Ohio History Journal

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BOOK REVIEWS

BOOK REVIEWS

Woodland Sites in Nebraska. By Marvin F. Kivett. Nebraska State Historical

Society, Publications in Anthropology, No. 1. (Lincoln, Nebraska State

Historical Society, 1952. 102p., 30 plates, maps, and bibliography. Paper,

$2.00.)

This is a report on previously unpublished excavations in sites generally

assignable to the Woodland Pattern in Nebraska, as well as a discussion and

summary of existing evidence on the place of Woodland in the Plains area.

The presence of Woodland manifestations in this region has been known

since the work of Strong in the mid-thirties on the Sterns Creek Aspect of

eastern Nebraska. The present data adds to that of Strong, Wedel, Champe,

and others to provide a variegated and chronologically deep picture of Wood-

land in the central Plains. With this evidence it is no longer possible to

assume that Woodland is "typically" eastern in locus. Kivett feels that on

the basis of the extensive Woodland deposits in western Nebraska it must

be hypothecated that similar manifestations will be found in eastern Colo-

rado; and this, with the Woodland evidence from northern New Mexico,

extends the range of the pattern well into the southwestern province.

The several Woodland manifestations described by Kivett are as follows:

first, Valley Focus, central Nebraska, with generalized "Middle Woodland"

pottery (cord-marked with nodes, stamping, and so forth), and with possible

cultural affiliations to the generalized "Hopewellian" sites near Kansas City.

Second, Keith Focus, western Nebraska, with simple cord-roughened pottery

lacking the Middle Woodland decorative treatment. Third is an unnamed

focus represented by pottery finds in the sandhills of western Nebraska, and

suggestive of Early Woodland forms.

To these manifestations described by Kivett may be added the previously

known cultures: Sterns Creek, with its smooth-surfaced pottery (early), and

the Late Woodland Missouri Bluffs Focus, with its single-cord-impressed

ware, which extends into Iowa.

Kivett is appropriately cautious in his assignments of focal identity,

chronology, and affiliation. He is aware of the fact that the Woodland cul-

tures are extremely complicated, and that extensive investigations of habita-

tion sites provide a picture of considerable blend and overlap--a picture

which in many parts of the eastern United States has been oversimplified by

the early attention to spectacular and unique funerary complexes, and the

subsequent fixation of typical "cultures" ("Adena," "Hopewell"). The most

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