Pipe forms and regional interaction spheres in the Great Plains and U.S. Southwest: A view from Scott County Pueblo (14SC1)

Abstract

We use pipe forms at Scott County Pueblo (14SC1), a seventeenth-century multiethnic community in western Kansas with Ndee (Dismal River) and Puebloan residents, to consider the community’s position within multiple regional interaction spheres. We first present a broad regional overview of Central/Northern Great Plains and Midwest, Northern Rio Grande, and Ndee pipe forms in the AD 1500–1700 period, tabulating the presence and absence of specific forms at 14 archaeological sites, before classifying two complete pipes and 49 identifiable pipe fragments recovered from 14SC1. Our pipe form comparisons better distinguish Ndee pipes from other forms than previous literature and confirm that 14SC1 pipes are fully consistent with the documented Ndee and Puebloan occupations at the site. Ceremonial beliefs and practices around smoking at 14SC1 were shared with other Ndee communities and the Northern Rio Grande region, presumably cementing regional relationships that facilitated the movement of other material culture and people. Although Dismal River territory extended into the Central Plains, we find almost no material evidence of diplomatic, social, or ceremonial engagement with Caddoan-speaking groups such as the Sahnish (Arikara), Čariks i Čariks (Pawnee), and kirikir?i:s (Wichita) peoples and Siouan-speaking groups to the northeast. We suggest that these differences in external relationships along the eastern and western Dismal River frontiers are linked to the history of Ndee migration.