North America - Plains (Geographic Keyword)
126-150 (223 Records)
The Lindenmeier Folsom Site (5LR13) was excavated from 1934-1940 by Frank H.H. Roberts, Jr. of the Smithsonian Institution. Over the course of six field seasons spent excavating the site, the spatial locations of approximately 6,000 items were mapped and recorded by Roberts, and later published as a series of maps in the appendices in the Concluding Report. These maps have been digitally reproduced using ArcGIS mapping software, preserving the spatial relationships between the artifacts mapped...
Losing Ground but Gaining Data: Erosion and Archeology in Badlands Parks (2015)
In 2013, the Midwest Archeological Center initiated a five-year project to study the impacts of erosion on archeological sites in Great Plains parks, specifically those parks with badlands geography. The project is designed to provide information on erosion rates in a variety of environmental contexts, as well as erosion’s effect on different features and artifact types. In the future, these data will be used to predict which sites or potential site locations may be most vulnerable to climate...
Make history: public archaeology as a way of life (2017)
Archaeologists, historians, and other scholars in the heritage sector share a responsibility to public interpretation, education, and the dissemination of our current understandings of the past often while challenging myths and dominant histories that clash with those interpretations. Use of dense academic jargon in archaeological publications represents a significant barrier to public engagement with our work, and narrow specializations prevent us from deploying our investigative tools to...
Making History Personal: Community-Focused Archaeology in the Nevada City Cemetery, Nevada City, Montana (2015)
The small cemetery overlooking Nevada City, Montana, holds this history of the town in a unique and personal way. To the nearby descendants, the cemetery symbolizes the continuity of family, community and history. In August, 2014, Extreme History partnered with Project Archaeology to map and assess the cemetery as part of a Teacher Workshop. The project revealed the value of the personal community connection to sacred places. By working with descendant members of the community, we were able to...
Making History Relevant and Sustainable: Listening to Descendant Communities through Collaboration and Partnership (2015)
Project Archaeology is a heritage education organization devoted to curriculum development that gives students the tools to better understand the cultural landscape of the world they live in. One of our main goals is to collaborate and partner with descendant communities in all that we do to research, develop, and implement our programs. In this paper we will outline our collaborative theory and practice, and our goals to encourage multiple ways of knowing, validate tribal history, and support...
Making Sense of the Variation in Folsom Projectile Point Technology (2015)
Analyses of Folsom projectile point technology generally focus on the making and use of the classic bifacially fluted form. Often some mention is made of Midland or unfluted points, but formal technological analyses of these types are rare. Utilizing a sample of 989 points and preforms from Folsom and closely related technologies, this research explores the variation that is present in Folsom point production. Points from Folsom contexts are divided into five types: Folsom, Midland,...
Mammoth and Mastodons….They are what’s for Dinner (2016)
The Pleistocene…basically a no-man’s time that is stuck between the disciplines of archaeology and paleontology when it comes to the animals that inhabited that period of time. For American archaeologists, they are often old, sometimes too old to consider them as having archaeological connotations. For Paleontologists, these are not fossils and by some paleontologist’s standards are considered too young for paleontological studies. It is important to archaeologists to understand these animals...
Mammoth Bone from Hell Gap (2015)
Mammoths and thus mammoth bones are associated with Clovis occupation of North America, while subsequent cultures are associated with Bison antiquus (Paleoindians) or various Holocene faunal species. However, this simple scenario is complicated by occasional occurrences of extinct species in later period assemblages. The Hell Gap site joins this exclusive club with a recent discovery of a mammoth tusk in deposits at Locality I. The Hell Gap site in eastern Wyoming is a stratified Paleoindian...
Measuring Differences in Occupation Length at Short Term Habitation Sites along the base of the Colorado Front Range (2016)
Two stone circle sites, T-W-Diamond (5LR200) and Killdeer Canyon (5LR289), offer insight into occupation length and structure use intensity. The two are located in northern Colorado, in the hogback zone along the Front Range of the Southern Rocky Mountains. Elizabeth Ann Morris and the Colorado State University field school excavated the sites in 1971 and 1982. This paper summarizes my thesis research, examining how temporary stone circle habitation sites actually are. Stone circle sites can...
Metal Projectile Points of the Interior West: A Synthetic Overview (2015)
Metal projectile points of the Protohistoric and early Historic periods are a somewhat rare, yet ubiquitous artifact type that has received little attention regarding synthetic research. Their roughly 300 years of use across the interior west coincided with perhaps the most profound and rapid culture changes experienced by native groups of North America during the entirety of their prehistory and history. A survey of 14 states across the interior west is currently underway to gather data on all...
Methods for the identification of dog and dog/wolf hybrids from wild canids in the Northern Plains (2017)
In Native North America, dogs (Canis familiaris) were an important resource, used for traction, food, security, and ritual. Given their ubiquity in settlements and their tendency to consume human food waste, dogs remains can provide significant information about past human diet. Stable carbon isotope (δ13C) ratios may be used to reconstruct maize consumption, while nitrogen (δ15N) isotope ratios increase by trophic level, and can be used to differentiate between marine, freshwater, and...
Microwear on Shell Beads at Cluny Fortified Village (EePf-1) (2017)
Beads in many forms have been used as decorative items on the Great Plains during the historic and prehistoric periods. Cluny Fortified Village (EePf-1), dating just prior to European contact, is an intrusive village unique on the Northwestern Plains. The unique artifact assemblage at the site offers information on the understudied topic of prehistoric shell bead production on the Northern Plains using local bivalves. During the past ten years, a number of shell beads, shell bead blanks, and...
Mobility of Folsom and Late Paleoindian Occupations at the South Bank Portion of Blackwater Draw Locality No. 1 (2017)
Research and excavations conducted at the Blackwater Draw Site have largely contributed to our understanding of Paleoindian era life. This study focuses on the lithic artifacts recovered from the South Bank portion of the Blackwater Draw Site to understand the mobility of Folsom and Late Paleoindian occupations. Although there has been extensive fieldwork conducted at the South Bank, the lithic artifacts from these excavations have not been studied as one cohesive assemblage. The entirety of the...
Modeling Channel Morphology at the Clovis-Type Site, Blackwater Draw, New Mexico (2017)
Blackwater Locality No. 1 (the Clovis-type site) served as a catchment for spring-fed streams during the late Last Glacial Maximum (~19,150-12,900 cal yr BP), providing a water source for the Paleoindian occupants of the Southern High Plains. During episodes of high effective moisture, water flowed out of the basin via an outlet channel into Blackwater Draw proper. Coinciding with the changing climate of the early Younger Dryas (~12,900-11,500 cal yr BP), the flowing waters of the outlet channel...
Modeling Landscape Evolution Across the Pleistocene-Holocene Transition at Blackwater Locality No. 1 (2016)
Blackwater Locality No. 1 (the Clovis-type site) served as a catchment for spring-fed streams during the late Last Glacial Maximum, providing a water source for the Paleoindian occupants of the Southern High Plains. During episodes of high effective moisture, water flowed out of the basin via an outlet channel into Blackwater Draw proper. Coinciding with the changing climate of the early Younger Dryas, the flowing waters of the outlet channel were obstructed, impounding the waters of a shallow...
Modeling Middle Holocene Site Frequencies in Southeastern Wyoming: Exploring the Early Archaic through Probabilistic Models (2015)
The lack of Middle Holocene sites on the Northwestern Plains provided grounds for further research on its source. A range of explanations have been proposed for the low frequency of archaeological sites dating between 8000 and 5000 BP in southeastern Wyoming, including geological, cultural, and researcher bias. Some suggest that human populations occupying the plains during this time were reduced. However, others point out that conditions during and following this time period may have destroyed...
The Montana Yellowstone Archaeological Project (2016)
The Montana Yellowstone Archaeological Project (MYAP) is a cooperative effort of the University of Montana (UM), Yellowstone National Park, and the Rocky Mountain Cooperative Ecosystem Study Unit of the National Park Service. Now in its ninth year, the MYAP engages undergraduate and graduate students at every level of cultural resource management projects so they are prepared for careers in the field. In addition, UM facilitates the completion of Yellowstone’s CRM responsibilities in a...
Mountain Shoshone Landscape Occupation of Caldwell Basin, Fremont County, Wyoming (2015)
Interpreting the use of mountainous regions by prehistoric and historic hunter-gatherers has been hampered through the years by difficult access, excessive ground vegetation, and wilderness restrictions. Archaeologists have benefited, however, from the regular occurrence of forest fires that burn thousands of acres and expose hundreds of archaeological sites every summer, as our knowledge of campsite structure and landscape use has dramatically improved. We now know that remote campsites often...
A Multi-Scalar Chipped Stone Analysis in the Northern Rocky Mountains: Comparing the Bridger Mountains, Montana to the Absaroka Mountains, Wyoming (2015)
Conducting research in montane settings, while rewarding, comes with a set of challenges which can result in a relative paucity of data from these locations. However, this problem can be mitigated by various analytical techniques. One approach is to employ a multi-scalar analysis on available data, a method that has produced richer results from limited data in other archaeological contexts. We have applied a multi-scalar analysis to the Pre-Contact era archaeological record of the Bridger...
Multispectral Photogrammetry of Cultural Landscapes on the Northern Plains from Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Platforms (2017)
As early adopters of technology, especially for creating accurate maps, archaeologists have been using Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) to discover and record archaeological features, landscapes and excavations since they became commercially available. This project tested the use of visual (RGB), near-infrared (NIR) and thermal sensors mounted on UAV platforms (fixed wing and multi-rotor) to discover and record archaeological features in their landscape context with georeferenced, high resolution...
Natural Disasters and Interregional Interactions:the establishment and maintenance of long-distance connections beyond the Northern Plains (2017)
Some 7627 calendar years ago, the Plinian eruption of Mount Mazama prompted small, dispersed bison hunting groups to abandon temporarily their traditional homelands and seek refuge among their distant relatives in the east. During their stay, they established new social ties and learned new technologies such as the use of stone boiling to extract nut oils. Returning to their homeland, they adapted this technology to extract bone grease and produce pemmican. As a reliable, storable, portable, and...
NCPTT and the Growth of American Archeogeophysics (2015)
Before the turn of the millennium there were few practitioners of geophysical prospecting in American archaeology. In this relative vacuum NCPTT came into being at the right time, situated to support and promote these methods for site exploration, documentation and, in effect, preservation of site structural information because vast areas of the subsurface and its archeological content could finally be mapped. In the late 1990s NCPTT was an early supporter of research into the integration or...
New Excavations at the La Prele Mammoth Site, Converse County, Wyoming (2017)
The La Prele Mammoth site (formerly the Hinrichs or Fetterman Mammoth) was discovered and initially excavated in 1987 by a crew led by Dr. George Frison. The remains of a single juvenile Columbian mammoth (Mammuthus columbi) were recovered along with a stone tool, a possible hammerstone, and a dozen pieces of debitage. Due to landowner dispute, no further work was completed on site for 27 years. In 2014 we returned to investigate the potential for intact deposits and settle the debate about...
New Investigations into a Late Paleoindian Bison Kill and Terminal Pleistocene Environmental Change at Blackwater Draw Locality 1 (2015)
Intensive investigation of an area of Blackwater Draw Locality 1 known as "Isequilla’s Pit" has revealed a well-preserved stratigraphic sequence and the remains of a Late Paleoindian-age bison kill. The work constitutes a resumption of excavation in this area of the South Bank, as Alberto Isequilla abruptly abandoned his fieldwork in 1969, leaving behind an open excavation pit and few field records. Over the past 6 years, the ENMU Archaeological Field School has successfully relocated and mapped...
Niche Construction of Predictable Landscapes: Redundant Caching in Ecological Niches on the Central Plains (2016)
Prehistoric groups were able to anticipate the use of redundantly visited landscapes by constructing niches with toolkits, called caches. The small size of caches and frequent absence of diagnostic tools limited the information available from studying individual caches. It was hypothesized that caches were examples of anticipated mobility to provision predictable ecological niches with tools for the presence or absence of resources in potential activity areas. Sixty-two caches from the Central...