Recent archaeological research shows that interactions among people living in plural communities not only reflect political and economic relationships but also influence how those relationships develop. This project will advance that line of research by studying the relationships between public declarations of identity embodied in residential architecture and regional political-economic changes in northern Great Plains farming communities dating to the A.D. 1400s and 1500s. Public debates about social and cultural diversity create a dynamic environment where norms are challenged and new political, economic, and social relations can emerge. Archaeologists can understand the content and therefore the significance of public debates over values and meanings by investigating how individuals and households chose to express the social or cultural differences between themselves and their neighbors. An archaeological perspective can provide special value since it can trace how patterns develop over significant periods of time. Archaeologists studying Colonial-era native communities have long recognized the political and economic consequences of day-to-day interactions among people claiming different identities. However, archaeologists now know that plural communities were common long before Europeans came to the Americas. Community formation and dissolution, migration at multiple scales, warfare and alliance formation, and trade continually transformed the ancient cultural landscape and as a consequence understanding social processes within plural communities is crucial for reconstructing the native history of the continent. This project will contribute to a growing body of comparative archaeological and historical research on the ways in which daily interactions among people brought together by colonialism, migration, war, or ecological change helped shape large-scale historical trends.
Dr. Mark Mitchell, of PaleoCultural Research Group, along with his research team will study household diversity within the native settlements clustered around the confluence of the Heart and Missouri rivers in present North Dakota. A wave of transformative change, marked by increased population density, expanded long-distance trade and interaction, more frequent warfare, and economic intensification, swept through this region between A.D. 1400 and 1600. However, little currently is known about the social processes operating within individual communities. This project will study intra-community social interaction by comparing the private lives of families living in two distinctly different types of houses, one that was recognized at the time as local and another that was recognized as foreign. The primary aim is to determine whether these families' architectural choices were motivated by their differing communities of origin, status, ideological affiliation, or some combination of these factors. Understanding why different households chose particular expressions of social or cultural difference will provide insight into the factors underpinning regional changes in demography, settlement, and economic practice. The project will involve students from two different institutions and will broaden participation by American Indians in regional archaeological research.
