sherd Categories and Ceramic Types

245

Appendix C: Tables of Radiocarbon Dates

277

Appendix D: Dendrochronological Dates

295

References

299

index

321

vii

Figures
1. The Middle Missouri subarea with archeological regions, counties,
and reservoirs depicted
4
2. Location of selected Plains Village archeological sites from the
Middle Missouri, Central Plains, and Northeastern Plains subareas 5
3. Plains Village sites located in South Dakota and southern
North Dakota employed in the ceramic ordinations
6
4. Cultural chronology of the Middle Missouri subarea
14
5. Decadal radiocarbon calibration curve
33
6. Plot of calibrated radiocarbon date ranges from Initial Middle
Missouri variant components based on the decadal calibration
curve as implemented in CALIB 3.0.3
94
7. Plot of Great Oasis components and descriptive rim sherd
categories on Axis 1 and Axis 2, detrended correspondence
analysis ordination
96
8. Plot of Initial Middle Missouri variant components and
descriptive rim sherd categories on Axis 1 and Axis 2,
detrended correspondence analysis ordination
104
9. Plot of calibrated radiocarbon date ranges from Extended
and Terminal Middle Missouri variant components based on
the decadal calibration curve as implemented in CALIB 3.0.3
112
10. Plot of Extended and Terminal Middle Missouri variant
components and descriptive rim sherd categories on Axis 1 and
Axis 2, detrended correspondence analysis ordination
115
11. Plot of Extended Middle Missouri variant components and
descriptive rim sherd categories on Axis 1 and Axis 2,
detrended correspondence analysis ordination
117
12. Plot of calibrated radiocarbon date ranges from Coalescent
tradition components based on the decadal calibration curve
as implemented in CALIB 3.0.3
121
13. Plot of Initial Coalescent variant components and descriptive
rim sherd categories on Axis 1 and Axis 2, detrended
correspondence analysis ordination
123

smithsonian contributions to anthropology

14. Plot of Extended Coalescent variant components and descriptive rim sherd categories on Axis 1 and
Axis 2, detrended correspondence analysis ordination
15. Plot of southern Extended Coalescent variant components and descriptive rim sherd categories on
Axis 1 and Axis 2, detrended correspondence analysis ordination
16. Plot of northern Extended Coalescent variant components and descriptive rim sherd categories on
Axis 1 and Axis 2, detrended correspondence analysis ordination
17. Plot of Post-Contact Coalescent Le Beau phase components and descriptive rim sherd categories on
Axis 1 and Axis 2, detrended correspondence analysis ordination
18. Plot of the relative amounts of metal modified bison scapula hoes, bone knife handles, bone awls,
and trade metal artifacts, Post-Contact Coalescent Le Beau phase
19. Plot of Post-Contact Coalescent Bad River phase components and descriptive rim sherd categories on
Axis 1 and Axis 2, detrended correspondence analysis ordination
20. Plot of Post-Contact Coalescent Talking Crow phase components and descriptive rim sherd categories
on Axis 1 and Axis 2, detrended correspondence analysis ordination
21. Plot of the relative amounts of metal modified bison scapula hoes, bone knife handles, bone awls,
and trade metal artifacts, Post-Contact Coalescent Talking Crow phase
22. Plot of Post-Contact Coalescent components and rim sherd cord impressed motifs on Axis 1 and
Axis 2, detrended correspondence analysis ordination
23. Distribution of Plains Village components within the Middle Missouri subarea during Period 1
24. Aerial photographs of Initial Middle Missouri sites
25. Distribution of Plains Village components within the Middle Missouri subarea during Period 2
26. Distribution of Plains Village components within the Middle Missouri subarea during Period 3
27. Aerial photographs of Extended and Terminal Middle Missouri sites
28. Aerial photographs of Extended Middle Missouri sites
29. Distribution of Plains Village components within the Middle Missouri subarea during Period 4
30. Distribution of Plains Village components within the Middle Missouri subarea during Period 5
31. Aerial photographs of Heart River, Painted Woods, and Knife River complex sites
32. Aerial photographs of Initial, Extended, and Post-Contact Coalescent sites
33. Aerial photographs of Extended Coalescent sites
34. Distribution of Plains Village components within the Middle Missouri subarea during Period 6
35. Aerial photographs of Talking Crow phase, Heart River, and Knife River complex sites
36. Distribution of Plains Village components within the Middle Missouri subarea during Period 7
37. Aerial photographs of late Extended and Post-Contact Coalescent sites
38. Distribution of Plains Village components within the Middle Missouri subarea during Period 8
39. Distribution of Plains Village components within the Middle Missouri subarea during Period 9
40. Aerial photographs of post-contact period sites
41. Distribution of Plains Village components within the Middle Missouri subarea during Period 10
42. Distribution of Plains Village components within the Middle Missouri subarea during Period 11
43. Distribution of Plains Village components within the Middle Missouri subarea during Period 12
44. Distribution of Plains Village components within the Middle Missouri subarea during Period 13

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Appendix B Figures
[Link] Middle Missouri rim sherds
B.2. Initial Middle Missouri rim sherds
B.3. Initial Middle Missouri rim sherds
B.4. Initial Middle Missouri rim sherds
B.5. Initial Middle Missouri rim sherds
B.6. Initial Middle Missouri rim sherds
B.7. Initial Middle Missouri rim sherds (Cambria site)

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number 47

[Link] Middle Missouri (Cambria site) and Great Oasis (lo) rim sherds
B.9. Initial Middle Missouri (Great Oasis) rim sherds
[Link] Oasis (ah) and Extended/Terminal (io) rim sherds
B.11. Extended/Terminal Middle Missouri rim sherds
B.12. Extended/Terminal Middle Missouri rim sherds
B.13. Initial Coalescent rim sherds
B.14. Initial Coalescent rim sherds
B.15. Extended Coalescent rim sherds
B.16. Extended Coalescent rim sherds
B.17. Post-Contact Coalescent rim sherds
B.18. Extended Coalescent rim sherds
B.19. Post-Contact Coalescent rim sherds
B.20. Post-Contact Coalescent rim sherds
B.21. Post-Contact Coalescent rim sherds
B.22. Post-Contact Coalescent rim sherds
B.23. Post-Contact Coalescent rim sherds
B.24. Post-Contact Coalescent rim sherds

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Appendix D Figure
D.1.Plot of the ranges of the latest dendrochronological dates from Plains Village sites within
the Middle Missouri subarea

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xi

Tables
1. Commonly used Middle Missouri subarea taxonomic systems
2. Two-way weighted averaged (uk) table of selected Le Beau
phase components, first iteration of correspondence analysis
based on descriptive rim sherd frequencies
3. List of Plains Village tradition components used in the ceramic
ordinations by taxonomic assignment, extent of fieldwork, and
source of the ceramic data
4. Mean orifice diameters (centimeters) by descriptive rim sherd
category for six components
5. List of Plains Village tradition components with a potential for
radiocarbon dating listed by region, variant, and estimated date
based on existing radiocarbon dates and ceramic seriation
6. Intermediate working list of sites and components to be dated
prior to the start of sample selection, February 1992
7. Radiocarbon dates from Plains Village sites, Smithsonian
Institution Repatriation Office Plains Village dating program
8. Data from test excavations in three villages in North Dakota
9. Results of dating pottery sherd residues with more routine
AMS dates from the same contexts
10. Evaluation of radiocarbon dates produced in the Plains Village
dating program and previously existing dates from the same or
different sites as the Plains Village dating program
11. Site component and ceramic type scores from the detrended
correspondence analysis of Great Oasis components
12. Site component and ceramic type scores from the detrended
correspondence analysis of Initial Middle Missouri components
13. Site component and ceramic type scores from the detrended
correspondence analysis of Extended/Terminal Middle Missouri
components
14. Site component and ceramic type scores from the detrended
correspondence analysis of Extended Middle Missouri
components

15

30

40
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50
55
58
65
87

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103

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15. Site component and ceramic type scores from the detrended correspondence analysis of Initial
Coalescent components
16. Site component and ceramic type scores from the detrended correspondence analysis of Extended
Coalescent components
17. Site component and ceramic type scores from the detrended correspondence analysis of southern
Extended Coalescent components
18. Site component and ceramic type scores from the detrended correspondence analysis of northern
Extended Coalescent components
19. Site component and ceramic type scores from the detrended correspondence analysis of Le Beau phase
components
20. Frequencies of temporally sensitive post-contact period artifacts and their ratios to ceramic vessels
21. Site component and ceramic type scores from the detrended correspondence analysis of Bad River
phase components
22. Site component and ceramic type scores from the detrended correspondence analysis of Talking Crow
phase components
23. Site component and ceramic type scores from the detrended correspondence analysis of Post-Contact
period cord impressed motifs
24. Comparison of Middle Missouri subarea Plains Village chronologies (years ad)

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Appendix A Tables
A.1.Data matrix of ceramic rim sherd descriptive categories by component, Initial Middle Missouri
variant (Great Oasis)
A.2.Data matrix of ceramic rim sherd descriptive categories by component, Middle Missouri tradition
(Initial variant)
A.3.Data matrix of ceramic descriptive rim sherd categories by component, Middle Missouri tradition
(Extended and terminal variants)
A.4.Data matrix of ceramic descriptive rim sherd categories by component, Coalescent tradition
(Initial variant)
A.5.Data matrix of ceramic rim sherd types by component, Coalescent tradition (Extended and
Post-Contact variants)
A.6.Data matrix of ceramic rim sherd cord impressed motif categories on straight or braced rim forms,
Post-Contact Coalescent variant

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239

Appendix B Table
B.1.Correlation of descriptive rim sherd categories and defined ceramic types, Middle Missouri subarea

246

Appendix C Tables
C.1.Summary of sample location and sample type information for radiocarbon samples dated under
the Smithsonian Institution Repatriation Office Plains Village
C.2.List of radiocarbon dates from Plains Village components
C.3.Radiocarbon dates from Plains village sites, combines Smithsonian Institution Repatriation Office
and preexisting dates

278
282
290

Preface

he funding for this project was initiated through the efforts of Dan
Rogers of the Smithsonian Institution. In November 1991, a purchase
order (FP2016180000) to develop a chronology of archeological
sites located in the Middle Missouri subarea of the Great Plains was
granted to the author by the repatriation office of the Department of Anthropology, Smithsonian Institution. A second one was written for Stanley A. Ahler
to assist the author in the radiocarbon chronology of the study. The terms of
these purchase orders were fulfilled in December 1994 when a draft report was
submitted. A final report was submitted early in 1995. In July 1995 Diane Tyler,
managing editor of the Smithsonian Contributions and Studies Series, expressed
an interest in publishing the report. Based on her comments, a revised report
was submitted to the Department of Anthropology in August 1996. By October
1996, 20 additional radiocarbon dates became available for a series of Middle
Missouri tradition sites, as part of an independent effort by Ahler. Thirty-four
additional dates later became available for site 32MO291 and the Huff site as
part of separate contract completion reports. This necessitated some revisions of
the 1996 report. A decision was made to submit a third revised report in June
2001, a fourth in February 2003, and a fifth and final manuscript in July 2003
for publication. The 2001 version was sent out for peer review that year.
Although this study was initiated in 1991, in another sense this research
really began years ago when I started my graduate studies in the Department
of Anthropology, University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Lincoln, which is the former
headquarters for the Smithsonian Institutions Missouri Basin Project in salvage
archeology, served as a backdrop for my immersion into Middle Missouri archeology. My initiation began when I helped to computer code the ceramic vessels
from the Walth Bay and Lower Grand sites under the direction of F.A. Calabrese of the Midwest Archeological Center, National Park Service, Lincoln, Nebraska. In 1975, I began my long association with Carl R. Falk, formerly chief of
the Midwest Archeological Center and subsequently director of the Division of
Archeological Research, Department of Anthropology, University of NebraskaLincoln. At this time I began the research for my thesis involving the analysis of
the ceramic assemblage from the Medicine Crow site (39BF2), a Post-Contact
Coalescent Talking Crow phase earthlodge village in the Big Bend reservoir.

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This collection, then curated at the Midwest Archeological

Center, was one of many excavated under the auspices of
the Interagency Archaeological Salvage Program (ISAP).
Falk and Ahler secured funding from Interagency Archeological Services (IAS), National Park Service in Denver, Colorado, to complete the site report from Medicine
Crow, which contained an important pre-ceramic component of particular interest to Ahler. Then with the Illinois
State Museum, Ahler acted as principal investigator on the
project, mostly because of his interest in the pre-ceramic
components present at the site. Additional contracts to
complete the site reports from the Larson (39WW2), H. P.
Thomas (39ST12), and Sommers (39ST56) Plains Village
sites were taken on by Falk as the principal investigator
through IAS with the help of Jack Rudy, J. J. Hoffman,
and others of IAS-Denver. These projects, in addition to
inventory surveys and excavations along the east bank of
the Oahe and Big Bend reservoirs for the U.S. Army Corps
of Engineers, served as a springboard into Middle Missouri archeology for me and for others, such as Dennis
Toom, Terry Steinacher, and Darcy Morey.
My involvement with Falk and Ahler initiated a period of particularly intense research during my graduate
and post-graduate career, focusing on statistics, electronic
data processing on mainframe computers (then state-ofthe-art), and detailed data collection and analysis of large
numbers of lithic and ceramic artifacts. An integral part of
my work on three of the four sites involved intersite stylistic comparisons of ceramic assemblages. This led me into
various multivariate statistical techniques, such as factor
and cluster analysis, to assess stylistic variability between
sites. A portion of the data that appears in the present
study was collected during this time (19761979). The results of these early efforts are similar to those presented
herein and set the foundation for much of my subsequent
research. The research emphasis was largely inductive in
nature, focusing on a number of basic research questions
important to understanding the occupational histories of
these sites, the kinds of activities that took place within
them, their relationships to other sites, and their culturehistorical context. Although this occurred at a time when
the New Archeology was in vogue, this theoretical school
had little impact on my day-to-day research activities. The
emphasis was mostly culture-historical in nature.
In many respects, this report is a culmination of my
first 20 years of Middle Missouri research and represents
a logical conclusion to this chapter of my professional and
personal life. During this period, my interactions with Falk
and Ahler have been intellectually satisfying and broadening experiences, providing me not only with the tools to

further my career, but also with an appreciation for quality

research and the effort and personal sacrifices it requires
takes. I was not the only student at the University of Nebraska who might consider Falk and/or Ahler as mentors.
Among others who owe their early research interests to
them include Dennis Toom, Darcy Morey, Lynn Snyder,
and Rob Bozell. All worked on various aspects of Falk and
Ahlers long-term research program in the Middle Missouri,
which had its beginning while they were graduate students
under Ray Wood at the University of Missouri-Columbia.
The enthusiasm and interest that Wood, Falk, and Ahler
generated in their students and colleagues resulted in an
espirit de corps among a small group of passionate and
dedicated Middle Missouri archeologists. It is very satisfying to know that others share a deep professional and personal commitment to Middle Missouri archeology and are
willing to make numerous sacrifices to further knowledge
of its prehistory. Hopefully, our dedication to understanding the history of the Native Americans who once lived
along the Missouri River in the Dakotas will continue to
be passed on to future generations. Given the continuing
problems in funding research in the Middle Missouri subarea and other extenuating circumstances, this goal will be
even more difficult to attain in the future.
Although the authorship of this report reflects the actual division of writing responsibilities, the effort put into
chapter five by Ahler, Haas, and Bonani far outweighs
their scheduled commitments. Ahler in particular put in
a major effort at selection, preparation, and transmittal
of datable samples, far exceeding his planned workload.
Haas and Bonani were very accommodating in their work
on the project. This point can be underscored by the fact
that Haas agreed to prepare, run, and transmit samples
despite a heavy work schedule and during a time when
his laboratory at Southern Methodist University was
being terminated. Because this project renewed Ahlers
interest in refining the Plains Village chronology in the
Middle Missouri subarea, he secured additional funding
from University of North Dakota sources to run an additional 19 radiocarbon dates from six sites. These data
were submitted for analysis on 21 February 1996 and 11
March 1996 and were reported later that year. The results of these dates, together with those presented in this
report and elsewhere, form the basis of a larger synthetic
treatment of radiocarbon dating of Plains Village manifestations within the Middle Missouri subarea. Preliminary
results appeared in Ahler et al. (1995). Despite his death
earlier this year, Stans inspiration lives on through me
and others as we fulfill our shared commitment to under
standing Middle Missouri Plains village archeology.

number 47

Any archeologist who has been immersed into a particular research area is well aware of the dangers of losing
ones perspective on life. This problem commonly results
in reducing or virtually eliminating ones personal relationships during particularly intensive periods of research
and can result in strains within the family. This research
effort is no exception. Throughout the 10 years of work
on this project, my wife and children have coped during
the times I was traveling or working evenings or weekends
in my office. As much as anyone, Charlene has endured
these hardships and bore the brunt of child rearing during

xvii

this extended period of time. She has been responsible

as much as anyone for maintaining my sanity during the
course of this project. Although my daughters, Alicia and
Rachel, were too young to fully appreciate their sacrifices,
perhaps some day they will realize what it means to have
an archeologist for a father. My mother and father, Eileen
and Reuben, also deserve credit for taking care of the children on Saturdays and other particularly crucial periods
of research activity. To all of those who have played such
an important role in my professional and personal life, I
dedicate this report.

Introduction

Craig M. Johnson, Minnesota Department of

Transportation, 395 John Ireland Boulevard, St.
Paul, Minnesota 55155-1899. Stanley A. Ahler
(d. February 2007), formerly of Paleo Cultural
Research Group, P.O. Box EE, Flagstaff, Arizona 86022. Herbert Haas, RC Consultants
Inc., 2846 Marida Court, Las Vegas, Nevada
89120. Georges Bonani, Institute of Particle
Physics, HPK-H30, ETH Hnggerberg, CH8093, Zurich, Switzerland. Manuscript received
11 September 2003; accepted 18 March 2004.

t has been more than 35 years since the publication of Donald J. Lehmers
(1971) Introduction to Middle Missouri Archeology, which has been used
by a generation of archeologists to organize and interpret the prehistory
of the Northern Plains. This publication shared with his earlier synthesis
(Lehmer, 1954a:118159) the same basic taxonomic structure and sequence of
cultural events, but it added detail and an absolute time scale from information
collected during the intervening years. In this sense, Lehmers culture-historical
model of the Middle Missouri villagers, the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara and
their prehistoric and protohistoric ancestors, is a formulation that had been
defined very early from a limited number of often inadequately reported sites.
Most of the research within the Middle Missouri subarea uses a model that is
50 years old. Logan (1977) discussed the events leading to the publication of
Lehmer (1971).
To the uninitiated, the availability of a comprehensive treatment of Middle
Missouri archeology tends to give the impression that the basic culture history
of the subarea is complete. Other subarea specialists who continue to employ the
Lehmer model of 1971 for lack of a suitable alternative, particularly those concerned with the cultural sequences in South Dakota, reinforce this perception.
Breaking away from a mold that many archeologists have grown up with is a
difficult task. Examinations of large series of radiocarbon dates also tend to substantiate a portion of Lehmers (1971, table 2) chronology (Thiessen, 1977:64
65), despite problems with dating the cultural complexes of the subarea (Lehmer,
1971:5758). The thought among some subarea researchers is that the basic
archeological complexes are blocked out, and by now, most are reduced to a fair
degree of temporal control (Caldwell and D. R. Henning, 1978:139). This view
may be justified to some extent, for when salvage archeology ended with the
dissolution of the Smithsonian Institution River Basin Surveys program in 1969,
the pace of field investigations dramatically declined, and with it the timely dissemination of site reports, radiocarbon dates, and other associated information.
In short, many casual readers of the literature of the Middle Missouri Plains
villagers may be lulled into a sense of complacency, or overconfidence, that the
culture history of these peoples has essentially been completed (see also Toom,
1994:483). Nothing could be further from the truth.

smithsonian contributions to anthropology

Soon after its publication, some portions of Lehmers

(1971) synthesis of Native American life on the upper
Missouri River began to be questioned by a small group
of active and dedicated researchers. These inquiries focused on the taxonomic assignments of a number of villages and the time they were occupied (Ahler, 1977a:144;
Falk and Calabrese, 1973; Falk and Ahler, 1988). More
recent research has redefined the temporal limits of some
taxonomic units, challenged the validity of others, and created new culture-historical frameworks (Ahler, 1993a:38;
Lovick and Ahler, 1982:5765; Steinacher, 1983:9193).
It is clear that an integrated program that focuses on the
dating of a select number of the hundreds of excavated
sites is needed to refine the Plains Village chronology.

Objectives
The objective of this research was to develop a refined
chronology of Plains Village pattern components from the
Middle Missouri subarea of the Great Plains. The project
had six specific goals: (1) assign as many components to
specific time periods as possible; (2) establish dating parameters for each of the six cultural variants; (3) evaluate
the feasibility of dating short-lived macrobotanical remains
and carbon residues on pottery; (4) assess the reliability
of radiocarbon dates run by various laboratories; (5) construct a settlement history of the Plains villagers who lived
along the Missouri River in the Dakotas; and (6) recommend future research within the Middle Missouri subarea,
particularly as it applies to chronology. These goals were
accomplished by employing eight interrelated absolute
and relative dating techniques: (1) intersite ceramic ordinations; (2) radiocarbon dating; (3) site stratigraphy; (4)
Euro-American trade materials; (5) historic documentation; (6) oral traditions; (7) historical linguistics; and (8)
craniometric or biological distance. Most previous efforts
to refine the chronology of the Plains villagers focused on
taxonomic units rather than on individual sites, with the
exceptions of Ahler and Haas (1993). The research presented herein attempts to greatly refine the chronology of
the Plains Village pattern by assigning a large number of
components to 50- and 100-year periods.
The 225 site components involved in this study are
from extant archeological collections recovered by various governmental agencies, universities, museums, and
individuals. Twelve regional ordinations or seriations,
distinguished by employing traditionally defined ceramic
types from various phases, variants, and traditions, were
the focus of this research. In several instances, the intersite ordinations were interpreted with the aid of intrasite

rdinations, site stratigraphy, and other temporal indio

cators. Absolute dates were assigned to the temporal dimensions in each ordination by dating a select number
of components through the use of radiocarbon dating of
short-lived organic materials, such as botanical remains,
grass, and twigs. Previously dated components also were
included in this study. Historic documentation of village
sites occupied after about ad 1800 was used to anchor
the late end of the protohistoric or Post-Contact period
components in time and to link the long prehistoric and
protohistoric cultural sequences to the tribal groups who
occupied the Middle Missouri subarea in historic times,
namely the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara. The resulting
temporal sequences also were compared with the related
Mill Creek and Pawnee/Lower Loup chronologies, whose
sites in Iowa and Nebraska fall outside of the Middle Missouri subarea.
A secondary goal of this project was to provide the
Office of Repatriation of the Smithsonian Institution with
information useful in determining which modern Native
American tribes are culturally affiliated with the occupants of specific Plains Village archeological sites or the
taxonomic units created to assign these sites to an overall
culture history framework. The Mandan, Hidatsa, and
Arikara were the three ethnic groups in the Middle Missouri subarea participating in a Plains Village lifestyle at
the time of European and American contact. Of particular interest to Native Americans are the excavated human
skeletal remains and associated funerary objects of their
ancestors and the ultimate repatriation of these remains.
As a consequence, an emphasis in this report is placed on
those villages and associated cemeteries containing human
skeletal remains. The chronology developed in this report
facilitates the assignment of particular sites to the various
ethnic groups and tribes who occupied the Middle Missouri subarea during the prehistoric, protohistoric, and
historic periods. This effort is seen as providing a culturehistorical context for the human skeletal remains, thereby
assisting the Office of Repatriation of the Smithsonian Institution in fulfilling its responsibilities under the National
Museum of the American Indian Act (20 U.S.C., section
80q). The large quantity of human skeletal remains and
associated artifacts from Plains Village sites in the Middle
Missouri subarea can only be put in their proper context
by a methodical examination of the context or location
within each village or cemetery. This stems from three
basic facts of Middle Missouri archeology: (1) many of the
archaeological sites within the subarea and included in the
current study have not been fully reported; (2) many sites
contain a number of discrete and often mixed occupations

number 47

or components; and (3) there is no a priori reason to associate any particular cemetery population with a specific
village or component. Again, only after a detailed analysis
of the archaeological context of the recovered skeletal remains and associated artifacts can any assurance be made
concerning their relationship with a component. Of particular interest to the Smithsonian Institution is the chronological placement and cultural relationships through time
of the Sully (39SL4), Mobridge (39WW1), Black Widow
Ridge (39ST203), Fay Tolton (39ST11), Buffalo Pasture
village and cemetery (39ST6/39ST216), Cheyenne River
(39ST1), Leavitt (39ST215), Indian Creek (39ST15), and
Swan Creek (39WW7) sites.1
In addition to providing information useful in determining the ancestral relationships between the sites in
this study and todays Native American tribes, establishing refined and site- specific chronologies is crucial to any
analyses of culture process. Up to this point, most of the
chronologies have focused on the phase or variant level,
providing only the coarsest of temporal controls and little
specific information about sites other than those that are
directly dated. This is a particular problem for some studies that propose cultural or biological process models of
varying sophistication without chronologies of comparable
refinement (Jantz, 1973; Key and Jantz, 1981; Ramenofsky, 1987; Rogers, 1990, 1993; Zimmerman and Bradley,
1993). It is no exaggeration to reiterate that archeology is
a historical science, so time and temporal variability in archeological phenomena are of paramount importance...
we must keep striving for better temporal control over
our data, for without improved chronologies our culturalhistorical scenarios lack the precision necessary to guide
processual studies into meaningful lines of inquiry (Toom,
1992a:126).

Environmental and Cultural Setting

The Middle Missouri subarea of the Plains (Wedel,
1961, fig.1; 1983, fig. 6.1; Lehmer, 1971, fig. 20) is defined as the area along the Missouri River where it flows
through North and South Dakota (Figure 1). The subarea
consists of four distinct physiographic zones, including the
uplands, the breaks, the river terraces and floodplain, and
the river itself (Lehmer, 1971:4953). The valley is greatly
modified by the construction of five mainstem dams operated by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. These dams
created reservoirs that have destroyed and/or inundated
thousands of archeological sites. A number of sites are
currently being directly affected by these reservoirs and by
vandals, particularly in the tailwaters of Lake Oahe near

Mobridge, South Dakota, and in the Big Bend reservoir

(Lake Sharpe). The Interagency Archeological Salvage
Program (IASP) was established to salvage a small portion of these cultural resources. Between 1945 and 1969
the IASP coordinated the efforts of (1) the Smithsonian
Institution River Basin Surveys (SI-RBS) Missouri Basin
Project; (2) cooperating institutions, such as universities
and historical societies; and (3) the National Park Service
Midwest Archeological Center (NPS-MWAC) (Ahler,
1993a:30; Thiessen, 1994a:18, 1999). Most of the data
used in this report was derived from IASP. Details of the
administration of the IASP program, as well as life in the
field, are found in Wedel (1967), Lehmer (1971:123),
Jennings (1985), Smith (1992), Thiessen (1994a, 1994b,
1999), Wood and Hoffman (1994), Hurt (1995), Wood
(1995), Gradwohl (1997), and Grange (1997).
In his synthesis of Middle Missouri Archeology, Lehmer
(1971, fig. 21) divided the subarea into the Big Bend, BadCheyenne, Grand-Moreau, Cannonball, Knife-Heart, and
Garrison regions. The portion of the river below the Big
Bend region was not included within Lehmers (1971:37)
regional scheme, although it is apparent that the area,
herein labeled the Fort Randall region (Figure 1), has cultural relationships to the Big Bend region, as well as to other
plains subareas. In an earlier report of Middle Missouri
archeology that proved to be a draft of his 1971 synthesis,
Lehmer (1965:K28) defined the Lower Fort Randall district or region as encompassing the area between the White
and Niobrara Rivers. One year later, Lehmer and Caldwell
(1966) dropped the Ft. Randall and Garrison districts in
their application of the Willey and Phillips (1958) taxonomy to the Middle Missouri subarea. Ahler (1993b:5859)
proposed two additional tentative regions, not depicted in
Figure 1 (Lower Yellowstone, Little Missouri), as well as
a separation of the Knife-Heart region into two distinct
areas. Related sites located off the Missouri River that had
been assigned to the Initial variant of the Middle Missouri
tradition (Knudson, 1967:278280; Lehmer, 1971:98;
Alex, 1981a; Tiffany, 1983; Toom, 1992a; A. Johnson,
1993), as well as the Coalescent Lower Loup phase and the
historic Pawnee (Grange, 1968; OShea, 1989) extended
the area of interest into western and southeastern South
Dakota, northwestern Iowa, southwestern Minnesota, and
Nebraska (Figure2). Most of the sites that form the basis
of this study are located along the Missouri River in South
Dakota (Figure 3). Sites from other Plains subareas are incorporated for comparative purposes.
The Plains villagers of the Middle Missouri subarea
lived in circular and rectangular lodges arranged in a variety of village plans and subsisted on a dual economy of

smithsonian contributions to anthropology

Figure 1. The Middle Missouri subarea with archeological regions, counties, and reservoirs depicted.

number 47

Figure 2. Location of selected Plains Village archeological sites from the Middle Missouri, Central Plains, and Northeastern Plains subareas.

smithsonian contributions to anthropology

Figure 3. Plains Village sites located in South Dakota and southern North Dakota employed in the ceramic ordinations.

number 47

bison hunting and horticulture (Wilson, 1917; Lehmer,

1954a:139140; Lehmer and Wood, 1977; Toom, 1992b).
The hunting of smaller animals and the gathering of plants
added to this subsistence base, which revolved around an
annual cycle (see Hurt, 1969). The relative importance
of their subsistence activities is a source of debate, with
recent evidence suggesting a greater reliance on bison in
one case (Tuross and Fogel, 1994:288). Villages were located on a series of Missouri River terraces and consisted
of from several to 200 or more houses, many fortified by
a combination ditch and inner wood-post palisade system. Historically, the houses were constructed from wood
frames covered with earth (Wilson, 1934). Most villages
were probably occupied for one or perhaps two generations (Toom, 1992a:124, 1995:363), but some may have
been inhabited for a period of two centuries or more, as
indicated by thick midden deposits (Ahler, 1993b, table
25.2). Rectangular Middle Missouri tradition houses usually ranged in length between 30 and 50 feet and were
normally 20 to 30 feet wide. Circular, and more rarely
square, Coalescent tradition lodges were usually 30 to
40 feet in diameter but could have been as much as 70
feet. Most houses were semi-subterranean and probably
earth covered with a central fire hearth and a number
of storage/refuse pits dug into their floors. Most village
sites contained large quantities of broken grit-tempered
ceramic vessels, ground and chipped stone tools, chipped
stone flaking debris, bone tools, fire-cracked rock, and
unmodified vertebrate remains indicative of rather intensive occupations. Small amounts of Euro-American trade
items made from metal or glass have been found in villages

dating after about ad 1600/1650. Human remains were

occasionally found on house floors or in pits but were
most commonly found in separate cemeteries associated
with late Extended Coalescent and Post-Contact Coalescent period villages (ad 16001780). Summaries of both
the Middle Missouri and Coalescent traditions have been
reported in Lehmer (1954a, 1971, 2001), Winham and
Lueck (1994), Toom (1996), C. Johnson (1998a, 1998c),
Winham and Calabrese (1998), Wood (1998, 2001),
and Krause (2001). Descriptions of the history and culture of their Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara descendents
have been published by Wood and Irwin (2001), Stewart
(2001), and Parks (2001), respectively.

Note
1. The site numbers appearing in this report are based upon
a trinomial, or Smithsonian Institution, site designation
system. The three components are codes that represent the
state, county, and site within each county. The 48 contiguous states are listed in alphabetical order and are given a
number between 1 and 48, with Alaska and Hawaii given
the final two state numbers. Counties within each state are
given a two letter designation. Sites within each county are
given a number that is generally based upon their order of
discovery. The five state numbers in this report are Iowa
(13), Minnesota (21), Nebraska (25), North Dakota (32),
and South Dakota (39). Thus, using this system, Cheyenne
River (39ST1) is the first site in Stanley County, South Dakota, to be given a site number.

Previous Culture-Historical
Reconstructions

hroughout the history of systematic archeological investigations in

the Middle Missouri subarea of the Plains, archeologists have focused
on developing Plains Village culture taxonomies and chronologies
(Wood, 1969). These have taken the form of culture-historical syntheses, which were based mainly upon intuitive understandings of the information at hand and data-based ceramic seriations or ordinations. The former
efforts were in vogue from about 1940 to 1971, whereas ceramic ordinations,
in conjunction with radiocarbon dates and other temporal indicators (e.g., site
stratigraphy, historic documentation, metal trade artifacts), generally began
to be used after that period. The addition of radiocarbon dating during the
1960s facilitated the construction of the most commonly accepted taxonomic
and chronological framework (Lehmer, 1971). Work at the Knife River Indian
Villages National Historic Site (KNRI) resulted in a revised developmental sequence for the Knife and Heart regions (Ahler, 1993b). Ahler (1993a:3241),
Billeck and Byrd (1996:430), and Toom (1996:6065) presented summaries of
archeological research and taxonomy within the Middle Missouri. These and
other taxonomies provide the historic context of the present study.

Description and Early Classification

Period (18831945)
This period began with the explorations of the Northwestern Archaeological
Survey by Theodore Lewis in 1883 and continued through the work of George
Will and Herbert Spinden at Double Ditch and other sites in North Dakota.
William D. Strong (1940) formulated the first widely accepted chronology of
Plains Village sites within the Dakotas. He assigned the villages to the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara through the direct-historic approach, using a variety
of historic, protohistoric, and prehistoric components that he excavated in the
1930s. A related effort by Wedel (1940) dealt with cultural developments in the
Central Plains. The next synthesis to appear (Will and Hecker, 1944) was based
upon a large number of sites in North Dakota and north-central South Dakota
(c.f. Will, 1924). They assigned those sites to three sequential periods (Archaic

10

smithsonian contributions to anthropology

Mandan, Middle Mandan, Later Heart River) that are the

approximate equivalents of the Extended Middle Missouri
variant, Terminal Middle Missouri variant, and the Heart
River phase, respectively.
Bowers (1948a) developed a culture-historical model
of the Mandan and Hidatsa on the basis of ethnographic
information and data recovered from test excavations at
a large number of sites in North and South Dakota from
1929 to 1933 for the Logan Museum, Beloit College, Beloit, Wisconsin. He organized the components into 15
foci (Arzberger, Cannonball, Cheyenne, Crow Creek, Ft.
Sully, Heart River, Huff, La Roche, Lower Grand, Meyers, Painted Woods, Pierre, Sommers-Fort-George, Upper
Grand, Woodlands), some of which have been recognized
in modified form in later syntheses. Some of these units
have been identified with particular subgroups of the
Mandan and Hidatsa. Bowers cultural reconstruction,
based upon the direct-historic approach, never received
broad acceptance because neither his dissertation nor the
primary data upon which it was based were ever published
(Ahler, 1993a:35). His model was later eclipsed by the one
proposed by Lehmer (1954a, 1971). Subsequent work at
the Knife River Indian Villages National Historic Site adds
credibility to Bowers model (Ahler, 1993a:35).

Salvage Archeology and Culture

History Period (19451970)
The construction of dams and reservoirs in the Missouri River basin by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and
the Bureau of Reclamation after World War II prompted
archeologists to begin to survey and excavate numerous
Plains Village sites. This was done under the auspices of
the Interagency Archeological Salvage Program (IASP), a
multi-agency program composed of the Smithsonian Institution (which sponsored the Smithsonian Institution River
Basin Surveys [SI-RBS]) and various cooperating entities
(e.g., universities and historical societies) (Thiessen, 1999).
The accumulating mass of information from this program
prompted Robert Stephenson (1954), along with other archeologists, to develop a cultural taxonomy of the Middle
Missouri and Central Plains subareas that was based upon
the Midwestern Taxonomic System. This model has five
aspects and at least eight foci that focus on the Plains Village components concentrated in the Bad-Cheyenne and
Big Bend regions. Many of these divisions are recognized
today, although the names and assigned components have
changed. The five aspects of concern here and their current
equivalents are the Pahuk (Talking Crow phase, Historic

Pawnee-Lower Loup phase), Sanish (Bad River phase),

Chouteau (Extended Coalescent variant), Aksarben (Initial Coalescent variant), and Chamberlain (Anderson
phase) aspects. A sixth unnamed aspect includes five Over
focus components (Swanson, Mitchell, Brandon, Twelve
Mile Creek, Dinehart), which are now assigned to the Initial Middle Missouri variant. A good summary of many
of these taxonomic units from the perspective of the Arzberger site appears in Spaulding (1956:65110).
During the 1950s, Wesley Hurt produced a series of
site reports on his work in South Dakota in which he defined a number of foci. The reports in this series contained
essentially the same chronology chart dealing with the
full range of Middle Missouri and Coalescent taxonomic
units, including those defined by Hurts contemporaries.
The Over focus of the Mill Creek aspect, initially formulated by Over and Meleen (1941:4041) from villages
along the James and Big Sioux Rivers (Brandon, Mitchell,
Twelve Mill Creek), was expanded to include the Swanson
and Brandon sites (Hurt, 1951:1516). Hurts work at the
Thomas Riggs site formed the basis for the Thomas Riggs
focus (Hurt, 1953:4748), a unit now included within
the Extended Middle Missouri variant. He also postulated the Bennett, La Roche, and Akaska foci to include
Coalescent components in the Chamberlain, Pierre, and
south Mobridge areas (Hurt, 1957:2630, 80). Today,
these taxonomic units are part of the Extended variant of
the Coalescent tradition. His Le Beau focus, currently the
Le Beau phase of the Post-Contact Coalescent, was based
upon excavations at the Swan Creek site (Hurt, 1957).
At about the same time, Donald Lehmer (1954a:
114159; 1954b:138159) developed a culture-historical
taxonomy that gained widespread acceptance by incorporating some more recent minor modifications. This
model proposed a Plains Village pattern encompassing
all semi-permanent villages in the Central Plains and
Middle Missouri subareas. This pattern, or tradition as
it later became to be known, is composed of the Middle
Missouri, Coalescent, and Central Plains traditions. The
Plains Village chronological sequence in the Oahe Dam
area was designated the Fort Pierre Branch in an earlier
synthesis (Lehmer, 1952a), a short-lived term that is no
longer used. Based upon the superpositioning of circular
Coalescent earthlodges upon rectangular Middle Missouri
tradition houses at the Dodd site (39ST30), Lehmer was
able to develop a relative chronological relationship between the two traditions, anchoring the late Coalescent
sites into historically documented Mandan, Hidatsa, and
Arikara villages. He envisioned the Coalescent tradition
as a blending, or coalescence, of cultural traits of the

number 47

Middle Missouri and Central Plains traditions. A series of

radiocarbon dates were instrumental in establishing approximate temporal spans of the two traditions and their
variants (Lehmer, 1971:33). A dendrochronological dating program in the Middle Missouri subarea was undertaken by Weakly (1971), although the results did not gain
widespread acceptance because of a variety of problems
(Caldwell and Snyder, 1983). Thiessen (1977) and Toom
(1992a, 1992b) completed examinations of Middle Missouri tradition radiocarbon dates. Their results generally
supported Lehmers temporal positions of Middle Missouri tradition variants.
Most taxonomies developed in the 1960s dealt with
low-order integrative units, such as the phase. Most notable among these are the Grand Detour phase (Caldwell
and Jensen, 1969), the Bad River phase (Hoffman and
Brown, 1967), and the Felicia focus (Caldwell, 1966a:80).
A broader based taxonomic system, incorporating the
Willey and Phillips (1958) system, appears in Deetz
(1965:718). Deetz discussed two regional sequences, incorporating two phases (Aksarben, Lower Loup) and the
historic Pawnee from the Central Plains, and five phases
(Middle Missouri, Arzberger, La Roche, Stanley, Snake
Butte) from the Middle Missouri region. Soon after,
Lehmer and Caldwell (1966) and Lehmer (1966:5354)
presented a revised version of the Lehmer (1954a:114
154) taxonomic scheme, incorporating the units of the
Willey and Phillips (1958) system. Lehmer (1966:5660),
in his analysis of the Fire Heart Creek site, defined the
Fort Yates phase to include all Extended Middle Missouri
tradition sites in the Knife-Heart and Cannonball regions,
then called districts. He also drew comparisons to similar
sites in the Bad-Cheyenne district, which was assigned to
the Thomas Riggs focus. Except for a few modifications
made since then, the Lehmer and Caldwell system remains
essentially unchanged. Wood (1967:112146), in a report
of his Huff site excavations in the Cannonball region, proposed the Huff focus. It represents the final phase of the
Middle Missouri tradition stretching back to the Extended
Middle Missouri Thomas Riggs focus and the Initial Middle Missouri Chamberlain aspect found to the south in
the Bad-Cheyenne and Big Bend regions. Woods Thomas
Riggs focus included all sites currently included within the
Extended Middle Missouri.
Drawing on his earlier syntheses (Lehmer, 1954a:114
159, 1966:5367), the taxonomic outline by Lehmer and
Caldwell (1966), and a summary of Middle Missouri archaeology (Lehmer, 1965), Lehmer (1971) presented his
most influential and lasting contribution to the archeology
of the subarea. Because his 1971 synthesis was formulated

11

on information available prior to this time, it is placed in

the Salvage Archeology and Culture History Period. In
it, Lehmer defined six regions of the subarea (Garrison,
Knife-Heart, Cannonball, Grand-Moreau, Bad-Cheyenne,
Big Bend) that are almost identical in their boundaries to
the earlier defined districts (Lehmer and Caldwell, 1966).
The Plains Village pattern or major cultural tradition is
divided into two distinct traditions, the Middle Missouri
and the Coalescent, that are in turn subdivided into seven
variants, which supersede the earlier defined horizons
(Lehmer, 1971:2833).

Contract Archeology and Cultural

Ecology Period (1970Present)
This period begins with the dissolution of the SI-RBS
program and the beginning of problem-oriented research.
Although this transition began several years prior to 1970,
this date is chosen as an approximate demarcation point.
From 1968 until his death in 1975, Donald J. Lehmer of
Dana College in Blair, Nebraska, together with W. Raymond Wood and his graduate students from the University of Missouri-Columbia, conducted field investigations
at more than 20 Plains Village sites in the upper KnifeHeart region (Lehmer, 1967; Lehmer et al., 1978:vix;
Wood, 1986a:xxi). This region was chosen because its
archeology was largely unknown, and it is the only large
portion of the Middle Missouri subarea unmodified by the
construction of the mainstem reservoirs. National Park
Service-Midwest Archeological Center excavations from
1969 to 1973, under the overall direction of Carl R. Falk
and Stanley A. Ahler, targeted three Plains Village sites
(Helb, Walth Bay, Lower Grand) in the upper Oahe Reservoir (Falk and Ahler, 1988; Thiessen, 1999:5961). Unlike the earlier work in the upper Knife-Heart region, these
investigations focused on intensive large-scale excavations.
The two programs were not only influential in refining
field procedures and the cultural sequences in the Knife,
Cannonball, and Grand-Moreau regions, but more importantly, they introduced a number of Woods graduate students to Plains Village archeology. Some of these students,
such as Stanley A. Ahler and Carl R. Falk, have continued
their interest in the subarea, representing a third generation of Middle Missouri archeologists who, in turn, became mentors to and influenced their own students and
colleagues, including this author. Ray Woods enthusiasm
for research in the subarea has encouraged a number of
his students to pursue research into the expanded fields of
ethnohistory, cultural ecology, and disease ecology.

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smithsonian contributions to anthropology

The results of some of the 1968 field work in the

upper Knife-Heart (i.e., Knife) region, as it pertains to culture history and archeological taxonomy, is summarized
in Lehmer (1971: 203206). Two studies, Lehmer et al.
(1978) and Wood (1986a:724), have portions devoted to
cultural chronology and taxonomy based upon Lehmers
framework. Lehmer et al. (1978) focused on the last period of Plains Village life, the Knife River phase, whereas
Wood (1986a:724) summarized the culture history of the
region from the Middle Missouri through the Coalescent
traditions, ending with the nonPlains Village historic Dakota occupations at several sites. Despite the fact that his
synthesis largely reflects earlier culture history formulations, Wood extended the Heart River phase, originally
placed fully within the protohistoric period at ad 1675 to
ad 1780 by Lehmer, well back into the prehistoric period
at ad 1450 to ad 1780. In summary, both the Lehmer
and Wood syntheses have been eclipsed by recent developments stemming from the research program within the
Knife River Indian Villages National Historic Site.
The validity of the Lehmer culture-historical model,
particularly as it pertains to the Coalescent tradition, also
has been called into question as a result of recent research
within the Knife River Indian Villages National Historic
Site (Lovick and Ahler, 1982:5765; Ahler, 1993a:3839).
This problem was traced, at least in part, to the fact that
Lehmers scheme developed from his early work in South
Dakota, where the Caddoan-speaking Arikara were the
dominant group. On the other hand, the North Dakota prehistoric record is largely based upon the Siouan-speaking
Mandan and Hidatsa. The results indicate that the Coalescent tradition, as it is defined by Lehmer (1971:115120),
is most similar to the Willey and Phillips (1958:33) horizon and does not account for the cultural diversity present
within the Knife and Heart regions of the Middle Missouri
subarea. There appears to be at least three cases in which
the process of coalescence or diffusion occurred, but they
did not occur sequentially nor did they always involved
the same groups: (1) when Caddoan speakers moved from
the Central Plains to the Middle Missouri; (2) when the
southern Mandan adopted architectural and ceramic traits
from others while in the Black Hills; and (3) when the
three groups of Hidatsa and two groups of Mandan interacted in the Knife and Heart regions (Ahler, 1993a:38).
According to John Ludwickson, it is diffusion, precipitated by climatic change (little Ice Age), large-scale
warfare, and pre-European epidemic diseases that led to
widespread borrowing among groups. Diffusion and not
micro-evolution within ethnic groups led to the dramatic
material culture changes encompassed under the banner of

the Coalescent tradition (pers. comm., 1993). Lehmer

(1971:99, 104, 125128) also identified a number of cases
of borrowing between different variants.
Bowers (1948a, 1965:1025, 476489) model, although limited by a lack of taxonomic rigor, is better able
to accommodate the complex cultural developments within
the Knife and Heart regions. As a result, five partially contemporaneous and sequential cultural complexes (Charred
Body, Middle Missouri, Painted Woods, Heart River, Knife
River), encompassing 11 phases, are defined for the Knife
and Heart regions (Ahler et al., 1991:27; Ahler, 1993b).
The Middle Missouri complex includes the Fort Yates
phase and is followed by the Huff phase in the Cannonball
region, which was assigned by previous researchers to the
Extended and Terminal variants of the Middle Missouri
tradition. The Charred Body complex is partially contemporaneous with the Fort Yates phase and represents the
earliest villagers in the Knife, Heart, and Garrison regions.
The next two phases, Clarks Creek and Nailati, have components assigned to both the Middle Missouri and Painted
Woods complexes. The Scattered Village and Mandan Lake
phases also are assigned to the Painted Woods complex,
with the latter also containing components of the Heart
River complex. The Heart River complex includes almost
all late villages in the Heart region assigned to the Heart
River phase (Lehmer, 1971:203205). Because there is so
little systematic research within the Heart region, phases
are not defined for the Heart River complex there. Data
from only two of these sites, Double Ditch and Slant, have
been reported (Will and Spinden, 1906; Ahler, Schneider
et al., 1980; Ahler, 1997). Heart River complex components in the Knife region are included in the Mandan Lake,
Hensler, and Willows phases. Some components of the Willows phase also are assigned to the Knife River complex, as
are all succeeding Minnetaree, Roadmaker, and Four Bears
phase villages. Knife River complex components represent
the protohistoric villages of the Mandan and Hidatsa, including remnant Arikara groups from South Dakota. This
complex most closely corresponds to Lehmers (1971:203
206) Heart River 2 and Knife River 1 and 2 subphases. The
latter two subphases are assigned to Lehmers Disorganized
Coalescent variant. The dating of the late village components, traditionally assigned to the Coalescent tradition in
the Knife and Heart regions, also has been modified. Many
were occupied up to 200 years earlier than previously believed (Ahler, 1993b, figs. 25.125.2).
Other efforts at refining the Middle Missouri tradition
taxonomy focused on Initial variant sites along the lower
James River in southeastern South Dakota and in the Mill
Creek sites in northwestern Iowa (Alex, 1981b:171186;

number 47

Tiffany, 1982:9398, 1983). Alex included the Mitchell, Bloom, Twelve Mile Creek, and Goehring sites in the
Lower James phase. Tiffany proposed adding the Swanson
and Brandon phases along with the conversion of three
foci to phases (Anderson, Cambria, Thomas Riggs). The
Chamberlain and Mill Creek variants, two spatial variants of the Initial Middle Missouri, also were added to the
growing list of taxonomic units. The Chamberlain variant
is similar to Hurts (1953, chart III) Chamberlain aspect.
Tiffanys two new spatial variants are further solidified
with the differentiation of the Initial Middle Missouri
variant into western and eastern divisions (Toom, 1992a,
1992b). Steinacher (1990, table 2) presented a summary
of Initial Middle Missouri taxonomy.
In addition to the work at the Knife River Indian Villages National Historic Site, a series of research results
from sites in South Dakota has raised questions about the
validity of the widely accepted Lehmer model of Plains
Village taxonomy and development within the Middle
Missouri subarea. One of these challenges the concept that
the earliest Coalescent tradition villages, those assigned to
the Initial variant, represent admixtures of Central Plains
and Middle Missouri tradition cultural traits (Steinacher,
1983:9195). Despite earlier pronouncements by Lehmer
(1971:111), the results of this research indicate that at
least some of these Initial Coalescent villages are essentially Central Plains tradition sites that lack evidence of a
blending of traits. Additional radiocarbon dates also indicate that the Initial Coalescent began about ad 1300,
some 100 years before the commonly accepted date for the
variant (Toom, 1992b, table 1; C. Johnson, 1998a:308),
and the time span for the Initial Middle Missouri variant
along the Missouri River was compressed from Lehmers
ad 900 to ad 1400, to ad 1000 to ad 1300 (Tiffany, 1982,
fig. 27; 1983, fig. 5; Toom, 1992a: 125, 1992b, table 1).
Other archeologists have questioned the taxonomic assignments of Extended Middle Missouri villages in South
Dakota (Falk and Calabrese, 1973; Ahler, 1977a:14145;
A. Johnson, 1977). The implications of these results are
addressed in chapter 6.
These developmental sequences and taxonomies, encompassing the period between ad 900 and ad 1886, is

13

reconstructed in Figure 4. It is based upon existing radiocarbon dates and the discussions by Lehmer (1971), Steinacher (1983), Tiffany (1983), Toom (1992a, 1996), Ahler
(1993b), and C. Johnson (1998a) but does not include
the findings in the present study. The resulting taxonomy,
composed of the Middle Missouri and Coalescent traditions, is essentially unchanged from Lehmers (1971:33),
except for the Knife, Heart, and Cannonball regions,
where Ahlers system was adopted. The contrast between
the Lehmer and Ahler systems is presented in Table 1. The
dating of the Middle Missouri and Coalescent traditions
and the variants and phases they subsume, however, is in
the process of being revised. Six of Lehmers seven variants
(Initial, Extended, and Terminal Middle Missouri; Initial,
Extended, and Post-Contact Coalescent) also are recognized, with the Disorganized variant absorbed into the
Post-Contact Coalescent. The Initial variant of the Middle
Missouri tradition is divided into nine phases included
within eastern (Great Oasis, Big Sioux, Little Sioux, Brandon, Cambria, Lower James phases) and western (Swanson, Grand Detour, Anderson phases) divisions following
the conventions of Tiffany (1983) and Toom (1992a,
1992b). The Extended Middle Missouri variant, or Middle
Missouri complex, includes four phases (Thomas Riggs,
Fort Yates, Clarks Creek, Nailati), whereas Huff is the
sole phase of the Terminal variant. The Initial Coalescent
variant is divided into two phases (Campbell Creek and
Arzberger), with the Anoka phase formulated to include
the Lynch site in Nebraska (not depicted in Figure 4). The
Extended variant of the Coalescent tradition is separated
into a large number of foci and phases. The most recent,
although poorly defined, scheme (Lehmer, 1971:120) proposed six phases for the Extended Coalescent (Shannon,
Bennett, La Roche, Akaska, Le Compte, Redbird). Four
of Lehmers (1971:201206) six Post-Contact Coalescent phases (Felicia, Talking Crow, Bad River, Le Beau)
also were recognized, pending future modifications. His
Knife and Heart River phases are eliminated in favor of
the Knife and Heart River complexes of Ahler (1993b).
Detailed discussions of the cultural taxonomy of the Plains
Village pattern are presented with each ceramic ordination
in chapter 6.

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smithsonian contributions to anthropology

Figure 4. Cultural chronology of the Middle Missouri subarea.

number 47

15

Table 1. Commonly used Middle Missouri subarea Plains Village taxonomic systems (Lehmer, 1971; Ahler, 1993b).*
Lehmer Taxonomy
(All Middle Missouri subarea regions)
Tradition

Variant

Phase/Focus/Aspect

Type Sites/Important Sites

Middle Missouri Initial (AD 9001400) Anderson

Dodd, Breeden, Fay Tolton
Jiggs Thompson, Pretty Head, Langdeau

(AD 10001300) Grand Detour
Swanson Swanson, Crow Creek, King

Lower James
Mitchell, Bloom, Twelve Mile Cr., Ghoering, Ethan

Brandon
Brandon

Cambria
Cambria, Price

Big Sioux
Broken Kettle, Kimble

Little Sioux
Phipps, Brewster, Wittrock, Chan-Ya-Ta
Great Oasis Great Oasis, Broken Kettle W., Hitchell, Oldham
Clarks Creek
Clarks Creek

Extended (AD 11001500)
Cross Ranch

(AD 11001500) Nailati
Fort Yates Fire Heart Creek, Paul Brave, Jake White Bull
Thomas Riggs Thomas Riggs, Pitlick, Cheyenne River
Terminal (AD 15001675) Huff Huff, Shermer

(AD 15001650)
Coalescent Initial (AD 14001500) Arzberger Arzberger
Campbell Creek Talking Crow, Crow Creek

(AD 13001500)
Anoka
Lynch
Le Compte
Potts, Molstad, Moreau River

Extended (AD 15501675)

(AD 15001650) Akaska Swan Creek

La Roche Scalp Creek, La Roche, McClure, Robinson

Bennett
Black Widow B, Meyers
Shannon Spain A, Clarkstown B

Redbird
Redbird II
Knife
Deapolis, Rock Village, Nightwalkers Butte

Post-Contact (AD 16751862)
Double Ditch, Slant, Boley, Mandan L, Smith Farm

(AD 16501886) Heart River

Le Beau Four Bear, Anton Rygh, Spiry-Eklo, Swan Creek

Bad River
Dodd, Buffalo Pasture, Philips Ranch
Talking Crow
Medicine Crow, Talking Crow, Oacoma, Oldham
Felicia Two Teeth, Cadotte, Black Partizan

Ahler Taxonomy
(Cannonball, Heart, Knife and Garrison regions only)
Complex
Charred Body (AD 900/10001200)

Phase

Type Sites/Important Sites

Flaming Arrow, Menoken

Middle Missouri (AD 10001450/1500) Fort Yates (AD 10001300) Fire Heart Creek, Paul Brave, Jake White Bull
Huff (AD 13001500) Huff
Clarks Creek, Steifel, Grandmothers Lodge

Clarks Creek (AD 12001300)
Cross Ranch
Nailati (AD 13001400)
Mandan Lake (AD 14501525)
Heart River (AD 14501785)
Hensler (AD 15251600)

Willows (AD 16001700)

Mandan Lake
Lower Hidatsa, White Buffalo Robe
Lower Hidatsa

Painted Woods (AD 13001525)

Clarks Creek (AD 12001300)
Nailati (AD 13001400)
Scattered Village (AD 14001450)

Mandan Lake (AD 14501525)

Clarks Creek, Steifel, Grandmothers Lodge

Cross Ranch, White Buffalo Robe, Amahami
Big Hidatsa, Upper Sanger, Mandan Lake
Mandan Lake, Mahhaha

Knife River (AD 16001886)

Willows (AD 16001700)
Mahhaha, Big Hidatsa
Lower Hidatsa, Big Hidatsa, Molander

Minnetaree (AD 17001785)
Big Hidatsa, Sakakawea, Deapolis, Ft. Clark

Roadmaker (AD 17851830)
Four Bears (AD 18301886) Ft. Clark, Deapolis, Rock Village, Like-a-Fishhook
* The first series of dates for the Lehmer variants are those appearing in Lehmer (1971, table 2). The second series below these are those proposed by Toom (1996, table 8).
Lehmers Disorganized Coalescent variant is included in the Post-Contact Coalescent. Some phases and sites included in the Lehmer scheme have been added by later researchers. Lehmer did not include the Cambria, Big Sioux, Little Sioux, or Great Oasis phases in his taxonomy; they were added later by other archeologists.

Methods of Dating

rcheologists divide dating techniques into two general classes, absolute and relative. Absolute techniques rely on a number of procedures,
such as radiocarbon dating, to determine the age of a particular sample. Relative techniques, one of the most popular being seriation, or
ordination, place various strata, artifacts, or groups of artifacts from a common
provenience unit in an order that is interpreted to be temporal in nature. Because
ceramic ordination plays a major role in refining the Plains Village chronology
of the Middle Missouri subarea, the subject of this study, several theoretical and
methodological issues are addressed.

Ceramic Ordination
Archeologists have employed seriation, or ordination, as a relative dating or
ordering technique since the nineteenth century, beginning with the work of a
number of Old World archeologists. Willey and Sabloff (1993) discussed early
applications in the New World. James A. Ford, together with several of his colleagues, applied the technique to a large number of collections from the lower
Mississippi River valley (Phillips et al., 1951). One of his more influential studies
described the technique in detail (Ford, 1962). As a consequence of the work of
Ford and others, and of concurrent advances in seriation techniques by Brainerd
(1951) and Robinson (1951), a large number of early chronologies were built
upon ceramic seriations, including a number from the Middle Missouri subarea
of the Plains.

Applications in the Middle Missouri Subarea

The role of pottery in assessing the similarities between components and
what these relationships entail for cultural chronologies and taxonomies has been
explicitly addressed in a number of seriations and ordinations within the Middle
Missouri subarea. These efforts, focusing on intrasite and intersite ceramic variability, provide a context for the ceramic ordinations developed for this report.
Beginning with modest efforts in the early 1960s, ceramic seriation was applied

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smithsonian contributions to anthropology

with increasing frequency because of the development of

various computerized and noncomputerized quantitative
techniques. The first of these (Smith, 1960, 1963) relies on
the Ford (1962) technique of visually arranging ceramic
types from various components into lenticular or battleship curves. Shortly thereafter, the techniques developed by Brainerd (1951), Robinson (1951), and Meighan
(1959, as modified by Ascher, 1959) began to be used with
increasing regularity as additional sites were excavated.
Several of the more notable analyses in this regard are by
Hoffman (1963a, 1972). More recently, multivariate statistical techniques, such as principal components analysis,
have been used to assess the chronological relationships
between large numbers of provenience units within particular sites or between site components (C. Johnson, 1977a,
1977b; Falk, Johnson, and Richtsmeier, in prep.; Falk,
Steinacher, and Johnson, in prep.; Falk and Johnson, in
prep.). The following discussion briefly summarizes these
studies for each Plains Village variant, including related
sites not situated along the Missouri River in southeastern
South Dakota and northwestern Iowa.
Initial Middle Missouri
The earliest attempt to use a quantitative statistical
measure to assess the ceramic relationships between provenience units at a site was by Lehmer (1954a:7383), for
artifacts excavated at the Dodd site (39ST30), a multicomponent village containing two and perhaps three distinct
Plains Village occupations. As noted earlier, the data obtained from the excavations at this site also was instrumental in developing Lehmers cultural taxonomy within
the subarea. Lehmer used the mean standard error and
the index of association to assign particular provenience
within the site to three components, one Post-Contact
Coalescent component and two Initial Middle Missouri
components. His analysis, not a seriation in the strictest
sense of the word, was the first to evaluate the nature of
intrasite variations with a full range of material classes.
Because of its limited applicability (Robinson, 1952), the
mean standard error did not become popular, and Lehmers early interest in quantitative analyses waned in his
later research. A study by Ehrenhard (1971) used a factor
analysis of ceramics in an attempt to determine if the King
site (39LM55) represents a hybridization of the Initial and
Extended Middle Missouri, as represented by the Sommers and Thomas Riggs sites, respectively. Like Lehmers
Dodd site study, this was not a seriation, but it represents
the first study to use factor analysis to evaluate intersite
relationships within the Middle Missouri subarea.

Several analyses by Johnson (Falk and Johnson, in

prep.; Falk, Johnson, and Richtsmeier, in prep.) and Steinacher (Falk, Steinacher, and Johnson, in prep.) used multi
variate statistical techniques to order Initial variant sites
along several dimensions of variability. Johnsons analyses
used an r-mode principal components procedure of five
ceramic types to order nine Missouri River components
along two factors based upon their factor scores. One of
the extracted factors was interpreted to be temporal in nature, although there was an insufficient amount of independent information, in the form of site stratigraphy and
radiocarbon dates, to support this interpretation. Steinachers study used a variety of techniques (cluster analysis,
principal components analysis, multidimensional scaling)
to arrange a larger set of Initial Middle Missouri, Great
Oasis, Mill Creek, and Extended Middle Missouri components. Only the Initial variant components located along
the Missouri River, including the Mitchell site, were subjected to an intensive analysis. The final analysis used 18
of these components and a number of ceramic types and
attributes to distill what Steinacher interpreted to be temporal dimensions in the data, supported by radiocarbon
dates. The results conflict with Johnsons earlier findings.
In his intrasite analysis of the Sommers site pottery, Steinacher (1990) used the Brainerd-Robinson technique, principal components and cluster analysis, and a number of
additional statistical measures to assess stylistic variability
and complexity. His goal was to test four models of site
settlement, with the results indicating that the village was
a single large settlement that subsequently contracted into
a smaller fortified area.
Several ceramic seriations have used Initial Middle
Missouri sites located off of the Missouri River along the
lower James River in southeastern South Dakota and with
Mill Creek components from northwestern Iowa. Alex
(1981b) used the Ascher (1959) modification of the Meighan (1959) seriation technique to order units, some composed of very small amounts of pottery, from the Mitchell,
Goerhing, and 12 Mill Creek sites based upon the percentages of two wares. A number of seriations of Mill Creek
components and/or provenience units also have been accomplished. The first of these (Flanders, 1960) used the
Brainerd-Robinson approach on a number of surface and
excavated collections from the Little Sioux locality. Flanders analysis formed the basis of a number of subsequent
seriations. The second effort to seriate Mill Creek components was by Vis and D. R. Henning (1969), who used the
Ascher and Brainerd-Robinson techniques on as many as
11 components. A key to this analysis was the inclusion of
two stratigraphically related zones (upper and lower) from

number 47

19

each of two sites, Wittrock and Phipps. Their results support a division of the Little Sioux sites into early and late
phases. In a similar seriation, Anderson (1981:104109)
used percentages of the same two pottery types (Kimball
and Mitchell Modified Lip) on the same basic set of site
units and on an expanded number of proveniences from
the Brewster site (13CK15). The Brewster site included a
series of stratigraphic units used to support the order of
the seriation. Anderson (1981:108) concluded that there
was no evidence to support a separation of the Little Sioux
phase into early and late subphases. Tiffany (1982:5666)
performed an r-mode principal components analysis of 14
pottery types from the Chan-Ya-Ta site in order to determine the occupational sequence at the site. His claim of two
separate components, however, cannot be evaluated without a re-analysis of the distributions of ceramic types within
the Brewster provenience units, perhaps by an r-mode
principal components analysis linked with factor scores
of these units. Tiffanys intersite analysis of Little Sioux
locality sites was similar to the previous studies, using
the Ascher-Meighan approach. He concluded that his seriation reflected a developmental, diachronic sequence as
opposed to Andersons interpretation that the seriation
simply reflected variations of contemporaneous village
groups. Finally, D. R. Henning and King (1982:113130)
performed an intrasite seriation of 10 provenience units
from the Larsen site (13PM61), a Great Oasis/Mill Creek
site from the Big Sioux locality in northwestern Iowa. They
used the Brainerd-Robinson and Meihgan techniques and
concluded that the site had a single component amalgam
of Great Oasis and Mill Creek ceramics.

components from North and South Dakota based upon

generalized pottery types. Two dimensions were extracted
from the data, one relating to spatial variation between
the sites. The lack of significant amounts of ceramic variation within the Extended variant and radiocarbon dates
prevents any conclusive statements regarding the relationships between chronology and ceramic relationships between the components.

Extended Middle Missouri

Extended Coalescent

In contrast to the Initial variant of the Middle Missouri

tradition, there are virtually no ceramic ordinations of Extended Middle Missouri villages. Calabrese (1972:4965)
performed a discriminant analysis of various metric pottery attributes from three sites (Fire Heart Creek, Paul
Brave, Cross Ranch), although his intention was not to
develop a chronological ordering but to determine which
attributes best discriminate between these sites and how
the sites related to each other in discriminant space. It also
is of interest to note that he conducted similar analyses
with arrow points. Lippincott (1970) ordered a number of
Extended Middle Missouri and Post-Contact Coalescent
Plains Village components from the upper Knife-Heart region by using the Ford technique on attributes instead of
types. C. Johnson (1999) presented a detrended correspondence analysis of 13 Extended Middle Missouri tradition

Smith (1960, 1963) and Hoffman (1963a) conducted

the first seriations of Extended Coalescent components,
both relying on the Ford technique to arrange their units.
Smiths seriation included three Extended variant components and three early post-contact (Felicia phase) sites in the
Big Bend Region. The results support the assignment of the
sites to their respective taxonomic units. Hoffmans temporal ordering of the Chouteau aspect (Extended Coalescent)
was more ambitious; 11 Extended and seven Post-Contact
Coalescent components, from almost the entire length of
the Missouri River in South Dakota, were the basis for the
analysis. He discovered that these components, although
varying along a single temporal continuum, were divided
into three temporal units. Hoffman (1967:5961, 7879;
1968:6566, 7375) pursued his early interests in seriation as a way of assessing the ceramic similarities between

Initial Coalescent
The earliest attempt to seriate Initial Coalescent provenience units was by Smith (1960, 1977:141149) from
his work at the Talking Crow site. He used pottery types
and body sherd surface treatment to order up to 21 units
from this partially mixed multicomponent Initial and PostContact Coalescent site. Steinacher (1983) performed an
intersite seriation of five Initial Coalescent components,
including the Whistling Elk site (39HU242), using the
Brainerd-Robinson procedure on types and attributes. The
ceramic assemblages from the ordered sites were compared
with five Central Plains tradition sites from Nebraska and
Kansas, and one Initial Middle Missouri site (Langdeau)
based upon attributes. Steinacher concluded that the earliest Initial Coalescent site, Whistling Elk, was very similar
to the Central Plains tradition sites and that this affinity
decreased through time within the Initial Coalescent. The
results of this analysis contradicted Lehmers (1971:111)
notion that the Initial Coalescent, in its earliest manifestations, represented an admixture or blending of Central
Plains and Middle Missouri cultural traits.

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smithsonian contributions to anthropology

sites in his reports on the La Roche and Molstad Village

sites. Both efforts compute Brainerd-Robinson coefficients
between the two reported sites and from 8 to 19 additional components based upon traditionally defined pottery types. His report of the La Roche sites also included
an intrasite seriation of four separate and pooled provenience units in order to determine the number of components present at the two adjacent La Roche sites. From his
seriation of Molstad Village, Hoffman concluded that the
results support previously defined taxonomic units, leading him to postulate a Le Compte focus consisting of the
Molstad, No Heart Creek, and possibly Potts Village sites.
The seriation in the La Roche site report also was used to
assign components to taxonomic units and to assist in the
dating of these villages. Brown (1967:153162) also took
a similar approach in determining the relationship between
component B at the Chapelle Creek site and eight Extended
Coalescent and Felicia phase villages. More recently,
[Link] (1977a:2224; 1977b) advocated arranging
components in multidimensional space through the use of
principal components analysis. This approach recognizes
the possibility that a number of underlying dimensions in
a data set might be isolated, instead of traditional seriation
techniques that attempt to reduce all ceramic variability
down to a single, temporal dimension. Johnsons approach
was to use groups of pottery types from sites located along
the entire length of the Missouri River in South Dakota.
More than 32 Extended Coalescent and Felicia phase
components were included in these analyses (C. Johnson,
1984a). The results isolated a single major source of variation, interpreted to be temporal in nature, although the
corroborating information (i.e., radiocarbon dates) did
not unequivocally support this conclusion. Johnson (1988)
also arranged a number of Extended Coalescent and Felicia
phase components based upon a plot of the percentages
of three ceramic types. All of Johnsons findings are very
similar to those of past investigators, such as Smith and
Hoffman.
Post-Contact Coalescent
No other variant or taxonomic unit defined for the
Middle Missouri subarea has received as much attention
from archeologists seeking to order and date villages as
has the Post-Contact or protohistoric period. There is a
long list of researchers involved in a number of attempts
to arrange or group sites and provenience units within
sites, using a variety of techniques. The earliest of these
seriations includes those by Lehmer (1954a:8083), Smith
(1960), Krause (1967:182192), and Pollnac and Pollnac

(1969). The Lehmer and Smith analyses are discussed

above. Krause seriated 12 post-contact villages, including Leavenworth, using Spauldings (1960:8182) index
of ceramic likeness, which is almost identical to the one
developed by Robinson (1951). Krause presented a partial
matrix of these values for the sites, although he apparently did not attempt any formal arrangement of the full
matrix. It is unclear how these indices were computed, but
presumably a number of ceramic modes were used in the
computation (Krause, 1967:244252). He also assigned
absolute dates to these components. The Pollnac and Pollnac study was based upon a Q-mode factor analysis of
the data presented in Krause (1967:244252). It is a study
of the variation of these modes in time and space rather
than a seriation of sites, because they use the same village
dates as Krause. Hoffman (1970b:290311, 1972) relied
on the Brainerd-Robinson and Ascher modification of the
Meighan techniques to order eight Bad River phase villages, based upon the percentages of Stanley ware types
from the villages. Hoffman used this seriation to question
Lehmer and Jones (1968:97100) division of the Bad
River phase into two temporal subphases. In his report
of the Chapelle Creek, Brown (1967:147153) calculated
indices of likeness (Spaulding, 1960:8182) between the
site and six additional Bad River phase components based
upon four ceramic types. From this analysis, he developed
a relative order of the villages, although it is unclear how
this sequence relates to his seriation. D. M. Healan performed a Q-mode factor analysis of five lodges and a pit
from the Biesterfeldt site on the basis of seven ceramic
attributes (Wood, 1971). He concluded that the pottery
from the site exhibits a high degree of homogeneity from
one provenience unit to the next. Lippincott (1970) ordered a number of Extended Middle Missouri and PostContact Coalescent Plains Village components from the
upper Knife-Heart region by using the Ford technique on
attributes instead of types. In his report on the McClure
site, Johnston (1982:4250) used a computerized seriation
program (Craytor and Johnson, 1968) to arrange 16 late
Extended and Post-Contact Coalescent components on the
basis of ceramic type percentages. From this chronology,
he then reconstructed the changing settlement patterns in
the Big Bend region during late Coalescent times.
C. Johnson (1977a, 1977b), C. Johnson et al. (1995),
Falk and Johnson (in prep.), and Falk, Johnson, and Richtsmeier (in prep.), in a series of intrasite and intersite ceramic analyses, performed r-mode principal components.
They used both traditionally defined pottery types (intersite) and attributes (intrasite) to arrange components or
provenience unit factor scores in multidimensional space.

number 47

All of these studies isolate what is interpreted to be temporal dimensions in the data, partially supported by site
stratigraphy, radiocarbon dates, and historic documentation. In a recent review, Toom (1994:483) criticized previous ceramic seriations by Johnson because they lacked
corroborative temporal evidence and were too broadly
based. As the analyses presented in chapter 6 demonstrate,
there is supporting evidence for interpreting some kinds of
ceramic variation along temporal lines, recognizing that
there are other types of variability that can complicate this
general and somewhat simplistic perspective. The results
of these analyses indicate that various levels of confidence
can be assigned to each ceramic ordination, depending on
the amount of independent chronological controls.
A somewhat different approach to dating was proposed
by Grange (1981), who used the mean ceramic date approach initially developed for historic European ceramics.
His analysis was an outgrowth of his interests in developing a Pawnee-Lower Loup temporal sequence through ceramic formula dating (Grange, 1968, 1984). He calculated
a series of mean dates for a large number of Coalescent
components, focusing on the Post-Contact period, but also
included a smaller set of Initial and Extended variant villages. Grange then proposed a series of conclusions about
the origin of particular ceramic wares and types, and the
settlement of the Missouri River valley in South Dakota
through time.
The last major attempt to order Post-Contact period
villages was by Ramenofsky (1987, appendix C). As a way
of establishing temporal control in her study of the spread
of contagious Euro-American derived diseases among Native Americans, she seriated sites from a full range prehistoric and protohistoric contexts, including Middle
Missouri and early Coalescent villages. The ceramic data
used in these seriations was based upon the percentages
of three classes of attributes (rim shape, extra clay to rim,
rim decoration). The particular technique used in these seriations is not made explicit, although it appears that the
Ford (1962) technique was used (Ramenofsky, 1987, fig.
22). Additional supporting information used to develop
her five period chronology (ad 10301359, 14161649,
16491780, 17801837, 18451885) included radiocarbon dates, seriation of metal occurrences, and cumulative
frequencies of trade glass.
Knife Region and Related Areas
Principal components analysis and other analytical
techniques are used to arrange components within the Knife
River Indian Villages National Historic Site (KNRI) based

21

upon both ceramic attributes and types. The first of these

evaluates the relationships of the anomalous Elbee site, a
component with close ties to Extended Coalescent developments in South Dakota (Ahler, 1984a). Using a series of descriptive ceramic categories (types), Ahler concluded that
Elbee is most similar, in terms of Euclidean distances, to
the Mondrian Tree in North Dakota, Demery, and Swan
Creek A components from north-central South Dakota. An
r-mode image factor analysis of the percentages of the pottery types from 17 components yielded a factor interpreted
to be temporal in nature. On this dimension, Elbee is similar to the Payne and Demery sites, both Extended Coalescent villages in north-central South Dakota.
In his analysis of the ceramics from Taylor Bluff, Ahler
(1988) conducted two cluster analyses and one r-mode
principal components analysis of 11 components, including Greenshield and Fort Clark, based upon 11 ethnic and
temporally sensitive variables and attributes. Both Greenshield and Fort Clark were occupied at various times by
the Mandan and Arikara. Leavenworth, a historically
documented Arikara village in the Cannonball region of
South Dakota, was used for comparative purposes but not
formally included in the multivariate analyses. This analysis, for the first time within the Middle Missouri subarea,
attempts to systematically evaluate the ethnic identity of
the occupants of a particular village (i.e., Taylor Bluff). He
concluded that it was most likely occupied by the Hidatsa
(Awatixa and/or Hidatsa proper subgroups) and not by
any other groups, including the Arikara. Ahlers analysis
of the Taylor Bluff pottery represented a concern with assigning components to the various Hidatsa and Mandan
ethnic groups in the Knife region, an interest he peruses in
the ceramic synthesis of the KNRI project.
In his analysis of the Mondrian Tree site ceramic assemblage, C. Johnson (1983) performed a principal coordinate analysis or multidimensional scaling of nine
components both within and outside of the Knife River
Indian Villages National Historic Site on the basis of ceramic types. A cluster analysis also was performed on
this data. Results indicated that Mondrian Tree was most
similar to Scattered Village Complex components within
KNRI, and that two dimensions are tentatively defined as
temporal in nature.
In their synthesis of ceramic variation within the upper
Knife-Heart region, Ahler and Swenson (1993) used 42
metric and nonmetric variables and attributes of various
artifact classes in an r-mode principal components analysis
and several cluster analyses of 78 ceramic batches or components. The principal components analysis isolated three
temporally sensitive factors and the variables making up

22

smithsonian contributions to anthropology

these factors. Plotted factor scores of the batches agree with

the placement of the components when site stratigraphy,
historic documentation, and a large series of radiocarbon
and thermoluminescent dates are considered. Cluster analysis was used to group the batches into eight temporal periods
and subperiods, forming the basis of a culture taxonomy
(Ahler, 1993b; Ahler and Swenson, 1993). A cluster analysis of 43 late period (Heart River and Knife River phase)
batches was able to discern tribal and subtribal ceramic
differences. These differences are helpful in assigning the
batches to ethnic groups. Ahler and Swenson defined temporal trends in ceramic variation within KNRI, including
differences among contemporaneous batches attributable
to ethnic groups. Their results have four broad-ranging implications for ceramic seriation within the Middle Missouri
subarea and beyond: (1) ceramic types mask important temporal and ethnic group variation that are more adequately
explored by a consideration of variables and attributes;
(2)ceramic variation because of differences between contemporaneous villages occupied by different ethnic groups
can lead to incorrect temporal assignments without supporting chronometric dating techniques; (3)multivariate
statistical techniques, such as principle components analysis, is able to isolate varying sets of temporally sensitive ceramic variables and attributes depending on the time period
involved, assuming adequate independent temporal measures are available; and (4) there is a close correspondence
between native oral tradition history and culture-history
derived from the archeological record. Any attempts to
reconstruct late prehistoric culture-history without a firm
basis in oral traditions may be severely compromised, depending on the nature, specificity, and depth of these traditions. The impact these observations have on the current
project is dealt with in greater detail in chapter 6.

Methodological Considerations
Seriation is defined as the placing of items in a series so that the position of each best reflects the degree of
similarity between that item and all other items in the data
set (L. Johnson, 1972:310). Similar definitions have appeared in Spaulding (1971:10), Cowgill (1972:381), and
Marquardt (1978:258). Ordination, on the other hand,
may be viewed as a more general approach in which the
units of interests are positioned in two or more dimensions rather than along a single scale (see also Sneath and
Sokal, 1973:245). The items in the current study are site
components, and the degree of similarity is measured
between all components on the basis of ceramic descriptive category or type frequencies, making it a frequency

(similarity) seriation rather than abundance (presence/

absence) seriation (Rowe, 1961:326; Dunnell, 1970:308).
This analysis relies on detrended correspondence analysis
to order the components in multivariate space represented
by a reduced number of dimensions from a larger number
of ceramic types. Because these analyses are not necessarily
limited to a single dimension or series as are more traditional seriation techniques, the depiction of components
in relation to each other is best described as an ordination.
Interpretation of one or more of these dimensions along
temporal grounds is called a seriation, however. Dunnell
(1970:305306) pointed out that in the past, seriation was
treated as a technique, when in reality it should be viewed
as a method with its own series of underlying assumptions
and corollaries that are organized for the solution of a particular problem (i.e., chronology building). These assumptions are the focus of the following discussion.
In their influential analysis of ceramic surface collections from the lower Mississippi River valley, Phillips,
Ford, and Griffin (1951:219223) presented seven assumptions necessary for a seriation to reflect chronology:
(1) geographically stable population; (2) short period of
site occupation; (3) gradual change in pottery over time
and through space; (4) defined ceramic types are sensitive at measuring spatial and temporal variation; (5) types
exhibit unimodal, lenticular or battleship curves through
time if assumptions 1 and 3 are true; (6) if assumption 5
is true, the unimodal distributions of the pottery types at
any particular time forms a unique pattern; and (7) the
combined site collections, consisting of random samples
of at least 50 sherds/site, is representative of the entire
range of temporal variability within the study area so that
there are no gaps in the seriation. Many of these assumptions were subsequently discussed by Ford (1962:4243),
Dunnell (1970), and McNutt (1973:46). To this list Dunnell (1970:311, 318) added several additional conditions
for seriation to reflect a chronological ordering: (1) all
groups (e.g., components) must be of comparable duration; (2)components must belong to the same cultural
tradition; (3) components must come from the same locality; and (4) deviations from unimodal type distributions
or the model of continuous artifact changes are due only
to sampling errors. Deetz and Dethlefsen (1965:196196,
206) also pointed out that seriation assumes equal rates
of ceramic change, meaning that any type employed originates and spreads from a single locus and that sites farther
away from the locus exhibit frequency occurrences later
in time compared with those near the center of origination (i.e., Doppler effect). This time lag in the popularity
of a decorative type is used in chapter 6 to correlate the

number 47

northern Extended Coalescent temporal sequence with the

Hensler phase.
Several archaeologists think that chronologies are more
discriminating if the artifact classes, types, or attributes have
short temporal spans or change relatively rapidly (Meighan,
1959:210; Ford, 1962:43). A number of researchers note
problems in their own results, commonly attributed to violations in the above assumptions. Most problems seem to
arise when dimensions other than time are represented in the
data (Brainerd, 1951:305; Cowgill, 1968:374; Renfrew and
Sterud, 1969:271; Gelfand, 1971a:271273, 1971b:199;
Kruskal, 1971; L. Johnson, 1972:324; Johnson and Johnson, 1975:283; LeBlanc, 1975:33).
The ways this study adheres to or violates these assumptions is presented in the following discussion. The assumption of a geographically stable population is related
to the condition of restricting a seriation to a confined
spatial unit, such as the locality. This is to prevent the
problem of the confounding temporal effects of diffusing
styles through space (i.e., the Doppler effect). That is, as
a particular temporally sensitive trait diffuses, the period
when it reaches its height of popularity is generally later
the farther a particular site is from the point of trait origin.
This principal was demonstrated by Deetz and Dethlefsen
(1965) in their study of the spread of historic grave headstone styles in the northeastern United States. In addition,
if there are population movements into and out of a locality or region, the pottery of each village group presumably
reflects the development of their ceramic tradition from
their point of origin or homeland. This study attempts to
partially control the confounding effects of time and space
by limiting, to the extent possible, each ordination to a
region or a phase. This approach, along with the use of
correspondence analysis, has the potential of beginning
to unravel multiple sources of variation in the archeological record. This partially ameliorates a recent criticism by
Toom (1994:483) of this methodology. Because of the
small number of components in some regions, the stability
of potting traditions across regions, and the desire to correlate regional chronologies, some chronologies combine
components from different regions. Finally, geographic
stability (i.e., movements) of the Plains villagers must be
assumed to be equal through time and space because it
is very difficult to control for this factor with the available information. Certainly within the late protohistoric
and early historic period, there are numerous cases of village movements (Wedel, 1955:7784; Ahler and Swenson,
1993:135139). It is suspected that migrations occurred
prehistorically, sometimes across long distances (Toom,
1992b).

23

It also is assumed that all components have rather short

occupations and comparable time depth. Even though this
may not be true in some cases, a number of techniques are
used to satisfy this condition. De Barros (1982) addressed
the ways that variable site-duration affects frequency seriation. His simulation study concluded that errors in seriation
ordering, using pottery types, occur under the following
conditions: (1) varying rates of ceramic change; (2) transition periods, especially short ones, during the rise and
decline of a types production; (3) increasing rates of type
replacement; (4) lower intervals of time between site occupation dates; and (5) short pottery-type spans in relation
to the duration of site occupation. More specifically, if ceramic types are replaced rather slowly (e.g., every 75100
years) and have relatively long life spans (e.g., 180 years)
compared with site occupation spans (e.g., 1060 years),
few seriation errors occur. On the other hand, long-lived
types having slow replacement rates result in seriations
with low temporal resolutions (cf. Baxter, 1994:122). In
addition, considerable overlap in site occupation and increased numbers of contemporary types does not result in
more seriation errors, although the detection of these errors is sometimes difficult to verify. One solution that de
Barros (1982:310313) suggested, namely to seriate shortterm provenience units of comparable duration (e.g., pits,
houses), using temporally sensitive ceramic attributes with
multivariate techniques (e.g., factor analysis), is beyond
the scope of this study. The studies by C. Johnson (1977b)
and Steinacher (1990) tried to minimize temporal depth
by conducting intrasite analyses using discrete provenience
units. The present study, by its nature and scope, must rely
on traditionally defined types from a large number of sites,
so the solution that de Barros recommended awaits a more
exhaustive and comprehensive analysis of ceramic variability among a smaller number of Middle Missouri Plains Village sites. In addition, many sites do not have large enough
samples from short-term contexts, such as pits or house
floors, to perform these analyses. This problem is one of
mixed materials from different time periods. One solution
proposed a technique to detect mixed samples (Kohler and
Blinman, 1987). This approach is thought to be inapplicable to the present study because it relies on establishing
calibrated (i.e., dated) ceramic data sets for various time
periods, apparently relying on unmixed units for establishing characteristics for each of them.
In the present study, several of the above seriation errors are minimized at sites with long periods of discontinuous occupations by dividing them into their respective
components. In cases in which there is a lengthy, continuous occupation by peoples of the same cultural tradition

24

smithsonian contributions to anthropology

or variant, subdivisions into shorter temporal segments are

made. This is accomplished by two procedures: (1) limiting
each seriation to the same tradition, variant and or phase,
thereby fulfilling Dunnells second condition; and (2) dividing sites with long and continuous occupational histories
into shorter temporal units, as in the case with some Le
Beau phase villages, such as Larson (39WW2), Spiry-Eklo
(39WW3), Anton Rygh (39CA4), Sully (39SL4), and Swan
Creek (39WW7). On occasion, this procedure is not possible because of inherent limitations in the nature of some
site assemblages (e.g., Mobridge site). These examples are
discussed in conjunction with each seriation. With these
exceptions, all components are treated as single units with
no further temporal divisions. This approach is deemed
necessary because of low sample sizes within individual
site provenience units, lack of uniform and meaningful
provenience units, and the desire to include as many components as possible within the funding and time constraints
of the study. In essence, most of the village ceramic assemblages are treated as surface collections; hence, the
concern with the seriation assumptions of Phillips, Ford,
and Griffin (1951:219223). Additional variables contributing to potential seriation errors, such as the longevity of
pottery types, varying rates of ceramic change and type
replacement, and variation in the interval between village
occupation, are largely uncontrolled in the current study.
Instances in which these factors are particular problems are
discussed so that ordination results can be evaluated.
The assumption that ceramic change is gradual over
time and space was demonstrated in many archaeological contexts and in several ethnoarcheological studies
(Graves, 1985:3233). Graves also pointed out that rapid
population loss and other factors might result in the disruption of traditional inter-cohort transmission of design
information, resulting in dramatic ceramic change. Plog
(1980:108111) indicated that ceramic change in the American Southwest can occur rather quickly, perhaps within
a period of about 75 years or less or can proceed at low
rates, such as in the Valley of Oaxaca. Cleland (1972:209)
also suggested that objects with short life-spans, such as
pottery, change rapidly over time because of stylistic drift.
Changes in the intensities of village interaction and the
rates of ceramic change can vary through time, causing
additional problems in interpreting a seriation or ordination along temporal grounds. Controlling for the effects
vessel size, function, and form among contemporaneous
prehistoric communities would help to determine the influence of these variables on style (see Graves, 1985:31).
Ceramic variability within the Middle Missouri subarea
is characterized by conservative potting traditions broken

by a number of relatively rapid temporal changes or noncontinuous clinal variations through space. These changes
generally occur at divisions between various taxonomic
units at the phase or variant level, the typical subject of
individual ordinations.
The requirement that the defined ceramic types, descriptive categories, or attributes be sensitive to temporal
and spatial variation is self-explanatory. Types or attributes that were diagnostic space-time indicators were designated as historical by Rouse (1960:317). Those that
are not were referred to as descriptive types or attributes. A summary of these two views of types appeared
in Dunnell (1986:167176). Marquardt (1978, 1979) also
emphasized the search for temporally sensitive attributes
before the seriation process begins. Another area of concern during the artifact classification process involves the
search for types or attributes (i.e., mental templates) that
conform to those of the makers of the artifacts. Dunnell
(1986:176182) summarized these efforts in terms of etic
and emic approaches. Further consideration of these distributions is beyond the scope of this study other than to
say that, except at the initial and most inclusive stages of
classification into wares, ceramic typologies within the
Middle Missouri have focused on descriptive types, with a
few possible exceptions (e.g., Smith, 1977:5152). Several
researchers have commented that chronologies are more
discriminating if the artifact classes, types, or attributes
have short temporal spans or change relatively rapidly
(Ford, 1962:43; Meighan, 1959:210). LeBlanc (1975:29)
also indicated that reliance on too few pottery types does
not result in the discrimination of fine time increments. In
the present study, it is impossible to determine which artifact types or attributes are temporally sensitive before a
formal analysis is completed. In addition, the time span of
ceramic types or their rates of change in the Middle Missouri remains largely unknown because of an inadequate
number of absolute dates. Only a massive dating program,
much larger in scope than the present study, can begin
to address these questions. These issues are discussed in
greater detail in chapter 8.
There are no all-inclusive tests to determine if the established ceramic types or descriptive categories from the
Middle Missouri subarea are sensitive to the spatial or temporal dimensions. Many of the types, or combined types
(i.e., descriptive categories) do vary significantly through
space, as measured by their relative frequencies from region to region. There also are major differences in their occurrence from variant to variant, and less so from phase to
phase. What has not been accomplished is to demonstrate
that these types or categories consistently vary through

number 47

time within phases or variants so as to provide a means of

making fine-scale temporal discriminations between individual components. Some studies, however, have isolated
temporally sensitive attributes that relate to traditionally
defined types (C. Johnson, 1977b:4344; Ahler and Swen
son, 1993:93135; Johnson and Toom, 1995:263). In a
sense, this study not only seeks to order components along
a time scale, but it also explores the usefulness of types
in making fine-scale chronological discriminations. There
also is some evidence to indicate that types, whether from
the Middle Missouri subarea (Steinacher, 1990) or other
areas (Hegmon, 1992) reflect social interaction, historical
context, symbolic, or emblematic expression. The work
within the Knife region is an exception to this generalization, providing fairly precise measures of ceramic change
on the attribute level while controlling for the effects of
ethnic group variation (Ahler and Swenson, 1993). Several
intrasite ordinations using attributes demonstrate that not
only is there quantifiable ceramic change through time,
but also that attributes play significant roles in the formulation of traditional types (C. Johnson et al., 1995:239
240). The results of the present study begins to evaluate
more fully the ability of these established types, or their
descriptive category reformulations, to help to make finer
temporal divisions than previous seriations.
There is no assurance in the current study that the assumption of a unimodal type distribution through time is
adhered to. The underlying premise that components can
be ordered into a chronological sequence depends upon
this assumption, although various internal checks are used
to determine if this is indeed the case. Techniques for testing this assumption and for providing independent relative
and absolute dating controls on each seriation include site
stratigraphy and radiocarbon dating. Stratigraphy is discussed by a number of archaeologists as an independent
technique for verifying seriations (Brainerd, 1951:305; Vis
and D.R. Henning, 1969:255257; LeBlanc, 1975:32). By
including stratigraphically related components from the
same site containing a long and continuous occupation, a
test of the temporal ordering of components and the nature (e.g., lenticularity) of ceramic change is accomplished.
Adding radiocarbon dates provides an absolute time scale
to each seriation. Deetz (1968) also presented an example
in which the assumption of unimodality is violated.
Most of the components used in this study have ceramic assemblages consisting of at least 50 rim sherds to
ameliorate misrepresentative, unreliable, and highly erratic type frequencies inherent in small sample sizes. The
use of attributes instead of types was demonstrated by
LeBlanc (1975:26) to increase sample size when missing

25

data present a problem but, as is outlined above, collecting

this data is beyond the scope of the current study. Cowgill
(1968:372373) pointed out that correlation coefficients
are dependent upon sample size, with smaller samples
yielding lower correlations. Hatch et al. (1982) had suggested that only sample sizes in the thousands begin to
reduce error or noise in frequency seriations. Several components that contain small sample sizes in the present
analysis are included because they have a pre-existing suite
of radiocarbon dates or are considered to be important
to the overall interpretation of the study. In general, the
smaller the sample size in relation to the population of rim
sherds from a village, the less likely the sample reflects the
actual variability in the entire site. These cases are pointed
out during the analysis portion of this report.
Finally, Dunnells condition that all components represent occupations of equal duration is related to the life
spans of ceramic vessels. There are a large number of ethno
archeological studies indicating that different sized pots
are broken and enter the archeological record at different
rates (David, 1972:141; David and Hennig, 1972:1819;
DeBoer, 1974; DeBoer and Lathrap, 1979; Longacre, 1985,
table 13.1, 1991:7; Arnold, 1988, table 3). Breakage rates
depend on how the pots are used. Those that are used and
transported more often tend to break more frequently than
those that are not. In general, the largest pots are broken
less frequently and therefore have longer life expectancies
compared with the smaller ones, on the order of 2.55
times (0.213 years). C. Johnson (1983, table 9.14) and
Wilson (1977) discussed the ways pots were used among
the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara. If different size pots are
correlated with variations in decorative style or any other
variables, then the qualities of smaller pots are overrepresented in the archaeological record compared with their
relative abundance within a household or village at a given
point in time. The longer a site is occupied, the greater the
disparity between the two figures, assuming of course that
the greater rim circumference of larger pots when they are
broken does not outweigh their lower breakage rates when
rim sherds rather than vessel counts are used (see Ford,
1962:38).
Several examples from the Middle Missouri subarea
support the idea of a relationship between length of occupation and material content. Undecorated wares, which
appear to be used most often for physical utilitarian functions, tend to break at higher rates than decorated wares
(Steinacher, 1990:226231). Another example is demonstrated at the Whistling Elk site (39HU242). This village
was probably occupied for a very short time as reflected
in the presence of a large number of chipped stone tool

26

smithsonian contributions to anthropology

preforms, unused, and fully functional stone tools made

from nonlocal resources (Toom, 1983a). This pattern dramatically contrasts to almost every other village within the
subarea. Another site that could represent a short occupation is the Fay Tolton site (39ST11), where a number of
human skeletons and complete pots were recovered from
several houses (Wood, 1976). An unusually light density
of occupational debris characterizes the site.
There is virtually no way to control for the effects
of occupational duration on the ceramic assemblages of
Middle Missouri villages given the existing information.
As noted above, villages with comparatively long occupational histories are divided into a number of shorter
temporal units, although no systematic efforts to study
this problem have been undertaken beyond that of Steinacher (1990); however, the relationship between the rates
at which vessels are broken and discarded and style can
be indirectly examined. If it is assumed that vessel size
has something to do with the way pots are used, then this
characteristic (as measured by orifice diameter) is easily
compared with the ceramic types used in this study. This
relationship is examined in chapter 4.

Theoretical Considerations
In order to place the results of the ceramic ordinations
in chapter 6 of this study into their broader archeological context, it is useful to review some of the important
concepts that form the theoretical basis of this study. Normative and social interaction theory provide the most useful frameworks through which to view the results of this
study.
Normative theory is the oldest of the perspectives and
is the basis of much of the artifact and assemblage-pattern
recognition studies in archaeology so crucial in inferring
social boundaries used to reconstruct culture history (Stein
acher, 1990:99100). Normative theory, as summarized
by Binford (1965:203204), is concerned with the ideational basis of human life (i.e., the normative concepts in
peoples minds that structure the way they behave). Formal or stylistic variation in material culture is an expression of these normative ideas. The cohesive set of shared
ideas that make up culture are transmitted through learning between the generations or by diffusion between nonbreeding social units, with an inverse relationship between
transmission and the social distance between the groups.
Spatial discontinuities in this pattern are the result of migration and natural or psychological barriers. Cultural innovation originates at culture centers and spreads out,
blending with surrounding cultures.

Social interaction theory, which relies on many of the

same assumptions as normative theory, maintains that
aspects of style are communicated from individual to individual based upon their intensity of interaction (J. N.
Hill, 1985:364). Individuals or groups that interact more
frequently share more aspects of style than those who do
not. Stylistic elements diffuse by exposure; there are no implications that these elements are adaptive for the groups
who use or adopt them. Styles remain stable or change at
certain rates unless there are accidental or random errors
in communication, or other factors disrupt the transmission process. In this sense, it is similar to normative theory
in its emphasis on the transmittal of information through
learning, borrowing, and diffusion. Unlike the normative
perspective, social interaction theory elaborates on the
mechanisms by which style is transmitted, leading many
early proponents to reconstruct social structure from ceramic variation (Deetz, 1965; Whallon, 1968; J. N. Hill,
1970; Longacre, 1970). Some of the later analyses involving this perspective (Plog, 1976, 1980) have related similarities and differences in ceramic style to various levels of
social integration through time.
A key concept involved in both theories is social
distance. In summarizing the normative theory of culture, Binford (1965:204) stated that culture is transmitted between social units through diffusion and across
generations by learning that is inversely proportional to
the degree of social distance between them. (A study by
Roberts et al. (1995), of 47 artifact types among 31 New
Guinea villages indicated that distance and language each
account for slightly more than 25% of the variability in
the artifacts, whereas combining the two accounts for an
additional 10%.) The relationships between various measures of social distance (e.g., ceramic similarity) between
villages and their locations in space might point to discontinuities because the interaction between contemporaneous communities is assumed to be inversely related to the
physical distances between them. A lack of correspondence
between physical and social distance, as measured by ceramics, might be interpreted to be the result of migration,
varying degrees of intervillage social interaction, or some
other phenomenon, assuming time is not a factor. Population movements into, out of, or within the Middle Missouri subarea during the prehistoric, protohistoric, and
historic periods were discussed by Wedel (1955:7784),
Stewart (1974), Wood and Downer (1977), Ahler et al.
(1991), Toom (1992b), and Ahler (1993b).
In terms of the present study, social distance between
villages is measured by the degree of similarity between
their rim sherd assemblages, as reflected in ceramic types.

number 47

Assemblages that are most similar are thought of as being

temporally and/or socially proximate, assuming a relatively uniform degree of social interaction between villages
through time and space (see Plog, 1976, 1983:126, for a
discussion of factors relating to unequal rates of interaction). Close similarities may be caused by the sharing of
a potting tradition by distinct and contemporaneous or
nearly contemporaneous village groups, or by direct ancestral relationships between them. In this sense, a primary
goal of this study of Plains Village chronological relationships is the reconstruction of culture-history, one of the
three goals (along with reconstruction of past lifeways
and the study of culture process) of archeology (Binford,
1968:816).
These chronologies are taken to the next level of abstraction by interpreting the ceramic relationships between villages in terms of ethnic origins, migrations, and interactions
between peoples (see Binford, 1962), or what Hegmon
(1992:518) called time-space systematics. The investigation
of these similarities characterizes culture-historical archeology (Conkey, 1990:5). As Hegmon noted, this approach
dominated traditional archeology and the early years of
the New Archeology. Because style is treated as a passive
phenomena and an integral component of material culture,
a close analytical link between the objects of study or patterns of formal variation and subject (style) is maintained
(Hegmon, 1992:518). Other theoretical perspectives, such as
information exchange (Wobst, 1977), take a more active approach to style, relying on complex bridging arguments relating subject to object that are much more difficult to establish
(Hegmon, 1992:518519). This also includes the evolutionary approach of Dunnell (1978) and ecological theory (J. N.
Hill, 1985; OBrien and Holland, 1990; Neff, 1992).
Another important topic to consider is the framework
in which ceramic variation is viewed. Formal or morphological variation in pottery or any other material class is
viewed as consisting of the components of style and function. The relationship between these two dimensions is a
major point of debate in archeology, resulting in a number of theoretical formulations. Early discussions make a
relatively sharp division between the two, confining function to the utilitarian use of tools, such as ceramic vessels to cooking, storage, or transportation, and confining
style to a residual category. Recent perspectives consider
the overlap between the two concepts, preferring to view
style as performing a broad array of specific social functions within the context of production and use of ceramic
vessels. This discussion is of particular interest to ceramicists who perform ordinations because of the desire to
determine whether the variation between ordered units is

27

the result of some relatively broad-scale stylistic changes

over time or a relationship to the way pots were used in
the cooking, storage, or transportation of their contents.
A relationship between utilitarian function and purely
stylistic variation might result in spurious or inaccurate
chronologies if these factors are not controlled or at least
considered. These relationships have not been systematically investigated in the Middle Missouri subarea and are
beyond the scope of this study.
Binford (1962) made one of the first attempts by an
archaeologist to deal with the ways material items function
within the total cultural system. In a classic discussion, he
defined three kinds of artifacts that differ in the ways they
were used: (1) technomic artifacts, which have their primary use in dealing directly with the physical environment;
(2) sociotechnic artifacts, which serve primarily within the
social subsystem of culture to articulate individuals to one
another into cohesive groups; and (3) ideotechnic artifacts,
which function primarily within the ideological subsystem
to provide ideological rationalizations for the social system and a symbolic milieau for the enculturation of its
participants. Formal or stylistic characteristics, defined as
qualities that cannot be directly explained in terms of the
physical aspects of artifacts or variation in the technological or social subsystems, are labeled as stylistic. Stylistic
attributes are best studied when questions of ethnic origin,
migration, or interaction between groups are considered.
In a later article Binford (1965) made a distinction, when
discussing ceramic variation, between primary functional
variation (specific use) and secondary functional variation
(by-product of the social context in which the vessel was
made). Secondary functional variability arises from the
traditional ways of doing things within a family or larger
social unit, or may be an expression of between-group
solidarity. Sackett (1977) viewed function as operating in
all areas of the cultural system: technological, societal, and
ideational. Artifact function has an active (technological)
role when dealing with the environment, whereas style
operates in a non-utilitarian or passive sense, reflecting a
particular culture-historical context within the societal or
ideational spheres of culture. Similar to Binfords concept
of secondary functional variation, Sackett (1977, 1990:33)
introduced the term adjunct form to account for variability in artifacts that are included within the cultural
subsystem opposite of which the object finds its major
function. In the archeological record, adjunct form is most
widely manifested in decoration. This idea was reinforced
with the definition of style by Davis (1983:55) as formal
similarities not related to the physical or mechanical effectiveness of artifacts. Rye (1981:3) and Braun (1983:13,

28

smithsonian contributions to anthropology

1991:363) considered decoration to be a non-essential

characteristic of pots that was not necessary for them to
be used as tools, although the physical characteristics of
pottery put constraints on the ways in which it was decorated. Ceramic variation in this secondary, adjunct,
non-essential, or stylistic realm is one of the key concepts underlying the present study.
A somewhat simplistic but crucial assumption is made
herein that Plains Village life throughout all periods and
places in the Middle Missouri subarea was relatively uniform in basic subsistence pursuits (see Wood, 1962, 1974),
including the ways ceramic vessels were used and the role
that style played. From this perspective, ceramic style is
measured from rim sherds that vary in terms of form or
shape and decoration.
With the exception of Deetzs (1965) work, efforts
at defining and interpreting stylistic ceramic variability
within the Middle Missouri subarea have not been very
ambitious. Aside from the intersite ceramic seriations discussed above, several studies examine intrasite variation
at several Plains Village communities. Steinacher (1990)
explored ceramic variation at the Initial Middle Missouri
Sommers site (39ST56) in an attempt to evaluate various
occupation scenarios at the village. C. Johnson (1977a,
1977b) and Johnson et al. (1995) reexamined the Medicine Crow site (39BF2) that formed the basis of Deetzs
work. Their goals were much less ambitious than Deetzs,
focusing on arranging the various provenience units at the
site into a chronological sequence. Although a temporal
sequence was established, uncontrolled variation because
of the occupation of the site by two or more distinct Arikara village groups was acknowledged to be a problem
(C. Johnson, 1977b:4748). It was not until sometime
later (Ahler, 1992; Toom, 1995) that additional temporally sensitive data was used to question Johnsons construct of village occupation. These interpretations of the
data point to an occupation of the two main site areas by
contemporaneous village groups rather than a sequential
use of the areas by the same group. During the historic period, the Arikara consolidated into one major village, the
Leavenworth site. The site was divided into two spatially
and ethnically separate communities, often designated
as an upper and lower village (Bowers, 1935:5; Krause,
1972:16). A comparison of ceramic modes from these two
parts of Leavenworth suggested very little difference between them (see Krause, 1972, table 5).
Absolute temporal control, in the form of a large series of radiocarbon and thermoluminescent dates, was
brought to bear on the problem of ceramic variation between contemporaneous Hidatsa villages from the Knife

region by Ahler and Swenson (1993, fig. 17.16). Their results indicated that there are sufficient differences between
the potting traditions of the different Hidatsa subgroups
to render traditional ceramic seriations misleading when
interpreted as reflecting only temporal variations. In another study, Ahler (1988:108119) demonstrated that
specific ceramic attributes reflect temporal and ethnic
variability among the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara and
their various ethnic subgroups. These attributes are used
to assign specific villages to these ethnic entities. Finally, in
his analysis of the settlement pattern within the Sommers
site (39ST56), Steinacher (1990:220238) indicated that
there are a number of factors that contribute to ceramic
variability at the site, including length of occupation.

Correspondence Analysis
Correspondence analysis is a member of a family of
pattern-seeking data reduction multivariate statistical
techniques. Other more familiar techniques to archeologists, such as factor analysis, principal components analysis, and multidimensional scaling, belong to this general
group designed to extract a reduced number of factors,
dimensions, or axes from a data matrix or matrix of
similarity/dissimilarity coefficients (see Sneath and Sokal,
1973:245250; Shennan, 1988:241297). Implicit in the
use of these techniques is the assumption that there is more
than one underlying dimension or pattern of variability in
the data. In the case of this study of Plains Village ceramic
variation, such dimensions may be related to temporal and
spatial patterned variability, or perhaps to some other factors. Multivariate techniques should not be viewed as a
panacea because they mask patterns in data and do not
allow the exploration of other dimensions of variability available through other techniques (Plog, 1983:131).
Steinacher (1990) presented an example of the use of other
techniques and alternative interpretations of ceramic variation within one Initial Middle Missouri village.
Correspondence analysis, also referred to as reciprocal analysis, was first widely applied in the field of ecology
to study variation in vegetation along a number of underlying gradients, such as available moisture (M. O. Hill,
1973, 1974). In these applications, the incidence (presence/
absence) or abundance of a number of plant species are
recorded at a number of locations. Each location is referred
to as a sample. The resulting species by sample data matrix is then input into correspondence analysis to extract
underlying gradients, such as moisture, slope, plant succession, and plant communities. In this sense, it has most
often been used to generate empirical generalizations of the

number 47

data by induction. It is interesting to note, however, that

a number of articles on correspondence analysis by ecologists also refer to seriation applications in archeology, with
Kendalls (1971) work being cited most often (M. O. Hill,
1974:344, 351354; Hill and Gauch, 1980:47; Wartenberg et al., 1987:438). Correspondence analysis was first
introduced to the larger archeological community through
the efforts of Bolviken et al. (1982). It has gained widespread application in Old World archeology in the 1980s,
but only recently in North America (Madsen, 1988; Baxter, 1994:133139).
Correspondence analysis is a nonparametric ordination
technique developed primarily for the analysis of contingency tables, although it can be applied to both incidence
and abundance data matrices (M. O. Hill, 1974:348349;
Greenacre, 1984:5558, 308315; ter Braak, 1985:859,
1987:9697; Weller and Romney, 1990:7274; Ringrose,
1992:616617). It also has been used with continuous data
(M. O. Hill, 1974:348349; Davis, 1986:589594). Correspondence analysis is considered to be a variant of principal
components analysis based upon a chi-square distance metric (Bolviken et al., 1982:43; Gauch, 1982:148; Wartenberg
et al., 1987:437), with both techniques resulting in similar
solutions in many applications (M. O. Hill, 1974:340, 346
349; ter Braak, 1985:871; Ringrose, 1992:615616). Like
principal components, correspondence analysis derives a
series of axes or eigenvalues from a data matrix with each
axis accounting for a decreasing amount of variation in
multidimensional space as additional axes are extracted.
These axes explain as much variation in a data matrix as
possible from a null hypothesis of no association between the matrix rows and columns (Baxter, 1994:114).
Unlike principal components, the procedure uses a twoway weighted averaging algorithm or formula applied to a
series of iterations to reach a solution (ter Braak, 1987:97
103). As Greenacre (1984:54) described it, correspondence
analysis displays the rows and columns of a data matrix as
points in dual low-dimensional vector spaces. In this sense,
it orders or arranges a data matrix composed of both the
species (or variables, ceramic types) and sample (or cases,
site components) scores in terms of their similarities to
other species or samples simultaneously (hence the term
two-way or reciprocal analysis). It thus provides a useful
way to explore the relationships between both variables
and cases in a single procedure (Bolviken et al., 1982:43;
Gauch, 1982:144147; Greenacre, 1984:6061). This feature is apparent once the actual ordinations that are the
subject of this study are presented in chapter 6. Once an
initial solution is found, the reordered data matrix is reentered into the algorithm until a more precise ordering is

29

achieved. This iterative process is done a number of times

until a final stable ordered matrix is achieved, indicating
that the first axis is successfully extracted. Once this first
axis is extracted, a second axis or dimension orthogonal
or independent of the first is extracted by applying several intermediate steps to the process before the two-way
weighted averaging algorithm is once again applied to the
data matrix through a number of iterations. This process
of orthogonalization and recalculation of the weighted
species and sample scores is applied any number of times,
depending on how many axes or eigenvalues are desired.
These scores are standardized to a mean of zero and a variance of one (z-scores).
Correspondence analysis is based upon a chi-square
metric, so low-expected cell frequencies should be avoided
in any analysis (Weller and Romney, 1990:71; Baxter,
1994:113118). There appears to be some ambiguity in
the literature as to whether this applies to inferential or
hypothesis testing during correspondence analysis, or
whether it applies to use of the technique in a purely descriptive sense. Weller and Romney (1990:71) and Baxter
(1994:113) correctly stated that inferences based upon tables with low expected cell frequencies can invalidate formal chi-square testing. Use of correspondence analysis as
an exploratory, data-reduction, descriptive tool, eliminating formal testing of the null hypothesis of no association
between variables and cases, could permit low-expected
cell frequencies. The problem arises when low frequencies
in a particular row or column unduly influence the solution of a correspondence analysis (Baxter, 1994:115). Although this is acknowledged to be a problem, an example
consisting of a single infrequently occurring artifact type
that Baxter (1994:113, 115, 118) used demonstrates that
low frequencies sometimes have little effect, or inertia
on an analysis.
In the present study, a number of components and
pottery types are characterized by low frequencies. The
approach is to include as many of them, within reason,
into the analysis because (1) they are radiocarbon dated,
(2) their potential interpretive value, (3) including many
components can help to delineate changes in regional settlement patterns, and (4) the importance of some pottery
types in temporal-spatial dynamics is unknown. A number of additional analyses not reported in this study were
made eliminating infrequently occurring pottery types,
resulting in little change in the overall placement of components or types. In addition, the downweighting option
of the detrended correspondence analysis was chosen in
several analyses, also resulting in little change in the final
results.

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smithsonian contributions to anthropology

In order to illustrate the correspondence analysis procedure, a data matrix consisting of 11 components and 12
ceramic types composing a portion of the Le Beau phase
sample used in this study is passed through one iteration
or step in the algorithm by manual calculations. This procedure follows the one described by ter Braak (1987:97
107). Table 2 lists a first iteration ordering of these 11
components, initially placed in numerical order by site
number: Anton Rygh RI (39CA4), Anton Rygh RIIIV
(39CA4), Bamble Early (39CA6), Bamble Late (39CA4),
Red Horse Hawk A (39CO34), Four Bear (39DW2),
Spotted Bear (39HU26), Sully Late (39SL4), Sully Middle
(39SL4), Swan Creek C+D (39WW7), and Swan Creek B
(39WW7). According to step 2 (ter Braak, 1987, table 7),
the weighted-average site scores (uk in Table 2), are calculated by multiplying the frequency of each type for a
given component by the numerical position of these types
in Table 2 (i.e., 1 = cord-impressed, S-shaped rim through
12 = undecorated straight rim). These summed values are
then divided by the sum of all types for a particular component. As an example, the uk for Bamble Late is computed as follows:
[(117 1) + (27 2) + (16 3) + (1 4 ) + (14 5) +
(17 6) + (0 7) + (7 8) + (260 9) + (106 10) +
(243 11) + (384 12)] / [(117 + 27 + 16 + 1 + 14 + 17
+ 0 + 7 + 260 + 106 + 243 + 384)] = 11132/1192 = 9.34

An examination of the first iteration of this matrix

places components in a close approximation of their final
order (see chapter 6). The purpose of achieving this arrangement of values in a data matrix is to model the pattern in ecology in which successive replacements of species
usually show Gaussian, unimodal, or bell-shaped distribution curves with respect to environmental gradients (Hill
and Gauch, 1980:49; ter Braak, 1985:859, 1987:9596;
Wartenberg et al., 1987:434435). The reader familiar
with the literature on seriation in archeology recognizes
that ceramic types or attributes are thought to rise, peak,
and decline through time resembling unimodal or battle
ship curves (Brainerd, 1951:304; Robinson, 1951:293;
Ford, 1962:3940; Dunnell, 1970:309; McNutt, 1973).
Several popular methods of arranging similarity matrices
of site components focus on achieving a similar pattern
with high values along the diagonal and corresponding lower values at off-diagonal positions (Renfrew and
Sterud, 1969; Robinson, 1951; Gelfand, 1971a, 1971b).
Hill and Gauch (1980) proposed a modification of the
ordination technique, detrended correspondence analysis, shortly after correspondence analysis was introduced
in ecology. The modification is designed to alleviate two
problems inherent in correspondence analysis or reciprocal averaging: the arch effect and the distortion of relative
distances of species and samples along their axes (Hill and
Gauch, 1980:4749; Gauch, 1982:150152; Greenacre,

Table 2. Two-way weighted averaged (uk) table of selected Le Beau phase components, first iteration of correspondence analysis
based on descriptive rim sherd frequencies. Components arranged according to increasing uk. (C.I. = Cord Impressed; H.I. = Horizontal
Incised; D.I. = Diagonal Incised; HR.I. = Herringbone Incised; T/F I. = Tool or Finger Impressed; UN = Undecorated; DH.I .= Diagonal
or Herringbone Incised; T.I. = Tool Impressed; F.I. = Finger Impressed.)
Straight/Curved/Flared/Simple rim forms
S-shaped/Collared/Compound rim forms

Exterior rim
decoration

Exterior rim decoration

Component

C.I.

H.I.

D.I.

Swan Creek B
Bamble Early
Anton Rygh RII-IV
Swan Creek C+D
Sully Middle
Anton Rygh RI
Bamble Late
Spotted Bear
Sully Late
Four Bear
Red Horse Hawk

103
13
79
256
12
31
117
20
12
22
5

28
3
22
181
16
1
27
2
0
4
0

7
2
20
47
51
2
16
4
17
24
0

HR.I. T/F I. UN
4
0
3
26
3
2
1
0
4
0
0

32
1
7
55
1
1
14
0
1
2
0

0
1
3
1
7
0
17
2
0
1
0

Lip decoration

DH. I.

H.I.

C.I.

T.I.

F.I. UN

0
0
0
0
3
0
0
0
2
0
0

27
1
18
48
28
2
7
0
1
0
0

60
7
18
403
41
50
260
319
20
126
78

134
5
76
393
125
23
106
327
71
229
58

101
11
56
580
96
69
243
106
102
393
227

15
7
95
141
21
23
384
34
44
368
166

uk
7.02
7.10
7.51
8.05
8.49
8.74
9.34
9.50
9.66
10.50
10.82

number 47

1984:232; ter Braak, 1987:105107). The arch, or horseshoe, effect occurs when axes extracted by correspondence
analysis are dependent upon each other, resulting in a curvilinear plot of samples along two or more axes. Horseshoe
patterns are commonly found in archaeological applications using multivariate data reduction techniques, resulting in curved patterns of components, samples, or cases in
two dimensions (Kendall, 1971; LeBlanc, 1975:35; Drennan, 1976; Marquardt, 1979:320; Ahler and Swenson,
1993, fig. 17.2). The second problem of distance distortion
is related to the arch effect. Species (or ceramic types) and
samples (or components) at the ends of the extracted axes
or dimensions exhibiting this horseshoe effect tend to be
more compressed relative to one another compared with
those nearer the center of the axes. These two problems
arise because the underlying model of correspondence or
reciprocal analysis differs from the mathematical properties of unimodal or Gaussian distributions encountered
with real data (Gauch, 1982:150). As a result, some researchers (Hill and Gauch, 1980:47; Peet et al., 1988:926)
thought that these problems were more a artifact of the
ordination technique used than a real property of the data.
Wartenberg et al. (1987), among others, contended that
the arch effect is a real property of the data that should not
be ignored. The solution that Hill and Gauch (1980:48)
devised to ameliorate these inherent problems in correspondence analysis was to divide an axis into a number
of segments and center the species or sample scores to a
mean of zero (see also Gauch, 1982:152157; ter Braak,
1987:105107). This rescaling or detrending of species and
sample scores between axes makes all axes orthogonal and
independent of one another, removing any systematic relationships between them (Hill and Gauch, 1980:4748;
Gauch, 1982:153). One of the most popular detrended
correspondence analysis computer programs is DECORANA (DEtrended CORrespondence ANAlysis) developed
by M.O. Hill (1979). This program is used in all but one
of the ordinations of components presented in chapter 6.

Dendrochronological Dating
Dendrochronology in the Middle Missouri subarea
has provided some of the earliest dates from sites, particularly those from North Dakota (Will, 1946, 1948).
Faced with an extensive salvage archeology program at
numerous sites in the Dakotas in conjunction with dam
building after World War II, there was a need to date these
sites. Dendrochronology was one of several dating techniques incorporated into the Missouri Basin Chronology

31

Program with the intended purpose of developing interrelated chronologies, using a variety of techniques (Stephenson, 1958). The results of this program were reported
by Weakly (1971) and in the Missouri Basin Chronology
Statement No. 3. Caldwell and Snyder (1983) reviewed
the topic and concluded that the dendrochronological
dates from the Middle Missouri subarea are unreliable.
They concluded that all radiocarbon and dendrochronological dates from the Middle Missouri subarea must be
questioned. This was supported by a comparison of three
radiocarbon and dendrochronological dates on the same
wood samples from the Sommers site, producing widely
divergent dates that fall outside the temporal range of
variant Sommers is assigned to. Dendrochronological
dates from specific sites are discussed in chapter 6.

Radiocarbon Dating
Broadly speaking, the purpose of the radiocarbon dating portion of this chronology program is to integrate to
the maximum extent possible an accurate, high-precision
calendar-based chronology with the ceramic ordination
process. To achieve this, the following two specific goals
in the area of radiocarbon dating were accomplished:
(1)the evaluation of the relatively large number of existing radiocarbon dates for accuracy and precision, and the
reduction of this array of existing dates in to a smaller
set considered to be most reliable and informative about
the cultural components and time period under study; and
(2)the generation of new, maximally precise and accurate radiocarbon dates for as many previously undated or
poorly dated components as possible.
Broad developments in three aspects of radiocarbon
dating during the past decade conditioned the specific
approach to these goals. First, development and routine
application of the accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS)
dating method makes it possible to date many components
more precisely compared with conventional means (Creel
and Long, 1986; Aitken, 1990:7685). Because AMS dating uses an atom counting procedure, it is used with small
samples, as little as several milligrams, within a short time
span (Aitken, 1990:7677). Conventional beta counting
requires larger samples, on the order of about 10 grams.
The AMS procedure facilitates the dating of small samples
that would ordinarily not be suitable for conventional radiocarbon dating. This development has a direct bearing
on the ability to date many components in the study area,
which previously would not be accessible to radiocarbon
assessment.

32

smithsonian contributions to anthropology

Second is the general understanding of the importance

of focusing dating on short-lived botanical remains unequivocally associated with human activities (e.g., cultigens) as opposed to dating the often more abundant wood
or wood charcoal, which is subject to a much greater possibility of discontinuity between the growth event and the
cultural event under study. Error potentially assignable to
old wood sources has been demonstrated to be substantial and confounding in several contexts in which the wood
was well preserved in the environment (e.g., Schiffer, 1984,
1987:308311; Smiley, 1985; Dean, 1991). In the present
study area, old wood (wood predating the cultural event
that is to be dated) undoubtedly exists in the inner rings of
large timbers used as house posts, and dates on posts form
a large fraction of previously existing radiocarbon dates.
In addition, cultural practices compound the old wood
problem. Cultural use of scavenged wood and river drift
logs or salvaging of old house timbers would make most
radiocarbon-dated samples appear to be older than the
events (i.e., village occupation) with which they are associated. These practices have been documented among the
Hidatsa (Wilson, 1934:359, 372376).
It is therefore clear from cultural practices within the
region, as well as from case studies outside the region, that
compelling reasons exist for reevaluating existing dates
that were based upon wood and for reorienting any new
radiocarbon dating toward more ideal sample materials.
Fortunately, the advent of routine AMS dating allows for
a focus on dating materials that often occur in relatively
small samples sizes in regional study sites. In our case,
these newly accessible target materials include cultigens,
wild plant food remains, and carbonized cooking residues
occurring in small quantities on pottery vessels. Dates on
maize are now well accepted when corrected through isotopic fractionation (Creel and Long, 1986). Dating of pottery residues seems practical, but it is far less established by
test studies. Dating of pottery residues in the present study
should therefore be considered an experimental approach.
A third advancement in radiocarbon dating that has
direct bearing on this study is the development of routinely
accessible computer programs that rapidly perform several
very important functions, such as (1) testing for contemporaniety among a suite of dates, (2) averaging two or more
dates, and (3) calibrating individual or mean dates into a
calendar age by basing them upon the varying amounts of
radiocarbon in the atmosphere through time. We refer in
particular to components of the desktop computer program
CALIB 3.0 and its successors (Stuiver and Reimer, 1993).
Regarding the first point, the test of contemporaniety is
used as a screening tool to eliminate from consideration

suites of dates that contain too large an amount of error

to accurately reflect the true age of the associated archaeological context based on a careful assessment of archaeological data independent of radiocarbon results (see Shott,
1992, for an excellent example of a systematic comparison of radiocarbon results and archaeological evidence to
achieve the best possible age estimate for a site). Error assessed in this fashion includes a combination of association
error (poor temporal association between the growing date
of the sample and the cultural event), error introduced during laboratory processing (interlaboratory differences (International Study Group, 1982), as well as intra-laboratory
errorall in addition to counting error), and error from
other unknown sources. After suites of dates are screened
for accuracy, the averaging routine is used to generate a
mean date with the highest possible level of precision for a
given cultural component.
Although it has been known for more than 30 years
that differing amounts of radiocarbon in the atmosphere
and oceans can affect the relationship between the radiocarbon age and the calendar age of dated materials, only
recently have computer programs become available to
correct for these variations. Program CALIB (Stuiver and
Reimer, 1993) greatly facilitates the task of calendrically
calibrating the 375 dates employed in this study. The program is based upon a recent effort to calibrate the radiocarbon time scale (Stuiver and Becker, 1993). A graphical
representation of a portion of one of the calibration curves
upon which this program is based is presented in Figure 5.
It is observed that this decadal tree-ring curve fluctuates
or wiggles more in some time periods than others. This
has implications for the precision of corrected radiocarbon dates that are based upon the curve and can mean
that the number of curve intercepts and the 1-sigma or
2-sigma ranges of dates varies depending on their position
on the curve. Generally, dates that fall within the straight
portions of the curve calibrate to smaller ranges than those
on other more jagged parts.
Once a new set of screened, averaged, and calendrically calibrated radiocarbon dates are obtained for the
largest possible number of components, the radiocarbon
dates are integrated with ceramic ordination results in the
following manner. Components with radiocarbon dates
are used in conjunction with ceramic ordination to assign,
within certain error parameters, many of the undated components included within the ceramic ordinations to 50 and
100 interval time periods. This is done by determining if
an ordination reflects a temporal dimension or pattern by
appealing to site stratigraphy, historic documentation, radiocarbon dates, and other temporal indicators. Once this

number 47

Figure 5. Decadal radiocarbon calibration curve (adapted from Stuiver and Becker, 1993: fig. 2ac).

33

34

smithsonian contributions to anthropology

is accomplished, the radiocarbon dates associated with a

number of components included within each ordination
are used to estimate early and late dates of each temporal
axis that is interval scaled by detrended correspondence
analysis. Once this is done, assigning absolute dates (or
more appropriately hypothesized dates) to each component
is a matter of interpolating between two or more dated
components in each ordination to other undated components. This technique, which is explained in more detail
in chapter 6, results in an ordering of village components
along an absolute time scale that is divided into 50- and
100-year increments. Only with a massive absolute dating program, far beyond the scope of the current study,
could a more precise temporal ordering of components be
achieved, assuming an appropriate amount of datable material and archeological context information is available.
As a result, the temporal orderings presented in chapters
6 and 7 are considered to be hypothesized chronologies
to be tested more thoroughly with additional radiocarbon
dates and other independent bodies of temporally sensitive artifacts. Various levels of confidence also can be assigned to each variant or phase chronology depending on
the comprehensiveness of available dates and the nature of
ceramic variability within each one.
The current radiocarbon dating program is considered
to be the third systematic effort to date sites of the Plains
Village pattern within the Middle Missouri subarea. The
first of these was the Missouri Basin Chronology Program,
which was intended to develop inter-related chronologies,
using a variety of techniques and data sets, including radiocarbon dating, dendrochronology, geological-climatic
dating, and ceramic typology (Stephenson, 1958). The objectives were to develop a general chronology of the subarea that could be used to date subsequently excavated
sites and be related to cultural developments in other parts
of North America. It is particularly relevant to the current
study that the type of ceramic analyses done by Dr. A. O.
Shepard in conjunction with the type of ceramic seriation
that has heretofore been done in the area was a component in the program (Stephenson, 1958:4). The ceramic
aspect of the chronology program did not progress beyond the prospectus dealing with technology and how clay
sources could be used to identify trade vessels (Huscher,
1958). Other portions of the chronology program yielded
substantive results however, particularly in the area of radiocarbon dating. A summary of many of the radiocarbon
dates from the Missouri Basin Chronology Program appears in Neuman (1967).
The second integrated dating program to be undertaken in the Middle Missouri subarea was in conjunction

with the first phase of research at the Knife River Indian

Villages National Historic site (Ahler and Haas, 1993). The
cultural chronology that grew out of this and related analyses formed the basis of the reconstruction of Plains Village occupations in the Knife and Heart regions employed
in the present study (see Ahler, 1993b). The chronology of
the remaining regions within the Middle Missouri subarea
(Cannonball, Grand-Moreau, Bad-Cheyenne, Big Bend,
Fort Randall) is the result of the current study.

Site Stratigraphy
When a number of stratigraphically related provenience units within a particular site are grouped together
into components or other cultural-temporal units, a very
powerful tool is created to aid the interpretation of the
results of any archeological ordination that includes these
units. Interpreting the various dimensions, factors, axes,
or patterns of a multivariate ordination procedure that
includes some variables thought to be related to time ultimately depends upon information independent of the
actual data used to construct these ordinations. Like the
absolute dates provided by radiocarbon dating, stratigraphy is an interpretive tool to help in the construction of
chronologies relying on ceramic ordination.
For the most part, the limited stratigraphic information available for this study seems to be an incidental byproduct of the excavation of a number of villages with
relatively thick midden deposits. Even in these cases, the
emphasis of the Interagency Archeological Salvage Program (IASP) program was to uncover as many houses as
possible, within the existing budgetary constraints; areas
between houses received far less attention It is no exaggeration to state that good stratigraphic control usually
can be attained with relatively small excavations placed
to maximize this information. The excavations at some
of the villages in the Knife River Indian Villages National
Historic Site dramatically demonstrates this point (Ahler,
1993c). It is emphasized that the stratigraphically related
units sought in the current study are those that are included
within the same ordination, usually confined to those components assigned to the same variant or phase. There is a
wealth of stratigraphic information from many excavated
sites within the Middle Missouri subarea, although it usually involves a short time period or components assigned
to different variants or traditions that cannot be included
within the same ordination.
Most of the stratigraphic controls for the present
study are derived from villages containing relatively thick

number 47

midden deposits (i.e., those occupied shortly before and

during the protohistoric or Post-Contact period). The
excavations at the Big Hidatsa and Lower Hidatsa sites
within the Knife River Indian Villages National Historic
Site is a case in point. Other villages providing some degree of stratigraphic control include a number assigned
to the late Extended Coalescent variant (Swan Creek,
Anton Rygh), Le Beau phase (Anton Rygh, Bamble, Larson, Spiry-Eklo, Swan Creek, Sully), Talking Crow phase
(Medicine Crow), and to a lessor degree the Extended
Coalescent (Walth Bay, Lower Grand), and Initial Middle
Missouri (Jiggs Thompson, Pretty Head, Sommers) variants. Given the magnitude of this study and the number of
components included within it, this list is relatively small
and inadequate. Because there are a large number of Le
Beau components that provide stratigraphic control, the
ordination of this phase, along with the existing Heart
River and Knife River complex sequences from the Knife
and Heart regions, is firmly established. Affixing an absolute time scale to the Le Beau sequence relies on dating
parameters developed largely from components occupied
prior to these villages, because they were occupied most
intensively after the latest feasible date for radiocarbon
dating (i.e., after ad 1650).

Euro-american Trade Materials

Artifacts of Euro-American derivation, either in their
original manufactured form or modified by Native Americans, serve as a horizon marker for the beginning of the
protohistoric or Post-Contact period in the Middle Missouri subarea. Some of the more common artifacts include
copper, brass or iron knives; arrow points; tubes; beads;
awls; fishhooks; conical tinklers; and scraps cut up from
kettles and other trade items.
Glass beads also are commonly found in Post-Contact
period sites. Billeck (2000) is the only one to have systematically dated sites in the Middle Missouri subarea using glass
beads. His study provided an independent dating source
for the post-contact sequences in this study. The actual
process by which Euro-American trade items are eventually incorporated into the archaeological record is complex
(Ray, 1978; Toom, 1979). Generally, sites later in time
have larger numbers and more varieties of Euro-American
trade items than those dating to the early part of the proto
historic period. There also are qualitative differences, as
Billeck (2000) demonstrated. These trends provide ways to
estimate the relative and absolute temporal placement of
sites in this period. One of the major limiting factors is the

35

field recovery techniques employed in excavations and their

consistency of use, as pointed out by Billeck (2000:1) and in
chapter 4. Because almost all of the sites used in this study
were not screened during excavation, most of the EuroAmerican trade artifacts, which tend to be small, were not
recovered. Only those items that were fortuitously found
during excavation or were excavated with more attention
to detail (e.g., human burials) remain in extant collections.
Comparisons between Billecks chronology and this study
also are limited by the difference in archaeological context;
this study is based upon villages, whereas Billecks study focused on their associated cemeteries. This is not a problem
when the villages were occupied for relatively short periods;
however, some were occupied for long periods spanning the
late prehistoric and protohistoric periods. Dates based upon
beads probably tend to place these sites (i.e., the latest occupations) later than the dates derived from ceramics. Even
when different components are dated in the present study, it
is unclear if these occupations are defined precisely enough
to allow for a one-to-one comparison with their associated
cemeteries. Many of the late multi-component sites used in
this study were excavated under salvage conditions that did
not allow enough time for fine-scale separations of long,
continuous occupations. The focus of excavations at many
sites were contexts, such a houses (rather than thick middens), that could not be related stratigraphically. Still other
sites either lack reports (e.g., Sully, Mobridge, Cheyenne
River, Black Widow, 39ST25), do not adequately justify
their separation of components (e.g., Swan Creek, SpiryEklo), or are reported based upon grossly inadequate field
records (Larson). All of these factors add more uncertainty
in the dating process. Nevertheless, comparisons are made
in this report between the chronologies based upon ceramics and those based upon beads.

Historic Documentation
Historic documentation of Mandan, Hidatsa, and
Arikara villages not only provides information about the
tribes that occupied particular regions and specific village
sites along the Missouri River in the Dakotas, but also
when these villages were inhabited. This information is
most complete for the eighteenth and nineteenth century
Mandan and Hidatsa communities in the Knife and Heart
regions, but information also is included for a number of
Arikara villages in North and South Dakota.
An increasing interest in ethnohistory during the past
30 years has generated a number of summaries of the pertinent primary sources. These include Chomko (1986), Wood

36

smithsonian contributions to anthropology

(1986a:2558; 1986b), and Thiessen (1993b), as well as the

earlier studies of Wedel (1955:7784), Hughes (1968:19
24), and Lehmer (1971:164179, 1977a, 1977b). These
compilations of European and American observations,
aided by native informants, form the bulk of the historic
documentation relating to the time of occupation and abandonment of specific Plains Village sites within the subarea.

Oral Traditions
Oral histories provide another source of information
useful in reconstructing Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara
origins, their cultural growth, and eventual decline. Most
important for the current study is their record of where
they lived during these periods and whether these locations or specific village sites can be tied to the archeological record. This historical record is critical not only as
a source of independent chronological information, but
also as a guide in assigning certain village components,
archeological phases, complexes or other units to particular tribal entities or ethnic subdivisions within these
groups. The further these oral histories are extended back
in time, the more secure are the ethnic assignments of the
prehistoric and post-contact villages. Making these links
also is invaluable in interpreting the archeological record, a fact not lost on the adherents of the direct-historic
approach to archeology on the plains (Wedel, 1938,
1940:296; Strong, 1940:353354). Studies, such as the
present one, which rely on multiple lines of archeological,
historic, ethnographic, linguistic, and physical anthropological evidence in their reconstructions, follow the general methods set forth by these early pioneer archeologists
more than 50 years ago and bring it full circle to these
early efforts. Syms (1985) argued for a return to these
various sources of information in the interpretation of the
archeological record.
It becomes apparent later in chapter 6 that these
various sources of interpretive information vary in detail
and usefulness, depending on the tribe or ethnic group
under consideration. The historic record is most detailed
for the Mandan and Hidatsa, as are their oral traditions.
Historical linguistics and physical anthropology are best
documented for the Arikara and their ancestors. On one
level, more is known about the archeology of the proto
historic and prehistoric Arikara than the Mandan and
Hidatsa, although this balance has tipped in recent years
as the Knife River Indian Villages National Historic Site
is interpreted through the archeological, historic, and
ethnographic records of the Hidatsa (Thiessen, 1993b).

Much of what is known about the Mandan and Hidatsa

is the result of Bowers (1950, 1965) historical and ethnographic work. A comparable study of the Arikara has not
been conducted, although Holder (1970) provided some
relevant information as more continues to be made available, if only in piecemeal fashion (Parks, 1979a). Bowers
keen interest in setting the prehistoric context of the Mandan and Hidatsa, so useful in recent cultural-historical
reconstruction (Ahler, 1993a:3438), has not been duplicated for the Arikara. This information may exist in the
unpublished notes of Preston Holder, although efforts by
this author to gain access to that source have not been
productive.

Historical Linguistics
Linguistic studies that outline the temporal relationships between various Northern Plains language groups
(Hughes, 1968; Parks, 1979b; Hollow and Parks, 1980;
Springer and Witkowski, 1982) provided useful information relating to the distributions and splitting of various
Caddoan (e.g., Arikara and Pawnee) and Siouan (Mandan, Hidatsa) language groups. To the extent that such
studies can date the approximate times of language group
splits, the more useful this information is when combined
with other studies of the affinities of certain biological
populations, or ceramic relationships between villages or
complexes of villages. The results of these historical linguistic studies are integrated with other temporal data in
chapter 6.

Craniometric Distance
Through the efforts of Bass (1964), Jantz (1972,
1973), and a number of their students (summarized in
Bass, 1981), craniometric analyses focus on morphology
to infer biological distance between skeletal populations
associated with certain Northern Plains Villages. Among
the findings in these studies is what various investigators
interpret to be temporal variability between the populations. Despite the fact that the absolute dates they employed were only estimates that were based upon very
limited information (Jantz, 1972:2425, 1973, table 1;
Owsley and Jantz, 1978, table 2; Key and Jantz, 1981,
table 1; Jantz and Willey, 1983, tables 1 and 2), these
studies do provide relative orderings between the populations and a measure of biological distance between them
that are in turn related to other factors. These results are

number 47

particularly intriguing for the present study that tries

to examine the flip side of the affinity question (i.e., the
ceramic or inferred social distance between villages).
Clearly, the complementary nature of these two data sets,
ceramic and skeletal, and the inferred social and biologi-

37

cal affinities are important to the overall effort to date

and otherwise relate the villages and their associated remains, even though the underlying processes of ceramic
and skeletal change are probably very different.

Data Acquisition

able 3 lists a total of 225 site components used in this chronology of

Middle Missouri Plains Village sites. The accompanying data matrices, listing the percentages and frequencies of various ceramic types,
and cord-impressed decorative attributes, appear as a series of tables
in Appendix A (Tables A.1A.6). Site assemblages containing 50 rim sherds or
more appear in this table, although there are a few exceptions in which smaller
samples are included. Components not included in the analysis are discussed
later. Also not included in the study are a number of components from the Knife
and Heart regions in North Dakota; the established chronology for this region
(Ahler, 1993b) is integrated into the present study. Related Mill Creek (Flanders, 1960; D. R. Henning, 1971; Anderson, 1981; Tiffany, 1982) and Lower
Loup/Historic Pawnee (Grange, 1968, 1984; OShea, 1989) chronologies also
are considered herein, although no formal re-analyses are attempted. The components in Table 3 are organized by traditionally defined taxonomic units, the
variant and phase, with additional information pertaining to the degree of the
fieldwork and source of the information. Variant designations follow Lehmer
(1971), and taxonomic assignment is listed only in cases in which the first reporting of the site designated a phase, focus, aspect, or variant. The intensity of
the field effort includes four categories: (1) surface or beach collections; (2)initial reconnaissance tests; (3) major excavations not resulting in the exposure
of houses; and (4) excavations uncovering houses and the number of partial or
complete houses excavated.
The source of the information listed in Table 3 deserves additional clarification. There are two major sources of actual rim sherd counts: (1) published and
unpublished literature; and (2) personal inspection by the author, the latter designated as Johnson followed by the institution in which the collections were curated at the time they were examined. Explanations of all abbreviations appear at
the end of this table. In the case of the cord-impressed motif data in Table A.6, all
collections were personally examined except for Deapolis, Amahami, Rock Village, Nightwalkers Butte, and Biesterfeldt, reported in Wood (1971) and Lehmer
et al. (1978). When more than one source for each component appears in Table3,
the first listed provides the actual rim sherd counts, whereas the second gives background information on the site. In some instances, the second source also provides

40

smithsonian contributions to anthropology

Table 3. List of Plains Village tradition components used in the ceramic ordinations by taxonomic assignment, extent of fieldwork,
and source of the ceramic data. Dashes indicate not assigned or not available.

Taxonomic Extent of
Variant/Component1 Assignment2
Field Work3

Source4

Initial Middle Missouri

Broken Kettle West (13PM25) Great Oasis
1 House
Johnson, 1974
Williams (13PM50) Great Oasis
Excavations
Williams, 1975
Larsen (13PM61) Great Oasis
Excavations Henning and King, 1982; Henning 1996
Cambria (21BE2)
Cambria Phase
Excavations
Johnson (MHS;UMM); Knudson,1967
Price (21BE25)
Cambria Focus
Excavations Scullin (1979)
Great Oasis (21MU2) Great Oasis
Excavations
Johnson (UMM); Johnson, 1969
Ferber (25CD10) Great Oasis
Excavations
Edwards, 1993
Packer (25SM9) Great Oasis
Excavations
Johnson (NSHS); Bozell and Rogers, 1989
Crow Creek (39BF11)
Test Hanenberger, 1986; Kivett and Jensen,1976
Pretty Bull (39BF12)
(6)
Excavations
Johnson (SDARC)
Akichita (39BF221)

Excavations
Johnson (SDARC); Husted, n.d.
Swanson (39BR16) Over F.
4 Houses
Johnson (SDARC); Hurt, 1951
Jones Village (39CA3) IMM Tests
Johnson (SDARC); Johnson, 1986
Pease Creek (39CH5) Great Oasis
Excavations
Johnson (NMNH)
Oldham (39CH7) Great Oasis (6)
Excavations
Johnson (NMNH); Huscher, 1957
Hitchell (39CH45) Great Oasis (6)
Excavations
Johnson (NMNH); Johnston, 1967
39CH205 Great Oasis
Excavations
Johnson (NMNH)
Mitchell (39DV2) Over F./Lower James Ph.
2 Houses
Johnson (SDARC); Alex, 1981b; Meleen, 1938
Chapelle Creek C (39HU60) Over F. (5,6)
Excavations
Brown, 1967
St. John (39HU213) Great Oasis Tests
Johnson (NMNH); Jensen, n.d.a
Twelve Mile Creek (39HT1) Over F.
1 House
Johnson (SDARC); Meleen, n.d.
Dinehart (39LM33)

2 Houses
Johnson (SDARC)
King (39LM55) IMM
1 House
Johnson (NMNH); Ehrenhard, 1971
Jiggs Thompson A (39LM208)
Tests
Caldwell & Jensen, 1969
Jiggs Thompson B (39LM208) Grand Detour Phase
2 Houses
Caldwell & Jensen, 1969
Langdeau (39LM209) Grand Detour Phase
5 Houses
Caldwell & Jensen, 1969
Jandreau (39LM225)

2 Houses
Johnson (SDARC); Jones, n.d.
Gilman (39LM226)
Tests
Johnson (SDARC)
Pretty Head A (39LM232) Grand Detour Phase
1 House
Caldwell & Jensen, 1969
Pretty Head B (39LM232) Over F.
2 Houses
Caldwell & Jensen, 1969
Heath (39LN15) Great Oasis
1 House
Johnson (ACAL); Hannus et al., 1986
Brandon (39MH1) Over F.
7 Houses
Johnson (SDARC); Over & Meleen, 1941
Fay Tolton (39ST11) Anderson Phase
2 Houses
Johnson, 1976
H.P. Thomas 1 (39ST12) IMM Variant (5,6)
Excavations Falk, Johnson, and Richtsmeier, in prep.
Breeden A (39ST16) Anderson Phase (6)
4 Houses
Brown, 1974
Dodd (39ST30)
Monroe/Anderson Foci (6)
11 Houses
Johnson (NMNH; SDARC); Lehmer, 1954a
Sommers (39ST56) IMM
8 houses Steinacher, 1990; Falk, Steinacher, and Johnson, in prep.
Cattle Oiler Early (39ST224) IMM (2,5)
6 houses
Johnson (NSHS); Moerman & Jones, 1966
Gavins Point (39YK203) Great Oasis Surface
Johnson (NMNH); Brown, 1968
Extended Middle Missouri
Havens (32EM1) Fort Yates Phase
4 Houses Sperry, 1968a; 1995
Tony Glas (32EM3)

2 Houses
Johnson, 1999; Howard, 1962a
Clarks Creek (32ME1) Fort Yates Phase Tests
Calabrese, 1972
White Buffalo Robe (32ME7) Nailati Phase
1 House
Lee, 1980
Amahami (32ME8) Nailati Phase
1 House
Lehmer et al., 1978
Bendish (32MO2) Fort Yates Phase
2 Houses Thiessen, 1976
Cross Ranch (32OL14) Nailati Phase
2 Houses
Calabrese, 1972
Fire Heart Creek (32SI2) Fort Yates Phase (6)
3 Houses
Lehmer, 1966
Paul Brave (32SI4) Thomas Riggs Focus
3 Houses
Wood & Woolworth, 1964
Ben Standing Soldier (32SI7)

3 Houses Hoffman, 1970a
South Cannonball (32SI19)
EMM Variant
7 Houses Griffin, 1984
McKensey (39AR201)

1 House
Caldwell, 1966a
39AR210
Tests
Caldwell, 1966a
Vanderbilt Village (39CA1)
EMM Tests, Surface
Johnson, 1986; Jensen, n.d.b
Keen Village (39CA2)
EMM Tests, Surface
Johnson, 1986; Jensen, n.d.b
Helb (39CA208) Fort Yates Phase
Excavations Falk & Calabrese, 1973

number 47

41

Jake White Bull (39CO6)

EMM Variant Tests/Surface Ahler, 1977a
Travis I (39CO213)
EMM Variant (5)
Excavations
Johnson, 1982
Calamity Village (39DW231)

1 House
Johnson (SDARC); McGowen, 1973
Thomas Riggs (39HU1) Thomas Riggs Focus
6 Houses
Johnson (SDARC); Kleinsasser, 1953
Sully School (39SL7)
(5)
1 House
Johnson (SDARC); McNutt, n.d.a
C.B. Smith (39SL29) Thomas Riggs Focus (5) Tests
Johnson (SDARC); McNutt, 1958
Zimmerman (39SL41)


Johnson (SDARC)
Cheyenne River Early (39ST1)
(5,6)
5 Houses
Johnson (NMNH)
Indian Creek (39ST15)
EMM Horizon (6)
Excavations
Lehmer & Jones, 1968
Blk. Widow Ridge E. (39ST203)
(6)
2 Houses
Johnson (NMNH)
Cattle Oiler Middle (39ST224)
EMM (1,6)
1 House
Johnson (NSHS); Moerman & Jones, 1966
Extended/Terminal Middle Missouri
32MO291

Excavations Ahler et al. (2000)

Terminal Middle Missouri

Shermer (32EM10) TMM
Huff (32MO11) Huff Focus

4 Houses Sperry, 1968b

10 Houses
Wood, 1967; Ahler & Kvamme, 2000

Initial Coalescent
Lynch (25BD1) Anoka Focus
Talking Crow II (39BF3)
Campbell Creek Ph. (6)
Arzberger (39HU6)

Whistling Elk (39HU242)

Black Partizan B (39LM218) Arzberger Phase (6)

5 Houses
Witty, 1962
4 Houses Smith, 1977
4 Houses Spaulding, 1956
2 Houses Steinacher, 1983
2 Houses
Caldwell, 1966b

Extended Coalescent
Redbird II (25HT2)
Redbird Focus
1 House
Wood, 1965
Elbee (32ME408) Scattered Village
Excavations Ahler, 1984a
No Heart Creek (39AR2)
Le Compte Focus/Phase
1 House Hurt, 1970
39AR7
Le Compte Focus Surface
Johnston & Hoffman, 1966
Anton Rygh RV-VII (39CA4) Akaska Focus (6)
Excavations
Johnson (NMNH); Knudson et al., 1983
39BR10
Surface
Johnson (NMNH)
Locke Creek (39CA201)
Surface
Johnson (MT)
Demery (39CO3)
Chouteau A.
4 Houses
Woolworth & Wood, 1964
Fort Manuel (39CO5)

Excavations
Johnson (MWAC); Smith & Ludwickson, 1981
Leavenworth Early (39CO9)
(6)
Excavations
Johnson (NSM); Krause, 1972
Lower Grand (39CO14)

5 Houses
Johnson, 1988
Bellsman Creek (39CO17)
Surface
Johnson (MT)
39CO18
Surface
Johnson (MT, NMNH)
North White Bull (39CO41/207) Surface
Johnson (MT)
Potts Village (39CO19)
Chouteau A./Le Compte F.
2 Houses Stephenson, 1971
H & H (39CO78)
Surface
Johnson (MT)
Travis I (39CO213)
EMM (2)
Excavations A. Johnson, 1982
Moreau River (39DW1)
Tests
Johnson (NMNH); Winham, 1984
39DW217
Surface
Johnson (NMNH)
Fox Island (39DW230)
EC Horizon
1 House
Kotch & Starr, 1968
Molstad (39DW234)
Chouteau A./Le Compte F.
4 Houses Hoffman, 1967
39DW253
Surface
Johnson (MT)
39DW254
Surface
Johnson (NMNH)
Scalp Creek A (39GR1)
La Roche Focus
10 Houses Hurt, 1952
Pierre School-South (39HU10)
EC
Excavations
Johnson (ACAL)
Robinson (39HU15)
Surface
Johnson (NMNH); George, 1949
Chapelle Creek B (39HU60)
Chouteau Aspect (1,6)
Excavations
Brown, 1967
Little Pumpkin (39HU97)
Surface
Johnson, 1984b; Toom, 1992d
Little Cherry (39HU126)
EC Variant
Excavations
Kapler, 1991
Bowman (39HU204)

1 House
Johnson (MWAC); Roetzel & Strachan,1986a
Standing Bull (39HU214)
Surface/Tests
Johnson, 1984b
Fry A (39HU223)

1 House
Jensen, n.d.a
39HU241
Surface
Johnson (NMNH)
Stricker B (39LM1)
La Roche Phase
1 House Smith, 1975
Bice (39LM31)

1 House
Johnson (MWAC)
Clarkstown B (39LM47)
Surface Smith & Grange, 1958
Meander (39LM201)
Chouteau Aspect Tests Husted, 1965a
39LM222

3 Houses
Johnson (MWAC)
Spain A (39LM301)
Chouteau A./Shannon F.
1 House Smith & Grange, 1958
Hosterman (39PO7)

5 Houses
Miller, 1964
(continued)

42

smithsonian contributions to anthropology

Table 3. (continued)

Taxonomic Extent of
Variant/Component1 Assignment2
Field Work3

Source4

Extended Coalescent (continued)

Gettysburg (39PO209)
EC Horizon Tests
Coleman, 1968
Fairbanks (39SL2)
Tests
Johnson (NMNH)
Sully Early (39SL4)
(6)
Multiple Houses
Johnson (NMNH)
Sully School (39SL7)
(2)
1 House
Johnson (MWAC)
39SL8
Tests
Johnson (MWAC)
39SL12
Tests
Johnson (MWAC)
39SL23
Tests
Johnson (MWAC)
39SL24

1 House
Johnson (MWAC)
C.B. Smith (39SL29)
Bennett Focus (2)
1 House
McNutt, 1958
Cheyenne River Middle (39ST1)
(2,6)
1 House
Johnson (NMNH)
Black Widow Early (39ST3)
(6)
3 Houses
Johnson (NMNH)
Overs La Roche (39ST9)
EC Horizon
7 Houses Hoffman, 1968
Meyer (39ST10)
Surface
Johnson (NMNH); Hoard, 1949
H.P. Thomas 2 (39ST12)
EC Variant (1,6)
Excavations Falk, Johnson, and Richtsmeier, in prep.
Cooper (39ST45)

2 Houses
Johnson (MWAC)
Leavitt (39ST215)
EC Horizon
1 House
Lehmer & Jones, 1968
Cattle Oiler Late (39ST224)
(1,2)
Excavations
Johnson (NSHS); Moerman & Jones, 1966
Bowers La Roche (39ST232)
EC Horizon
2 Houses Hoffman, 1968
Swan Creek A (39WW7) Akaska Focus (6)
Excavations Hurt, 1957
Spiry (39WW10) Akaska Focus
1 House
Baerreis & Dallman, 1961
Walth Bay (39WW203)
EC
7 Houses
Johnson 1988; Ahler, 1975, 1975b
39WW300 Akaska Focus Tests Hurt, 1957
Payne (39WW302)
Chouteau A./Akaska F.
2 Houses
Wilmeth, 1958
Felicia Phase
39BR201

2 Houses
Weakly, 1961
Cadotte (39HE202) Felicia Phase Tests/Surface Smith & Johnson, 1968
Black Partizan A (39LM218) Felicia Focus (4)
3 Houses
Caldwell, 1966b
39LM219 A

1 House Husted, 1965b
Crazy Bull (39LM220)
Chouteau Aspect
1 House Frantz, 1962
Mc Clure (39HU7) Felicia Phase
2 Houses
Johnson (MWAC); Johnston, 1982
Talking Crow Phase
Medicine Crow 1-5 (39BF2) Talking Crow Phase
17 Houses
Johnson & Toom, 1995
Talking Crow III (39BF3) Talking Crow Phase (4)
9 Houses Smith, 1977
39BF4 Ft. Thompson Focus
Excavations
Kivett & Jensen, 1976
Pretty Bull (39BF12)
(1)
1 House
Johnson (MWAC)
Fire Cloud (39BF237)
Pahuk A./Ft. Thompson F. Test
Karklins, 1970
Sanitarium (39BR6)

1 House
Kruschwitz, n.d.
39BR13
Tests/Surface
Johnson (NMNH); Witty, 1960
Oldham (39CH7)
(1)
13 Houses
Johnson (NMNH); Huscher, 1957
Hitchell (39CH45) Fort. Thompson F. (1)
2 Houses
Johnston, 1967
Iron Shooter (39HU217)
Tests/Surface
Johnson, 1983b; Peterson, n.d.
Amos Shields (39HU220)
Tests/Surface
Johnson (MWAC);Roetzel & Strachan, 1986b
Hawk (39HU238)

1 House
Jensen, n.d.a
Ocoma (39LM26/27)

10 Houses
Johnson (NSHS); Kivett, 1958
39LM34
Surface
Johnson (MWAC)
Peterson (39LM215) Fort Thompson F.
1 House
Jensen, 1966
Breeden B (39ST16) Talking Crow Ph. (1)
Excavations
Brown, 1974
Fort George Village (39ST17)
Bad River Phase
6 Houses Hoffman, 1970b
Bad River Phase
Pascal Creek (39AR207) Stanley/Snake Butte F. Tests
Chapelle Creek A (39HU60)
Bad River Phase (1,5)
5 Houses
Coleman (39SL3)

1 House
Little Bend (39SL13)
Tests
Madison (39SL19)
Tests
39SL28
Tests
Cheyenne River Late (39ST1)
(2,5)
2 Houses

Johnston, 1966
Brown, 1967
Johnson (MWAC)
Johnson (MWAC)
Johnson (MWAC)
Johnson (MWAC)
Johnson (NMNH)

number 47

43

Black Widow Late (39ST3)

(5)
1 House
Johnson (NMNH)
Dan Donavan (39ST5)
Surface
Johnson (NMNH)
Buffalo Pasture (39ST6)
Bad River 2
5 Houses
Lehmer & Jones, 1968; Howson, 1941
H.P. Thomas 3 (39ST12)
Bad River Phase (1,5)
5 Houses Falk, Johnson, and Richtsmeier, in prep.
Phillips Ranch (39ST14) Snake Butte F.
10 Houses
Lehmer, 1954a
Indian Creek A (39ST15)
Bad River 1 (2)
2 Houses
Lehmer & Jones, 1968
Gillette A (39ST23) Stanley/Snake Butte F.
2 Houses
Brown, 1966
39ST25

Excavations
Johnson (NMNH)
Dodd A (39ST30) Stanley Focus (1)
10 Houses
Lehmer, 1954a
39ST50

1 House
Johnson (NMNH)
39ST51
Surface
Johnson (NMNH)
Johnston (39ST244)
Bad River Phase 2 Surface
Lehmer & Jones, 1968
Blk. Widow Ridge L. (39ST203)
(2)
2 Houses
Johnson (NMNH)
Le Beau Phase
Anton Rygh RI-IV (39CA4)
(5)
Excavations
Johnson (NMNH)
Anton Rygh Upper-Lower (39CA4) Le Beau F., Rygh F.
8 Houses
Knudson et al., 1983
Bamble Early (39CA6)
Le Beau Focus
3 Houses
Baerreis & Dallman, 1961
Bamble Late (39CA6)
Le Beau Focus
3 Houses
Baerreis & Dallman, 1961
Nordvold I (39CO31)


Johnson (UNL); Krause, 1962
Red Horse Hawk (39CO34)
Bad River Phase
15 Houses Hoffman, 1970b
Four Bear (39DW2) Four Bear Focus
1 House Hurt et al., 1962
Oahe Village (39HU2)

2 Houses
Johnson (SDARC)
Mush Creek (39HU5)
Tests
Johnson (MWAC); Bleacher, 1980
Pierre School 1987 (39HU10)
(5)
Excavations
Johnson (SDARC; ACAL)
Pierre School 1990 (39HU10)
(5)
Excavations
Johnson (ACAL)
39HU22
Tests/Surface
Johnson (NMNH)
Spotted Bear (39HU26) Spotted Bear Focus
5 Houses Hurt, 1954a
Steamboat Creek (39PO1)
Tests/Surface
Johnson (MWAC, NMNH)
Rosa A (39PO3)
Le Beau/Bad River Ph.
2 Houses Hurt, 1974
Artichoke Creek (39SL1)
Surface
Johnson (NMNH)
Sully Middle (39SL4)
(5)
Multiple Houses
Johnson (NMNH)
Sully Late (39SL4)
(5)
Multiple Houses
Johnson (NMNH)
Mobridge (39WW1)
Surface
Johnson (NMNH); Parmalee, 1979
Larson 1-4 (39WW2)
Le Beau Phase
7 Houses Falk and Johnson, in prep.
Spiry-Eklo Late-Early (39WW3)
Le Beau Focus
2 Houses
Baerreis & Dallman, 1961
Swan Creek B (39WW7)
Le Beau Focus (5)
1 House Hurt, 1957
Swan Creek C+D (39WW7)
Le Beau Focus (5)
2 Houses Hurt, 1957
39WW301 Akaska/Le Beau F. Tests Hurt, 1957
Knife River Phase
Deapolis (32ME5)
Amahami (32ME8)
Rock Village (32ME15)
Nightwalkers Butte (32ML39)

Knife River Phase Surface

Knife River Phase
4 Houses
Knife River Phase
13 Houses
Knife River Phase
28 Houses

Lehmer et al., 1978

Lehmer et al., 1978
Lehmer et al., 1978
Lehmer et al., 1978

Protohistoric Cheyenne
Biesterfeldt (32RM1)

PCC

Wood, 1971

Late Protohistoric/historic Arikara

Greenshield (32OL17)
Fire Heart Creek Late (32SI2)
Leavenworth (39CO9)
Blue Blanket Island (39WW9)

Tests
Johnson (UMC); Nicholas & Johnson, 1986
(2)
6 Houses
Lehmer, 1966
(5)
7 Houses
Johnson (NSM); Krause, 1972

1 House Stephenson, 1969

7 Houses

Component Abbreviations: E = Early, M = Middle, L = Late. Single occupations at multiple component sites are frequently designated by letter codes (e.g. A, B, C, D).

Taxonomic Abbreviations: Variant assignments and taxonomic abbreviations follow Lehmer (1971). IMM=Initial Middle Missouri; EMM=Extended Middle Missouri;
TMM=Terminal Middle Missouri; IC=Initial Coalescent; EC=Extended Coalescent; PCC=Post-Contact Coalescent. A=Aspect; F=focus; Ph=phase; H=horizon. Taxonomic assignments are from site reports. Numbers in parentheses under Taxonomic Assignment refer to additional components present at a site and included in this analysis. 1=IMM,
2=EMM, 3=TMM, 4=IC, 5=EC, 6=PCC.

Extent of Field Work: Four levels of fieldwork are included. Surface are those collections from surface cutbank or beach areas. Tests are usually small, limited scale investigations. Excavations represent more extensive excavations than tests but did not result in the discovery of any houses. House excavations are denoted by the number of complete
or partial houses excavated. Additional units were often excavated along with houses at the same site.

Source of Data: MT=Marion Travis Collection; NMNH=National Museum of Natural History (Smithsonian Institution); NSM=Nebraska State Museum; NSHS=Nebraska
State Historical Society; SDARC=South Dakota State Archaeological Research Center; MWAC=Midwest Archeological Center (National Park Service); UNL=University of
Nebraska-Lincoln; MHS=Minnesota Historical Society; UMC=University of Missouri-Columbia; UMM=University of Minnesota-Minneapolis; ACAL=Augustana College
Archeology Laboratory. All references to Johnson refer to Craig M. Johnson, the author of this report. Semi-colon between multiple sources indicates first source for ceramic
data, second source as additional background. Dash between sources indicates use of both as sources of ceramic data.
4

44

smithsonian contributions to anthropology

a rim sherd count, but this information is rejected in favor

of the authors personal data. Sources separated by a dash
indicate that both are independent samples used in the tabulation of rim frequencies. Ceramic assemblages inspected
by the author are currently curated by a number of institutions, with several housed at Marion Travis residence in
Mobridge, South Dakota. The author examined many of
the ceramic assemblages during a period of almost 20 years,
beginning in 1975. Since this time, most of the archeological collections curated at the Midwest Archeological Center, National Park Service in Lincoln, Nebraska, have been
transferred to the South Dakota State Archaeological Research Center in Rapid City, South Dakota. There were two
major periods when ceramic assemblages were examined
by the author, twice in 1982 at the Midwest Archeological
Center (National Park Service) and the National Museum
of Natural History (Smithsonian Institution), and again in
1991 and 1992 at the National Museum of Natural History, the South Dakota State Archaeological Research
Center, the University of Minnesota, and the Minnesota
Historical Society. A few ceramic assemblages not included
during these periods were examined at various times since
1982. The author privately funded the 1982 effort with the
assistance of Carl R. Falk, whereas the Repatriation Office of the Smithsonian Institution supported the 1991 and
1992 trips. Most Coalescent tradition assemblages were
examined in 1982, whereas the 19911992 effort focused
primarily on pottery from Middle Missouri tradition components and the selection of botanical remains for the radio
carbon dating portion of the project.
There are a number of ceramic assemblages not
listed in Table 3. A more complete list of Plains Village
components appears in Lehmer (1971, figs. 38, 39, 76,
77, 79, 82, 111, and app. 1). Additional small, partially
documented, or unlocated collections were made from a
variety of survey and testing projects sponsored by the Interagency Archeological Salvage Program, the U.S. Army
Corps of Engineers-Omaha District, Logan MuseumBeloit College (Bowers, 1948a), Over Museum of South
Dakota (Sigstad and Sigstad, 1973) and other institutions
and individuals (Petsche, 1968) . Some of these are discussed in a series of published and unpublished reports
including Bowers (1930, 1948a), Howson (1941), Hughes
(1955), Kuhn (1961), Howard (1962b), Hoffman (1963b,
n.d.), Caldwell et al. (1964), Neuman (1964), Johnston
and Hoffman (1966), Gant (1967), Lehmer and Jones
(1968:75), Smith and Johnson (1968:4143), Sigstad and
Sigstad (1973), A. Johnson (1979), C. Johnson (1986),
Roetzel and Strachan (1986a, 1986b), Toom (1990:138
147), Fritzen (n.d.), Hillman (n.d.), Jensen (n.d. a,b),

McNutt (n.d. bf), Reed (n.d.), Richards (n.d.). Two preliminary reports (Moerman and Jones, 1966; Jones, 1969)
exist for the Cattle Oiler site (39ST224); only one is listed
in Table 3. In addition, data from a recently released report on the Havens site could not be incorporated (Sperry,
1995). An older version of the report was used to compile the ceramic information from the site (Sperry, 1968a).
Many of the unpublished reports are in the library at the
Midwest Archeological Center, National Park Service,
Lincoln, Nebraska. In addition, the Initial Middle Missouri and Initial Coalescent components from the Crow
Creek site reported by Kivett and Jensen (1976) could not
be used because of insufficient descriptive information and
problems separating components (see introduction to Appendix A). Hanenbergers (1986) description of the Initial
Middle Missouri pottery from Crow Creek is used in this
analysis. The Initial Coalescent component from the Farm
School site (39BF220), reported by Neuman (1961), also is
eliminated because of mixing of components (Steinacher,
1983:6466). The result is to reduce the small number of
Initial Coalescent villages to five for this very important
taxonomic unit. The latest Redbird components also are
rejected because they contain large amounts of undecorated straight-rimmed vessels, unlike the late Extended
and Post-Contact Coalescent in South Dakota (see Wood,
1965:99103). The assemblage from the Medicine Creek
site (39LM2), which contains Initial Middle Missouri,
Initial Coalescent, and Extended Coalescent components
(Lehmer, 1971:195), has been in the possession of Elizabeth Potter Henning since the early 1970s and could not
be used despite a concerted attempt to examine it.
Plains Village components from the Knife, Heart, Garrison, and Little Missouri regions, subjects of recent reports (Woolworth, 1956; Cooper, 1958; Metcalf, 1963a,
1963b; Wheeler, 1963; Ahler, Weston et al., 1980, Ahler,
Schneider et al., 1980; Ahler and Weston, 1981; Ahler and
Mehrer, 1984; Kuehn et al., 1984; Ahler and Swenson,
1985), are not formally included in the present analysis,
except for the Clarks Creek, Cross Ranch, White Buffalo
Robe, Amahami, and Elbee sites. The Deapolis, Amahami,
Rock Village, Nightwalkers Butte, Greenshield, and Biesterfeldt sites from North Dakota are included in the analysis of cord-impressed motifs. The Plains Village sites from
the Knife and Heart regions, forming the basis of a recent synthesis of the Knife River Indian Villages National
Historic Site (Thiessen, 1993b), also are not formally included in the present study. The cultural chronology from
the area (Ahler, 1993b) is incorporated into the settlement
history in chapter 7 and is relied upon to help interpret the
sequences from South Dakota.

number 47

Descriptive Rim sherd Categories

Ceramic classification in the Middle Missouri subarea
has resulted in more than 200 crosscutting and sometimes
duplicate ceramic wares, types, subtypes, varieties, classes,
groups, and other categories (Wheeler, 1954; Lehmer,
1971:2223; Calabrese, 1977; C. Johnson, 1980; Butler
and Hoffman, 1992). The plethora of pottery categories
tends to inhibit comparisons between site assemblages, although some broader studies have been accomplished (see
chapter 2). The inclusion of additional assemblages in the
classification process beyond those originally used to define
ceramic types has had a subtle, yet pronounced effect on
the actual composition of these groups. As van der Leeuw
(1991:22) asserted, the inductive definition of types changes
when newly classified artifacts are included within them.
The reasons for the explosive growth of ceramic wares and
types remains unclear, but the shear number of excavated
sites, and their geographic and temporal distributions contributed to the problem. The large number of archeologists
working in the subarea, the evolving nature of ceramic
classification, and the availability at any one time of only
one or several ceramic assemblages during the classification process certainly aggravated the situation (C. Johnson,
1980:12). Despite one attempt (C. Johnson, 1980), there
were no productive efforts to integrate, reconcile, or revise
the ceramic classification systems used in the Middle Missouri subarea. Without a single consistent system, any intersite quantitative analyses are doomed to failure.
It is the intent herein to begin to reconcile the multitude
of ceramic classification or grouping systems by reducing
the myriad number of types into a smaller and more manageable number of groups, termed descriptive rim sherd
categories. Because these categories are designed for use in
broad cultural comparisons, they represent the efforts of
a classic lumper as compared with a more fine-grained
splitter approach to ceramic classification. The author
uses the latter approach in intrasite ordinations (C. Johnson, 1977b; Johnson et al., 1995; Falk and Johnson, in
prep.; Falk, Johnson, and Richtsmeier; in prep.), although
analyses that are based upon attributes take enormous
amounts of time not available for the present study. A
good example of the utility of using attributes in chronological ordering is by Ahler and Swenson (1993). A recent
discussion of attribute versus type approach in microseriation was presented by Duff (1996) who concluded that
types can provide as accurate results as attributes. One
of the results of the lumper approach is to emphasize the
affinities between certain ceramic assemblages at the expense of variation between them. This approach also is

45

deemed necessary to maximize the number of components

used in the study. In short, the approach is to include as
many of the radiocarbon dated components into the ceramic ordinations as possible. This is done to evaluate the
relationship between ceramic variation and radiocarbon
dates, and to provide data for the settlement model presented in chapter 7. Another result of the present study
is to identify a small number of ceramic assemblages that
can be used to address chronology problems, using more
detailed attribute-based studies (see chapter 8).
The percentages and frequencies of these descriptive
categories listed for each component are presented in Appendix A. The resulting five data matrices, consisting of
225 components and the frequencies of 53 descriptive rim
sherd categories, are the basis of the ceramic ordinations.
Examples from most of these categories are illustrated in
Appendix B. The components in Appendix A are ordered
by traditionally defined taxonomic units (Lehmer, 1971).
The five matrices list components assigned to the following
units: (1) Great Oasis phase of the Initial Middle Missouri
variant; (2) Initial Middle Missouri variant; (3) Extended
and Terminal Middle Missouri variants; (4) Initial Coalescent variant; and (5) Extended and Post-Contact Coalescent variants. The latter matrix is further divided into the
Extended variant, four post-contact phases (Felicia, Talking Crow, Bad River, Le Beau), and the Late Arikara village sites. The late Arikara sites are included in the analysis
of the Bad River Phase. Separate intersite seriations, based
upon these variants and phases, are the focus of this report.
Components assigned to some variants also are segregated
by region or locality and are included within their own
regional ordinations to partially control for the effects of
spatial variation. Several components are included in more
than one regional ordination to cross tie each one and to
serve as internal checks on the orderings. An additional
data matrix, listing a variety of cord-impressed motifs from
31 Post-Contact Coalescent components, also is included
in the analysis (Table A.6). This matrix is based upon
motif divisions within one descriptive rim sherd category
(straight/curved/flared/outcurved/simple rim forms with
cord-impressed lips or rim braces) included in the more inclusive intersite analysis. Methodological and other considerations inherent in the use of ceramic types in ordinations
are addressed in chapter 3.
The descriptive rim sherd categories employed in this
analysis are listed in a hierarchical fashion in Table B.1 by
variant or phase as they appear in the data matrices. This
table also lists the major corresponding previously defined
types included within these descriptive categories. These
categories follow the traditional and most widely accepted

46

smithsonian contributions to anthropology

method for classifying ceramics from the Middle Missouri

subarea (Lehmer, 1954a:3; C. Johnson, 1980:213). In
short, pottery associated with a particular variant or phase
is generally assigned to a number of wares based upon rim
form. Types within each ware are defined on the presence
or absence of decoration, the location of decoration, the
techniques used in the decoration process, and the resulting motif or overall pattern. The result is a hierarchy with
wares at the top, followed by types based upon decoration, or lack of it, and the decoration location, technique,
and motif. The descriptive system used herein recognizes
a number of these attributes that had been more fully discussed by C. Johnson (1980:3742), arranged in a hierarchical system most closely corresponding to the majority
of typologies used in the past by Middle Missouri archeologists. Examples included within the resulting categories
are illustrated in Appendix B.
The first division in the descriptive system includes two
major rim forms: straight/curved/flared/outcurved/simple
(abbreviated to straight), and S-shaped/collared/compound
(abbreviated to S-shaped). Two additional minor forms,
rolled rims and bowls, occur in small or moderate quantities
in some Initial Middle Missouri assemblages. The straight
and S-shaped rim forms do not take into consideration the
orientation of the rim to the plane of the lip (e.g., straight
versus outflared) but rather the nature of the curved-rim
surface from the vessel neck to the lip. Straight rims are
those that have surfaces that do not change direction or
have inflection points, as contrasted with S-shaped rims
having surfaces that change direction once and sometimes
twice, resembling the letter S on profile or cross-section
(Appendix B). Braced rim forms, used as the defining attribute of Stanley Braced Rim ware (Lehmer, 1951; 1954a;
Lehmer and Jones, 1968), is not recognized here but rather
included within the straight rim category because of inherent inconsistencies in its definition and difficulties in separating it from closely related types (Baerreis and Dallman,
1961: 439441). Rolled rims have no rim heights or very
low ones and have round and exterior thickened bulbs of
clay at their orifices. Bowl-rim or vessel forms are those
that have straight or curved vessel walls up to the lip but
lack a separate, definable neck or rim.
Rim sherds in each rim form are next divided by the
presence or absence of decoration, and whether decoration
is present on the lip/lip margins or exterior rim surfaces.
No further divisions are made in the rolled or bowl forms,
although some typological systems have made additional
distinctions. Shoulder decoration is not considered in this
system because of the fragmentary nature of the vessels and
because it has not been used in the classification systems.

Undecorated rim sherds are assigned to separate descriptive categories, whereas decoration technique and motif
further subdivide those with lip or exterior-rim decoration. Two exceptions to this procedure deal with S-shaped
rims from Extended Coalescent and Extended Middle
Missouri variant contexts. These rims lacking exterior-rim
decoration, with or without decorated lips, have usually
been classified into one, infrequently occurring type.
Rim sherds with straight rims and decorated only on
the lip, or on the interior and/or exterior lip margins, are
assigned to descriptive categories based upon decoration
technique and occasionally by motif as well. There are
three major decorative techniques (tool impressing, cord
impressing, and finger impressing), all illustrated in Appendix B. The differentiation between tool and finger impressing has, with a few exceptions (Brown 1974:1617;
Steinacher, 1990, table 14), not been made on rim sherds
from Initial Middle Missouri, Extended Middle Missouri,
and Initial Coalescent contexts. In these cases, tool- and
finger-impressed lips on straight rims constitute a single
descriptive category. Pinching, a special case of finger impressing, is consistently defined from Extended Middle
Missouri assemblages and is maintained in this study. Rim
sherds associated with Initial Middle Missouri components
having crosshatched and incised lips also are maintained
herein as a separate descriptive category. Tool impressions
generally consist of short and relatively narrow diagonal or
inward oriented incisions or punctates in a variety of motifs made with a bone, chipped stone, shell, or wood tool.
Finger impressions are relatively broad decorations applied
to the top of the lip or in an alternating pattern on the
interior and exterior lip margins, creating a wavy or pie
crust effect on the lip. Cord impressions consist of single
twisted cords applied a number of times in horizontal, vertical, or diagonal motifs on vessel lips. Cord impressions
also occur on the exterior rims of many of these straightrimmed vessels but have not been considered in typological
classifications. They are combined with rims with cord impressions only on the lip (or rim brace) into a single cordimpressed category. A few straight rim sherds recovered
from Extended Coalescent components have cord impressions only on the rim exteriors and either undecorated lips
or lips decorated with another technique. These rim sherds
also are combined with the rims having cord-impressed lips
because of the overall similarity of the types.
There are a relatively large number of descriptive rim
sherd categories within each rim form. These categories are
based solely upon exterior rim decoration technique and
motif. In cases in which this portion of the vessel is decorated, other areas, such as the lip, also may be decorated

number 47

but are ignored in the classification process, following the

procedures used in previous typologies. The over-riding
criterion in these cases is rim decoration. Straight and
S-shaped rims share many common exterior rim decoration techniques and motifs. For the purposes of the present analysis, rim sherds of the same rim form (straight or
S-shaped) having different decorative techniques are maintained as separate descriptive categories, although they may
or may not include rims with similar motifs. These inconsistencies or exceptions, like those previously discussed, are
the legacy of ceramic classification in the Middle Missouri
subarea. A number of the more common decorative motifs
included within the descriptive categories are illustrated in
Appendix B.
A variable used in comparisons among ceramic assemblages involves the use of rim sherds versus vessel counts.
Determining the minimum number of vessels within a particular provenience unit within a site, such as a house, is
crucial in the study of other problems, such as site formation processes or intrasite stylistic variations. It is impossible to determine the degree to which the assemblages
being studied were subjected to vessel reconstruction,
although it appears that only the most obvious matches
were considered during laboratory processing to be single
vessels (Steinacher, 1990:120121; C. Johnson and Toom,
1995:249). A number of ceramic assemblages (Falk and
Ahler, 1988:66; Steinacher, 1990:120121; Johnson and
Toom, 1995:249; Falk and Johnson, in prep.; Falk, Johnson, and Richtsmeier, in prep.) were reduced to smaller
vessel counts by systematic matching efforts of conjoined
and nonconjoined rim sherds. A comparison of type percentages from the large Medicine Crow site (39BF2) assemblage before and after the matching process indicates
that there is little difference between the two data sets.
It might be anticipated that the smaller a particular assemblage, the greater the differences in type or descriptive
category percentages between matched and unmatched
collections. If this factor is combined with the probable,
but unknown, bias in field selection techniques discussed
below, assemblage size must be considered in the ordination process.
Determining the minimum number of vessels at a
particular site is a particularly crucial problem when the
assemblage consists of highly fragmented rim sherds that
are decorated around the vessel circumference by regular
recurring motif segments. For example, Great Oasis assemblages have relatively large quantities of rim sherds
with horizontally incised or trailed lines encircling the entire vessel upon which are imposed diagonal lines, forming various triangular motifs at regular intervals. Many

47

rim segments that are classified as horizontally incised in

this study are probably from areas between these diagonal motifs. The result is to artificially inflate the number
of rim sherds assigned to the horizontally incised descriptive category in highly fragmented assemblages, such as
the Heath site (39LN15). Another of the many examples
involves Post-Contact Coalescent assemblages containing
rim sherds decorated only with finger-impressed (pinched)
lips. These broad and sometimes shallow impressions often
occur at fairly large intervals (48 centimeters). This results
in the classification of small rim fragments from areas between these impressions into an undecorated category. The
author cannot recall any assemblages with a particularly
high number of small rim fragments. Because screens were
generally not used during excavations (see the discussion
below), only the larger rim sherds were recovered.
These two examples illustrate the problems in using
ceramic assemblages recovered using a variety of field
techniques. In the current report, it is assumed that the effects of unequal fragmentation are random and balanced
out for the vast majority of the assemblages. The definition of the descriptive categories also has tried to minimize
these fragmentation effects. For example, Post-Contact
Coalescent assemblages have cord-impressed S-rims with
a wide variety of motifs. All of these were combined under
a single descriptive category, despite earlier attempts to
subdivide them (Hurt, 1957:3644).
Another factor that may have an effect on the vessel
versus rim sherd counts is vessel size. Larger vessels generally have larger orifice circumferences, although this relationship has not been systematically studied for the entire
range of variation of constricted-mouth, globular jars most
commonly found in Plains Village sites in the Middle Missouri subarea. A study by Rogers and Brewster (1990) of
Post-Contact period pots associated with Arikara villages
demonstrated a positive curvilinear relationship between
orifice diameter and volume. Larger vessels, therefore, are
probably more likely to break up into a larger number of
rim fragments, with all other factors, such as rim thickness,
vessel use, and post-depositional factors, being equal. Vessel size and breakage rates may tend to cancel one another,
with larger, thicker vessels less likely to break into more
pieces after they are discarded and enter the archeological
context than smaller, thinner ones.
The way vessels are used also is related to their breakage rates. A number of ethnoarcheological studies have
concluded that large storage vessels are broken less often
than those used for cooking or other purposes (see chapter
3). If there is another relationship between vessel size and
the decorations applied to the rims, differential breakage

48

smithsonian contributions to anthropology

rates and the corresponding archeological assemblages

might be very different than an in use village assemblage. The relative frequencies of vessels of particular
styles or types used at any particular time might be very
different from the broken vessels left by the same village
group in even relatively short periods of time, perhaps on
the order of 10 years. In an ideal world, all of the nonstylistic related factors, such as vessel size (as measured
by orifice diameter or rim thickness), might be controlled
in comparisons of style from one village to the next.
Despite the fact that such an analysis is beyond the
scope of the present study, data relating to variation
in orifice diameter by the descriptive categories used in

this study was gathered for a number of sites, presented

in Table 4. This means that there is some minor variation, not only among sites but also between descriptive
rim sherd categories. In general, S-shaped rims from
Lower Grand, Walth Bay, and Larson are larger than
their straight-rim counterparts, whereas tool-impressed
straight rims are usually larger than the more highly decorated, cord-impressed or incised straight rims. Several
reasons for the small size of cord-impressed, straightrimmed vessels may relate to their use. These vessels have
a higher incidence of handles, making them more suitable
for carrying and suspending. These activities may require
small pots. In addition, some of these vessels may be in-

Table 4. Mean orifice diameters (centimeters) by descriptive rim sherd category for six Plains Village components (sample size in parentheses). (IMM =Initial Middle Missouri component, EMM = Extended Middle Missouri component.)

Lower
Walth
Descriptive rim sherd Grand Bay
Larson

Medicine
Cattle Oiler
Crow IMM EMM

Coalescent Tradition
S-shaped/Cord Impressed Rim
S-shaped/Horizontal-Diagonal Rim
S-shaped/Tool-Finger Impressed Rim
S-shaped/Undecorated
S-shaped/All Categories
Subtotal S-shaped rims
Straight/Diagonal Incised Rim
Straight/Horizontal Incised Rim
Straight/Cord Impressed Lip
Straight/Tool Impressed Lip
Straight/Finger Impressed Lip
Straight/Undecorated
Subtotal Straight rims
Total all rims

18.0(37)
18.0(123)
19.0(1)
17.4(7)

18.0(168)

14.5(68)
13.2(13)
16.0(48)
21.0(1)
16.2(14)
15.1(144)
16.7(312)

16.3(15)
17.3(120)
13.8(14)
16.8(4)

16.9(153)

14.2(78)
10.8(8)
15.5(73)

11.8(19)
14.3(178)
15.5(331)

16.9(72)
15.9(56)

16.4(7)

16.5(135)

17.0(32)
14.2(586)
16.7(289)
17.1(737)
16.7(167)
16.1(1811)
16.1(1946)

15.6(14)
15.6(14)
10.1(1)
12.2(4)
13.3(39)
14.7(397)
18.8(5)
12.5(24)
14.5(470)
14.5(484)

Middle Missouri Tradition

S-shaped/Horizontal Cord Impressed Rim
S-shaped/Triangular Cord Impressed Rim
S-shaped/Horizontal Incised Rim
S-shaped/Triangular Incised Rim
S-shaped/Cross Hatch Incised Rim
S-shaped/Undecorated Rim
Subtotal S-shaped rims
Straight/Tool-Finger Impressed Lip
Straight/Cross-Hatch Incised Lip
Straight/Cord Impressed Lip
Straight/Undecorated
Subtotal straight rims
Rolled Rim
Total all rims

17.2(29)
16.0(16)
18.9(8)
18.0(8)
25.5(2)
11.0(1)
17.4(64)
19.3(13)
14.6(13)
12.0(1)
18.5(36)
17.8(63)
14.0(4)
17.5(131)

10.1(1)

10.1(1)
19.7(12)

17.8(12)
18.8(24)

18.4(25)

number 47

tended for burial, as it is this authors impression that

the majority of vessels that accompany burials during the
protohistoric period are straight rimmed and cord impressed. Because of lower sample sizes, the intertype variation in Table 4 is less conclusive among the two Middle
Missouri components at Cattle Oiler, although these pots
are larger than their Coalescent counterparts. Variation
in size also is apparent among the four Coalescent villages of Lower Grand, Walth Bay, Larson, and Medicine
Crow. The Post-Contact Coalescent assemblage from
H.P. Thomas (39ST12) has a comparable overall orifice
diameter of 15.8 centimeters (N = 174). A more striking
difference in inferred vessel size is apparent when several Extended and Terminal Middle Missouri and Heart
River phase villages are compared with those above. Orifice diameters from these former villages include Bendish
(32MO11) at 25.8 centimeters (N = 28), Huff at 19.1
centimeters (N = 41), Nailati phase at 22.0 centimeters
(N = 184), and Heart River phase at 21.7 centimeters
(N = 244) (Wood, 1967:6469; Thiessen, 1976, table 19;
C. Johnson, 1983, table 9.13). The greater sizes of these
vessels compared with their Coalescent counterparts may
reflect household size or simply the degree of rim flare.
It is unclear at this time what the role that overall vessel
shape plays in these calculations and if the ratio of orifice
and maximum vessel diameters differs between these sites
(i.e., wide- versus narrow-mouthed jars). Only examinations of complete or nearly complete vessels (i.e., those
for which maximum vessel diameters are known) will resolve this issue.

Radiocarbon Samples
The selection of samples to be submitted for radiocarbon dating for this study was determined by a number
of explicit criteria that maximized the ability to assign
absolute time scales to the ordering of components derived from the ceramic ordinations. The selection process
is detailed in chapter 5. The intent was to avoid problems
of cultural association, laboratory procedures, and single
dates in the selection process (Thomas Thiessen, pers.
comm., 1992; Toom, 1992a:121122). It is desirable to
obtain many samples of short-lived botanical remains,
such as corn, squash, seeds, and ceramic vessel residues,
so as to minimize the dating of aged samples, and also to
allow for examination of other attributes of these samples
(see chapter 5). First, a priority was placed on samples
from components that were suspected of falling at either
end of the temporal range within each variant and those

49

located at the maximum geographic limits of each taxonomic unit. It was the intent to date those villages in each
variant that were suspected of falling at the extreme temporal and geographic limits of these taxonomic units. Ideally, this would allow for the dating of both ends of each
regional variant and would tie these into the ceramic ordinations of components so that a relatively accurate temporal sequence of a much larger number of villages could
be established. As a rough guide, a list of components
assigned to each variant by region (Table 5) was compiled
prior to the radiocarbon sample selection process on the
basis of previous ceramic ordinations and existing radiocarbon dates.
Second, archeological context is carefully considered
in the sample selection process because many villages
have long occupational sequences, some being inhabited
by Native American village groups of different cultural
traditions. To be able to relate the results of the radiocarbon dating to the ceramic sequences requires an ability to associate a particular dated sample with a specific
ceramic component assemblage recovered from each site.
This problem has sometimes been overlooked in past dating efforts (Thomas Thiessen, pers. comm., 1992; Toom,
1992a:121122). The sample-selection process focuses on
those sites that have a single component. When this is not
possible, only samples from contexts that are assigned to
a specific component are chosen for dating.
Finally, most samples are selected from components
that could be included in the ceramic ordinations. In addition, samples from components that have relatively large
ceramic assemblages are chosen instead of those from
smaller assemblages. Furthermore, sites that have published or unpublished reports are generally favored instead
of unreported ones. This is important because understanding the context of each dated sample is made clearer when
a formal site report exists. These three criteria for sample
selection were compromised once an examination of available short-lived botanical and ceramic vessel residue specimens proceeded. Some of the ideal village components
could not be dated or subjected to multiple dates because
datable material was either absent or of insufficient quantity (e.g., Arzberger, Lynch, Black Widow Ridge). At sites
with multiple prehistoric and post-contact occupations,
most of the botanical remains are associated with the later
component. These late villages cannot be reliably dated
(i.e., Cheyenne River, Dodd sites). Some multicomponent
sites are so badly mixed or poorly understood so as to
preclude associating some datable samples with one component or another without an intensive reanalysis of each
one (e.g., Crow Creek).

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smithsonian contributions to anthropology

Table 5. List of Plains Village tradition components with a potential for radiocarbon dating listed by region, variant, and estimated
date based on existing radiocarbon dates and ceramic seriation.
Extended Middle
Initial Middle Missouri
Missouri Initial Coalescent Extended Coalescent
Big Bend Region

Early Unknown Time Unknown Time
Early
Sommers (ST56)*
Cattle Oiler (ST224)
Medicine Creek (LM2)
Bowers LaRoche (ST232)*
Akichita (BF221) Useful Heart (LM6) Overs LaRoche M/E (ST9)
Cattle Oiler E/M (ST224) Standing Bull (HU214)

Middle
Middle
Middle
King (LM55)
Lynch M/L (25BD1)
Redbird II (25HT2)
Chapelle Creek C&D (HU60)
Crow Creek (BF11) HU15/HU241/HU223
Langdeau (LM209)*

Late
Late
Late
Late
Dinehart (LM33)
Durkin (ST238) Arzberger (HU6)* Spain (LM301)
Jandreau E/L (LM225) Stricker B (LM1)
Jiggs Thompson (LM208)*
McClure (HU7)
Pretty Head L/M (LM232) Scalp Creek (GR1)
Crow Creek M/L (BF11)
39BR201
HU204/LM47/LM201/LM31
Bad-Cheyenne Region

Early
Early
Early
Breeden A (ST16)*
Cheyenne River (ST1) No Heart Creek (AR2)
Dodd E/L (ST30) Thomas Riggs L/E (HU1)
Black Widow (ST3)

Cheyenne River (ST1)
SL24/SL8/SL7/ST10

Middle
Sully (SL4)
SL23

Late
Late

McKensey (AR201)* Sully (SL4)
Indian Creek (ST15) Gettysburg (PO209)
ST45/SL2
Unknown

Black Widow Ridge (ST203)
Grand-Moreau Region

Early
Early
Travis I (CO213)
Lower Grand (CO14)

Potts (CO19)

Molstad M/E (DW234)

DW230/DW217/DW254
Unknown Time

Calamity Village (DW231)

Middle

Walth Bay (WW203)*

WW10/WW302

Late
Hosterman (PO7)

WW7/WW300/WW301
Cannonball Region

Early
Helb (CA208)*

Jake White Bull (CO6)*

Paul Brave E/M (SI4)

Middle

Bendish (MO2)*
Havens (EM1)*

Ben Standing Soldier L/M (SI7)

Middle
Demery (CO1)*

number 47

51

South Cannonball (SI19)*

Fire Heart Creek (SI2)*
Tony Glas (EM3)

Late

(Terminal

Middle Missouri)
Huff (MO11)*
Shermer (EM10)
* Denotes agreement of 14C and ceramic seriation dates.
E/M, M/L, E/L, M/E, L/M, L/E denote disagreement between 14C and seriation dates. First letter designates radiocarbon date, last letter seriation date.
E = Early, M = Middle, L = Late.
Components are listed by group according to priority. The ones at the top of each group have the largest sample sizes, are single component sites and/or
have been reported.
The following sites, in the Knife-Heart and Garrison regions, are not included in this list: closely related Lower Loup sites in Nebraska; Over focus sites
in southeastern South Dakota; Mill Creek sites in northwestern Iowa; the Cambria phase sites in southwestern Minnesota;, Great Oasis sites in southwestern Minnesota, northwestern Iowa, and northeastern Nebraska; and select Central Plains tradition sites in Nebraska. Sites separated by slashes (/)
contain small ceramic samples.

Field Sampling Strategies

Because most of the ceramic assemblages and datable material employed in this study were collected during
the 1950s and 1960s, a brief discussion of field collecting
strategies is in order. The major focus of most of the past
research in the Middle Missouri subarea was on developing culture-historical chronologies and taxonomies (Wood,
1969). Ceramic variation and differences in house form
were identified early on as key components in these efforts
during the salvage period in Middle Missouri archeology (see Lehmer, 1954a:118159). The work of Donald
Lehmer and other pioneering archeologists, such as Carlyle Smith and Wesley Hurt, emphasized the primacy of
ceramic and architectural variability instead of other data
in their culture-historical reconstructions, and shaped the
way archeologists excavated and interpreted sites for the
next generation. At the time, this perspective appeared to
answer all the relevant questions of the currently accepted
theoretical framework. The emphasis on architecture resulted in the excavation of houses, with little or no work
accomplished in other site areas. This point is particularly
important for the present study, because a number of extramural contexts, such as midden deposits, can provide useful stratigraphic information crucial in the study of ceramic
change without many of the post-depositional disturbances
associated with activities, such as house construction on
top of older cultural deposits. The utility of a small number of test excavations strategically placed within stratified
deposits to develop site chronologies is demonstrated by
work at the Knife River Indian Villages National Historic
Site (Ahler, 1993c:7376).

The emphasis on architecture and ceramics meant that

screening of site matrix was not particularly important in
the recovery of the data in question, especially considering
the voluminous amounts of large pieces of pottery recovered at Plains Village sites. Excavation techniques involved
shovel skimming of general site matrix and troweling features. A popularized version of these techniques appeared
in Deetz (1971:57) and was evaluated by Ahler, Falk et
al. (1995:3033). Certainly, the burden of salvaging information from hundreds of sites containing large quantities
of cultural materials with limited funding led to excavation techniques that would generally not be used today
or in areas at the time when cultural materials were not
so abundant (see Lehmer, 1971:14). There are only a few
instances known to the author in which screens were employed (Kivett and Jensen, 1976:20; Owsley et al., 1977,
fig. 1; Ahler, Falk et al., 1995:30), and these occurred in
unique situations. The result of these field techniques was
that large quantities of small chipped stone, ceramic, and
bone artifacts were not recovered, in addition to botanical remains, trade artifacts, and unmodified vertebrate remains. Shortly after the Interagency Archeological Salvage
Program was terminated in 1969, systematic screening was
added to the repertoire of field recovery techniques in the
Middle Missouri (Lehmer et al., 1978:149; Falk and Ahler,
1988:26; Ahler et al., 1991:108). In those instances in which
1/4 inch hardware cloth and 1/16 inch window screen was
used, enormous and sometimes overwhelming quantities of
cultural material were recovered, creating their own massive problems of sorting, processing, and data recordation.
Occasionally, even small seeds were recovered using these
techniques (Haberman, 1984:273). These changes in field

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smithsonian contributions to anthropology

procedures were designed to answer questions that went be

yond the traditional concerns of tribal identity, taxonomic
assignment, and cultural chronology, focusing on new ap
proaches to describing and analyzing cultural materials.
The Walth Bay (39WW203), Lower Grand (39CO14),
and Helb (39CA208) sites served as a springboard for examining lithic raw material procurement (Ahler, 1977b), a
systematic approach to stone tool function (Ahler, 1975b),
and the use of unmodified vertebrate fauna to study climatic change and subsistence-settlement patterns (Falk,
1977; Semken and Falk, 1987, 1991).
At this time, it is impossible to determine how these
varying field methods affected the ceramic data used in
this study. There is no question that the lack of systematic
screening resulted in the loss of many, if not most, artifacts from the sites. A comparison of the estimated yield of
vessels greater than 0.5 inch recovered from the screened
matrix of house 12 excavated during 1969 at the Lower
Grand site, 0.55 vessels/square foot (2,273 vessels/4,150
square feet excavated), and all vessels from a typical unscreened SI-RBS excavation at the Medicine Crow site,
0.20 vessels/square foot (2,306 vessels/11,351 square feet
excavated from 14 houses), indicates a considerable loss
of data. From these figures, the average yield of ceramic
vessels/house at Medicine Crow is 165, a figure much lower
than the 2273 vessels recovered from house 12 at Lower
Grand. It seems that on an intuitive level there would not
be a systematic field selection of rim sherds assigned to
a particular type or descriptive category instead of other
ones, particularly when large assemblages are considered.
Field selection might result in a bias in favor of one or
more ceramic categories in smaller assemblages. This situ-

ation also might apply to surface or beach samples, although this does not appear to be the case with Marion
Travis collections (Ahler, 1977a:58, 62).
A comparison of smaller items, such as chipped-stone
arrow points, could not be performed on these same sites,
although data is available from the two separate excavation programs at the Lower Grand site (Falk and Ahler,
1988, table F.1). These are the 19621964 excavations
by Alfred Bowers and the 1969 excavations by the University of Missouri. The earlier excavations appear to be
unscreened, whereas artifacts from the latter fieldwork
were recovered, using 0.25 inch and finer hardware cloth.
A total of 228 arrow points were recovered from Bowers excavations, consisting of 3.5 houses and another area
equivalent in size to a house. This contrasts to a total of
1260 complete or partial points recovered from house 12
in 1969 (Stanley Ahler, pers. comm., 1993). Although precise figures cannot be calculated, it is apparent that smaller
artifacts, such as projectile points, are under-represented
to an even greater degree than ceramics, perhaps by a
magnitude of about 20 times. Even smaller artifacts, such
as trade materials (glass beads, small pieces of brass, copper, or iron) found in protohistoric contexts, are probably
even more underrepresented in extant collections because
of field sampling methods. A casual inspection of the number of glass beads recovered from the recent excavations
at the Knife River Indian Villages National Historic Site
(Ahler and Dreybred, 1993) and any Post-Contact period
assemblage from non-screened excavations anywhere in
the subarea illustrates this point. Finally, unscreened excavations tended to be highly selective in favor of patterned
tools (C. Johnson, 1995: 267).

Radiocarbon Dating Results

Stanley A. Ahler, Craig M. Johnson,
Herbert Haas, and Georges Bonani

Review of Criteria for Sample Selection

As a prelude to the presentation of the radiocarbon dating program results, it is worthwhile to briefly review the criteria already discussed in chapter
4 that guided site and sample selection. Because funds for radiocarbon analysis conducted as part of this program were limited, a strategic sampling and
site selection process was followed in which some sites and components were
given priority over others. Several