From Circular Lodges to Rectangular Cabins: Continuity and Change in Indigenous Use of Domestic Space at the Twilight of the Fur Trade

Rachel M. Thimmig; Kacy L. Hollenback; Kathryn A. Cross

From Circular Lodges to Rectangular Cabins: Continuity and Change in Indigenous Use of Domestic Space at the Twilight of the Fur Trade

Author(s): Rachel M. Thimmig; Kacy L. Hollenback; Kathryn A. Cross

Year: 2020

Summary

This is a poster submission presented at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

For over five hundred years, circular earthlodges were the traditional homes of the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara on the northern Plains. Construction, layout, and use of these structures were imbued with ceremonial and ritual significance. The last traditional earthlodge village was forcibly broken up with allotment in 1886. Yet prior to forced acculturation, some families willingly transitioned to Euroamerican rectangular log cabins. We do not know what processes drove such transformations, but we can begin to explore both change and continuity in the use of domestic spaces, not recorded in historic or ethnographic records, through archaeological and archaeometric techniques. This poster explores evidence of an early Arikara cabin (ca. AD 1850s) from the Forth Clark State Historical Site, North Dakota.

Cite this Record

From Circular Lodges to Rectangular Cabins: Continuity and Change in Indigenous Use of Domestic Space at the Twilight of the Fur Trade. Rachel M. Thimmig, Kacy L. Hollenback, Kathryn A. Cross. 2020 ( tDAR id: 457392)