Pawnee vessel function and ceramic persistence: Reconstructed vessels from the Burkett, Barcal, Linwood, Bellwood, and Horse Creek sites

Abstract

During the AD 1750–1850 period, Pawnee households in the Central Plains made and used ceramic vessels less frequently than Arikara and Hidatsa households in the Northern Plains. Here I explore Pawnee vessel function and ceramic persistence during the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries through measurements and use-alteration analysis of 15 reconstructed jars from five Pawnee or ancestral Pawnee sites. These data indicate that ancestral Pawnee households stopped designing or using ceramics for cooking by the end of the Lower Loup phase, approximately AD 1750, although ceramic vessels were used for liquid storage and ritual practice into the early 1800s. The reasons why Pawnee women stopped cooking in ceramic vessels in the mid-eighteenth century, perhaps a century earlier than Arikara and Hidatsa women to the north, are probably linked to epidemic impacts and economic decisions about bison hide production for European trade.