|Comanche camp (George Catlin)|
Is there anything "urban" about these big circular camps? Archaeologist Alice Kehoe thinks so. In her textbook, North American Indians, she says:
Nomad peoples were constrained to adapt social affairs to ecological cycles: most of the business that in towns [in other cultures] occurred over the year had to be compressed by the nomads into the few summer weeks when grass was most lush on the open plains. Trading, gambling, visiting friends from other bands, games and sports competitions, and seeking a compatible spouse or comrade were individual incentives to rendezvous in large camps. Adjudicating disputes, discussing policies and strategies for allied bands drew leaders to these camps. Above all, participation in rituals was a magnet (Kehoe 1981:295). This is the first edition of the book; I have not had the opportunity to check this quote in the more recent 3rd edition.
|Lakota camp, 1891|
On the other hand, these large tipi camps were large dense settlements (if not permanent), and they certainly had a level of social complexity and intense social interaction that was not present in the smaller regular camps. This is the feature described in Kehoe's quotation above. And this is why I have called these tipi aggregation camps "semi-urban settlements," comparable to pilgrimage sites, festivals, camp meetings, refugee camps, and some contemporary RV camps. These are places that are formed rapidly by an influx of people, who live in a densely-arranged form for a few days to a few weeks before dispersing. See my previous post on semi-urban settlements.That post describes an article I wrote with a bunch of students on neighborhood organization in semi-urban settlements. That paper is STILL in press; the journal is taking forever to get the paper into print. Arrrrrgh........
|Quartzsite, AZ: A modern nomad camp?|
I've listed below some sources on Plains tipi camps. Roland Fletcher's paper first suggested to me that this kind of settlement was relevant to concepts of urbanism. Banks and Snortland is a fantastic study that uses historic photographs to work out the nature and size of Plains settlements. Hassrick and Oliver are standard monographs on Plains Indian groups. Scheiber and Finley use advanced methods to identify the archaeological remains of ancient tipi sites.
|Sioux camp, 1891|
While no one would call a tipi camp a "city", these settlements are certainly part of the Wide Urban World.
Banks, Kimball M. and J. Signe Snortland (1995) Every Picture Tells a Story: Historic Images, Tipi Camps, and Archaeology. Plains Anthropologist 40(152):125-144.
Fletcher, Roland (1991) Very Large Mobile Communities: Interaction Stress and Residential Dispersal. In Ethnoarchaeological Approaches to Mobile Campsites: Hunter-Gatherer and Pastoralist Case Studies, edited by Clive Gamble and B. Boismer, pp. 395-420. Prehistory Press, Ann Arbor.
|Small tipi camp|
Kehoe, Alice B. (1981) North American Indians: A Comprehensive Account. Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs.
Oliver, Chad (1962) Ecology and Cultural Continuity as Contributing Factors in the Social Organization of the Plains Indians. University of California Press, Berkeley.
Scheiber, Laura L. and Judson Byrd Finley (2010) Domestic Campsites and Cyber Landscapes in the Rocky Mountains. Antiquity 84:114-130.
|Stone circle, "tipi ring" from the Rocky Mountains (Scheiber & Finley)|