I have spent most of my discretionary time over the last few weeks working on this website and the data that it contains.  If you know me personally, you know that there isn't a lot of "discretionary" time to go around in my household these days.  I'm happy I was able to put some effort into the EWHADP to get it going, and I'm pleased with the results so far.  Thank you to all that have provided data, feedback, and encouragement.

I have more house data to add, but I will need to slow down for a bit and focus on some other things.  First among those is my presentation for the 2014 SAA meetings: I'm opening a new front in my research and giving a presentation on Neandertal families (the abstract is here -- you have to click on the tiny "more" after the title to be able to read it).  This will be a model-heavy paper, focused on trying to make some statements about what family size and composition may have been like during the Middle Paleolithic.  It builds on the analysis in a recent paper of mine in AJPA.   I'm really interested in figuring out ways we can suss out aspects of prehistoric hunter-gatherer demography and social organization while keeping the household/family unit in the foreground.  It's too bad the record of Neandertal domestic structures isn't better.

But, anyway, I hope I get a chance to meet some of you in Austin.  I took the plunge and spent nearly $14 to have business cards printed up with the logo and web address.  I think the logo is nice.  I will buy a beer for the first person that gets it as a tattoo.  Okay . . . I'll buy a beer for every person that gets it as a tattoo.

A Few Corrections

I have updated the inventory pages for the states with "new" sites in the database: Alabama, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, South Carolina, and Tennessee. 

Bibliographic references for three sites were missing from the database:

• Dyar (Smith 1994)
• Fernvale (Steere and Deter-Wolf 2013)
• Garden Creek (Keel 1976; Wright 2013)

I have added those references to the bibliography and they will be included in the next issue of the database.

I have corrected three small errors in the GIS dataset, replaced the maps on the website, and made new GIS files available for upload here. 

• Moundville was plotting in Hale County, but I changed it to Tuscaloosa County to be consistent with the site number (1-Tu-500).
• My UTMs for Camden County, GA, fell on an island. I moved them inland.
• A typo resulted in my UTMs for Forsyth County, GA, plotting in Gwinnett County, GA.  I fixed it to properly reflect Forsyth County's claim to the Summerour site.

The second issue of the EWHADP database (and some figures with explanation and brief discussion) is available here. It contains basic information on over 2100 structures from 272 archaeological sites across the eastern United States and Canada. 

The large majority of the increase in the number of entries in the database is attributable to incorporation of information from Ben Steere's dissertation (Steere 2011).  Ben's data collection was focused on later (i.e., Late Woodland, Mississippian, and post-Mississippian) sites in the Southeast, and the new data reflect that.  The database now contains many more sites in the South, particularly in Alabama, Georgia, and North Carolina.

There was some overlap between the datasets that Ben and I had assembled.  I was careful to try to avoid listing the same structure twice, but mistakes are always possible. If you find any, please let me know. 
Now that the basic data are altogether, I will spend some time (as I have it) checking what's in the database against the primary sources.

I have made some adjustments to the way structure shape is represented.  I have plans to systematically collect data on architectural features of the structures.  I would also like to start putting together a table of radiocarbon dates that will be linked to the main structure table.  Data on associated features would also be nice, as would digitized versions of plan maps that could be used to more accurately estimate floor area.  

Jarrod Burks' dissertation, entitled Identifying Household Cluster and Refuse Disposal Patterns at the Strait Site: A Third Century A.D. Nucleated Settlement in the Middle Ohio River Valley (Burks 2004), considers how patterns of trash disposal can be used to assess the contemporaneity of residential structures.  Jarrod examines artifact density data from shovel probes in  light of a model of household-level trash disposal developed from ethnoarchaeological data, then compares the results to geophysical and excavation results.  Portions of two structures were exposed.  I have added a listing for the Strait site to the inventory for Ohio, and will include the site in the next version of the Database. 

The Strait site (33-Fa-156-158) is one of only a handful of "Middle Woodland - Late Woodland Transitional" sites in the Database.  Sites of this age (i.e., arguably post-Hopewell, generally associated with projectile points belonging to the Lowe Cluster) are sometimes referred to in the literature as "late Middle Woodland" and other times as "early Late Woodland."  Hence my decision to give them their own category.  These sites represent a time of important change in the organizational structure of settlement during the Woodland period in the Ohio Valley.  Read Jarrod's dissertation to find out more.

Above:  Artifact cluster interpretations and proposed household clusters at the Strait site (Burks 2004: Figure B.64).

As an academic, I find few things more frustrating than working long and hard to bring some piece of research to publication, only for the response to be . . . crickets.  Thankfully this has not been my experience so far with the EWHADP.  If the statistics are accurate, pages on this site have been viewed over 2800 times since the website was launched a week ago.  Now, granted, that is a slightly less vigorous response than the world has given to this narrated video of a pair of manicured hands opening novelty Easter eggs, which has been viewed about 78 million times.  But in terms of archaeology, it’s not too bad.  Links were posted on several archaeology and anthropology pages on Facebook (e.g., UWF Graduate Anthropology Association, Research Laboratories of Archaeology at UNC-Chapel Hill, Tennessee Council for Professional Archaeology, Southeastern Archaeological Conference Student Affairs Committee, Florida Public Archaeology Network), the site was discussed on SEAC Underground, and word spread.

The response to my plea for additional information has also been heartening:  almost immediately after the site was launched I started getting emails specifying sources of data.  I have been incorporating that "new" information into the site as I have time, beginning with some Archaic house structures from Ontario and Michigan.  There is much more on the way.  I will continue to update this page as I add structures, and I will also post those updates on the EWHADP Facebook page.  Stay tuned!

One of the first things I learned after launching this site last Sunday was that Ben Steere had collected a large amount of data on prehistoric houses as part of his dissertation research (Steere 2011).  While there is some overlap between our datasets, his is concentrated later in time and farther to the south than mine.  Ben and I have started the process of merging the basic data presented in the appendices of his dissertation into the Database.  There are a lot of data, so it's going to take a little time.  We'll work together to resolve any discrepancies between his dataset and mine.  The results will be available in the next issue of the database, hopefully sometime in March.

The paper on the Late Archaic wall trench structure from the Davidson site (Ellis and Keron 2011) discusses a similar structure from the Rock Hearth site in Berrien County, Michigan.  I was unaware of the structure until reading about it in the Davidson paper.  Chris Ellis was kind enough to make available sections of the original report (Garland et al.1990), from which the figure at the right is taken.  Two radiocarbon estimates place the age of the structure at around 3700 BP.  I have added the reference to the Bibliography section, and the structure will be included in the next issue of the Database.

Above: Plan view of Late Archaic wall trench structure from the Rock Hearth site (reproduced from Garland et al. 1990:Figure 42).

Christopher Ellis and colleagues have excavated several Late Archaic structures at the Davidson site (AhHk-54) in Middlesex County, Ontario.  Reports on a pithouse (Ellis et al. 2010) and a wall trench structure (Ellis and Keron 2011) are available on Chris' academia.edu page (along with many of the other interesting publications Chris has authored over the years).  The structures from the Davidson site have been added to the Structure inventory and will be included in the next issue of the Database.

The Davidson houses are also discussed in a recent paper in the Canadian Journal of Archaeology (Eastaugh et al. 2013) and are the subject of a chapter in an upcoming edited volume:

C. J. Ellis, J. R. Keron, J. H. Menzies, S. G. Monckton and A. Stewart (2015): For Immediate Occupancy: Cozy 3000 Year Old Heritage Winter House with River View near Lake Huron. Apply to Terminal Archaic Realty. In Building the Past: Studies of Prehistoric Wooden Post Architecture in the Ohio Valley-Great Lakes Region, edited by Brian G. Redmond and Robert A. Genheimer. University Presses of Florida, Gainesville.

Above:  Plan map of Feature 32, a Late Archaic wall trench structure from the Davidson site.  Image from Davidson site webpage.