Village spatial layouts and social organizations -- A review of the late prehistoric Monongahela tradition and the new chronology for Allegheny Mountains villages -- Villages, communities, and social organizations -- Building models of village spatial and social organizations -- Models and hypotheses related to community organization -- Data sources, variables, and analytical approaches -- Modeling community patterning from select village components in the Allegheny Mountains region -- Comparative analyses from modeling individual village components -- Implications drawn from interpreting community organization through village spatial layouts
Summary
Between A.D. 1000 and 1635, the inhabitants of southwestern Pennsylvania and portions of adjacent states - known to archaeologists as the Monongahela Culture or Tradition - began to reside regularly in ring-shaped village settlements. These circular settlements consisted of dwellings around a central plaza. A cross-cultural and cross-temporal review of archaeological, ethnohistorical, and ethnographic cases demonstrates that this settlement form appeared repeatedly and independently worldwide, including throughout portions of the Eastern Woodlands, among the Plains Indians, and in Cent
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references (pages 165-187) and index
