People in a Sea of Grass

Ninety years ago Great Plains archaeologists such as WaldoWedel and William Duncan Strong made foundationalcontributions to American archaeology, enabling newdiscoveries, insights, and interpretations. This volumeexplores how twenty-first-century archaeologists have builtupon, remodeled, and sometimes rejected the inferences ofthese earlier scholars with updated overviews and analyses. Contributors highlight how Indigenous Plains groupsparticipated in large-scale social networks in whichideas, symbols, artifacts, and people moved across NorthAmerica over the last 2,000 years. They also discusscultural transformation, focusing on key demographic,economic, social, and ceremonial factors associated with change, including colonization and integration into thesocial and political economies of transatlantic societies.Cultural traditions covered include Woodland-era KansasCity Hopewell, late prehistoric Central Plains tradition,and ancestral and early historic Wichita, Pawnee andArikara, Kanza, Plains Apache, and Puebloan migrants.As the first review of Plains archaeology in more thana decade, this book brings studies of early Indigenous peoples of the central and southern Plains into a new era.