Northeast Subsistence-Settlement Change: A.D. 700 –1300

CHAPTER 3
“ . . . to reconstruct these houses of men
who lived in a stone age”:
MODELING VILLAGE COMMUNITY ORGANIZATION USING DATA
FROM THE SOMERSET COUNTY RELIEF EXCAVATIONS
Bernard K. Means
INTRODUCTION
In this chapter, I analyze data obtained through
archaeological investigations conducted in Somerset
County, Pennsylvania, between 1934 and 1940 (Figure
3.1) (Augustine 1938a, b, c, d, 1940; Butler 1939;
Cresson 1942). The majority of Somerset County is
located in the Allegheny Mountains region of the lower
Upper Ohio Valley River basin. These investigations
were funded by the federal government to provide
work for men who found themselves otherwise unemployable
during the Great Depression (A.D. 1929 to
1941) (Means 1998a, 2000a). While a Pennsylvania
Historical and Museum Commission Scholar in
Residence during September 1999, I completed an
inventory of all holdings related to the Somerset
County Relief Excavations that are present in the
archaeological collections of The State Museum of
Pennsylvania, and I examined associated documents
maintained by the Pennsylvania State Archives (Means
1999a). The main goal of this project was not to assemble
esoteric facts related to an obscure chapter in the
history of North American archaeology. Rather, this
project was designed to demonstrate that data collected
by the relief excavations are critical for addressing
research issues raised by a modern generation of
anthropological archaeologists.
The relief excavations made several lasting contributions
to the archaeology of the Upper Ohio Valley.
Butler (1937, 1939) used relief excavation data to create
the archaeological construct of the Monongahela culture
taxon that is still widely used today, with minimal
modifications. At its most basic level, the Monongahela
culture taxon refers to the inhabitants of southwestern
Pennsylvania and portions of adjacent states during
the Late Prehistoric period (A.D. 900 - ca. 1600s), who
practiced a related set of adaptational approaches to
the local environment, including intensive maize horticulture,
and who resided at least seasonally in circular
to oval palisaded villages (George 1983a; Hart 1993;
Johnson et al. 1989). There is a growing recognition
among some scholars that the Monongahela culture is
an artificial construct that likely bears little relation to
an actual aboriginal group (Hart 1992, 1993; Hart and
Nass 2002; McHugh 1984; Means 1999b; Raber et al.
1989), though this is not a universally accepted position
(George 1980, 1994; Johnson 1993; Johnson et al. 1989:3).
A key component of the Monongahela culture taxon,
the basic description of a “typical” Monongahela village
site, was initially developed during the relief excavations.
While providing employment was a major
goal of the relief excavations, the project supervisor,
Edgar Augustine, focused his efforts “. . . to reconstruct
these houses of men who lived in a stone age” (Figure
3.2) (Augustine 1935). Augustine even attempted this
task literally at the Fort Hill site, where some dwellings
were reconstructed using a framework of poles placed
in postholes uncovered by the archaeological investigations
(Means 1998a:44). By the time the relief excavations
ended in 1940, the basic elements found in the
description of a “typical” Monongahela village site as
it existed during much of the Late Prehistoric period
had been excavated. An additional six decades of
archaeological investigations have added a few additional
elements to the basic definition of a
Monongahela village site, which consisted of a circular
to oval occupation zone that contained activity areas,
dwellings, pits, burials, and other features, and which,
Northeast Subsistence-Settlement Change: A.D. 700–1300 by John P. Hart and Christina B. Rieth. New York State Museum
© 2002 by the University of the State of New York, The State Education Department, Albany, New York. All rights reserved.
Chapter 3 Modeling Village Community Organization Using Data From the Somerset County Relief Excavations 43