Bernard K. Means

Monongahela subsistence-settlement change?

Abstract The Late Prehistoric (c. A.D. 1050/1100–1635) Monongahela tradition of southwestern Pennsylvania and portions of adjoining states has come to be associated with specific subsistence-settlement traits. These include a heavy dependence on maize-based agriculture, large percentages of villages in upland locales, and use of semisubterranean storage facilities. In the traditional approach, that entails the construction of a series of sequential time periods, changes in subsistence and settlement traits are most often interpreted to have occurred at the boundaries of the time periods. These periods are defined on the basis of pottery style changes and the addition of European artifacts. An accumulation of data now allows for statistical analysis of posited changes in Monongahela tradition settlement and subsistence traits. Results of this study do not support the proposed subsistence and settlement pattern shifts at time period boundaries. Rather, the results support the position of continuous variation in the settlement and subsistence traits through the entire sequence with no evidence of regional uniformity.

The Later Prehistory of Meyersdale, Pennsylvania, and its surroundings: An overview

Publicly-funded archaeological investigations, in the form of work relief programs in the 1930s and compliance excavations in the 1970s and 1990s, generated the data presented in this overview of Late Prehistoric sites in the vicinity of Meyersdale, Pennsylvania. A consideration of information on community patterns, subsistence, and chronology suggested that the adoption and cultivation of maize inspired social and cultural changes that led to the development of village life and participation in the Monongahela culture by the native inhabitants of the Meyersdale area. The rise of village life both anticipated and paralleled regional trends occurring throughout northeastern North America.

Sites on the Margins are not Marginal Archaeology: Small, Upland Sites in the Vicinity of Meyersdale, Pennsylvania

When faced with a wide range of site types within an area under study, the attention of the archaeologist is often drawn toward larger settlements, such as base camps or villages, where one can reasonably expect a large quantity and diversity of cultural remains. While the role of smaller, limited resource procurement sites in subsistence-settlement systems is usually acknowledged, the sites themselves are seen as uninteresting or insignificant. This article focuses on the use of small, upland sites to create a more fully integrated view of the prehistoric cultural landscape in the vicinity of Meyersdale, Pennsylvania. A number of small and large sites in upland and lowland settings were excavated here as part of archaeological investigations for a highway bypass around Meyersdale.

Toward a Model of Monongahela Village Community Organization: Analyzing Pit Feature Data Recovered from the 1934 to 1940 Somerset County Relief Excavations

An ongoing review of the Somerset County Relief Excavations shows that architectural and feature data are integral to modeling Monongahela village community organization. In this paper, I focus on how feature morphology can be used as a tool to analyze Monongahela village community organization. While conducting this study, I encountered and overcame limitations in the field techniques and data recording procedures employed during the relief excavations. I was also hampered by the present status of the collections and field records generated by the relief excavations, which are incomplete, scattered, or lost. Nonetheless, sufficient data are available from these excavations to model Monongahela village community organization independently from the published and unpublished reports by the original excavators. Lessons learned from this study can be applied to the management of current archaeological collections and field records.