Table of Contents
Taxonomy
Distribution
Age
Settlement Pattern
Kinds of Sites
Kinds of Features
Houses
Hearths
Cache Pits
Activity Area
Subsistence
Artifacts
Pottery
Chipped Stone
Ground Stone
Bone, Antler and Shell
External Relationships
Native Exchange
Warfare
Origins
Outcomes
Bibliography
Taxonomy
Solomon River is a local expression of the Central
Plains Mosaic (01), formerly called the Central Plains Tradition. The reason
for the change is that the duration of the complex was not long enough to allow
the definition of sequential phases. Instead, the phases that are well dated
are more or less contemporaneous with one another. The Central Plains Mosaic,
in turn, is a regional expression of the Plains Horticultural Tradition, which
was previously called the Plains Village Tradition. The reason for this latter
name change is that none of the sites of the Central Plains Mosaic were villages
(Blakeslee 1999:31-38).
Distribution
Solomon River phase sites occur in the Glen Elder locality – around the
junction of the North
and South Solomon Rivers (02). Sites of this phase were brought to light
prior to the construction of Glen Elder dam and Waconda Lake. To the east is
the Smoky Hill phase, and to the north one finds the Upper Republican phase,
while to the south only fairly isolated Central Plains Mosaic sites have been
reported. To the west are blufftop sites of the poorly-understood High Plains
Upper Republican. No clear-cut boundary lines have been drawn between these
units, and given the nature of Central Plains Mosaic adaptations, none are likely
to exist.
Age
Solomon River phase sites appear at about A.D. 1030 and appear to disappear
by AD 1300 (Blakeslee 1999:44-46). This assessment is based on 13 dates run
by Beta Analytic Laboratory
corrected by the most recent calibration curve (03) and on a few early dates
that have not yet been published (Richard Krause, personal communication). Dates
run earlier by Gakushuin are now known to be unreliable (Blakeslee 1994), but
the early literature on the Solomon River sites depended on those early and
misleading dates. The sample of currently dated sites may be a biased sample
of the total number of sites in the locality, as all of the excavated sites
lie near the main rivers, and there are many other sites upstream on tributary
creeks (Latham 1996) (04).
Settlement Pattern
The people who created the Solomon River phase appear to have lived in relatively
isolated extended family homesteads within a scattered community of some sort
(Blakeslee 2002). Analysis of the details of house
construction indicates that many were built by two teams of people, each using
their own traditional methods (Blakeslee 2005).(05). Homesteads were located
near springs, groves of hardwood trees and easily-worked soils that retain moisture
well (Latham 1996).
A debate about whether the sites were occupied year-round (Lippincott 1976)
or only during the planting and harvesting seasons (Falk 1969: 51; Morey 1982)
appears to have been resolved in favor of the year-round hypothesis (Blakeslee
1999:43-44; Dorsey 2000).
An older debate considered whether or not there was a definable sequence of
different kinds of habitation sites. Originally proposed by Krause (1969), it
was critiqued by Lippincott (1976, 1978), with a reply by Krause (1982) and
further responses by a variety of authors (Blakeslee et al. 1982). Blakeslee
(1999:22-30) reviews the debate and provides a recent perspective.
The size and distribution of the scattered communities is not known. There are
localized traditions of house architecture within the Glen Elder locality (see
below), and analysis of ceramics from ossuary suggests that the people who contributed
offerings there came from a wider region than just the adjacent habitation site
but not from just across the river (Blakeslee 2002:179-182).
Details of ceramic styles also indicate the presence of communities larger than
single sites. At Waconda Lake, Blakeslee (1999:115-120) and his students detected
four such ceramic dialects in the Glen Elder locality. The extent to which this
patterning in space reflects movements of one or two families from one site
to another is not known. The chronological control is not adequate to differentiate
sequential sites within the short period of occupation of the locality.
Kinds of sites
Like the habitation sites in other phases of the Central Plains Mosaic, those
of the Solomon River phase appear to be accumulations of the remains of houses
that were occupied sequentially rather than simultaneously. They contain both
houses and external activity areas (06), and only sites located in fairly extensive
groves of trees have more than one or two houses. No kill sites have been reported.
The single instance of an ossuary/cemetery consisted of two ossuary pits (one
of which was excavated) surrounded by numerous small pits. Many of the latter
were empty, but some contained a few human bones and one held a complete skeleton.
The mortuary sequence seems to have involved individual pit burials followed
by removal of the remains from the individual pits for re-interment in the ossuary.
Whether the individual burials were primary or followed an interval of scaffold
burial is not known (Lippincott 1976; Blakeslee 1999:145-147)..
Kinds
of features
houses
Solomon River phase houses were built after stripping the sod from the ground
surface, creating a very shallow pit. Four or more centrally located support
posts were then erected, and the walls of the house were made from smaller posts.
Cross beams between the tall central posts and along the lower wall lines supported
rafters or cribbed poles (06). This layer was then covered to make the roof,
but the precise nature of the covering has not been determined; rather it has
always been assumed to have included an outer layer of sod. The nature of the
covering of the vertical walls is also not known. An extended entryway issued
from one wall of the house.
There are localized variations in the details
of the houses (07). On the South Solomon, they were longer than wide with
the entry coming from one of the short walls. There is no clear pattern of central
support posts, and the fireplaces are offset slightly toward the entryway. They
contain from four to ten
internal cache pits. (08). At the mouth of Oak Creek, the houses are fairly
square with four substantial central support posts. One lacks a hearth; the
hearth in the other is central to the support posts. They (N=2) contain
five and seven internal caches (09). Also on Oak Creek are two square houses
with many wall posts and many small central posts. Both have central hearths,
but one lacks internal caches while the other
contains only two (06). At 14OB27, the
most of the houses have trapezoidal shapes, and the pattern of center post
in them is also trapezoidal and not parallel to the walls. Hearths tend not
to be located centrally among the center posts, and the entryways are neither
centered on the walls not perpendicular to
them (10).
At the eastern end of the locality, on Limestone Creek, only one house has been
excavated, but it differs from all of the other styles. It is nearly square,
with numerous wall posts, a clearly defined pattern of central posts and a centrally
located hearth. It contains four
internal cache pits (11).
Like the houses in the Glenwood locality of the Nebraska phase and in the Medicine
Creek locality of the Upper Republican phase, at least some Solomon River phase
houses appear to have been built by two teams of people responsible for different
walls. In some instances, the front of the house differs from the back; in others
the differences are between the two sides. Blakeslee (2005) interprets the patterning
as reflecting different family traditions of architecture. Since some of the
smallest houses exhibit this pattern, there is reason to think that houses were
always built by two teams, with the houses built entirely in one style being
the products of two closely related teams.
hearths
The hearths, both internal and external, consist of shallow unlined basins.
Their contents usually consisted of ash and charcoal mixed with bits of bone
and fragments of artifacts. Often the hearths exhibit a fairly thick layer of
reddish baked earth.
cache pits
Cache pits were made in a variety of forms. The largest are bell-shaped, although
these are usually less than a meter deep (Lippincott 1976: Appendix I).. Cylindrical
caches tend to be smaller, with about one sixth or less the capacity of the
bell shaped features. Small to medium sized basins that contain trash may not
have been intended for storage. Many of the caches also ended up filled with
trash or ashes from a hearth.
In many sites, piles of mussel shells occur on the surface or in the fill of
cache pits. These were analyzed by Ron Dorsey, who found that they reflected
clambakes held at about five year intervals, always at the end of the warm season.
Much smaller accumulations of shells also occur, and these reflect mussels taken
at all seasons of the year and at closer intervals of time than the large clambakes
(Dorsey 1998, 2000).
Activity Areas
Adjacent to the houses in many of the sites, excavation uncovered scattered
post molds, cache pits and hearths that did not seem to derive from houses.
(Blakeslee 1999: 66-69, 73-74). No two of the activity areas looked
much alike (10). A few may be the remains of poorly-preserved houses, but
most exhibit patterns of placement of features that is totally unlike those
of the various house forms.
Subsistence
The people who created the Solomon River phase sites had a broad subsistence
pattern consisting of horticulture, hunting, fishing and gathering. Crops included
maize, sunflower, squash and marshelder, and the presence of tobacco pipes suggests
that tobacco was grown. Since the sites were excavated mostly without the use
of flotation, other crops may have been missed, and the data on the frequency
and ubiquity of plant remains has not been calculated. Blakeslee (1999: 89-92)
argues that the form of horticulture here and elsewhere on the plins was a form
of swidden. Large clambakes that occurred at about five year intervals and always
at the end of the warm season and organized hunts of certain rodent species
(for which we do not know either the season nor the temporal spacing) may reflect
the cyclic failure of swidden gardens (Blakeslee 2002:xx).
Small animals dominate the faunal assemblages in spite of the fact that neither
flotation nor water screening were used. In Central Plains Mosaic sites where
waterscreening was practiced, deer are the third most common species, bison
is fifth, pronghorn twelfth and elk eighteenth (of 26 species and two genera)
(Blakeslee 1999: Table 30). Non-migratory large game may have been hunted out
quickly around the year-round habitations, and garden hunting seems to have
been important both to protect the gardens from pests and as a way off adding
meat to the diet (Blakeslee 1999:77-85).
Fishing, gathering of a wide variety of wild plants, especially nuts and the
prairie turnip, along with taking an occasional bird rounded out the diet. The
winter food supplies of some rodents may have been taken, at least episodically
when the swidden gardens failed.
pottery
Most Solomon River pottery is in the form of utilitarian jars, with a few bowls
and miniatures also present. All but the miniatures were formed by the paddle
and anvil technique, which is obvious from the cord
roughening on vessel bodies (13). All jars are utilitarian, and some sloppy
products are present (14), but most vessels, although quite plain, are well
made (15). The cord roughening on lower bodies is never removed by smoothing,
and shoulders are rarely smoothed. Rims are sometimes smoothed and lips frequently
are, although some cord
roughened lips (16a) and collar
faces (16b) are present. Decoration
on rims is sometimes applied directly over cord-roughening (17), a trait
rare in other localities in the Central Plains Mosaic.
Blakeslee (1999:103-108) defines a Carr Creek ware with seven constituent types
based on rim form and decoration. The Tipton group consists of jars with direct
rims (21), while the Downs group is made up of jars
with collared rims (18). Tipton types include Tipton
plain (19), Tipton
decorated lip (20), Tipton
modified Edge (21), and Tipton
decorated face (22). Downs types are Downs
plain (23), Downs
modified base (24), and Downs
decorated face (25).
Decoration, when present, consists of punctations
(26a), incising or tool impressions on the lip, outer lip edge, rim face,
and collar face, and pinching or tool impressions on collar bases. Collar
face motifs are geometric (26b). Shoulders are not decorated.
Temper is mostly grog or sand, and the sand is either well rounded or highly
angular, with the latter derived from local bedrock sources. A few shell tempered
specimens have been found, some of which are identical in paste to the grog
and sand tempered vessels.
Bowls are small compared to the jars and usually constrict toward the orifice
(27). The bowls and miniature jars occur only in small numbers. They tend
to differ from the jars in details of paste and temper. Most of the miniatures
were formed by pinching (28a), but some nevertheless were finished with a cord-wrapped
paddle (28b).
Slightly differing styles of ceramics can be discerned in different
parts of the locality (29).
Sites at the west end of the locality contained pots with tall, fairly vertical
rims, including a relatively large number of the Tipton decorated face type.
The only motif on the Downs decorated face rims were horizontal lines. Midrim
fillets and wavy lips also occur.
In sites along the South Solomon, decoration is rare except at 14ML17, which
has a fair number of Tipton decorated face vessels. Motifs on collared rims
include both horizontal lines and zig-zags. Tipton ware vessels from the eastern
sites have flaring rather than vertical rims, and a high proportion of Tipton
modified edge vessels are present. Decoration created by striking the damp clay
with a pointed stick is present at both of the easternmost sites but is missing
in all of the others in the locality.
The sites along Oak Creek in the center of the locality, with two exceptions,
affiliate with the western (1), southern (1) and easter dialects (3). The exceptions,
at the mouth of Oak Creek, contain a high proportion of Downs decorated face
vessels including the only ones in the locality that have a band of diagonal
lines along the top of the collar face.
chipped stone tools
Solomon River phase people obtained the bulk of their stone
from northern Kansas (30), with only Flattop
chalcedony and Alibates coming from outside the state
(31). The bulk of the chipped stone in is comprised of Smoky
Hill jasper (32) and gray
Permian chert (33). Some of the latter is clearly from the northern
portion of the Flint Hills (34) and all of it may be. On average, 70% of
the stone is Smoky Hill jasper, of which about one third was (probably) local
upland lag gravel; the rest must have come from bedrock sources 50 or more kilometers
away. Slightly less than one fifth of the chipped stone is gray Permian chert.
Small amounts of Flattop
chalcedony (35), Alibates chert
(36), Ogallala
silicified sediment (37) and petrified wood are present. Of these, the silicified
sediment is the most ubiquitous, occurring in ten of fourteen sites. It is available
in small amounts in gravel exposures all across the western part of Kansas and
may have been obtained fairly locally. Alibates chert, from the Canadian River
some xx kilometers away, was found in eight sites. Surprisingly, one fairly
large core of Alibates chert was found.
Most of the Smoky Hill jasper was brought to the locality in the form
of bifaces, as the raw material occurs naturally in thin
slabs (38). Chipped stone tools include side notched arrow points and point
preforms. The latter are more crudely flaked and somewhat larger than the notched
points (39). The finished
points include single and double side notched varieties with and without
basal notches (40). Somewhat larger unnotched and notched points are found
in small numbers (41).
Knifes include the alternately-beveled diamond-shaped type called Harahey
(42), ovate (43) and
fishbelly (44) forms.
Informal cutting tools made from flakes are common. A few knives exhibit the
heavy rounded wear that comes from cutting soft stones such as pipestone
(45).
End
scrapers are common. They are typical of Middle Ceramic Period in terms
of size and proportions
(46). The proximal ends lack evidence of haft wear, and most are large enough
to have been held in the hand during use.
Chipped stone celts
occur fairly regularly (47). Their primary use was probably for girdling
trees for swidden horticulture, but they could have also been used as weapons
as is the case with celts elsewhere in the world. They could also have been
used in rough butchering of bison joints, but we lack direct evidence for such
use.
ground stone tools
Stone tobacco pipes occur in a variety of forms. One has a prow at the base
of the bowl like some Nebraska phase pipes, but the bowl is quite tall and meets
the stem at less than 90 degrees, making the pipe quite distinct from those
found in the Nebraska
phase (51). Other elbow pipes lack the prow but have the slightly
tilted and relatively tall bowl (52). The acute angle, tall bowl and short
stem are shared with Great Bend pipes, but the Great Bend specimens have much
taller bowls which bulge on the smoker's side giving the bowl the general appearance
of the calf from a human leg. Biscuit pipes are also found (53). One pipe with
a short, widely flaring bowl and a short stem that meets the bowl at an obtuse
angle is quite distinct and may be an import (54).
Sandstone shaft smoothers
(55), grooved abraders
(56) and ungrooved abraders (57)
are fairly common. Hammerstones occur, and the disk-shaped handstones with a
cup in the center of each face may have been used as hammerstones
(62). Nutting stones (59)
with one or more pits have been found. Some are quite large; one from 14ML15
measures 22 by 22 cm and has five pits on one face and a single pit on another.
Also quite large is a metate from the
same site (60). Quite thick, they were clearly intended to be permanent
furniture within the site. On the other hand, a carefully shaped thin grinding
slab from 14ML8 appears to have been made as portable
as possible (61).
Handstones are usually small and some exhibit central pits on both faces (62).
The pits are generally ovoid and shallow and do not similar to the pits on nutting
stones. The remainder of the faces are flat, indicating that the stones were
used with a rotary motion on a flat rather than concave surface. What appears
to be an artificial limestone
ball was found at one site
(63). The author has seen similar balls in sites in Nebraska, but their
purpose is unknown.
bone, antler and shell
The most common bone artifacts are fragments of scapula hoes. The form of hoe
made in these sites usually has an intact glenoid end, but sometimes it
has been trimmed (71).A
completed but unworn
hoe has a convex bit (72), but the thin central portion of the blade wore
away quickly, and most hoes that are found have an (often irregular) concave
bit. Broken hoes were fashioned into a variety of useful items. One
was used as a cutting board (73). Another bone horticultural tool was a
broken bison
rib used as a digging stick (74). Among the historic Arikara, such tools
were used by men to cultivate plots of tobacco.
Awls are the next most common bone tool. Frequently, they were made from deer
and antelope metapodials
(75) by the groove and snap technique, and the byproducts of this technique
are often found (76).
Especially long specimens may have been used as hair
or blanket pins (77). Splinter
awls were also made (78).
Awls with points to blunt to penetrate deer or antelope hide were probably used
in making basketry (79).
One awls has hack marks at the proximal end, and it may have been used as an
eyeless needle (80).
Antler cylinders are found
(81). Some show signs of use as flaking hammers, but others are merely smoothed.
Antler tine pressure flaking
tools are also present(82). Bone tubes of various sizes are found. The smaller
ones may have been beads, but larger
ones (83) may be fragments of whistles or shamans' sucking tubes. Beads
were made from both bird and
rodent bone (84). The occasional hollowed and perforated deer phalanx (toe
bone) may be from the ring and pin game or from tinklers
worn on clothing (85).
Shell tools include scrapers
for shelling corn (86), shell
spoons (87), and shell hoe
blades (88), but most uses for shell were ornamental. Marine shell ornaments
included gorgets (89)
and columella
pendants (90) of conch or whelk, marginella
shell beads (91) and disk
beads (92). Fairly large snail shells might represent natural accumulations,
food remains or items intended
to be made into ornaments (93).
Native Exchange
No obvious examples of trade wares occur in the ceramic assemblages. There is,
however, more variability in the assemblage from the mortuary site 14ML16 than
from any of the habitation sites. The people who contributed ceramic offerings
there -- in the form of sherds rather than complete vessels -- may have included
individuals from outside the locality.
In the chipped tone tool assemblages, there is no local material other than
some of the Smoky Hill jasper and perhaps the Ogallala silicified sediment and
petrified wood. The latter two make up only a small proportion of the stone
at any site. The rest of the Smoky Hill jasper and all of the gray Permian cherts
come from well outside the locality but may have been obtained by direct acquisition
rather than exchange. The Alibates chert and Flattop chalcedony are better candidates
for products of exchange, but there is no clear evidence that they were not
also the products of occasional visits to the sources.
In the ground stone category, the unusual pipe with the flaring
bowl (54) could well be a trade item, but its point of origin is not known.
The marine shell items are clearly the products of exchange. Fifteen of the
reported 21 marine shell specimens were found at 14ML16, the mortuary site.
They include the gorget
(89), a conch
columella (90), and three different varieties of beads. The other six specimens,
all beads, came from three of the 15 excavated or tested habitation sites. The
strong association with mortuary ritual is typical of Kansas sites during the
Early and Middle Ceramic periods (Blakeslee 1997). The precise nature of the
exchange system that brought these items from distant oceans to the center of
the continent is not known.
Warfare
One isolated skull from 14ML15 and a modified skull fragment from 14ML5 suggest
trophy taking. They are part of a relatively sparse but consistent pattern within
the Central Plains Mosaic (Blakeslee 1999: 151-152) that indicates that inter-community
raiding was fairly common.
Origins
The Central Plains Mosaic appears in numerous localities shortly after A.D.
1000. This statement is contra Roper (1995) who maps dates in various localities
by century. The localities with the earliest dates are those in which the largest
number of dates have been run, however, and a larger spread of dates is expected
as the number of dates increases (see Radiocarbon dating stochastic effects
on this web page).
There are Late Woodland sites just to the west of the Glen Elder locality, and
the people who created them may have been in place when the shift in subsistence
that generated the Central Plains Mosaic occurred. These sites have yet to be
investigated. Krause (1995) has discussed the changes in ceramics that may have
been involved.
Outcomes
The Glen Elder locality seems to have been abandoned in the period A.D. 1250-1300.
This was part of a regional pattern that terminated most of the Central Plains
Mosaic except perhaps along the northern fringes (Blakeslee 1997). In the same
general time frame there is a movement of Central Plains populations into South
Dakota to form the Initial Coalescent variant. Competing hypotheses regarding
the cause of this movement include the intrusion of Oneota-derived populations
(Ritterbush 2006:163-164), drought (e.g., Bryson et al. 1970), or over-exploitation
of the environment (Blakeslee 1993). The hypothesis that some Upper Republican
populations migrated south to form the Panhandle Aspect (Baerreis and Bryson
1966) is no longer tenable.
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