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Classifying the Past: The Great Plains Taxonomic System - Plains 13
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In this episode of the Great Plains Archaeology Podcast, host Carlton Shield Chief Gover unpacks the history and evolution of the Great Plains taxonomic system—the framework used by archaeologists to categorize and understand cultural periods in the region. From the early development of typologies to modern refinements, this system has shaped how researchers interpret the archaeological record of the Plains.
Links:
- The Midwestern Taxonomic Method as an Aid to Archaeological Culture Study by W.C. McKern (1939)
- The Sedentary Horizon of the Northern Plains by Donald J. Lehmer (1954)
- Method and Theory in American Archaeology by Gordon R. Willey and Philip Phillips (1958)
- Horizon and Tradition in the Northern Plains by Donald K. Lehmer and Warren W. Caldwell (1966)
- Taxonomic Practice and Middle Missouri Prehistory: A Perspective on Donald J. Lehmer’s Contributions by Richard A. Krause (1977)
- The Archaeology of the North American Great Plains by Douglas B. Bamforth (2021)
- Archaeology on the Great Plains Edited by W. Raymond Wood (1998)
- Carlton's KU Anthropology Faculty Bio
Transcripts
- For rough transcripts of this episode, go to: https://www.archpodnet.com/great-plains-archaeology/13
Contact:
- Instagram: @pawnee_archaeologist
- Email: greatplainsarchpodcast@gmail.com
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Transcript
Introduction to the Great Plains Archaeology Podcast
00:00:01
Speaker
You're listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network. You're listening to the Great Plains Archaeology Podcast. Join me as we uncover the rich histories of North America's Great Plains, exploring the latest archaeological discoveries and past cultures that shaped this storied region. Welcome to the podcast.
Meet Dr. Carlton Shield, Chief Gover
00:00:22
Speaker
Welcome to episode 13 of the Great Plains Archaeology Podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Carlton Shield, Chief Gover, and I am thrilled to have you join me on this exciting journey through the rich and fascinating we're finally going to dive into the taxonomy of the Great Plains.
Teaching Great Plains Archaeology and the Taxonomy Focus
00:00:50
Speaker
And I know we, I, early on I talked about this was supposed to be an episode we were supposed to hit on pretty, pretty early. And I was like going through some of the old literature again, it was making my thinker box hurt. But what ended up happening as goofy as it, as it sounds, I'm teaching a um graduate undergraduate level, great plains archeology course this semester. So at KU it's a 500 level course.
00:01:20
Speaker
So you know it's for seniors and master's students. or you know son It's not a required course for the grad students, although if they're interested in great print archaeology, they're supposed to take it. And I made it my mission.
00:01:36
Speaker
recently, like week two. So after syllabus week, they had to read it. I made myself and the students, I like pulled it all together and I made the students read the literature to force myself to reread it and analyze it, talk about it with the students. So I did that to myself and then I was like, okay, I think I can finally talk about it on the podcast after making my poor students have to sit through it. And like some of them were not very thrilled.
00:02:05
Speaker
And it was kind of funny. They're like, but I don't think I have a group planes background. I don't, I don't know this stuff. I'm like, dude, this is, we're reading the original stuff. Like nobody really goes into this. So that's the context basically forcing students having to do it. So I'd have to do it myself. Not totally for podcast reasons, but
Unpacking the 1939 Midwestern Taxonomic System
00:02:26
Speaker
that's an aside. So taxonomy, what is archeological taxonomy?
00:02:31
Speaker
These are the alphabet soup or the jargon that archeologists used to describe archeological sites,
00:02:46
Speaker
regions, components, and cultures. It's how like, if we think of a species belonging to a genus species, subspecies that then belongs to a family,
00:03:00
Speaker
somewhat similar ways that the archaeological record was described. And the first one, right, is the Midwestern taxonomic system. So this was written in 1939 by McCurn, the Midwestern taxonomic method as an aid to archaeological culture study.
00:03:27
Speaker
So this is coming out of the 30s and it's really important to remember that in the 30s during the Great Depression, we had a lot of public funds.
00:03:38
Speaker
going to archeologists by the federal government as part of WPA or CCC projects. WPA stands for like workers, public administration, and then CCC is civilian conservation corps, right? These are public works projects. And we had a law, we had laws in place at this point where you had to do archeological investigation before you put an infrastructure. So specifically, especially in the Great Plains, think dams. Dams are the big ones. So especially the Missouri River project, basin project. So in the thirties in particular, where we have the proof of archeology occurring, we have archeologists all across the country with huge crews of farmers and local folks who are doing these projects.
00:04:36
Speaker
excavating like entire sites. It's not always great, but a massive amount of the archaeological record gets excavated.
00:04:49
Speaker
I want to say massive amount. That's my bad for saying that, but there's a lot of archaeology happening. And as a lot of stuff is coming out of the ground, then people are starting to try to tie sites together. And so McCurn in 1939 writes this taxonomic system in an attempt to like, this is how we should begin describing things and the ways that we can relate sites to one another. Now, yes, it's particular for the Midwest, but it comes up with terms and phrases that get adopted by other
00:05:25
Speaker
regions. And it's important to note that McKern in this article and itself is stating like, these should be changed. This is a blueprint, right? Like he's acknowledging during this time, they're not going to have it figured out. And there's people in the thirties that were saying that, you know, we're not at this stage yet.
00:05:44
Speaker
We don't have enough stuff to start coming out with taxonomic systems. And McCurn, you know, he didn't believe that. And I'm with McCurn on that. I think clearly there was a lot of stuff coming out of the record.
00:05:58
Speaker
And so this is where we start seeing preliminary terminology being introduced into the literature about how we use to describe the record. So that's where we start seeing diagnostic artifacts or objects that you can, so if you find them, you're like, okay, I know exactly what this belongs to.
00:06:19
Speaker
we start seeing determinant being introduced. I'm pretty sure that's gone out, especially in the Great Plains. The determinant is to denote any culture trait when and is used as a mark for any specific culture division. A lot of traits get talked about, but the taxonomic assist system itself it gets adopted, but this is the baseline. McCurn comes up with a couple of terms here. One being focus, which is starting at the site level. And a focus may be briefly defined as the class of culture exhibiting characteristic peculiarities in the finest analysis of cultural detail and maybe instances correspond closely to the local tribe and ethnology. And it's basically the focus is just, this is the site level. These are the specific things found to the site in the immediate area.
00:07:11
Speaker
then we have component being introduced. And a component isn't ah a taxonomic term as it is like a site can have multiple components. So that's where we get the term multi-component site. As in like one archeological site can have two different or more than one occupation levels of different archeological cultures. So that's a component. An aspect is a comparison of established foci.
00:07:38
Speaker
and that looking at different foci, if you see a bunch of different foci are related, then they belong to the same aspect. So we have an umbrella going on where multiple foci go to one aspect. And similarly, multiple aspects can go belong to one phase.
00:07:56
Speaker
So this is the third class type of phase. As the classified approach is the more generalized classes, cultural detail becomes less important to his purpose, and the traits that are shared by all so aspects within the phase to make up the phase complex take on more general character. So the focus is the most specific. you know That's where the most detail. And as you go up and up the ladder, as you're getting more broad and broad, those details start being less important. So foci within an aspect becomes more generalized. So like when you have an aspect, you're looking for a smaller number of similarities or diagnostics that all those foci belong to, to create this aspect, multiple aspects, make up a phase. And then moving on, you have a pattern where several phases may be shown to share a small complex of broadly general traits. And that's how you get a pattern.
00:08:51
Speaker
And so this is where we get the Mississippian pattern, the woodland pattern, right? These are different. They're different. You know, the Mississippian pattern, triangular chipstone projectile points, the woodland pattern, pottery, characteristically grit tempered or granular structure. I'm just quoting from this paper, right? This is almost a hundred years ago. And then you have a base.
00:09:20
Speaker
which is incredibly way more generalized. We don't really use base anymore. So there's these, six he introduces seven terms, six of which are taxonomic. Component is being used to describe if they're, you know, just saying like, hey, if there's more than one foci at a site or two occupation levels from different foci, that's a multi-component site. So these are really well needed for this is happening in the thirties. They give us a way to start, ah you know, grouping,
00:09:47
Speaker
archaeological the archaeological record by similar sites across a region that allows to compare and contrast and really start looking at the differences rather than just digging things up. McCurn talks about this needs to be edited, this is just a base level. And then moving from McCurn, the next biggest taxonomic detail that we get to is, I'm like pulling up my notes here real quick, Wiley and Phillips.
The Expansion by Wiley and Phillips in 1958
00:10:15
Speaker
Wiley and Phillips, 1958, Method and Theory in American Archaeology. And this is where the term, ah I don't think the term culture historical is is introduced here. it shouldn't be It absolutely should not be. And what they introduce more in particular is they build upon this system and they,
00:10:42
Speaker
Rather than a focus, you know, they introduce the site, the smallest unit of space and most difficult to define. Locality moves up from site, right? So you have a small bounded geographic area in which multiple site complex exists. Then above that, you have a region.
00:10:59
Speaker
which is offering the city relationship between space, between culture and environment that have been occupied by a social unit larger than a community. Then above that you have an area, which is a geographic unit larger than a region and corresponds with culture of the area. It gets a little bit, they change things up a bit.
00:11:17
Speaker
What they do also recognize is that change isn't sudden. So we have the 1939 McCurn giving us some key phrases. We have Wiley and Phillips talking more specifically about space and time within archeology, especially as it relates to the archeological record. And they become parameters in which we we need to refocus some of our talks, right? By talks, I mean,
00:11:43
Speaker
that are there, they're reinforcing the need to bring space and time back into taxonomic discussions. And so those are two like really fundamental texts. Like the Wiley and Phillips one is like a textbook. And we get back from break. I know this is an incredibly dry episode and I apologize, but I wanted to tackle it. We're going to talk about how, how does this then relate to planes? So I'll be right back for segment two to really look into um Lemmer's work.
00:12:12
Speaker
All right, so
Lemmer's Classification of Northern Plains Horizons
00:12:14
Speaker
welcome back. Now we're talking about what's happening on the Great Plains. And where do we start seeing things get focused? And that's why I wanna talk about Donald Lemmer. So Lemmer, Donald Lemmer is really focused in, this is coming, up his first publication is before Wiley and Phillips, 1958. So we're looking at ah an article he wrote And it's like a goofy, it's in the Southwestern Journal of Anthropology in 1954 called the Sedentary Horizon of the Northern Plains. And what Donald is talking about is he is really interested in what he calls the Sedentary Horizon of the Northern Plains. Really looking at the Dakotas and Nebraska, Iowa, that part of the Missouri River, and noticing that there are similarities with the Mississippian period, but they're different.
00:13:09
Speaker
And so he creates a couple periods here. He develops in the plains what he calls the early hunting horizon, the post-alty thermal foraging horizon.
00:13:22
Speaker
the plains woodland horizon, the equestrian horizon, and the sedentary horizon. And then he also has the early sedentary horizon. And so like, we're seeing the vestiges of what we call paleo-Indian, archaic, woodland, plains village period. They're wrapped up in here. So he's getting these time periods across the region kind of settle down saying, Hey, this early hunting horizon is big game hunting. This is our Clovis, our Folsom age sites of back when we really were fully on board with overkill hypothesis and Clovis equipped populations being specialized big game hunters.
00:14:04
Speaker
And then we get to the post-alti thermal, which is about, he calls, was it 2,500 BC to 800 AD? So this is really like archaic period, late archaic, still based on hunting and gathering economy. Plains, woodland horizons, roughly the same as what we have now. Some differences. This is where people are experimenting with horticulture. And then we have the, oh, excuse me.
00:14:32
Speaker
the sedentary horizon, which is our central point tradition farmers, our early Plains village folks and our late Plains village folks. So we're starting to get there. We're starting to see like a lot of some analogies to what we have and in contemporary great, great Plains lit. And he's really looking at a number of different things. He's comparing contrast and difference between the middle Missouri.
00:14:56
Speaker
ah culture at this time is what it's being called. Today we call it initial Middle of Missouri, extended Middle of Missouri, and he's comparing against Central Plains tradition, which is, you know, what I do. And then it also has this, the coalescent.
00:15:10
Speaker
traditions he throws in here as well. So we're really starting to see the terms that we use today being introduced by Lemmer in 1954 and starting to group things like lower loop focus or lower loop phase, sorry, upper Republican phase versus Nebraska phase. And those are still being bounded in some of the ah language that McCurn introduced, like what's a phase, right? A phases, man, I just hit a frigging wall. I apologize everybody.
00:15:41
Speaker
I was like, so excited to do this. And all of a sudden it just like, my brain turned off. I've been grating all day. I think I can, whoa, big yawn. I'm getting bored just talking to you guys about this to be honest.
00:15:58
Speaker
But we're seeing the vestiges with Lemre in 1954, but Lemre isn't done. you know, we're getting the terms that we use today, but Lemmer comes out with another article. ah Gosh darn, I'm just trying to pull up my own notes. So, um Lemmer and Caldwell, Donald Lemmer and Warren Caldwell in 1966, published Horizon and Tradition in Northern Plains. So remember, the first article we read was from 1954 by Lemmer in Southwest Journal
Geographic Distribution in Taxonomic Systems
00:16:29
Speaker
of Archaeology. And this is before Wiley and Phillips came out with
00:16:34
Speaker
their method. And so what Donald's doing in 1966 after the publication of Wiley and Phillips is he is proposing the adoption of Wiley-Phillips because the ah Midwestern taxonomic system does not use age or geographical distribution.
00:16:50
Speaker
So this is where he's like, okay, we should adopt Wylie and Phillips as a defining scale of archaeological unit concepts. And so this is where the phase comes back in as a time period with no content and area. We don't use that today, and that's been kind of messing like specifically with the central plains tradition. If you read literature about the central plains tradition, we have seven phases now.
00:17:14
Speaker
They're all contemporaneous. Whereas phase itself originally based on the system is not supposed to be geographic bounded. it's It's a time marker. Now all these seven phases are contemporaneous and they've become geographic boundaries and it's just bonkers. But then we have units that are being introduced.
00:17:36
Speaker
and more importantly, like districts. And it's just, he proposes these things. It doesn't necessarily catch on. More importantly, these terms start becoming, especially in the sixties with new archeology being more prominent, with one of the major figureheads being Binford. There's more scientific archeology occurring, allegedly, quote unquote, finger quotes, air quotes. People just start adding on to these systems and not necessarily re reframing them.
00:18:03
Speaker
That's when we start getting a different form of components, which components we grouped into phases, but some phases represent those outside of a tradition. So we're starting to get phases within a tradition again. It's just getting confusing. And that confusion is not like we're going to leave us off because as in and the central plains in particular, archaeologists start taking notice.
Critique of Central Plains Taxonomies
00:18:26
Speaker
um And so we get an article by Dick Krause who passed away within this past year. um And Krause in 1977 publishes Taxonomic Practice in Middle Missouri Prehistory, a perspective on Donald J. Lemmer's contributions in Plains Anthropologists. And so he starts coming in and like critiquing what had been done and kind of how confusing it has become for taxonomic systems in the central plains. And I cannot
00:19:00
Speaker
I'm having the same thing. I'm like going back between, I have like 20 pages of notes here that I'm trying to like flip through. Cool. Sorry. And I know we're like wrapping up the episode and this is boring as hell. Basically it's calling out like Donald Lemmer tried to reorganize the taxonomic system and it just does not work. And also critiquing the Midwest taxonomic system from the thirties that there are more, when it comes to the relationship between components and foci, what is that exact hierarchy? Like how, what's the cutoff but things between sites becoming too related to differentiate them from a foci in a phase type of stuff? And so when we talk about specifically traits, you know, it really boils down to how do we share? Wow, this episode sucks.
00:19:57
Speaker
I am bored out of this. This, I mean, this is the thing about talking about taxonomy, and not actually archaeological record, like organizing the record is ah nowhere near as fun. And so that's where we start getting the phase tradition. Horizon system is coming from Kraus.
00:20:13
Speaker
variant is being introduced, you know, which unique and reasonably uniform expression of cold tradition with greater order than a phase and distinguished from other variants of the same tradition by geographical attribution. So when it comes to like today in the central plane tradition, we have seven phases, but they are you know, a phase is supposed to be a period of time, not geographic distribution. Really the Central Plains tradition doesn't have seven phases and a seven variants. And you can argue that Glenwood locality is an eighth variant. And so, but it's just, but because the Central Plains tradition used to have two phases that were separated by time, Upper Republican at Kansas, Nebraska phase in Nebraska,
00:20:58
Speaker
as we started tacking on Smokey Hill, Solomon River, It's Scotty, St. Helena, um, Steve Kisker, they just kept calling them phases, um, but they're really variants. And then so, you know, under, and then moving forward from that, you have under the plains village pattern, you have the initial coalescent variant, the extended coalescent variant, but those aren't really variants and actuality, they're phases.
00:21:28
Speaker
Yay, because those are separated by time. And under those phases, that's where you have different variants within them. This sucks. Someone needs to fix it. It'll probably have to be, I'll probably have to be a part of it, but it's an undertaking. We need more archaeologists.
The Importance of Understanding Taxonomy and Farewell
00:21:48
Speaker
Taxonomy is hard, but you have to understand it in order to understand how the archaeological record is being organized by a region. So for those who do listen to this podcast or who have a greater interest in Great Plains archaeology in general, or archaeology as a whole in general, um when you come across these phrases such as phase, variant, foci, component,
00:22:14
Speaker
there's meaning behind them. And understanding how the archaeological records being organized is how you can make these mental compare and contrast. When someone says, oh, I'm executing a central point tradition site, that already in my head, I understand generally where it is in time, the expectations of the material culture and settlement pattern of a central point tradition site. And so they're useful, not only for compare and contrasting, but just immediate memory recall.
00:22:40
Speaker
And so with that, I will see you guys all for episode 14 in two weeks. We'll get back into some archeology. Thank you for bearing with, uh, through this with me. I'll see you all next time.
00:22:54
Speaker
Thank you for listening to the Great Plains Archaeology Podcast. You can follow me on Instagram at pawnee underscore archaeologist, and you can also email me at greatplanesarcpodcast at gmail dot.com. And remember, anybody can love the mountains, but it takes a soul to love the prairie. American author Willa Cather.
00:23:20
Speaker
The Archaeology Podcast Network is 10 years old this year. Our executive producer is Ashley Airy, our social media coordinator is Matilda Seabreck, and our chief editor is Rachel Rodin. The Archaeology Podcast Network was co-founded by Chris Webster and Tristan Boyle in 2014 and is part of CulturoMedia and DigTech LLC. This has been a presentation of the Archaeology Podcast Network. Visit us on the web for show notes and other podcasts at www.archpodnet.com. Contact us at chris at archaeologypodcastnetwork.com.