Thirteenth- and Fourteenth-Century Redstone Pipes and Social Change on the Central Great Plains

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Redstone elbow pipes, often made from catlinite from the Pipestone quarries in Minnesota, play essential roles in many Pawnee ceremonies, including the Hako ceremony, and in the calumet ceremony that was widespread in eastern North America. They appeared first during the thirteenth century in Central Plains tradition communities in eastern Nebraska. Excavations at 25BD1 in Boyd County, Nebraska, produced one finished and two unfinished redstone elbow pipes; local collectors showed us three additional finished pipes from the area. This paper describes the Boyd County examples and their significance in the context of late thirteenth-century social change on the central Plains, including evidence that Oneota-style disk pipes also appeared in eastern Nebraska at this time.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 38888.0