European-contact and southwestern artifacts in the lower walnut focus sites at Arkansas City, Kansas

Large-scale data recovery at eight Lower Walnut focus sites yielded a large and rich data base, including glass beads, a piece of lead, obsidian, marine shell, Southwestern ceramics, and cultural turquoise (i.e., chemical turquoise, azurite, chrysocolla, and malachite). The aboriginal artifacts may have entered the sites through the hands of intermediate hunting-foraging societies or through direct contact between Lower Walnut focus-Wichita peoples and the Puebloan societies of the Rio Grande valley. Exotic materials may have functioned as status symbols. The artifacts show that the Lower Walnut focus was part of an exchange system ultimately integrating the southern Plains with the Southwest, Great Basin, and California. A few glass beads and a piece of lead, indicative of historic components at some sires, are evidence of direct or indirect contact with European populations.