The Wall Ridge site consists of one residential lodge. The site is assigned to the Glenwood phase of the Nebraska variant of the Central Plains Village tradition. The Nebraska variant dates to AD 1200–1350, and Wall Ridge was occupied during the later part of that range. The Glenwood phase is restricted to a small area of western Iowa overlooking the Missouri River Valley. The site was excavated in 1984, with analyses of finds taking place over the next several decades.
Research goals include definition of site paleoecology, occupation duration, seasonality, economic and subsistence strategies, site abandonment, size and composition of residence group, and cultural interactions. These are integrated into a theoretical theme common to Central Plains Village tradition research and many other archaeological studies around the world: the role of nucleated versus dispersed settlement systems in small-scale farming.
Chapters 2 through 11 cover standard topics such as site setting, excavation methods, laboratory procedures, site stratigraphy, features, house architecture, and radiocarbon dating. Analyses address ceramics, lithics, pipes, bone and shell tools, archaeobotanical remains, and zooarchaeological materials. These studies are descriptive and detailed, and they involve some new analytical techniques. Most chapters include brief comparisons to other Central Plains Village tradition sites, especially those belonging to the Glenwood phase.
The remainder of the book comprises the primary contribution to the theoretical theme. The chapter on lodge architecture (Chapter 12) considers construction sequence, the role religion may play in house architecture, site abandonment, and—most importantly—duration of lodge occupation. The latter depends partially on ceramic analyses and determination of ceramic vessel discard rates. There is a detailed construction of food energy budget as reflected by storage capacity along with faunal and botanical remains. These reconstructions require a number of ideas, arguments, and extensive analyses of data. These analyses are supported by numerous in-text tables and other data available online. Readers will need to assess all this information carefully to determine if they accept or reject the conclusions presented. The principal conclusion of the chapter is that the lodge was likely abandoned because of resource exhaustion long before its architectural life was exhausted. This leaves readers wondering why was it overbuilt, or whether the occupants had no inkling that resource inadequacy was going to plague them.
The penultimate chapter is “Lodge Housekeeping” (Chapter 13). This discussion includes residents’ use of the lodge, the moving of material around the lodge, the filling of subterranean features, pottery vessel function, and diet and energy budgets. This is potentially the most controversial chapter because it involves accepting a number of arguments about relative plant and animal contributions to diet. The upshot is that there was an extremely high reliance of Wall Ridge–site residents on maize. This was a problem for site residents because maize only contributed a small amount of protein to the diet. Indeed, at least based on an animal MNI calculated from nontool bones, protein sources would have been inadequate. Most analyses of diet exclude tool bones because of the possibility of overrepresentation resulting from trade or collection of bones from animals that died from causes other than hunting. If tool bones are included, then bison contribute more food to Wall Ridge residents. More than other animals living closer by. This issue has important implications for reconstruction not only of foodways but also of settlement and hunting strategies.
The last chapter—coauthored by Joseph A. Tiffany, Stephen C. Lensink, James L. Theler, William Green, and Shirley J. Schermer—summarizes archaeological finds from Wall Ridge and interprets the site as representing evidence of a dispersed farming strategy. This chapter argues that the lodge was occupied year round, bison were procured by small task groups or through trade rather than by communal hunting and village abandonment as was practiced later in time, activities related to economic production were evenly distributed between sexes, site and lodge occupation was short lived, the site was abandoned because of dietary stress on the household, the household included two or three nuclear families organized matrilineally and matrilocally, and external interaction was mostly focused on nearby groups—primarily others within the Central Plains Village tradition.
Overall, this study provides much to think about and debate. Even the authors of the various chapters do not agree with some of the conclusions (p. 205). These disagreements include the use of tool bones in calculating MNI and the role of bison in Wall Ridge residents’ subsistence. Also debated is dietary stress. These are significant points of disagreement.
Household Economy at Wall Ridge is an important contribution toward understanding small-scale farming communities of the North American Plains. The book is well produced, with few typos. It also comes with extensive supporting data and outstanding graphics at a reasonable price. Ample amounts of interesting supplemental data are easily accessed online from the University of Utah Press website.
