university alabama press circular villages of the monongahela tradition aug 2007

[...]... development of village settlements in the Northeast and beyond Like elsewhere, archaeologists in the Northeast are exploring the multiple pathways that were followed in the domestication of maize and the rise of nucleated villages (Hart and Means 2002) There is a tenuous understanding throughout the Northeast regarding the timing of the ¤rst appearance of nucleated villages in local developmental sequences... lack of understanding of the organizing principles that generated the layouts of their ring-shaped settlements Not knowing until recently the age of occupation for many Monongahela tradition village sites also curtailed efforts to determine whether there was a temporal shift in the nature of the organizing principles that operated at these sites To address these issues, two sets of models with archaeological... microcosm of the universe, rather than passively re®ecting its constituent social groups (Maybury-Lewis 1989a:11; Pearson and Richards 1994:12) The act of linking their settlement’s layout to their model of reality enhances the stability of the local group (Fletcher 1977:64) In other words, the inhabitants of ring-shaped settlements are cognizant on some level of the active role that material elements and their... of the Monongahela tradition to a speci¤c linguistic or tribal group known dimly from vague historical documents, simply possessing the historic identity of the Monongahela tradition would tell us little about how they organized themselves socially, politically, or economically earlier To accomplish this feat, archaeologists must turn to the material remnants of the Monongahela tradition, notably their... for the Allegheny Mountains region MAIZE, AGRICULTURE, AND VILLAGES IN THE NORTHEAST A few general comments on maize-oriented agricultural economies, their impact on social groups, and the potential connection to the rise of village settlements are warranted before further consideration of the Monongahela tradition Maize agriculture ¤gures prominently in some explanations of the rise and development of. .. Maximum geographic extent of the Monongahela tradition 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 The use of the Monongahela taxon has led to an overgeneralization of similarities and a suppression of differences within and between village sites Individual village sites are often characterized as... during the Late Prehistoric period is organized around a series of culture-historic taxa, many developed by the 1950s These taxa include not only the Monongahela culture taxon of the Upper Ohio Valley but also the Fort Ancient culture taxon of the 16 / Chapter 2 Middle Ohio Valley, the Clemson’s Island culture taxon located along the main, north, and west branches of the Susquehanna River, and the Montgomery... Chapter 2 because the adoption of maize agriculture is often viewed as the major catalyst leading to the rise of village settlements in the Northeast and elsewhere A heavy reliance on maize agriculture characterized the subsistence economy of many village communities in the Northeast during the Late Prehistoric period The issue of how effective culture-historic taxa are for some analyses of Late Prehistoric... circumstances Examination of the ¤nal hypothesis should enable a determination of whether larger village components were more recent and more structurally complex than smaller village components NATURE OF THE DATA The majority of excavated Monongahela tradition village sites—and many other village sites in the Eastern Woodlands for that matter—are not well suited to an examination of patterning at the community... similar reasons that the phrase Monongahela tradition is favored over the more valueladen Monongahela culture” or Monongahela taxon.” PHYSIOGRAPHY OF THE ALLEGHENY MOUNTAINS REGION Because all case studies considered in this work are from the Allegheny Mountains region, only the physiography of this region is considered here (Figure 4) Review of the Late Prehistoric Monongahela Tradition / 17 4 Select . Circular Villages of the Monongahela Tradition Circular Villages of the Monongahela Tradition BERNARD K. MEANS THE UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA PRESS Tuscaloosa Copyright © 2007 The University of Alabama. 189 FIGURES 1. Maximum extent of the Monongahela tradition 2 2. DeBry’s version of John White’s 1585 watercolor of the village of Pomeioc, North Carolina 4 3. Villages sites in Somerset County,. Map of Peck 2 117 24. Map of Clouse 122 25. Map of Hanna 123 26. Map of Fort Hill 125 27. Map of Gower 130 28. Map of Reckner 132 29. Map of Powell 1 134 30. Map of Powell 2 136 31. Map of Troutman