Cultural patterns within and outside of the post-contact Great Plains as revealed by parfleche characteristics: Implications for areal arrangements in artifactual data

For some time it has been recognized that areal arrangements in ethnographic data might help archaeologists understand equivalent arrangements in artifactual data, especially in anthropologically relevant terms. Equally, ethnographic data have shown that material-culture patterns do not necessarily conveniently map discrete “peoples” or ethnolinguistic communities. However, the question still persists as to whether areal patterns in artifactual data represent anthropologically important information, and if so, how. Ethnographically, studies of these issues have tended to adopt two approaches. Some studies have examined areal patterning across broad geographic areas in terms of presences and absences of particular artifacts or suites of artifacts. Alternatively, studies have looked at variation in the stylistic traits of particular artifacts, but over a relatively more discrete geographic range, typically a sub-region defined on the basis of other cultural and/or ecological distinctions. Here, in this study a different approach is taken, whereupon variations in the inter-tribe attributes of a singular artifact class (post-contact-era “parfleches” or decorated rawhide bags) are examined over a wide geographic area (western North America). Multivariate statistical analyses demonstrate that among-tribe variation in parfleche characteristics most strongly conforms to three geographic stylistic regions and, moreover, that these three stylistic regions disregard linguistic affiliations and “culture area” designations. These trait-level patterns conform to documented trade patterns across the study area, explaining why these areal patterns disregard distinctions made on other criteria. Ultimately, the study demonstrates ethnographically the value of contrasting areal patterns based on discrete artifactual distinctions (i.e., presence and absence of particular artifacts) versus broader-scale, but trait-level, patterns in artifacts common across these different areas.