Plains archaeologists have referred to a class of features they have labelled mortar holes at least since the 1940s. These features are typically postholes identified in locations in the floors of houses that seem unlikely to have supported the weight of the house’s roof. Instead, researchers suggest that these holes once held wooden mortars used to process maize and other materials. These references are uneven: essentially identical features are labelled pocket caches or simply marked as posts in many cases. This paper discusses archaeological features likely to have held mortars in light of the use of wooden mortars in recent times on the Plains, outlines patterns in the distribution of possible mortar holes on the Central Plains and Middle Missouri, and sketches some of the important topics they may help us to study. These include the possibility that they can help to identify broad differences in the general kinds of maize grown in different areas and that they document variation in the gendered use of space within the house in different parts of the Plains.

至少自 1940 年代以来，平原考古学家提到了一类被他们标记为迫击炮洞的特征。这些特征通常是在房屋地板上的位置确定的柱孔，这些柱孔似乎不太可能支撑房屋屋顶的重量。取而代之的是，研究人员认为，这些洞曾经是用来处理玉米和其他材料的木研钵。这些参考文献是参差不齐的：在许多情况下，本质上相同的特征被标记为口袋缓存或简单地标记为帖子。本文讨论了最近在平原上使用木制迫击炮可能持有迫击炮的考古特征，概述了中原和密苏里州中部可能的迫击炮洞分布模式，并概述了它们的一些重要主题可以帮助我们学习。