time frame

[Koontz John E]

On Wed, 7 Mar 2007, tom poulsen wrote:
> can anyone tell me the time frame of the western sioux migrations into
> the great plains areas. Did the Lakota people etc, live in the upper
> south?

If you want a collection of semi-standard views by archaeologists, see

Plains Indians, A.D. 500-1500: The Archaeological Past of Historic Groups
(Paperback) by Karl H. Schlesier (Editor)
Paperback: 512 pages
Publisher: Univ of Oklahoma Pr; Reprint edition (March 1995)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0806126418
ISBN-13: 978-0806126418

Ironically, KS's own contributions, dealing with Tanoan, seem to me to be
the shakiest.

Archaeologists currently tend to associate the early Dakota with the
in-place development of something they call Psinomani, i.e., psiN-o'maNniN
'rice in-walking' = 'rice collecting'.  I'm not sure of the archaeological
pronunciation, but I think it must be close to cinnamony.  (Now I'm
hungry.)  (Another Dakota-named archaeological expression, from
northwestern Iowa, I think, is Chanyata, i.e., c^haNyata 'in/to the
woods', if I remember the right gloss.)

Psinomani is somewhat varied in its subsistance and residential patterns,
rather like the Dakotan groups themselves, but tends to be associated with
certain pottery types that are vaguely Oneota-like, but not as ornately
trailed or incised.  I think it dates back to c. CE 1000 in the general
area of northern Minnesota and the eastern Dakotas, but I'd rather not be
held to the precise date.

This association and Psinomani itself may not be the last word on the
subject from archaeologists.  Historically, they've waffled quite a bit
for Dakotan, especially Assiniboine-Stoney.  A lot of the archeological
work on Psinomani is fairly recent.

Check the list archives.  I think we've discussed this before.

Archaeologists do usually now assume that the Dakota developed in place in
Minnesota, emerging from earlier people there, and have for some time, and
I tend to agree with them for various reasons, but to be fair,
archaeologists have been very reluctant to postulate "migration"  or even
"outside influence" theories for the last 30 years or so.  Before that
everything was explained with at least "outside influences" and actual
"migration theories" get increasingly popular as you go back.  They were a
staple of popular and scholarly theory in the 1800s and before.  I think
we are now tending to swing back toward migrations, perhaps in a more
sophisticated way.

Note that when I say that archaeologists think of the Dakota as emerging
in place I am referring to the Dakota as a cultural entity.  As a rule
American archaeologists do not concern themselves much with language when
they are building their models.  To be fair, lexemes seem to be very
poorly preserved in most precontact sites north of the Rio Grande del Sur.
(I find that very frustrating.)

Anyway, archaeologists a few years ago were not in the least concerned
about the contradictions inherent in proposing that all the various Siouan
groups evolved in place.  Their model humans had physical remains, made
pottery, lithic artifacts and houses, erected mounds, dug pits and lit
fires.  They frequently practiced subsistence and occasionally conducted
economic activities or integrated themselves politically across extended
areas, but they never actually spoke, and they only seldom did anything
involving genes.  I think that stage has passed, but most of what you find
in print will neglect linguistics.

Almost the only exception to this linguistic neglect was an implicit
reliance on any and all schemes for associating languages into very high
level phylum groupings.  Of course, I have to admit that detailed
lower-level linguistic information of any other kind was and actually
still is a bit hard to come by ... so essentially they were using all the
easily available linguistic data and, like the early long rangers, not
worrying too much about linguistic processes just yet.