The Adaptive Patterning of the Dhegiha Sioux

Abstract

Most American anthropologists believe that culture is traditional. Most American archaeologists believe that traditional elements of a culture’s material culture should be easily defined when closely related groups are compared Thus, shared traditional elements should be apparent through analysis of the archaeological remains of the closely related Quapaw, Osage, Kansa, Omaha, and Ponca villages of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. However, when data from these early contact period villages are compared, significantly different technological traditions are represented in each tribe while the linguistic, religious, and social elements are very similar. Locational information, temporal data, migration legends, linguistic data, intercultural relationships, and some explanatory hypotheses are presented and discussed.