This paper considers possible social groups and interactions on the thirteenth through fifteenth century central Plains by examining patterns of ceramic rim face and upper body decoration. My analysis tabulates design motifs by site and/or locality, identifying a basic dichotomy between the northern / western area of the central Plains and the southern / eastern area, along with a third distinct pattern in the set of anomalously large sites on Ponca Creek in northeastern Nebraska. In the north and west, potters often used a diverse set of motifs on the faces of paneled rims and sometimes put Oneota designs on vessel upper bodies. In the south and east, they rarely decorated the face of any form of rim and sometimes put a pattern of alternating triangles filled with opposed diagonal lines on vessel upper bodies. This dichotomy maps onto a distinction between ossuary and cemetery burials and likely defines a social boundary between groups with long-standing interaction with different regions to the east of the Plains. The Ponca Creek data show a mixture of central Plains and Oneota styles along with hints of other regional patterns that may suggest the existence of a multi-ethnic community.

When they work, controlled experiments can efficiently and clearly reveal essential characteristics of the functions and performance of ancient hunting and fighting weapons. However, homogenous target media must be carefully validated to ensure that controlled tests capture the same variables that made weapons effective in their original application. Although homogenous flesh simulants have proven effective for studying firearms, the same simulants cannot be assumed to be effective when testing low-velocity cutting/piercing projectiles, which have significantly different performance characteristics than bullets. We build on past research showing that two flesh simulants that are commonly used by archaeologists, ballistics gelatin and pottery clay, fail to capture how atlatl darts and arrows perform when penetrating biological tissues. In accord with forensic research of knife-thrust attacks, natural and polymeric skin simulants may prove effective in future experiments, but this requires further research.

Abstract When they work, controlled experiments can efficiently and clearly reveal essential characteristics of the functions and performance of ancient hunting and fighting weapons. However, homogenous target media must be carefully validated to ensure that the same variables that made weapons effective in their original application are being captured in controlled tests. Although homogenous flesh simulants have proven effective for studying firearms, the same simulants cannot be assumed to be effective when testing low velocity piercing/cutting projectiles. In fact, we build on past research showing that two flesh simulants that are commonly used by archaeologists, ballistics gelatin and pottery clay, fail to capture how atlatl darts and arrows perform when penetrating living bodies. In accord with forensic research of knife stabbing attacks, polymeric skin simulants may prove effective in future experiments, but this requires further research.

This paper presents a series of new radiocarbon dates on the Lynch site (25BD1), an Initial Coalescent site in northeastern Nebraska, and takes a Bayesian approach to examining them in three contexts. First, we consider what they tell us about the chronology of occupation at the site itself. Second, we combine them with dates on other sites in the Ponca Creek drainage to consider the chronological pattern of horticultural settlement there. Finally, we compare the Ponca Creek dates to the radiocarbon chronologies for the Central Plains tradition and Central Plains Oneota. Our analysis indicates that people settled Lynch from east to west and abandoned it from west to east between roughly AD 1250 and 1350. At its maximum extent, farmers appear to have occupied the full 80 ha extent of the site. As farmers settled Lynch, closely related people settled upstream on Ponca Creek. People abandoned these communities shortly before they abandoned Lynch. Farmers settled on Ponca Creek as a whole shortly after the major expansion of Central Plains tradition (CPt) ways of life and the appearance of Central Plains Oneota towns and abandoned that area a generation or two before CPt communities disappeared. Central Plains Oneota communities persisted into the mid 1400s. The Lynch/Ponca Creek pattern is consistent with the movement of Central Plains populations into the southern portion of the Middle Missouri in the early 1300s.

I live in Longmont, Colorado, on the western edge of the Great Plains. Settlers from Chicago founded the modern city of Longmont in 1871 by the St. Vrain River (a generous term for a small watercourse), adjacent to the slightly older community of Burlington (Estes et al. 1971). Longmont has grown since then from a population of a couple of hundred to a community of nearly 100,000. My city’s many amenities include Sandstone Ranch, a park just east of town that includes athletic fields, a wildlife refuge, and an elegant late-19th-century home that a pioneer named Morse Coffin built at the base of a sandstone cliff overlooking the St. Vrain.

The century and a half from AD 1250 to AD 1400 saw massive shifts in the distributions of human populations on the Plains, the social groups that they lived in, and the interactions among these groups. These shifted again in the next 100 years, transforming the human landscape of the Plains in just a few generations. We see these changes more precisely in at least some areas because the radiocarbon calibration curve is smooth and straight for the 1400s (Figure 7.8). There seems especially to have been a major shift in settlement in the mid-1400s that corresponded with a dramatic drought (a “megadrought”) extending from the Dakotas into Texas (interestingly, tree-ring data suggest that the Canadian prairies were not affected by this drought, although the later 1400s were relatively dry there; Case and MacDonald 2003; Cook et al. 2007; Stahle et al. 2007). I consider this interval among farmers first and then turn to hunter-gatherers.

This article emerged as the human species collectively have been experiencing the worst global pandemic in a century. With a long view of the ecological, economic, social, and political factors that promote the emergence and spread of infectious disease, archaeologists are well positioned to examine the antecedents of the present crisis. In this article, we bring together a variety of perspectives on the issues surrounding the emergence, spread, and effects of disease in both the Americas and Afro-Eurasian contexts. Recognizing that human populations most severely impacted by COVID-19 are typically descendants of marginalized groups, we investigate pre- and postcontact disease vectors among Indigenous and Black communities in North America, outlining the systemic impacts of diseases and the conditions that exacerbate their spread. We look at how material culture both reflects and changes as a result of social transformations brought about by disease, the insights that paleopathology provides about the ancient human condition, and the impacts of ancient globalization on the spread of disease worldwide. By understanding the differential effects of past epidemics on diverse communities and contributing to more equitable sociopolitical agendas, archaeology can play a key role in helping to pursue a more just future.

Plains archaeologists have referred to a class of features they have labelled mortar holes at least since the 1940s. These features are typically postholes identified in locations in the floors of houses that seem unlikely to have supported the weight of the house’s roof. Instead, researchers suggest that these holes once held wooden mortars used to process maize and other materials. These references are uneven: essentially identical features are labelled pocket caches or simply marked as posts in many cases. This paper discusses archaeological features likely to have held mortars in light of the use of wooden mortars in recent times on the Plains, outlines patterns in the distribution of possible mortar holes on the Central Plains and Middle Missouri, and sketches some of the important topics they may help us to study. These include the possibility that they can help to identify broad differences in the general kinds of maize grown in different areas and that they document variation in the gendered use of space within the house in different parts of the Plains.

Dividing time into discrete chronological periods like those that organize the chapters here is a mixed blessing. On one hand, such divisions reflect real differences in the archaeological record, differences that tell us about important changes in the past. On the other, they often overemphasize those differences, as if massive changes occurred instantaneously. Looking for dividing lines teaches us to divide time into segments even though we know that it flowed continuously and it focuses our attention on archaeologically visible shifts, often blinding us to important patterns of continuity.