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Recent fieldwork has demonstrated the presence of several intrusive horticultural complexes in southern Manitoba during Late Prehistoric times. These groups probably first began entering the area circa 1000 B.P. and disappeared from the archaeological record some 600 years later—about 150 years prior to the entry of Europeans. An examination of the ceramics indicates that no single migration theory or simple diffusion of technology can account for these assemblages. The diversity of the wares, derived from identifiable antecedents elsewhere, indicates a complex mingling and syncretism of cultural elements drawn from widely separated sources resulting in some form of hybrid ethnicity. Subsequent work has indicated a localized dispersal of these unusual assemblages during the terminal Late Prehistoric period. The material assemblage of one such composite society is evident at the Lowton site which has provided the ceramic type collection for an initial definition of the Vickers Focus within the larger context of the Scattered Village Complex. The sheer abundance of cultural materials in the Lowton assemblage, when compared with other sites containing these ceramics, indicates that the Lowton site was the most important of the known sites for people belonging to this segment of the Scattered Village Complex and may have been a regional center for a coalescing polyethnic society.

The Vickers Focus people entered the parklands of Southwestern Manitoba sometime around AD 1400, settling in the Tiger Hills uplands. Their ceramics indicate that their original homelands were in south-central Minnesota and northern Iowa and that they maintained connections with the Middle Missouri area to the south. The reconstructed lifeways of the Vickers Focus people, while they were living in this area, indicate that a foraging/horticultural subsistence background influenced their selection of sites. Sometime before AD 1500 they shifted westward into the Lauder Sandhills area southeast of Oak Lake. In their new homeland there is no evidence that they continued to practice horticulture but rather they intensified their foraging activities. While their subsistence strategies appear to have been modified when they relocated themselves, a number of environmental and ecological commonalities link these areas. Both areas are characterized by warm soils, with an abundance of pothole water sources. Ecological complexity and resource richness characterize the local environments. In addition, there appears to have been an active desire to avoid locating their sites along major travel routes in the region. The ecological and environmental parameters of the areas they selected are explored in this paper.

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