Rocks in Our Heads: Recent Investigations in Knife River Flint Quarry Area

Summary

The Knife River flint primary source area was one of, if not the primary source of lithic material in the Northern Plains. Knife River flint was a major trade item from the Paleoindian through the protohistoric. Over the past several years, archaeologists from Metcalf Archaeological Consultants, Inc. have conducted projects within the Knife River flint primary source area located in north-central North Dakota. Many of these projects either directly or indirectly have been in support of oil development in the Williston Basin. These projects have resulted in the identification of several new sites as well as updates to a predictive model of Knife River flint natural deposits and site locational/spatial distribution using both archaeological and geoarchaeological methods. These activities have expanded our understanding of the nature and composition of the primary source area. This presentation reviews these projects and summarizes key findings to date.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)   •
• Those Dam Sites: Recent Archaeological Research in the Dakotas

Keywords

Spatial Coverage