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NUMBER 30 181
a long line along the ridge. Even when they are located on
the broad flat second bottom of the Missouri, the long line
is retained.
The theme of lodge placement and topography
was reiterated by Cooper and Bell (1936:20-21)
in their description of the Weisman site.
Of the thirty-one house depressions located, all but two
are scattered along a single ridge for a distance of approximately
1,700 feet [518 m], in three fairly distinct groups ....
While there seems to be some tendency toward a linear
arrangment of the houses, this is probably largely dictated
by the characteristics of the terrain upon which they are
constructed.
This brief summary of comments by archeologists
investigating various localities of the Central
Plains tradition suggests that the topography of
the general area selected for settlement strongly
influenced the placement of the lodges. With
these observations from other localities of the
Central Plains as a baseline for comparison, a
brief review of the observations of the investigators
in the Glenwood locality follows.
Settlement Variations in Glenwood
The surveys of both Proudfit (1881b) and Orr
(1963) located the majority of the lodge depressions
along the ridge tops overlooking the Pony
Creek valley. Only two lodges were located north
of Glenwood on Keg Creek by Proudfit (1881b)
and Dean (1883), and the lodges located east of
Keg Creek were confined mainly to the Horse
Creek area. Based on his surveys and excavations,
Proudfit (1881b:273) concluded: "A single lodge
is the exception—a group the rule." Substantial
development of the Mills County road system,
residential and commercial construction, and
continued farming had undoubtedly obliterated
many of the house depressions in the 58-year
interval between Proudfit's and Orr's surveys. As
early as 1880, Dean (1883) noted that the depressions
marking the Allis Village were becoming
difficult to see because of filling associated with
farming. To partially offset this problem, Orr
searched out older residents of the area who
provided locational information for a number of
lodges that were no longer visible on the surface.
After his 1938 field season, Orr (1963, 10:5) challenged
the settlement pattern reported by Proudfit.
Our survey finds the opposite of this is true. Forty-seven of
the sixty-eight located by us, separated by distances of over
half a mile, must certainly be considered singles.
Doubtless a number of sites have quite certainly been
obliterated by cultivation or have left no traces of their
location, but just as certainly by no means enough to make
every single location by us one of a group the others of which
have disappeared.
The pattern of lodge distribution was summarized
by Orr (1963, 10:4).
The earth lodge[s] . . . are found chiefly on the higher and
wider parts of the crests of the divides, at the general upland
level, and with two exceptions [probably the Allis village
and house site 36], somewhat back—one-fourth mile—from
the edge of the bluff line facing the river bottoms.
Of the sixty-eight sites . . . fifty-five are so situated, seven
are on small level benches or terraces on sloping points of
spurs of the upland, and the remaining six at or about where
the slope of the bluff and the bottom land meets.
At no place are they in close enough proximity or in
numbers sufficient, to be considered a village.
An opportunity to test for lodges and associated
external features in a transect through both the
Pony and Keg Creek watersheds was provided by
the extensive right-of-way requirements for the
Highway 34 relocation project. All 17 lodges
excavated within the right-of-way were located
with power equipment. Extensive testing between
the lodges and monitoring during contruction
failed to locate additional "buried" lodges, and
only one external cache was found in association
with a lodge (Hotopp, 1978a: 76-83). Based on
the work conducted in the Glenwood locality by
Anderson (1961), Brown (1967), and Hotopp
(1978a), the settlement patterns identified by
both Proudfit (1881b) (consisting of groups of
lodges) and Orr (1963) (identified by isolated
lodges) have been supported. By far, the most
common settlement patterns is that of houses
located in a linear arrangement along a ridge
spur or at the footslope contact, a pattern indistinguishable
from that reported by Cooper and
Bell (1936), Sterns (1915), and Wedel (1961).