The Archaeology of Arcuate Communities: Spatial Patterning and Settlement in the Eastern Woodlands

The Archaeology of Arcuate Communities

ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE AMERICAN SOUTH: NEW DIRECTIONS AND PERSPECTIVES

SERIES EDITOR

CHRISTOPHER B. RODNING

EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD

ROBIN A. BECK

JOHN H. BLITZ

I. RANDOLPH DANIEL JR.

KANDACE R. HOLLENBACH

PATRICK C. LIVINGOOD

TANYA M. PERES

THOMAS J. PLUCKHAHN

MARK A. REES

AMANDA L. REGNIER

SISSEL SCHROEDER

LYNNE P. SULLIVAN

IAN THOMPSON

RICHARD A. WEINSTEIN

GREGORY D. WILSON

THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF ARCUATE COMMUNITIES

SPATIAL PATTERNING AND SETTLEMENT IN THE EASTERN WOODLANDS

Edited by

Martin Menz, Analise Hollingshead, and Haley Messer

THE UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA PRESS

TUSCALOOSA

The University of Alabama Press

Tuscaloosa, Alabama 35487-0380

uapress.ua.edu

Copyright © 2024 by the University of Alabama Press

All rights reserved.

A Dan Josselyn Memorial Publication

Inquiries about reproducing material from this work should be addressed to the University of Alabama Press.

Typeface: Minion Pro

Cover image: Site plans of Tchula Lake pattern ring middens; drawing by Martin Menz, after Phillips 1970: figs. 77, 80, 133, and 149

Cover design: Sandy Turner Jr.

Cataloging-in-Publication data is available from the Library of Congress.

ISBN: 978-0-8173-2197-0 (cloth)

ISBN: 978-0-8173-6155-6 (paper)

E-ISBN: 978-0-8173-9515-5

Contents

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgments

Arcuate Communities of the Eastern Woodlands: An Introduction

Martin Menz, Analise Hollingshead, and Haley Messer

Part I. Defining the Domestic Unit in Arcuate Communities

1. Laying Villages to Waste: House Middens at Coastal Woodland Ring Middens

Michael Russo

2. Swift Creek Design Organization at the Woodland Period Arcuate Community of Hartford (9PU1)

Karen Y. Smith, Keith Stephenson, and Frankie Snow

3. Aspects of Geometric Patterning at Kolomoki (9Er1) or a Village of Villages

Shaun E. West, Martin Menz, and Thomas J. Pluckhahn

Part II. Organizing Principles of Arcuate Communities

4. Investigating the Ring Midden Phenomenon in the Lower Mississippi Valley: An Examination of Evidence from Feltus and Beyond

Megan C. Kassabaum, Vincas P. Steponaitis, and John W. O’Hear

5. Ring-Shaped Settlements and Exploratory Circular Statistics: A Graphical Approach

Bernard K. Means

6. Phenomenological Landscapes of Two Circular Monumental Villages in the Mississippi River Delta

Jayur Mehta and Tara Skipton

Part III. Comparison and Change in Arcuate Communities

7. On the Identification of Villages: Temporal and Formal Considerations between Early Nucleated Villages in the Miami Valleys and Neighboring Mississippian Regions

Robert A. Cook, Marcus A. Schulenburg, and Aaron R. Comstock

8. Circles of Life: Woodland Ceremonial and Domestic Organization in the Midcontinent

William Green, Adam S. Wiewel, and Steven L. De Vore

9. Historical Trajectories of Woodland Period Ring Midden Villages in Northwest Florida

Martin Menz, Haley Messer, and Jeffrey Shanks

10. Why Circles? Broader Perspectives on Arcuate Communities

Thomas J. Pluckhahn and Neill J. Wallis

References

Contributors

Index

Illustrations

FIGURES

I.1. Locations of case studies discussed in this volume denoted by chapter number

1.1. Kuikuru village houses and house middens, Hare Hammock and Harrison ring midden thickness, and Byrd Hammock north and south ring midden thickness

1.2. Xingu archaeological village with topographically mapped house middens

1.3. Xinguano and Yanomami concentric zone village plans

1.4. Byrd Hammock South Swift Creek ring midden, organic midden soil thickness distribution

1.5. Harrison ring site Swift Creek midden

1.6. Baker’s Landing ring site Swift Creek midden

2.1. Plan diagram of the Hartford site

2.2. Hartford dates calibrated within a two-phase Oxcal model

2.3. Occurrence seriation diagram of the midden designs

2.4. Network graph visualization of the arcuate middens and Swift Creek designs

2.5. Hartford’s five core designs based on k-core network analysis

3.1. Map of Kolomoki showing its earthworks, village areas, and central mound axis

3.2. Illustrated examples of geometric models

3.3. Notable distributional patterns at Kolomoki

3.4. Kolomoki in relation to various Swift Creek and Weeden Island ring middens

4.1. Site plans of Tchula Lake pattern ring middens along the Yazoo River and nearby streams

4.2. Phase sequence at Greenhouse showing development of the Black River site plan

4.3. Plan diagram of Feltus showing pottery densities

4.4. Gradiometer survey and excavated areas at Feltus

5.1. Layout of Fort Hill showing location of ceremonial posts

5.2. Features by type at Fort Hill I and Fort Hill II

5.3. Radial graph of feature classes and dwellings at Fort Hill I

5.4. Circumferential graph of feature classes and dwellings at Fort Hill I

6.1. Digital elevation model for Bayou Grande Cheniere

6.2. Select Marksville culture sites in Louisiana, select Coles Creek sites in Louisiana, select Plaquemine culture sites in Louisiana, and monumental archaeological sites in coastal Louisiana

6.3. Viewshed analysis of Bayou Grande Cheniere

6.4. Viewshed analysis of Magnolia Mounds

6.5. Viewshed analysis from interior plazas of Bayou Grande Cheniere and Magnolia Mounds

6.6. ArcScene extrapolation of looking into the plaza at Bayou Grande Cheniere

7.1. Generalized hierarchy of archaeological site forms

7.2. Variety of nucleated village layouts and shapes

7.3. Regional map showing migratory relationships between Mississippian subregions

7.4. Calibrated ranges for all known Range and Turpin radiocarbon dates

7.5. Turpin compared with other early Mississippian small villages and Guard compared with other early Mississippian large villages

8.1. Map of study area showing sites mentioned in text

8.2. Gast Farm site, controlled surface collection results

8.3. Magnetic survey results from Gast Farm site

8.4. Gast Farm site

9.1. Locations of Spring Creek, Mound Field, and Old Creek in the St. Marks National Wildlife Refuge

9.2. Radiocarbon dates from Spring Creek, Mound Field, and Old Creek

9.3. Ceramic density comparison of ring midden sites along the Gulf Coast

9.4. Relationships between Woodland period ring midden sites in northwest Florida

10.1. Circular community of Airstream travel trailers

10.2. Google Earth imagery of the Rotunda West development in Florida

TABLES

2.1. Radiocarbon and AMS Dates from the Hartford Village

3.1. Pit and Post Feature Metrics from Northern and Southern Outer Village Excavation Contexts

3.2. Descriptive Statistics for Buffer Areas

6.1. Mound Volumes as Calculated from 1 meter Digital Elevation Model Using ArcGIS

7.1. Integrative Features at Early to Middle Fort Ancient Villages in the Miami Valleys

Acknowledgments

THE EDITORS OF and contributors to this volume would like to thank the numerous colleagues, students, volunteers, landowners, and funding sources that helped make the research discussed here a reality. The editors would also like to thank Michael Russo for his advice and encouragement. This book, and the Southeastern Archaeological Conference session it draws from, would not have happened without him.

William Green, Adam S. Wiewel, and Steven L. De Vore acknowledge that the Gast family has been gracious and accommodating in regard to fieldwork over the past thirty-plus years, as have the Wilson and Hoben families since 2016. Gast Farm collections and associated data are housed at the Office of the State Archaeologist repository in Iowa City (accession 3437). Geophysical survey was supported by the National Geographic Society Committee for Research and Exploration (grant 9938–16), a Keefer Senior Faculty Grant from Beloit College, and the Midwest Archeological Center, National Park Service (National Historic Landmarks Program). Adam Barnes and Rachel Opitz at the Spatial Archaeometry Research Collaborations program of the Center for Advanced Spatial Technologies, University of Arkansas (funded by National Science Foundation award 1321443), provided technical assistance.

Snowvision research has been supported, in part, by grants from the National Science Foundation (1658987) and the National Endowment for the Humanities (HAA-266472).

Finally, the authors of this volume would like to recognize the life and accomplishments of fellow contributor John W. O’Hear, who passed away before this book’s release. His legacy to Southeastern US archaeology is substantial, and his humor and kindness will be greatly missed.

Arcuate Communities of the Eastern Woodlands

An Introduction

Martin Menz, Analise Hollingshead, and Haley Messer

ARCUATE SETTLEMENTS, VARIOUSLY described by archaeologists as circular, ovular, or annular, or as horseshoe-, parentheses-, ring-, or U-shaped, are a widespread phenomenon cross-culturally in societies of varying social and political organization (e.g., Chapman et al. 2019; Damp 1982; Heckenberger 2005; Rautman 2016; Whitelaw 1991; Wust and Barreto 1999; Yellen 1977). This settlement form is especially common and persistent among the Indigenous societies of North America’s Eastern Woodlands, with examples spanning more than 10,000 years, from the Paleoindian to Historic periods. Arcuate settlements in the Eastern Woodlands include the circular camps of aggregating mobile hunter-gatherers (Robinson et al. 2009); the permanent, plaza-oriented villages of settled horticulturalists and farmers (Cook 2017; Hally 2008; Jeffries 2018; Jones and Ellis 2016; Means 2007a; Wilson 2008); and the ring-shaped midden and mound complexes of societies somewhere in between (Pluckhahn 2003; Russo 2014; Russo and Heide 2001; Sassaman et al. 2006; Sassaman and Heckenberger 2004a, 2004b; Saunders et al. 2005; Thompson 2007). Among these are some of the first Indigenous settlements illustrated by Europeans along the Atlantic Coast (Lorant 1946) and examples from nineteenth- and twentieth-century ethnography (Fletcher and LaFlesche 1911).

The exceptional diversity and time-depth of arcuate settlements throughout the Eastern Woodlands make this region a particularly important context for understanding this settlement form and the communities that built and lived in them. This diversity enables us to address a wide array of questions as they relate to arcuate communities: What ideals and organizing principles do arcuate settlements reveal about the societies that built and inhabited them? How can we explain the similarity in settlement shape among these diverse societies? Does this similarity reflect a common social ethos or set of symbolic associations that transcends different structures of leadership and social organization, or are these convergent patterns that have developed for culturally specific reasons? The Eastern Woodlands region is also interesting in a historical sense, as North America north of Mexico contains no examples of primary state formation and few, if any, cities throughout the span of 16,000 or more years from the peopling of the continent through European invasion. Arcuate settlements occur most commonly among small-scale and middle-range societies, but they are not merely precursors of later cities and should be examined on their own account without the assumption of progress from circular village to gridded town or city. We believe that our focus in this book on Eastern North America and the variety of small-scale and middle-range societies therein helps us avoid such an assumption.

Arcuate communities are common in the ethnographic and archaeological literature from other world regions as well. However, rather than drawing broad comparisons between the arcuate communities of the Eastern Woodlands and those of other world regions, we envision this book as primarily an exploration of the ways arcuate communities of the Eastern Woodlands are analyzed and interpreted; only the last chapter, by Pluckhahn and Wallis, addresses arcuate communities as a global phenomenon. We believe that the insights provided in this volume will be helpful for archaeologists studying arc- or ring-shaped sites in other parts of the globe, especially those regions where durable architecture is scarce, where arcuate settlements were widespread and persistent, or where their exceptional size or other superlative qualities force us to rethink relationships between scale, social organization, complexity, and settlement form. The lessons derived from the case studies in this book will appeal to scholars from multiple regions interested in the communities that inhabited arcuate settlements and how they changed through time.

The temporal focus of this book is the Woodland (1000 BCE to 1050 CE) and Mississippian (1050–1550 CE) periods, during which circular settlements were widespread, but not often synthesized in archaeological scholarship. This is in contrast to the preceding Archaic period, for which there are multiple articles and volumes analyzing and comparing the Archaic shell rings of the coastal Southeast (e.g., Thomas and Sanger 2010; Russo and Heide 2001; Thompson 2007; Trinkley 1985). The focus on later periods allows us to concentrate on arcuate communities not as a specific historical phenomenon, as is often the case for Archaic shell rings, but as a set of geographically and temporally distinct cases that demonstrate the various possibilities of life in the round, as well as shared characteristics of arcuate communities across time and space (Figure I.1).

Figure I.1. Locations of case studies discussed in this volume denoted by chapter number. (Base map from ArcGIS [ESRI]; Martin Menz)

DEFINING ARCUATE COMMUNITIES

When we discuss arcuate communities, we are making an interpretive connection between a group of people and a specific settlement or site in which the accumulated material residues of domestic and/or ceremonial life are arranged in an arc-shaped or circular pattern. In the early and mid-twentieth century, such a connection was assumed by researchers who described the community as a collection of people who lived and worked together to maintain the settlement and its public spaces, and who—automatically by virtue of their proximity and close, familiar social bonds—also shared elements of a common culture, experience, and identity (Galpin 1915; Lowie 1948; Murdock 1949). Some saw this association between the community and the site as a way to operationalize the community concept for archaeology (Kolb and Snead 1997). This normative and homogeneous view of the community, as well as the assumption of an equivalence between the community and the site, has been challenged by more recent theories. Proponents of an interactionalist approach (e.g., Yeager and Canuto 2000) stressed that communities come about through frequent and repeated interaction between community members and are therefore constantly being remade in an ongoing process that may include multiple, competing factions. Others argued that communities are primarily ideational constructs that do not necessarily need to exist in person or be tied to a specific place. In this view, communities are composed of people who self-consciously create and share an identity or a sense of us versus them, but who are not necessarily bound together by shared experiences or practices (e.g., Anderson 1991; Cohen 1985; Isbell 2000; see also Barth 1998).

As some have pointed out, however, defining the community as a purely ideational construct expands the boundaries of the concept to such a degree that it becomes unwieldy as an analytical category (MacSweeny 2011:17). More recently, archaeologists have reasserted the importance of place in our understanding of communities by incorporating elements from both ideational and interactionalist approaches, along with a renewed emphasis on the spatial context in which community identities are realized (Birch 2013; MacSweeny 2011; Pluckhahn et al. 2018; Rautman 2014; see also chapters in Watts Malouchos and Betzenhauser 2021). For Rautman (2014:42), a village community may have encompassed individuals who did not live within the focal village full time, but the concept nonetheless centers village sites representing repeated and patterned individual and group activities that constitute recurring participation in community life. MacSweeny (2011) instead discusses geographic communities, which are defined by a consciously ascribed collective identity and a spatial focus, the latter usually consisting of a location where enactments of community, or social practices expressing the community’s collective identity, take place.

Here we adopt the conception of the geographic community for our discussion of arcuate communities because arcuate sites adhere to a consistent spatial form that we believe facilitates enactments of community, and because this definition applies equally well to villagers living in permanent settlements and to dispersed, mobile foragers who aggregate only periodically. For our purposes, then, arcuate communities are those whose settlements are oriented in an arcing or circular pattern surrounding a central feature that serves as a focal point for collective activities that reinforce the community’s shared identity. Archaeologically, this is likely to manifest as arcs or circular distributions of houses, pits, middens, or other features associated with habitation surrounding a central plaza, pole, structure, or some combination of these. We think that the distribution of habitation features and debris in an arcuate pattern and the presence of central features, such as plazas, at a particular site represents some degree of collective understanding and planning on the part of that site’s inhabitants; we argue that this is indicative of a shared sense of community. Still, the presence of a community must be demonstrated, meaning that researchers focusing on these settlements require theoretical models that link evidence and interpretations.

ANALYZING ARCUATE COMMUNITIES

Archaeological approaches to space and the built environment can help us understand how the distribution of architectural features and artifacts in arcuate settlements relates to the social dynamics of arcuate communities. Anthropologists have long recognized that the built environment and the use of space, including the physical layout of settlements, reflect the attitudes and ideals of a society, and influence the ways in which people move and act within them. However, the Eastern Woodlands presents methodological and interpretive hurdles for archaeologists attempting to study spatial organization within settlements. The analysis of community spatial organization in the Eastern Woodlands has mostly been done at sites where large-scale excavations have been conducted, allowing the assessment of artifact distributions, features, and entire structures across most of the settlement (e.g., Birch and Williamson 2013; Boudreaux 2007; Cook 2008; Hally 2008; Kelly 1990; Means 2007a; Polhemus 1987; Wilson 2008; see also chapters in Watts Malouchos and Betzenhauser 2021). These extensively excavated sites with preserved architectural remains generally date to later time periods because the materials used for structures across Eastern North America were almost exclusively organic and perishable. Well-preserved architecture from before about 1000 CE is relatively uncommon, with a few notable exceptions (Kelly 1990; Steere 2017). Sites lacking extensive excavation or those with poorly preserved architectural remains usually still contain some combination of earthworks, middens, artifact distributions, and features, which means they lend themselves to an analysis of space and the built environment nonetheless (Clark 2004; Lewis et al.1998; Mainfort and Sullivan 1998; Pluckhahn 2003; Russo et al. 2014; Sassaman 2005; Spielmann 2008).

Archaeologists have employed a variety of methods to analyze and interpret spatial patterning in the past at multiple scales (Flannery 1976; Gillings et al. 2020; Hietala 1984; Hodder and Orton 1976; Jones and Creese 2016; Kroll and Price 1991; Robertson et al. 2006). At the broadest scale, landscape and settlement pattern studies have attempted to define the spatial relationships between settlements and other loci of human activity across local catchments and entire regions (Anschuetz et al. 2001; Ashmore and Knapp 1999; Kowalewski 2008; Mehta and Skipton, this volume). Recently, large-scale social network analyses have added a new layer to landscape and settlement studies and helped to refine our understanding of connections between sites and cultural components over time (Lulewicz 2019, 2021; Mills 2017; Mills et al. 2015; Rivers et al. 2013). Social network analysis has also been applied at smaller, intrasite scales (Smith et al., this volume). At smaller scales, analysis of the built environment has focused on how the spatial layout of middens, houses, storage facilities, plazas, palisades, and other architectural features that made up arcuate settlements was structured by and influenced the ideas and practices of those who constructed and lived among them (Hillier and Hanson 1984; Kent 1990; Lawrence and Low 1990; Low 2000; Rapoport 1976, 1990; Steadman 1996, 2015; Wilson 1988). Approaches and techniques for the study of the built environment include demographic estimates based on floor area (Casselberry 1974; Cook 1972; Naroll 1962; Weissner 1974), space syntax analysis (Hillier et al. 1976; Hillier and Hanson 1984), and various models of the symbolic division of space at the household and community level (Bourdieu 1970; Dunnell; 1983; Lévi-Strauss 1953, 1963). As noted, detailed analysis of individual buildings is difficult at many arcuate settlements throughout the Eastern Woodlands, but at settlements where we can infer the presence of structures, we can analyze the relationships between them and other parts of the site.

Most of the studies in this volume focus on spatial patterning at the scale of the individual site with the assumption that an arcuate settlement is representative of a community. Analysis of intrasite spatial patterning was once a prominent theme in archaeology, represented by the substantial number of ethnoarchaeological studies during the 1970s and 1980s (e.g., Binford 1978, 1980; Kent 1984, 1987; O’Connell 1987; Yellen 1977; see also Surovell et al. 2022). However, intrasite spatial analysis has declined in popularity since that time, in part due to the recognition that a lack of theorizing and equifinality in the archaeological record often confounds the interpretation of activity patterns in the past (Clark 2022; O’Connell 1995). We believe that the theme of community in this volume provides theoretical grounding for the application of a variety of methods, including ethnographic comparison (Russo, this volume; West et al., this volume), computational approaches (Means, this volume; Smith et al., this volume), and remote sensing (Green et al., this volume), aimed at understanding the spatial organization of arcuate communities—not just why or how they take on their characteristic form, but also the relationships among their constituent social segments and households. In the following sections of this introduction, we outline key themes in the relationship between space and sociality for arcuate communities.

SOCIAL AND SYMBOLIC BOUNDARIES IN ARCUATE COMMUNITIES

Many, if not most, arcuate settlements exhibit some symbolic opposition or at least separation between social segments along the ring of habitations. The various symbolic divisions of space within arcuate and circular settlements are often understood through the application of geometric models. Geometric models consist of diametric models (Lévi-Strauss 1953, 1963), which emphasize the symmetry of arcuate settlements and their organization into opposing halves and concentric models (Lévi-Strauss 1963), foregrounding the different activities and meanings attributed to concentric zones within the settlement. For instance, in many ethnographic examples of circular settlements, the central plaza is set apart as a sacred or public space relative to the profane or private areas that surround it, consisting of houses, production areas, storage facilities, and middens (e.g., Chagnon 1968; Heckenberger 2005; Yellen 1977). Another type of model, circumferential models, stresses the organization of arcuate settlements into segments that may represent particular social groups. These models are not mutually exclusive and are often interrelated, for instance, among circular villages whose inhabitants are divided into clans or lineages (circumferential) and which are themselves classified into moieties (diametric) (Means 2007a:54–55).

Diametric or circumferential patterning within a settlement is often interpreted as representing the social relationships between various groups in terms of spatial proximity (Smith et al., this volume; West et al., this volume). This form of spatial organization, sometimes referred to as diagrammatic, or a sociogram (Knight 1998, 2016), indicates collective intention and planning of the settlement layout rather than gradual accretion, though community plans could and often did change over time. Some monumental enclosures and ceremonial centers, even at nonresidential sites, exhibit these patterns in their spatial organization and have been interpreted in similar ways (Dillehay 1990; Spielmann 2008). The social and spatial divisions reflected by diametric and circumferential models may indicate close relationships promoting cooperation as well as more distant relationships characterized by competition and tension. Such divisions and their representation in space serve as the basis for reciprocal relationships and political factionalism—both integration and exclusion. Indeed, some communities address factional divisions by emphasizing the complementary nature of social segments through mutual obligations of exchange (Tuzin 2001) or ceremonies requiring the ritual knowledge and participation of multiple groups (Cook 2017, 2018; Fletcher and La Flesche 1911). Even if relationships between such groups are sometimes competitive, distant, or historically violent, their incorporation into a unified settlement plan may be necessary for a community due to the socially interdependent and complementary relationship between the factions (e.g., Fowles 2013:122–35).

Arcuate communities characterized by internal social and political divisions may represent hybrid social groups, including coalescent societies formed in the aftermath of region-wide disruptions due to warfare, disease, and migration (Kowalewski 2006). Most coalescent societies share certain characteristic features, one of which is central to our conception of arcuate communities: a settlement plan promoting integration of multiple social segments through an orientation around shared, public space (Kowalewski 2006:117). Not all arcuate communities are coalescent societies or some other form of hybrid social group, but some certainly fit the description. Eastern North American examples include the Fort Ancient villages of southern Ohio and their descendant groups farther west (Cook 2017, 2018; Cook et al., this volume), as well as some large mound centers and ring midden villages of the Woodland period in the Southeast (Menz, Messer, and Shanks, this volume; Pluckhahn 2003; Pluckhahn et al. 2018; West et al., this volume). In these examples, migration, rather than disease or warfare, may have disrupted existing settlement patterns and triggered the creation of these new, hybrid communities (Cook 2017; Pluckhahn et al. 2020).

Concentric patterning, in contrast, is interpreted in a variety of ways, from the sacred and symbolic to the purely mundane and functional, depending on the context and associated activity (Cook et al., this volume; Green et al., this volume; Portnoy 1981; Russo, this volume). In terms of the sacred, plazas and other types of integrative architecture at the center of arcuate communities are sometimes viewed as axes mundi, symbolizing a cosmic center at the heart of the settlement (Cobb and Butler 2016; Skousen 2012). Such a symbolic association between the settlement and the cosmos can be viewed as orienting the practices of everyday life toward the sacred (Lewis and Stout 1998; Pauketat 2007). The outermost concentric activity zones in a settlement are usually occupied by middens or, where necessary, defensive structures such as palisades. In some of the case studies in this volume, the use of midden shell and soil in the construction of rings, mounds, house platforms, and other architectural and ceremonial features complicates our understanding of built environments by blurring the line between refuse disposal, architecture, and ritual (McNiven 2013; Russo 2014, this volume). For instance, a ring of midden along the exterior of a settlement may take on symbolic importance in addition to its more mundane function by demarcating the boundary between those inside and outside of the community.

Structural similarities regarding the use and symbolic division of space exist between arcuate settlements in Eastern North America and other settlement forms not usually considered arcuate or circular. Examples include many pueblos in the American Southwest, which generally consist of rectangular room blocks, sometimes oriented around plazas or public buildings. While most pueblos are not explicitly circular, several exhibit concentric and diametric divisions of space, representing an organizational logic similar to that expressed in arcuate settlements (Fowles 2005, 2013; Ortiz 1969; Rautman 2000). There are also a few examples of circular pueblos in the region (e.g., Rautman 2016). The orientation of household units around a central hearth and common area within some Northwest Coast multifamily plank houses provides another example, with the highest status families usually positioned opposite the door and other families situated according to their rank (Coupland et al. 2009). Similar patterning has been described for square or rectangular Mississippian period towns and villages and the camp squares of the Chickasaw (Speck 1907; see also Cook et al., this volume). To us, this suggests that the core aspects of arcuate settlements (i.e., central plazas, concentric activity zones, and diametric or circumferential patterning of habitations) are among the most elementary in North America, which helps to explain both their flexibility and longevity.

CENTERING PLAZAS IN ARCUATE COMMUNITIES

Shared, central space, usually recognized under the term plaza, is a common feature of community patterning through time and across the globe (Kassabaum 2019). Plazas, as focal areas of highly visible public activities, are core elements of the settlements that contain them and not just empty spaces enclosed by architecture (Kidder 2004:515). This is particularly true for arcuate communities, as central plazas are inherent to their design. Archaeological examples of arcuate settlements are often identified based on the distribution of architectural features, midden soils, or other debris. The disposition of these residues of daily life within arcuate settlements may have been incidental to other activities or a deliberate practice of its own, but in all cases, we can infer that the creation and maintenance of the central plaza were intentional. In many societies, plazas were the primary arenas for the organization and performance of ceremonies, maintenance of political alliances through displays of hospitality and gift-giving along with other forms of exchange, participation in public debates, and overall engagement with political life, as well as being a locus of communal labor (e.g., Chagnon 1968; Heckenberger 2005). In brief, even though plazas are often identified archaeologically by a lack of artifacts and features, the plaza was the focal point of arcuate communities, where a sense of collective identity was enacted.

Plazas are often associated with ritual and other nondomestic public activities, such as communal feasting (Delgado 2017; Kassabaum 2014). The creation and modification of a plaza was itself a ritually potent event, marking major transitions in the life of the community, because of the ways that public life is structured by plazas as well as the wide array of symbolic associations that were often applied to them (Cobb and Butler 2016). Examples of substantial changes in communities through the remaking of existing plazas or the establishment of new, plaza-centered settlements occurred in several of the arcuate communities discussed in this book (Cook et al., this volume; Green et al., this volume; Kassabaum et al., this volume; Means, this volume).

An important aspect of this understanding of plazas is that they are actively constructed and may represent an amount of labor comparable to that expended on mounds and other forms of public architecture (Lacquement 2020). Mounds, buildings, walls, and other forms of architecture surrounding plazas—or even the structure of the plazas themselves, in the case of enclosed and sunken plazas in Andean South America—can affect their acoustic properties as well as visual openness, restricting access to the activities taking place within them (Helmer and Chicoine 2013; Mehta and Skipton, this volume). Many plazas include architectural elements that further modify the types of activities that took place and the ways people moved within the plaza. These elements include men’s houses (Wüst and Barreto 1999), large, free-standing posts (Skousen 2012), or ritual structures such as kivas (Fowles 2013) and sacred lodges (Fraser 1968:63). In some cases, the placement of central structures within plazas is highly variable, and the location of a structure within a plaza does not necessarily mean that the structure was tied directly to plaza activities (Rautman 2000:275).

In the Eastern Woodlands of North America, plazas often contain central elements, particularly posts, but the most prominent form of architecture associated with plazas is the mound. This pattern of plazas enclosed by mounds began during the Middle Archaic period and persisted,