House structure, cultural connections between Middle Missouri and Central Plains communities, and peopling the Ponca Creek sites

A series of exceptionally large sites along Ponca Creek in northeastern Nebraska appear to have been home to a large population of maize farmers for roughly a century around AD 1300. People settled at these sites too quickly for their population to represent local demographic processes, raising the question of where they came from. Ceramic data suggests a population with diverse backgrounds. We consider how household architecture, particularly the distinction between hip and gable roof houses, helps us to think about this. The changing distributions of the architectural styles across the central and northern Plains between the eleventh and fourteenth centuries suggest that at least some of the Ponca Creek settlers moved into the area from communities in northwestern Iowa and southeastern South Dakota.