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The Price Site (21BE36) is one of four Cambria Focus sites located along the Minnesota River from just northwest of the village of Cambria to the southeast. All are on the south bank of the river and all are built adjacent to small but permanent streams. The Cambria Site (21BE2) is the largest of the four settlements and although its exact size has never been determined it is probably about two acres in extant and possibly larger. These days the surface of most of the site is in grass although much of it has been plowed in the past. The westernmost part is plowed yearly. No reasonably accurate population estimate is possible although I usually use 200 as what I consider to be a safe guess. The Price Site (21BE36) is upstream about two miles (4 K) northwest. The area, of the site, bounded by the two mounds and a stone lined hearth on the south and east and the banks of Morgan Creek on the west, would be perhaps two acres (.8 H).
The main occupation was probably confined largely to the northwesternmost part of the terrace. There was the possibility of another occupation area which would have been immediately north of what was a circular, flat-topped mound (1 meter in height and 45 meters in diameter after considerable cultivation). Both mounds and this area were destroyed by the Dakota, Minnesota, and Eastern Railroad in 1998 sand used for fill in a bridge reconstruction project. My excavations were confined to the northwesternmost part of the terrace and took place in 1974, 1975, 1991, and 1992. Analysis of subsistence is derived entirely from the 1974 and 1975 seasons. The third Cambria Focus site is the Jones Site (21BE5). This was the last site to be occupied and was probably abandoned at about 1350 AD. Cambria was undoubtedly the first occupation of the focus and was probably contemporaneous with the Stirling Phase at Cahokia (1050-1250 AD). This conclusion is based on both radiocarbon dates and the abundance of Ramey-like ceramics. A fourth Cambria site was discovered adjacent to the main Cambria Site by Dale Henning in 2001. Nothing is known of this site except that it is there.
The Price Site is situated, as were the others, to take advantage of five subsets of the larger prevailing prairie ecosystem which surrounded the area at the time of occupation. The point at which the Blue Earth River joins the Minnesota River pretty well defines the beginning and end of the prairie. That margin could vary during periods of abundant rainfall which favored tree growth and the suppression of fire, or during periods of less than normal rainfall a higher frequency of fires would have suppressed the growth of trees and favored grasses. Normal rainfall at present is defined as about 30 inches per year (750 mm).
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The Minnesota River remains a dynamic force, shaping and reshaping the landscape on an almost annual basis. Occasionally that reshaping is quite compelling. At Price the actual shoreline has changed three times since our first season there in 1974, and prior to that the then owner David Price saw part of his land become part of the north bank of the river instead of the south. The Minnesota River follows the course gouged out by the River Warren when it drained glacial lake Agassiz between 9,000 to 12,000 years ago, and although it is currently (October 2000) but one foot (30 cm) deep at Mankato, it can rise more than 30 feet as was the case in 1993.
On either side of the river is an extensive floodplain. Apparently the settlers chose a place where the floodplain was particularly wide probably the better to exploit its riches as well as its horticultural potential. The floodplain supports a rich flora and fauna, much of it edible.
The floodplain also features oxbow lakes formed when meanders are cut through and isolated. After flooding and sometimes for a considerable time after they may be home to many fish, muskrats, and wildfowl who prefer still water to running.
The first terrace above the flood plain was probably then as now a savanna or burr oak and prairie grasses all maintained by fairly regular burning. People, who have been in the area since the ice left, were probably part of that burning regimen. Although burr oaks (Quercus macrocarpa) are “white oaks” and therefore have acorns which are more easily made edible than the acorns of “black oaks” there is no sign that the people who lived there processed them. Perhaps the bipolar nature of acorn crops made acorns not worth the while. On the other hand one can always count on the white tailed deer occupying this zone. Bison too like this habitat, and I have camped with the bison in just such a habitat along the Little Missouri in North Dakota. One would find beaver in the banks of this terrace. The Minnesota River does nor lend itself to damming by beaver, and instead they tend to live in burrows. Dams are still constructed across the smaller tributaries. Beaver also tend to raid corn fields. Perhaps there was an element of revenge in the pursuit of beaver.
The north and south facing slopes are completely different. The north facing slopes are covered with the sugar maple and basswood of the the “Big Woods” just to the east. Along the edges at both the top and the bottom of the slope one finds plums and cherries (pin and choke). There are also raspberries and currants and wild grapes in great abundance. Both walnuts and butternuts grow where they have chance. The north facing slope is covered with useful resources. The south facing slope receiving intense insolation is prairie grasses and junipers - not all that much diversity nor much cover.
At the top was the prairie extending for hundreds of miles to the south and west. This would be tall grass prairie dominated by big bluestem but including much switch grass and Indian grass. Bison would have been here in abundance. The sediments along local rivers are continually revealing the bones of bison past, and when Swan Lake (the largest body of water in south central Minnesota and home to many thousands of water fowl) dried up in the mid-1930s farmers took wagons out on the lakebed and picked up bison bones by the wagon-load - animals which had fallen through the ice and drowned.
Thus the Cambria folk had the river, the floodplain, the terraces, the considerable slopes of the River Warren, and the prairie to exploit. All evidence points to them having done just that.
Because radiocarbon dates from Price and Cambria demonstrate contemporaneity and the ceramic assemblages although slightly different are similar enough to reinforce the impression of the radiocarbon dates it is safe to say that both were occupied at the same time. Why Price? I would see Price as being home to a group of disaffected individuals from Cambria. This sort of fissioning appears to be quite common and is particularly well documented for the Hidatsa of central North Dakota.
The excavated portion of Price was a compact cluster of houses of which not one trace (other than a hearth on the edge of one storage pit) has been identified. Considerable effort was expended to identify structures, but not even one unequivocal post hole was confirmed. Wilford and Nickerson did little better at the Cambria Site although Nickerson thought he might have uncovered a floor. For those who would assign an Initial Middle Missouri tag to the Cambria Focus this might be a matter to consider - no rectangular lodges leaving tangible depressions. At the Jones Site conditions were ideal for identifying post holes and hearths - a tan soil in the eastern half of the site. No post holes or trenches were found. Structures remain a mystery, not unlike the situation at Vosburg, an Oneota occupation about 35 miles to the south (56K), where ten weeks of fieldwork by Guy Gibbon and Orrin Shane in 1979 yielded many storage pits but only one confirmed post hole.
At Price 15 storage pits were identified and excavated or at least extensively sampled. Some contained considerable quantities of bones and carbonized seed and some nothing or next to nothing. Features 1 and 14 were particularly rich in garbage with 14 also yielding a spectacular array of ceramics. Feature 14 is a story unto itself with its considerable wealth of ceramics including two nearly entire and a fragment of a third identical Ramey vessels. What went on there?
The faunal record by the numbers. Faunal materials are sometimes reckoned by Minimum Number of Individuals (MNI). Floral materials are not. A single ear of corn can yield a couple hundred kernels and a chenopod produces thousands of seeds under the best of conditions and even under rather mediocre circumstances. Simply citing bone numbers can be terribly misleading as well. Fish have lots of bones and are highly portable to home base. A bison, on the other hand may weigh 2000 pounds more or less (about 900 kilos) of which much (depending on many factors including relative abundance or scarcity) is of little or no use. The hide alone might weigh 80 pounds (36 kilos). Gilbert Wilson nicely described late 19th century bison butchery and notes that virtually all the bone was left on the prairie with the meat packed home in the hide. Thus what appears to be a relatively low interest in bison may be completely in error. Tons of bison might have been consumed with no archaeological traces other than an astragalus or two used in gaming and some scapula tools like hoes and squash knives. I have, for better or worse, chosen numbers of bones and not numbers of individuals.
The record is skewed, but having worked through all this several times I feel more comfortable with numbers of bones. That this method has problems can be seen with the dog bone count. On some occasion a dog was butchered and presumably eaten. Most of its skeleton wound up in the bottom of a storage pit. This was the only dog found. Therefore, like so much archaeological data this data set provides impressions and only that. Of the mammals beaver bones are most abundant. As with fish a beaver can be carried home to be processed and therefore may be over represented. Still I feel it was in their interest to keep beaver populations low in the vicinity of their gardens, beavers being quite capable of devastating a corn crop. It is curious that no rabbit bones were identified.
Fishing was obviously a significant activity and “bottom feeders” like catfish and bullheads abound in the archaeological record. It should be noted that the bones of fish as small as “minnows” and as large as “lunkers” are represented. My feeling is that the inhabitants used fish-traps as described by both Gilbert Wilson for the Hidatsa and Melvin Gilmore for the Arikara. The trap is basically a corral of vertical saplings stuck into the river bottom with a narrow entrance. Baited with rotting meat the trap permits fish to swim in but not out. Wilson’s photographs show a large, cornucopia shaped basket being used to scoop any and all fish out. The relatively high frequency of turtle bones probably represent turtles which entered the fish-trap although turtles seeking a site in which to lay eggs are very vulnerable to humans. Clam shells were abundant and none showed obvious signs of wear.
Mammals were represented by a wide variety of species but beaver, deer, and bison were favored. Several bison scapula hoes were found, and two worn out squash knives (also made from bison scapula). Green corn was shelled with deer mandibles.
The record on birds appears to be largely opportunistic although the high incidence of “song birds” remained a mystery until I read in Wilson’s works about young Hidatsa boys honing their archery skill by shooting birds.
The floral record. As noted, counting kernels of corn does not in any way, shape, or form provide information on ear numbers or yields. Growing crops is a very untidy venture. The parameters are extremely variable and stochastic. In 1975, after a wet spring, it did not rain at the Price Site from early June until mid-September. Not once. Crops in the area were a disaster. Yet twenty miles (32K) away in the Garden City area crop yields were quite normal because a couple thunderstorms passed over Garden City and missed Cambria. Corn grown on light (sandy) soils that year yielded no corn at all, and this was the land that the Price Site inhabitants presumably would have farmed.
Storage pits abound and they are largely large - 120-140 cm deep and about as broad at the base. An idealized corn storage pit I constructed in a conveniently friendly geometric fashion can hold 12 bushels if 120 cm deep (1 bushel = 56 pounds of corn at 15.5% moisture or about 25.5 kilograms so 12 bushels would be a little more than 300 kilograms - 306 kilos) or 20 bushels if it is 140 cm deep and wide (or a little more than 500 kilograms). 20 bushels per acre is a figure used since the days of the Georges Will and Hyde (1917) as a rough estimate of yield from an Indian garden. Given the variables - grasshoppers, gophers, deer, beaver, crows, magpies and perhaps even bison walking through your garden munching as they went - any yield at all is a blessing. Then throw in climatic factors such as too little rain, too much rain, rain at the wrong time (during pollination), and late frosts in the spring (in 1991 we in south central Minnesota had snow on Memorial Day and a frost on the first day of summer) and one soon comes to realize that horticulture is a blessing when it works, but not reliable enough to be depended upon. As noted by an old German farmer who was fishing in the Knife River near Stanton, North Dakota when I commented on how good the crops looked, “It ain’t in the bin yet.”
If, on the basis of some data from my garden (The Amos Owen Garden of American Indian Horticulture), we can assume about a half of a pound (550 grams) of corn (unshelled) from each hill . Then in an acre with 2,601 hills (a field 51 hills square if the hills are on four foot or 1.2 M centers) we should have a yield of 1,430,550 grams or 1,430 kilograms or 3,147 pounds of unshelled corn per acre. Can this be correct? Stay tuned, I have an accomplished student who will be working on this over the next two years. And finally we can assume that the weight of the kernels is about 85% of the weight of an ear of corn (based on measurements I did last May with corn from my garden). If we are dealing with shelled corn then we have more than a ton or 2,675 pounds of corn or 48 bushels of shelled corn. This is a far cry from the twenty bushels per acre that seems to be taken for granted. Furthermore most authors fail to state whether they are calculating shelled or unshelled corn. It makes a difference.
At that rate it would take two storage pits slightly deeper and wider than the largest I described if an acre of corn were to have been grown. A complicating factor is corn eaten as “sweet corn” which probably will not show up at all but, according to Wilson (1917), could amount to a third of the corn grown. An acre per adult is a figure frequently used. If tilling is done with a digging stick (buffalo shoulder blade hoes are good primarily for hilling and definitely not for chopping) then this is an incredible amount of work. I have come to doubt it..Gilbert Wilson asked good questions and Buffalo-bird-woman gave good answers, but she never worked with a buffalo shoulder blade hoe. She lived in the age of cast iron hoes and iron or steel axes. That makes all the difference in the world.
Some sunflowers were grown and some squash as well. Beans were not identified in the samples. Lots of chenopods were identified although not to species. Something to be done. Certainly chenopods like areas disturbed by humans, and humans are good at making disturbances. Furthermore chenopods are easy to grow, store, and process.
Finally a few remarks about the end of subsistence at Cambria. The Jones Site has radiocarbon dates in the middle to late 13th century. Over all there are few storage pits and my calculations would put their contents at about 17 bushels. Faunal material was scant (and unfortunately in poor condition) and even fish bones and clam shells were scarce. The overall impression is one of impoverishment. In four storage pits buffalo shoulder blade hoes were left at the top of the pit. Was this the way a pit was closed out or a sign that the people who had placed them there intended to return and dig them out? Work in North Dakota by Kathleen Laird, et al. (1996) indicates a more stable climate after 1200 AD. This was shortly before Cahokia fell apart apparently at least in part because of climatic changes for the worse.
Climates in southern Minnesota and North Dakota are by no means on the same schedule. Good evidence can be seen in the flooding of the Devils Lake basin at present. No such water surplus exists in southern Minnesota where, despite recent rains, drought prevails. 1988 and 1989 were extremely hot and dry. Corn in my garden failed to pollinate even though I watered it. The tassels “burned,” as corn researchers call it, and failed to produce pollen. This year the cessation of rain at the end of July is evident in the ears which were late in maturing. The tips of these ears bear no kernels. As noted previously, the Minnesota River was at 1 foot (30 cm) in Mankato in October 2000. Were conditions like this to have prevailed for as few as three years I think subsistence strategies of mixed hunting, fishing and horticulture would have failed. Cambria ceramics have been found in southeastern North Dakota indicating that the Cambrians, as well as others, were opting for a more predictable climate. Just how far west they traveled and what new strategies they employed the ceramic record can only hint.
A Bibliography of the Cambria Focus and Related Materials
Anderson, Duane 1987.
Toward a Processual Understanding of the Initial Variant of the Middle Missouri Tradition: the Case of the Mill Creek Culture of Iowa. American Antiquity, Vol. 52:522-537.
Barrett, S.A. 1933.
Ancient Aztalan. Bulletin of the Public Museum of the City of Milwaukee, Vol. 3, No.1.
Blake, Leonard and Hugh C. Cutler 1973.
Corn from the Nelson Site (21BE23). Letter and unpublished report on file at Minnesota State University, Mankato.
Bryson, R.A. and D.A. Barreis 1968.
Climate Change and the Mill Creek Culture of Iowa. Journal of the Iowa Archaeological Society, Vols. 15-16:1-358.
Bryson, R.A. and Murray, T.J. 1977.
Climates of Hunger. University of Wisconsin Press.
Dobbs, Clark 1984.
Oneota Settlement Patterns in the Blue Earth River Valley, Minnesota. PhD. Dissertation, University of Minnesota.
Gibbon, Guy 1973/1979.
Mississippian Occupation of the Red Wing Area. Minnesota Prehistoric Archaeology Series, No. 13. Minnesota Historical Society, St. Paul.
Griffin, James B. 1978.
The Midlands and Northeastern United States. Chapter 6 in Ancient Native Americans edited by Jesse D. Jennings. Freeman, San Francisco.
Griffin, J.B. 1975.
Review: Aspects of Upper Great Lakes Anthropology. Edited by Elden Johnson. Minnesota History, Spring:192-193.
Grimm, Eric 1985.
Vegetation History along the Prairie-Forest Border in Minnesota. In: Archaeology, Ecology, and Ethnohistory of the Prairie-Forest Border Zone of Minnesota and Manitoba, edited by Janet Spector and Elden Johnson. Reprints in Anthropology, Vol. 31. J and L Reprint Company, Lincoln, Nebraska.
Ives, John C. 1962.
Mill Creek Ceramics. Journal of the Iowa Archaeological Society, Vol. 11 (3).
Knudson, Ruth Ann 1967.
Cambria Village Ceramics. Plains Anthropologist, Vol. 12:247-299.
Laird, Kathleen R., Sherilyn C. Fritz, Kirk A. Maash and Brian F. Cumming 1996
Greater drought intensity and frequency before AD 1200 in the Northern Great Plains. Nature, Vol. 384:552-554.
Lehmer, Donald 1971.
Introduction to Middle Missouri Archaeology. Anthropological Papers, National Park Service.
Lehmer, Donald J. 1951.
Pottery types from the Dodd Site, Oahe Reservoir, South Dakota. Plains Conference Newsletter Vol. 4 (2): 13-25.
Link, Adolph 1976.
Mississippian Paint Palettes. The Minnesota Archaeologist Vol. 25 (3): 31-36.
Nickerson, W. B. 1917.
Archaeological evidence in Minnesota. Unpublished MS., Minnesota Historical Society, St. Paul.
Porter, James W. 1974.
Cahokia archaeology as viewed from the Mitchell Site: a satellite community at A.D. 1100-1200. Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Wisconsin, Madison.
Scullin, Michael 1994
Cambria, Easternmost of the Western or Westernmost of the Eastern? A paper presented at the Plains Anthropological Conference.
Shay, Ruth Ann Knudson 1966.
Cambria Village ceramics. M.A. Thesis, University of Minnesota.
Swanson, Earl H., Jr. 1972.
Birch Creek. Idaho State University Press.
Thompson, Ralph S. 1983.
The Edgar L. Bailey Collection. Newsletter of the North Dakota Archaeological Association, Vol. 4, No. 3:3-10.
Watrall, Charles R. 1968a.
An analysis of the bone, stone, and shell materials from the Cambria Focus. M.A. Thesis, University of Minnesota.
Watrall, Charles R. 1968b.
Analysis of unmodified stone materials from the Cambria Site. The Minnesota Academy of Science, Journal, Vol.35 (1):4-8.
Waugh, F.W. 1916.
Iroquois Food and Food Preparation. Canada Department of Mines, Geological Survey, Memoir 86, Number 12, Anthropology Series.
Wedel, Waldo 1978.
The Prehistoric Plains. Chapter 5 in Ancient Native Americans edited by Jesse D. Jennings. Freeman, San Francisco.
Wilford, Lloyd 1945.
Three village sites of the Mississippian pattern in Minnesota. American Antiquity, Vol. 11:32-40.
-------------- 1955.
A revised classification of the prehistoric cultures of Minnesota. American Antiquity, Vol. 21:120-142.
Wilson, Gilbert L. 1917.
Agriculture of the Hidatsa Indians, an Indian interpretation. Studies in the Social Sciences, No. 9., University of Minnesota.
Wilson, Gilbert L. 1924.
The horse and the dog in Hidatsa culture. Anthropological Papers of the American Museum of Natural History, Vol. 15, Part 2.
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