North America - Plains (Geographic Keyword)
1-25 (223 Records)
An Alpine Archaeological Landscape in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, Wyoming (2017)
The alpine archaeological record above 3000m of Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem has received much less research attention than the adjacent plains, basins, and foothills. We have been working in an area of NW Wyoming where dense surface stone tool scatters, stone features (including some of the highest elevation habitation stone circles in the region) are associated with dwindling ice patches that have yielded both perishable artifactual material and an array of wood and bone that provides...
Analysis of an Obsidian Source from the Cougar Pass Region of the Absaroka Mountain Range (2017)
Obsidian samples from a variety of sites across Northwest Wyoming have been sourced using X-ray fluorescence and analyzed in order to determine the importance of a relatively unheard of source from the Cougar Pass region of the Absaroka Mountain Range. Artifacts manufactured with obsidian nodules from Cougar Pass have been found in archaeological contexts across Northwest Wyoming, extending as far as a presently unknown kilometer range from their source. The wide range of specimens from a...
The Anzick Genome Proves Clovis Is First, After All (2016)
The close relatives who buried the Anzick infant ca. 13,000 cal yr BP made classic Clovis tools and were unequivocally the lineal genetic ancestors of all the living Native peoples of southern North America, Central America, and South America. Clovis-derived Fell 1 fishtail points track the rapid southward migration of this ancestral population all the way to Tierra del Fuego. Any hypothesized earlier populations—e.g., the seaweed eaters of Monte Verde or the rock-bashers of Pedra Furada—if they...
The Anzick Site: A Rocky Mountain locale featuring recurrent human utilization across the millenia. (2016)
The Anzick Site is a multi-component archaeological site located at approximately 5,000 ft above sea level in the Shields River Valley of south central Montana. Included in the archaeological discoveries at the site are the fragmentary human remains of two individuals as well as an assemblage of approximately 115 lithic and osseous tools diagnostic of Clovis Culture technology. This assemblage of tools was thickly covered with red ochre, as was one set of remains, presumably indicating a burial...
Análisis de redes haplotípicas del DNA mitocondrial (parcial) de los pobladores del Valle de Toluca. (2015)
El valle de Toluca es una región que ha jugado un papel histórico importante dentro del altiplano central de México. Hasta el momento se desconoce el origen de estas poblaciones, aunque la primera aproximación basada en el estudio genético ha sugerido que podrían haber sido conformados por los grupos de raigambre otomiano. El presente estudio a través de la secuenciación del DNA mitocondrial y su análisis filogenético tiene el objetivo de conocer el origen materno de las poblaciones antiguas...
Apishapa Rock Art and Soul Capture (2017)
Rather than a western extension of the Plains Village tradition, the Apishapa phase was more likely an eastern extension of the Great Basin Desert culture. Among other things, Great Basin origins explain the Apishapa foraging economy that focused on small mammals, antelope and deer, and meager horticulture. Insubstantial structures and temporary rock shelter habitations attest to residential mobility. As others have noted, Archaic rock art in the Great Basin and Apishapa areas are remarkably...
Archaeological Investigation of the Stone Feature Located at Area 12, Gault Site Bell County, Texas (2015)
A 2x2 meter fractured limestone cobble surface was excavated in February of 2001 through May of 2002 at the Gault Site in Bell County, Texas dating to either the Clovis or pre-Clovis period. Current research indicates two toss zones associated to the 10-centimeter thick stone floor. One toss zone is illustrated through the faunal assemblage arcing around the southwestern corner of the feature and the second toss zone is associated to lithic artifacts concentrated around the northeastern corner....
Archaeology and Geomorphology of Paleo-shorelines at Yellowstone Lake, Wyoming (2017)
Recent archaeological and geomorphological studies illuminate an understanding of paleo-shorelines along Yellowstone Lake, Wyoming. Current shorelines are not always adequate predictors of prehistoric archaeological site locations due to ever-shifting lake levels over the last 12,000 years. The 20-mile-long Yellowstone Lake is within a caldera and, thus, has experienced dramatic shifts in lake levels associated with volcanism. In addition, lake levels have changed greatly due to Late Pleistocene...
Archaeology in a Cretaceous Swamp (2015)
During the Late Paleocene and Early Eocene, a tropic/sub-tropic forest located in a large swamp was located in present day east-central Colorado. Overtime the swamp was enveloped by subsequent volcanic eruptions which resulted in the creation of the Paleosol-Dawson Arkose formation. The primary area of this geological formation is located in Elbert County, between Colorado Springs and the small town of Agate on the plains of Colorado. Large stands of tropical wood, including sycamore, walnut,...
The Archaeology of Souls: A Foundation through Systematic Survey of Historic Woodland and Plains Native American Soul Concepts (2016)
The potential for accurately reconstructing prehistoric Woodland and Plains Indian societies’ notions of human soul-like essences using symbolically rich mortuary remains and art can be improved when analogous, comparative ethnohistorical information is collected systematically and with sensitivity to tribal and regional variations. Literature on 49 historic Woodland-Plains tribes produced 643 cases informing on nine selected subjects: number and locations of souls in an individual, number of...
Archaeology of the Nez Perce War of 1877 in Yellowstone National Park, WY. (2015)
The Nez Perce (Nee-Me-Poo) National Historic Trail was designated by Congress under the National Trails System Act in 1986 to commemorate the 1877 flight of the non-treaty Nez Perce from their homelands in present day Oregon, Idaho, and Washington, across Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming, including 85 miles within Yellowstone National Park. In 2008, Yellowstone began archaeological investigations of the trail corridor. This six-year project includes consultation with the Confederated Tribes of the...
Archaic Women in the High Country: an Ethnoarchaeological Framework (2015)
All-male hunting parties of the Middle Holocene are an important concept in the archaeology of America’s western mountains. The dichotomy of later high mountain family villages (repeat occupations of high density and diversity) versus specialized hunting sites and ‘man caves’ (sensu Thomas) are cited to argue that Archaic women never saw, or ventured into, remote high mountain landscapes. Yet the ethnographic literature of mobile foragers contains interesting evidence of women, usually young...
Asa T. Hill, the WPA, and the Fluorescence of Systematic Archaeology in Nebraska (2015)
The most prominent New Deal work-relief program with regard to archaeology was the Works Progress Administration (renamed in 1939 as the Work Projects Administration; WPA), which existed from 1935 to 1943. Functioning through sponsoring universities, historical societies, and other agencies, the WPA supported major field and laboratory projects. In Nebraska, almost all of the New Deal archaeological projects were carried out with WPA-funded labor. Between 1936 and 1941, the University of...
Assessing the Efficacy of Lesson Modules as a Public Education and Outreach Strategy for Archaeology (2015)
Archaeological education and outreach is becoming ever more of a priority in a discipline that struggles to make research accessible and relevant to diverse publics. In recent years, this void has begun to be filled through the creation of grade school lesson modules on various archaeological topics. However, though these modules are readily available, little has been done to assess the efficacy of such an educational outreach strategy. To address this gap, a study conducted in collaboration...
Bashing Bones – Experimental Archaeology and its Application to the Carter/Kerr-McGee Site (2015)
Thirty years ago, the Paleoindian bison bonebed at Carter/Kerr-McGee, located in northwest Wyoming, was interpreted as a winter kill-butchery locale with possible frozen meat storage. The recent complete analysis of these 9,000 year-old bones, originating from about 50 Bison antiquus, and comparisons of the bone fragmentation patterns at this site with those of experimentally broken bones, supports this initial assessment. Preliminary results confirm the presence of 15 regular spiral (fresh)...
The Bear in the Footprint: Using Ethnography to Interpret Archaeological Evidence of Bear Hunting and Bear Veneration in the Northern Rockies (2017)
Archaeological evidence of prehistoric bear hunting and bear veneration in the northern Rocky Mountains and northwestern Plains is presented. Ethnographic documents and the writings of trappers, traders, and explorers are assessed in order to establish an interpretative framework to help decipher archaeological contexts in the region that include bear remains and rock art depicting bears. Examining prehistoric archaeological contexts in Montana and Wyoming within this framework suggests evidence...
The Beaucoup Site: A Bison Kill in Northeastern Montana (2015)
Communal bison kills are among the most visible archaeological sites in the northwestern plains. They can originate from a variety of hunting practices, including jumps, pounds, corrals, traps, etc. Because of the group nature of the activities, these sites can be rich in archaeologically interpretable materials and behaviors. The Beaucoup site (24PH188/189) is a large Late Prehistoric site on the Milk River in northeastern Montana consisting of a kill, drive lines, cairns, and tipi rings. First...
Beaver River Complex Contribution to Folsom Archaeology: An Update and Future Directions (2015)
The Beaver River Complex (NW Oklahoma) of early Paleoindian (Clovis and Folsom) large-scale bison kill sites began contributing to our knowledge of Folsom hunting organization two decades ago with the identification, excavation, and analysis of the Cooper site. Since then a total of five Folsom kill components have been identified at three arroyo kill sites within a 700 m reach of the Beaver River. The most recently discovered site, Badger Hole, contains the youngest Folsom kill component of the...
Before and After Mazama at the Billy Big Spring Site: Landscape Evolution during Altithermal Times and Reoccupation after the Eruption (2017)
How did the ash fall from the Mount Mazama eruption (7682–7584 cal. yr BP (Egan et al. 2015)) affect the people on the Northwestern Plains who experienced it? Data from 24GL304 (the Billy Big Spring Site) in northcentral Montana is used to investigate this question. Excavations conducted in 1952, 1954, 1971 by Thomas Kehoe and in 2016 by our team all found extensive Middle and Late Plains Archaic deposits, but in 2016 we discovered a ~10 cm thick layer of ash from this eruption. This poster...
Big House on the Prairie?: Signal Quality across Multi-ethnic Homesteading Contexts in the Central Plains (USA) (2015)
Homesteaders colonizing central Nebraska (Central Plains, USA) in the late 1800s constructed communities that varied in terms of ethnic heterogeneity as well as across other dimensions. Costly signaling tenets explored to date suggest that for multi-lingual and multi-ethnic communities, we expect material culture, in this case, homestead size and ornateness, to index family capacities; in linguistically and ethnically homogenous communities, such a material signal may have had less saliency....
Bison Hunters and the Rockies: An Evolving Ontology (2016)
Euroamericans who encountered northern Plains bison hunters in the late 19th century believed that the Blackfoot held the Rocky Mountains in awe and fear, preferring to remain on the plains even as bison and elk herds dwindled. This incorrect assumption has hampered our ability to understand deep-time relationships between mountain and plains cultural expressions. Although the historic Blackfoot did not dwell in high elevations, the character of their relationship with the Rocky Mountain Front...
Bison Killsites and Carnivore Utilization: A Discussion of Prehistoric Human Impacts to Scavenging Carnivores and the Implications for Conservation Management (2015)
Zooarchaeologists have commonly employed analyses concerning only site formation processes when studying carnivore modification and utilization to North American faunal assemblages. Yet, such processes are rarely discussed beyond descriptions of the presence of tooth marks or overall percentages of elements with modifications. Additionally, limited discussion has occurred with regards to the implications of these data on how humans and carnivores interacted in the past. In this paper, I address...
BISON, DOG, AND DEER, OH MY!: FAUNAL ANALYSIS OF THE LOVITT SITE, WESTERN NEBRASKA (2017)
The Dismal River complex is a protohistoric archaeological complex likely representing an early Apache occupation on the Central Great Plains of North America. A key Dismal River complex site is the Lovitt site (25CH1), located in southwestern Nebraska. Excavations at Lovitt in 1939 revealed the site as a small residential locality with three ephemeral house structures and more than 150 pit features. Recent radiocarbon dating at the site suggests it was likely occupied either in the first half...
Boots on the Ground and Planes in the Air: Assessing Damage to Archaeological Sites Caused by the 2011 Missouri River Floods (2015)
In the spring of 2011, the Missouri River Mainstem received unprecedented combination of snow melt and rain causing widespread flooding unseen since the construction of the Missouri River Dams. One of the consequences of the flooding was damage to archaeological sites located on the lands surrounding the reservoirs. As a result, South Dakota State Historical Society (SDSHS) partnered with the University of Arkansas Center for Advanced Spatial Technologies (CAST) to assess potential damages...
Breckenridge Shelter, Arkansas and the Younger Dryas (2015)
Excavations by W. Raymond Wood and then by Ronald A. Thomas first exposed late glacial/early post-glacial archaeology in 1961 and 1962. In 2012 renewed excavations by Arkansas Archeological Survey personnel re-exposed 1960s test units of up to 3m thickness to further evaluate the unusually deep deposit and its stratigraphy; and to collect sediment, associated artifacts, and radiocarbon samples. Compared to Rodgers Shelter and Big Eddy, two well-dated alluvial archaeological sites in the western...
