Twenty separate essays cover both "Architecture" and "Arts and Crafts" in the ten North American culture areas: the Arctic, California, the Great Basin, the Northeast, the Northwest Coast, the Plains, the Plateau, the Southeast, the Southwest, and the Subarctic.
Once anthropologists thought that the Great Plains was a desolate place visited only periodically by hunting groups from the west and east and that native people could not have lived there permanently before they adopted horses and guns from Europeans. In fact, for thousands of years this region has been continuously occupied by people who relied on herds of grazing animals, particularly the bison. The life they made for themselves involved increasing technological sophistication and cultural diversity as they adapted to a series of environmental challenges.
Until the last two centuries, the human landscapes of the Great Plains were shaped solely by Native Americans, and since then the region has continued to be defined by the enduring presence of its indigenous peoples.
