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The Late Prehistoric people who once lived in the Allegheny Mountains region of southwestern Pennsylvania, and who are associated with the archaeologically de¤ned Monongahela tradition, are known today largely from the ringshaped village settlements they once inhabited. A large number of these village sites have had their layouts completely exposed, seemingly rendering them well suited to detailed community pattern analyses. However, scholars have been unsuccessful in integrating studies of these ring-shaped village sites into cultural developments that took place throughout the Northeast during the Late Prehistoric period (Means 2006a) or into a broader anthropological understanding of the social groups represented by the remains of these village sites (considered in Chapter 3). One factor that curtailed a broader understanding of these village sites was the lack of a secure chronological framework for the Allegheny Mountains region . It was partly to address this factor that AMS dates were secured for a number of village components of previously unknown age. Chronological ordering of these village components enabled their examination within a local developmental sequence, facilitating both the modeling of social organization for individual components and the consideration of—or lack of—diachronic changes in village social organization. The other major factor that limited analyses of Allegheny Mountains region village sites was the perception by some scholars that the ring-shaped settlement was a unique cultural “trait” of the Monongahela tradition. In fact, the ring-shaped settlement layout was shown in Chapter 1 to have characterized the layouts of villages and other settlement types located around the globe and throughout time. A cross-cultural and cross-temporal review of ring-shaped settlements in Chapter 4 revealed several geometric models that could have been responsible for the distribution of some or all material remains at Allegheny Mountains region village sites and aspects of village social organization. 9 Implications Drawn from Interpreting Community Organization through Village Spatial Layouts Outlined in Chapter 5, a series of models and hypotheses were then developed from this review. These were designed to ascertain the geometric model(s) underlying ring-shaped village sites. The models and hypotheses were tested in the individual and comparative analyses of village components presented in Chapters 7 and 8 according to methods and techniques described in Chapter 6. The remainder of this chapter is divided into three sections. In the ¤rst, a broad review is presented on the nature of the geometric models that potentially in®uence the layouts of all ring-shaped settlements. The second emphasizes major ¤ndings from the individual and comparative analyses of Allegheny Mountains region village settlements. These ¤ndings are integrated with the stronger chronological framework created through AMS dating of curated museum collections. The ¤nal section considers the implications of this work in terms of a broader understanding of ring-shaped settlements located outside the Allegheny Mountains region. SPATIAL PATTERNING IN RING-SHAPED SETTLEMENTS The spatial distribution of material elements at ring-shaped settlements was expected to take the form of two broad categories of patterning that are geometric in nature: concentric and circumferential. By de¤nition, ring-shaped settlements must exhibit concentric patterning at least in terms of their dwellings . In concentric patterning, a clear distinction is often exhibited between the settlement’s periphery—its ring of dwellings and associated features—and its center, or plaza. The latter may have an axis mundi—a centrally located post,¤re, or other feature of ritual or ceremonial signi¤cance—that ties geometric models used to plan the settlement to native models of the cosmos. Ringshaped settlements may also exhibit circumferential patterning. Such patterning refers to the fact that social groups and material remains may form discrete clusters within and around the dwelling ring, somewhat analogous to pie wedges. In the introduction to this work, it was argued that the layouts of most Allegheny Mountains region village settlements were intentionally planned according to cognitive models that arranged social spaces and corresponding village social organizations using geometric frameworks when the villages were initially established. The spatial manifestation of these planned layouts was evident in the distribution of dwelling clusters around a fairly well de¤ned plaza. It was further argued that the geometric framework resulting from the con¤guration of dwellings around an open central plaza should also have generated geometric patterning in the distribution of activities. This was generally not the case. What geometric patterning was evident in the distribution of activities was much weaker than anticipated and not clearly associated with the 156 / Chapter 9 [3.138.113.188] Project...

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