Between A.D. 1000 and 1635, the Monongahela people dominated southwestern Pennsylvania and adjacent parts of Ohio and West Virginia. They lived in dwellings arranged around a central plaza and enclosed by a circular wooden stockade. This ring-shaped pattern is common in the Eastern Woodlands, Great Plains, and elsewhere. Drawing on excavation data from work done in the 1930s in Somerset County, Pennsylvania, author Bernard Means reconstructs several Monongahela villages and recalibrates their occupation dates.
Using this data, Means is able to make an analysis of the social groupings, population estimates, and economic status of residents in the circular villages. He finds these villages were far from uniform. Their sizes varied widely, as did the complexity of the sites. The plazas were the principal social space within the village, home to graves as well as storage and refuge areas.
Means has produced a useful and intriguing study of an important Eastern culture that we are still struggling to understand.