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Houses

For most of the past, people lived in small family groups and moved seasonally to the best hunting and gathering areas.

After 1200 AD, when the people became farmers, they lived in larger communities. We have found evidence of longhouses built between 1300 and 1600 AD. An extended family may have lived in each house, with several houses present at a site. Each longhouse might have been 50-100 feet long.

Thatch is bundles of reeds or grasses. It was used to cover the walls and roofs of houses, as bedding, and to line storage pits. Masses of it, such as this sample, have been found charred and preserved in refuse pits.

Around the Hearth

A family's many domestic activities would have clustered around the hearth. This fireplace was often a bed of limestone rocks filled with charcoal from past fires.

We don't have many tools that tell us exactly how people used to prepare their food. The food was probably prepared and cooked in the clay pots that we find. Some of these still have the residue of burned food on the outside or inside, remnants of a meal. Oneota sites have grinding stones that were used for corn, and probably also for nuts and other foods. Only a few artifacts such as a shell and a clay spoon have ever been recovered. Probably the other kinds of tools that were used for preparing and eating food were made out of wood or bone that has not preserved.