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Plains Village Period

925 – 1499
CultureNorth America

The archaeological tradition of semi-sedentary earthlodge and grass-house farming villages across the Great Plains, hunting bison from temporary camps, that directly precedes and overlaps the historically documented Mandan, Hidatsa, Arikara, Pawnee, and Wichita nations already in this atlas.

Not an ending: by 1500 every village-farming nation the tradition became — Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara on the Missouri, the Pawnee of the Loup and Platte, the Wichita of the Great Bend, the Omaha, Ponca, Otoe and Kansa — is on the map as its own record, and the Plains Village pattern continues as those peoples; European trade goods, the horse, and later epidemics and displacement reshaped Plains village life from the 18th century onward.

Borders in 1450 · drawn from 3 sourced border frames
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Borders over time

The atlas holds 3 border frames for Plains Village Period — the shape you scrub through changes in 925 · 1100 · 1450.

Further reading

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Sources