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

Figure 3.1. Village sites excavated in Somerset County between 1934 and 1940.
for most of the Late Prehistoric period, surrounded an
open plaza area. Villages were frequently palisaded
during most of the Monongahela sequence (Butler
1939; Cresson 1942; George 1974; Hart 1993; Johnson
1981; Johnson et al. 1989; Mayer-Oakes 1955).
While a large number of Monongahela village sites
have been excavated over the last six decades, the
archaeologically recovered aspects of most village layouts
have not been examined within a theoretical
framework that relies on anthropological and ethnoarchaeological
studies of community organization. An
understanding of community organization in the
Upper Ohio Valley has been further hampered by
widespread use of the overly broad Monongahela culture
taxon. The Monongahela culture taxon subsumes
a considerable amount of variation in the material
expressions of cultural practices (Hart 1993; McHugh
1984; Raber et al. 1989:39), which differed over time
and space. In particular, the use of the Monongahela
culture taxon has led to an overgeneralization of similarities
and a suppression of differences within and
between village sites. Complex social relationships too
often are reduced to a level of abstraction that has little
explanatory value or are not considered at all. Further,
the “typical” Monongahela village site described in the
literature is actually a widespread, almost archetypal
settlement form documented archaeologically and ethnohistorically
throughout the Eastern Woodlands from
44 Means