The Great Bend Aspect

Description

This article is a review of the archaeology of the late prehistoric to early historic Wichita bands in Kansas. Waldo Wedel (1935a, 1959), who conducted excavations in two of three known settlement clusters, classified the remains in the McKern taxonomic systems as the Great Bend aspect. He classified the sites in Rice and McPherson counties as the Little River focus and those along the Kansas-Oklahoma border as the Lower Walnut focus (Figure 10.1), Since then, there has been work on a third cluster of villages near Marion (Lees 1988; Lees et al, 1989; Rohn and Emerson 1984). In addition, recent studies have dealt with sites other than village clusters. Wedel also explored sites that are called council circles, and in recent decades, work has been done on ground figures or intaglios, on quarries, and on hunting camps (Blakeslee and Rohn 1986; Mallam 1982; Stein and Reynolds 1994).