An Indigenous Archaeology of Pawneeland: Oral Traditions, Archaeology, and Euro-American Accounts of Pawnees in the Central Plains

SAS Webinar
Saturday, December 11, 2021
2:00 p.m.
Annual Meeting Program
The schedule for the event is as follows:
1:30 – Meet and Greet
2:00 “An Indigenous Archaeology of Pawneeland: Oral Traditions, Archaeology, and Euro-American Accounts of Pawnees in the Central Plains” by Carlton Shield Chief Gover
3:15 – SAS Annual Meeting with election of officers for 2022

When people think of Plains Nations, the Lakota, Comanche, Arapaho, and Apache usually come to mind. However, rarely does the public realize that the Pawnee have a deep relationship to the Central Great Plains and Western plains that spans over hundreds, if not thousands, of years. The Pawnee have oral traditions that date back to the Ice Age which potentially describes the Ice-Free Corridor, names for Colorado Front Range locations that hold sacred significance, and hunting campsites along the Western extents of the Platte and Republican Rivers. This presentation will cover the recorded oral traditions which tie the Pawnee to the land from Colorado to Nebraska, the archaeological evidence for the extent of Pawneeland in the West, and the Euro-American accounts of Pawnees west of their core homeland in Central Nebraska and Kansas.

Carlton Shield Chief Gover is a citizen of the Pawnee Nation of Oklahoma. Carlton received his B.S. in Anthropology from Radford University, his M.A. in Anthropology from the University of Wyoming, and he is currently a Ph.D. student in Anthropology at the University of Colorado Boulder. He has done archaeological fieldwork in Virginia, Wyoming, Colorado, Nebraska, and across Ukraine. Carlton’s research is primarily focused on answering qualitative questions using quantitative methods through an Indigenous and Collaborative Anthropological approach. Using Indigenous oral traditions from the Pawnee, Arikara, and Wichita, he uses the radiocarbon record from the Central Plains to date events distinguished in oral traditions and identifies periods of ethnogenesis and migrations. Carlton is also a passionate Science Communicator and believes Archaeology needs to do more public outreach. He is the host for the A Life In Ruins Podcast and the Museum Unlocked Podcast. He has appeared on several archaeology-based YouTube channels to promote Indigenous Archaeology and public outreach. He also produces video content on the A Life In Ruins YouTube channel.

Following the presentation’s question session SAS will hold its annual meeting. At the SAS Annual Meeting President, Tom Johansen will review SAS events for 2021, highlight expectations for 2022, and conduct an election of officers. The list of candidates will be published prior to the annual meeting. In 2021 monthly webinars continued from 2020 and will be offered in 2022. Hopefully we will be able to have more face to face activities in 2022. We hosted two archaeological tours: Lovelock Cave and Four Corners Tour. In 2021 scholarships were awarded to seven
scholars. In 2022 we will be hearing about their research and field schools.