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

Figure 3.12. Range of floor areas for dwellings at Fort Hill.
which accounts for a greater proportion than the combined
total dwelling floor areas. This space is created
because the palisade line deviates along its length in
its distance to the outer edge of the house ring. As
noted earlier, the palisade line was built largely along
the edge of the summit of Fort Hill, perhaps to give
the village a larger “apparent” size and deter potentially
hostile groups. However, the palisade was not
constructed solely following defensive guidelines,
since the eastern side of the palisade was not extended
along the narrow edge of the summit, but rather,
more closely paralleled the outer edge of the house
ring. Defensive considerations were, apparently, balanced
against the villager’s desire to adhere to the
geometric model(s) used to plan their settlement. It
should also be noted that, from a labor-management
perspective, a palisade that paralleled the house ring
was more efficient to construct than one that did not.
The remaining space at Fort Hill II was between
adjacent dwellings and again, dwelling spacing is
used as a proxy measure. Since the dwellings in Fort
Hill II were arrayed as a single row around the central
plaza, the distance between a dwelling and the two
dwellings on either side of it corresponded in most
cases to its first and second nearest neighbors. The
distance between a dwelling and its first “adjacent”
neighbor ranged from 0.7 meters to 5.2 meters, while
the distance to its second “adjacent” neighbor ranged
from 1.4 meters to 18.8 meters (Table 3.3). With two
exceptions, dwellings were usually greater than 1.5
meters from their nearest neighbor and not more than
3.1 meters from their second adjacent neighbor. The
first exception is the spacing between Houses 56 and
57, which were located 18.8 meters apart, on either
side of the entrance to the village component. The second
exception is between Houses 60 and 61, located in
the southeastern section of the village component,
which were 12.7 meters apart. These two gaps in the
house ring create a spatially discrete arc of dwellings,
or wedge, that might have represented a localized residential
corporate group, perhaps in the form of a lineage
segment or clan. Further analysis will be
required to evaluate whether there are any other less
obvious but still significant differences in spacing
between other dwellings that might have had some
social and/or economic significance.
62 Means