Plains Indian Studies - Smithsonian Institution Libraries

180 SMITHSONIAN CONTRIBUTIONS TO ANTHROPOLOGY
ated with plowing finally exposed the hearth. No
depressions were located by Anderson for the
three lodges that he excavated in 1969-1970, or
by the author for the fourteen complete and
partial houses excavated within the Highway 34
corridor during 1971-1973. The destruction of
surficial evidence of lodges is frustrating for two
reasons: (1) the requirements of settlement pattern
studies are totally dependent on an accurate
knowledge of lodge placement and distribution,
and (2) only large-scale construction projects permit
the extensive testing required to locate lodges
and determine variations in settlement distribution.
The second problem involves the substantial
body of excavated material from Central Plains
sites that is either not analyzed or only reported
in summary fashion. Information from these collections
is urgently needed to fill the gaps in our
understanding of the culture history of the Central
Plains tradition. Many of the undescribed
collections represent substantial excavations from
particular localities. As Wedel (1959:558) observed:
Much more comprehensive in scope were the still unreported
operations of the Nebraska State Historical Society and
Works Progress Administration in 1939 at Site 25HW6 on
Davis Creek, in Howard County, Nebr., where 21 house sites
were opened; and the 1948 investigations of the River Basin
Surveys (Kivett, 1949) and of the Nebraska Historical Society
(Wedel, 1953b [sic], pp. 12-18, 41-42) at Medicine Creek
reservoir area.
Almost 20 years later, in an obituary for his friend
and co-worker, George Metcalf, Wedel (1978:5)
stated that
he [Metcalf] was engaged before and after his retirement in
the analysis and writing up of great masses of unpublished
WPA materials from Davis Creek and was optimistically
planning research on the extensive River Basin Surveys
collections from Medicine Creek. These two Nebraska projects
would have provided many times more systematically
gathered information than is currently available on the
Upper Republican or, indeed, on any taxonomically sanctified
Central Plains Tradition complex west of the Missouri.
Central Plains collections, such as these, are located
in every state in the Plains area. McKusick
(1964:175) points out that the collections from
Orr's 1938 excavations in Iowa were virtually
ignored until Anderson's 1961 study. The continuing
problem of backlogged collections contributes
to the incomplete nature of the data base, upon
which settlement pattern studies are dependent.
The generally accepted view of the settlement
patterns for the Central Plains tradition was summarized
by Wedel (1961:95):
Villages show little or no evidence of planning. In the
Nebraska culture they consisted of house units strung irregularly
along the tops of ridges and bluffs; others may have
been scattered on lower terraces, where their arrangement is
now obscured by slope wash or other factors. Upper Republican
villages, like many of those in the Lower Kansas River
drainage, were generally on creek terraces, where the topography
permitted more latitude in the disposition of the
lodges. Typically, they consisted of single houses, randomly
scattered at intervals of a few yards to several hundred feet,
or of clusters of two to four lodges, similarly separated from
other small clusters or single units.
Wedel's summary view clearly recognizes that the
topographic setting provides an important constraint
on the placement of lodges within the
Nebraska phase. The rugged, dissected character
of the loess bluffs adjacent to the Missouri trench
and their relationships to lodge placement has
been considered by several researchers working in
this area.
Summarizing his excavations in eastern Nebraska,
an area very similar to Glenwood, Sterns
(1915:191-203) observed the following:
The depressions or ''circles" are usually located on the
steep loess ridges along the river courses. One important
group is located on the second bottom of the Missouri....
The sites on the ridges are not always on the highest part,
but often on a point, away from which the hill falls off
rapidly in three directions. Wherever possible, the "circles"
occur in little knolls from which water will drain in every
direction.
These sites are usually near the flood plain of the Missouri,
being often on the first or second bluffs of that river. The
great majority of them are included in a strip a mile wide
along the bottom of the river.
. . . Altho the "circles" are the remains of ancient lodge
sites, they are not* arranged in village groups. Some are
isolated as much as a half a mile from any other site. When
they are near each other, they are often merely spread out in
The word "not" is handwritten in the dissertation.