Midwest Archeological Center Non-series Reports

DOCUMENT Full-Text J. Homer Thiel.

Located near the confluence of the Missouri and Yellowstone rivers in North Dakota, Fort Union was an important fur trading post during the 19th century. During the 1980s, the fort was the subject of a multi-year historical archaeology project conducted by the U.S, Department of the Interior, National Park Service (NPS), The project was conducted by the Midwestern Archaeological Center (MW AC), NPS, in response to proposed reconstruction of the trading post as a National Historical Site. In...

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Nonsite archaeological survey in the southern portion of Agate Fossil Beds National Monument in 1994 documented the presence of archaeological remains throughout the area. No ceramics were located, but hundreds (N=852) of chipped stone fragments, including 32 tools, were found. In addition, 5 cairns beyond those reported by Kay (1975) were documented. Using artifact density and the presence/absence of features, 32 sites beyond those identified by Kay (1975) were defined. In 1995, test...

DOCUMENT Full-Text Kenneth P. Cannon.

In 2003 a partial bison skull was recovered by Ashley National Forest archeologist Brian Storm from an elevation of 3840 m (12,600 ft) AMSL in the Uinta Mountains. The partial skull consists of a portion of the frontal, occipital region, and horn cores including horn sheaths. The presence of the horn sheaths is of particular interest for the ecological information they can provide. Through the analysis of the individual cones of the horn sheath a record of the animal’s dietary and migration...

DOCUMENT Full-Text Ann Bauermeister. William J. Hunt, Jr..

Archeologists from the Midwest Archeological Center, assisted by the Chief of Interpretation and Cultural Resources for Central High School National Historic Site, conducted geophysical surveys and documentary research at CHSC from September 15-18, 2003. The work focuses on the vacant lot located at the northeast comer of Daisy L. Gatson Bates Street and South Park Street that is the proposed site of a new Visitor Center. Beginning at least as early as 1897, the lot served both residential and...

DOCUMENT Full-Text Douglas D. Scott.

Archeological testing and mitigation was performed for two projects at Fort Larned National Historic Site. The first project consisted of relocating a buried air conditioner refrigerant line that passed through the 1860 adobe Commissary Storehouse and Enlistedmens' Barracks (HSll) and near a feature (Feature 17) previously identified by Earl Monger as a possible privy pit. The second project entailed testing in cellars located under the Officers Quarters (north cellar, HS7 and north and south...

DOCUMENT Full-Text Douglas D. Scott.

Archeological testing and mitigation was performed on the Old Commissary, HS 5, at Fort Lamed National Historic Site in partial compliance with Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act as amended. The structure, built in 1866 and the oldest original structure at the fort, requires extensive foundation and stabilization work to preserve its condition (Figure I). Archeological field work was carried out between July 11 and 17 by Douglas Scott, Melissa Baier, and Thomas Thiessen. Fort...

DOCUMENT Full-Text William J. Hunt.

This document focuses on the excavation of a backhoe trench (Figures 1 and 2) from July 22 through August 6, 1996 at Fort Scott National Historic Site (FOSC). The purpose of this trench was to allow subsurface installation of a IO-in waterline, the first step in the eventual installation of a fire suppression system in all FOSC buildings. Monitoring followed the construction crew's work schedule, which utilized a work week of four lO-hour days followed by a three-day weekend. Because of FOSC's...

DOCUMENT Full-Text John R. Bozell.

This document provides an archeological overview and assessment of Agate Fossil Beds National Monument in Sioux County, Nebraska. The study was completed under the terms of a purchase order and scope-of-work issued by the Midwest Archeological Center, National Park Service in Lincoln, Nebraska. Archeological investigations began at the park in the 1960s and have continued through the present. All fee title land within the park has been examined on at least one occasion by professional...

DOCUMENT Full-Text John R. Bozell.

This document provides an archeological overview and assessment of Homestead National Monument of America in Gage County, Nebraska. The study was completed under the terms of a purchase order and scope-of-work issued by the Midwest Archeological Center, National Park Service in Lincoln, Nebraska. Archeological investigations began at the park in the late 1940s and have continued through the present. All fee title land within the park has been examined on at least one occasion...

DOCUMENT Full-Text Fred A. Finney.

This document presents an archeological overview and assessment for the Herbert Hoover National Historic Site (HEHO), Cedar County, Iowa. Specific report sections review and describe the local and regional environment, past archeological investigations, known archeological resources and repositories, primary and secondary data sources, reviews the park's archeological database, and concludes with a series of management recommendations for future archeological research. HEHO is located in the...

DOCUMENT Full-Text William J. Hunt, Jr..

Test excavations at the Miller House site in Lincoln Home National Historic Site (LIHO), were undertaken in response to National Park Service (NPS) plans to restore and reconstruct the house to its original circa 1860 appearance. The scale of the construction is such that there is potential for considerable ground disturbance. This, in an archeological site which historical documentation and small-scale archeological investigations have demonstrated to contain or potentially contain intact...

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The documents that follow are new literal transcriptions of several handwritten narratives describing the experiences and observations of Charles McKenzie among the Hidatsa and Mandan Indians from 1804 to 1806. They were originally published in 1889-90 by Louis Francois Rodrigue Masson as part of a collection of first-hand accounts of the fur trading operations of the North west Company (Masson 1960). These transcriptions are an interim product of a larger, in-progress study undertaken by W....

DOCUMENT Full-Text Robert K. Nickel.

In August 1999, tests were conducted with three geophysical instruments on a lO-meter square grid in the northeast corner of the Carver family cemetery, George Washington Carver National Monument, Diamond, Missouri. The instruments included a Geoscan FM36 flux gate magnetometer, a Geoscan RM15 soil resistance meter, and a Sensors and Software Noggin 250 ground-penetrating radar unit. The magnetic data revealed patterns very similar to those identified by J. L. Emery as a result of her work in...

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The following document is an edited transcript of an interview with the late Dr. Wilfred D. Logan, former career National Park Service archeologist. The interview was conducted by Thomas D. Thiessen of the Midwest Archeological Center on February 5, 1990, at Logan's home in Tucson, Arizona.

DOCUMENT Full-Text Robert K. Nickel. William J. Hunt, Jr..

In August 1999, archeologists from the Midwest Archeological Center conducted a magnetic survey of the existing waterline alignment at Fort Union Trading Post National Historic Site. This was done as the first phase of a three-phase project whose overall goal is to assist the park in achieving Section 106 compliance in conjunction with proposed Fiscal Year 2000 installation of a new waterline. The routes of the current waterline and its replacement transect two known significant sites - the...

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One of the most detailed and illuminating primary accounts of the fur trading operations of the North West Company is the daily journal kept by Alexander Henry, one of the company's employees and partner, from 1799 until his untimely death in 1814. Henry's original diary is now lost, but a copy of it survives in the Public Archives of Canada in the form of a handwritten copy purportedly made by one George Coventry in 1824. Elliott Coues edited and published the journal in 1897 under the title,...

DOCUMENT Full-Text Melissa Baier. Amanda Davey. Anne M. Wolley Vawser.

In 2009, the Buffalo National River requested the services of the Midwest Archeological Center to relocate and evaluate 26 abandoned wells in the park. The wells present a safety hazard for park visitors and wildlife and the park plans to mitigate the hazard by sealing or otherwise eliminating the wells. The crew was able to relocate and document 23 wells, some of which were not on the original list of 26. Each well was documented by recording the location with Global Positioning System (GPS)...

DOCUMENT Full-Text Vergil E. Noble.

During late September, 1989, and again in mid-October, personnel from the Midwest Archeological Center conducted archeological investigations at Grand Portage National Monument. Those efforts were precipitated by the planned installation of a new drainage system within the reconstructed fur trade Depot. That drain would function to remove ground water from two replicated structures inside the Depot, namely, the Kitchen and the Great Hall. Prior to installation of the drain, seven test units...

DOCUMENT Full-Text Douglas D. Scott.

A team from the National Park Service's Midwest Archeological Center (MW AC) carried out backhoe and hand test excavations behind the Summer Kitchen (HS2) at Ulysses S. Grant National Historic Site (ULSG) in an effort to locate archeological evidence of fence lines and the site of a small building believed to be a privy. The archeological investigations were undertaken to gather data to support the reconstruction of the historic fenceline and avoid, to the extent possible, the effect of the...

DOCUMENT Full-Text Douglas D. Scott.

The flag and flagpole at Fort Union were important visual symbols to the inhabitants and visitors to the Upper Missouri region as is clearly evidenced by Edwin Denig's quote. The flag and the pole it flew upon were visible reminders of a place of safety and rest for the person approaching the fort from land or water. The flag and pole were a part of the every day scene at Fort Union and yet they served a more important, although less tangible role as a visual symbol of American control of the...

DOCUMENT Full-Text J. Homer Theil.

Fort Union served as the major trading establishment for the American Fur Company and its St. Louis descendants (Bernard Pratte and Co. and Pierre Chouteau, Jr. and Co.) on the Upper Missouri River between 1828 and 1865. In 1865, Charles Chouteau sold Fort Union to Hubble, Hawley and Smith, otherwise known as the North Western Fur Company. During its last years of existence, between 1864 and 1866, the treaders shared the post's facilities with the U.S. Army, the latter utilizing Fort Union as a...