This ceramic cooking pot is from an ancestral Wichita archeological site near Arkansas City, Kansas. It was excavated by Kansas Historical Society archeologists in advance of the construction of US 166, a highway that bypassed Arkansas City. It is typical of early Wichita pots, which are distinct from most North American aboriginal pottery in having flat bottoms. Other characteristics include the inclusion of burned shell mixed with the clay to strengthen the pot and paired handles. This pot came from a trash-filled storage pit with a radiocarbon date of ca. 1568 CE. Pottery like this, along with the remains of grass thatched houses and a variety of distinctive stone and bone tools, are part of a set of characteristics that archeologists call the Great Bend aspect, which existed between 1400-1700 CE in central and south-central Kansas. A Great Bend aspect grass thatched house and associated artifacts types, including ceramic pots, are on exhibit in the Kansas Museum of History.
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