Cambria Focus

 The Cambria focus is located on a terrace above the Minnesota River, approximately 15 miles north of its juncture with the Blue Earth River. The Cambria focus is strongly linked to the Silvernale and Great Oasis Foci, which are all members of the Cahokia sphere of influence. The Upper Mississippian phase contains both the Cambria focus and the Silvernale. The climate in the area was warm and wet in the summer and cold and wet in the winter, much like today. The area was a transition zone between forest and prairie thus contained a wide variety of plants and animal. The Cambrian people had many resources form which to draw. They had the prairies, riverbanks, forests, terraces, and the river itself.

Cambrian diet consisted of maize (or corn), sunflowers, pumpkins, and many kinds of fruit. Choke cherry trees, raspberries, and plums were in abundance. For protein the Cambrian peoples ate a lot of fish and turtles. There is evidence showing that deer were an important part of their diet, even though bison were not.

There is some uncertainty as to where the Cambrian peoples came from, and went to. One idea put forth was that they were originally from the Middle Mississippian culture and that they migrated north. From then, they lived in the area for a while, until at an unknown time they moved on again to the west. The Cambrian people were a transitional step between the Cahokian Middle/Lower Mississippian peoples and the upper Mississippian peoples. Their pottery has many aspects of the Ramey in it as well of its own flavors. The Cambrians traded heavily with many of the peoples around them. Their pottery can be found as far as the Redwing/Silvernale area (East), Big Stone Lake (North), and North Dakota (West).

The Technologies of the Cambrian peoples were similar to many of the surrounding peoples. Cambrian pottery uses grit tempering and is considered to be of high quality (thin and strong). Later in the Cambria focus they adopted shell tempering from the Redwing people. They used both side notched and un-notched arrow points. Food was stored in underground pits. The pits were characteristically bell shaped, being smaller on top than on the bottom.

The key sites for the Cambria Focus are the Jones Site, the Nelson Site, the Price Site, and the Cambria Site.

Bibliography

"Cambria, Easternmost of the Western or Westernmost of the Eastern?" Michael Scullin, Cahokia State Agricultural Extension Office. Occasional Papers, No. 3. 1992.

"http://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/offices/scullin/" Michael Scullin, Prof. Anthropology, Minnesota State University, Mankato.