Horizon and Tradition in the Northern Plains

Abstract

Organization of the great mass of data accumulated during the salvage archaeology program in the Missouri River Basin poses a number of problems. One of the most fundamental is the choice of a satisfactory taxonomic system. The version of the Midwestern taxonomic system which has been used so far in the area has a number of shortcomings. In order to avoid some of them, data from the Missouri Valley in the Dakotas are organized here in terms of the Willey and Phillips system of "archaeological unit concepts." The classification which has emerged seems to have considerable merit; the application of the system itself to a particular archaeological situation has also suggested some modification of the categories which Willey and Phillips proposed.

Temporal changes in Arikara humeral and femoral cross-sectional geometry associated with horticultural intensification

“…Prehistorically and historically the Arikara resided in villages along the Missouri River in South Dakota, and are represented archaeologically by four variants of the Coalescent tradition: Initial (IC), Extended (EC), Post-contact (PCC) and Disorganized (DC) [26,31,38]. The chronology of the Coalescent period has been modified since its first inception [1,26,36], with archaeologists now confirming that the IC, a northern extension of the Central Plains tradition, dates from A.D. 1300 to 1600, the EC from A.D. 1500 to 1650, the PCC from A.D. 1650 to 1780, and the DC from A.D. 1780 to 1845 [26,31,45].…”

Research Traditions, Public Policy, and the Underdevelopment of Theory in Plains Archaeology: Tracing the Legacy of the Missouri Basin Project

“…More than 100 reservoirs of various sizes were slated for the Missouri River basin alone (Figure 1). Five massive dams were to be built on the Missouri River itself; the reservoirs behind them would inundate more than 950 kilometers of the valley in North and South Dakota, including nearly all of what archaeologists would come to call the Middle Missouri region or subarea (Lehmer 1971;Lehmer and Caldwell 1966). These projects threatened the region's most important historic and prehistoric sites.…”

“…This success led naturally and inevitably to a concentrated effort by Plains archaeologists to construct and refine local culture historical sequences. This led in turn to an implicit association between constellations of material culture traits and specific ethnic groups, despite the cautious approach to classification inherent in the Midwest Taxonomic Method, which was widely used at the time (Lehmer and Caldwell 1966).…”

The Chronological Position of the Cambered Jar at Cahokia and Its Implications

“…Knudson (1967: 278) feels that Cambria culture is basically Plains and belongs in the Middle Missouri tradition, being contemporaneous with Lehmer and Caldwell's Initial Middle Missouri horizon. That horizon may begin as early as A.D. 800 (Lehmer and Caldwell 1966). Henning (1967: 185) notes that Mill Creek dates range from ca.…”