People in a Sea of Grass: Archaeology's Changing Perspective on Indigenous Plains Communities

Great Plains archaeologists such as Waldo Wedel and William Duncan Strong made foundational contributions to American archaeology, enabling new discoveries, insights, and interpretations. This volume explores how twenty-first-century archaeologists have built upon, remodeled, and sometimes rejected these earlier scholars' inferences with updated overviews and analyses. Contributors highlight how Indigenous Plains groups participated in large-scale social networks and discuss cultural transformation, focusing on key demographic, economic, social, and ceremonial factors associated with change, including colonization and integration into transatlantic societies.

Format: Hardback
Length: 224 pages
Publication date: 30 June 2022
Publisher: University of Utah Press,U.S.

Ninety years ago, a group of remarkable Great Plains archaeologists, including Waldo Wedel and William Duncan Strong, made groundbreaking contributions to American archaeology, opening up new avenues for discovery, insights, and interpretations. This comprehensive volume delves into how twenty-first-century archaeologists have built upon, reimagined, and occasionally challenged the interpretations of these pioneering scholars, offering updated overviews and analyses. Contributors shed light on how Indigenous Plains groups actively participated in vast social networks that spanned across North America over the last 2,000 years, facilitating the exchange of ideas, symbols, artifacts, and people. They also explore the profound cultural transformations that occurred, focusing on key demographic, economic, social, and ceremonial factors associated with change, including colonization and integration into the social and political economies of transatlantic societies. The book covers a wide range of cultural traditions, including Woodland-era Kansas City Hopewell, late prehistoric Central Plains tradition, ancestral and early historic Wichita, Pawnee, and Arikara, Kanza, Plains Apache, and Puebloan migrants. As the first review of Plains archaeology in over a decade, this volume ushers in a new era of studies on the early Indigenous peoples of the central and southern Plains.

Weight: 303g
Dimension: 254 x 178 x 20 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781647690205