AbstractsAnthropology

The decades around 1800 A.D. witnessed dramatic changes in material culture and technology among Central Plains tribes. About this time, the rapidity of change in and transition from traditional chipped stone technologies was unprecedented in the preceding human occupation on the Plains. Chipped stone assemblages were being rapidly replaced and changing in character and function. This transition was in large part accelerated by the introduction and incorporation of European trade items into tool kits, and the increasingly pervasive influence of new technologies on traditional life-ways. Here I consider the chipped stone material from two Kitkehahki Pawnee sites, 14RP1 in Republic County, Kansas, and the Hill site (25WT1) in Webster County, Nebraska. Stone sources and artifact types are reviewed and limitations of current samples are noted. Research at 14RP1 and the Hill site will help to alleviate these limitations and to characterize the Pawnee's transition away from chipped stone technologies.