Publications

The Late Prehistoric (c. A.D. 1050/1100–1635) Monongahela tradition of southwestern Pennsylvania and portions of adjoining states has come to be associated with specific subsistence-settlement traits. These include a heavy dependence on maize-based agriculture, large percentages of villages in upland locales, and use of semisubterranean storage facilities. In the traditional approach, that entails the construction of a series of sequential time periods, changes in subsistence and settlement traits are most often interpreted to have occurred at the boundaries of the time periods. These periods are defined on the basis of pottery style changes and the addition of European artifacts. An accumulation of data now allows for statistical analysis of posited changes in Monongahela tradition settlement and subsistence traits. Results of this study do not support the proposed subsistence and settlement pattern shifts at time period boundaries. Rather, the results support the position of continuous variation in the settlement and subsistence traits through the entire sequence with no evidence of regional uniformity.