Prehistory Of The Little Blue River Valley, Western Missouri: Archeological Investigations At Blue Springs Lake

Summary

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Kansas City District is presently constructing Blue Springs Lake on the East Fork of the Little Blue River in Jackson County, Missouri. The location of the project is in the tall grass prairie forest mosaic of the eastern Prairie Plains (Figure 1). This area is in the West Missouri Management Unit as defined by the Preliminary Draft Master Plan for Archaeological Resource Protection in Missouri prepared by the Missouri Department of Natural Resources. Completion and operation of the lake will directly impact and result in the loss of significant archaeological data at three sites 23JA143, the Cold Clay site (23JA155) and the Black Belly site (23JA238), all located within the project area.

Test excavations at the three sites indicated that they contained intact deposits associated with poorly known cultural periods in the Little Blue drainage and the Kansas City area in general. Work at the Cold Clay site (23JA155) indicated the presence of a late Middle Archaic component that predates the Late Archaic Nebo Hill occupation of the area (Schmits and Reust 1980). Work at the Black Belly site (23JA238) indicated the presence of Middle Woodland, Late Woodland and Mississippian period May Brook phase components (Schmits and Reust 1982b). 23JA143 was initially recognized as containing a Middle Woodland component (Peterson and Schmits 1982). Further testing of the site, however, revealed the presence of a deeply buried early Middle Archaic component eroding from a cutbank of the Little Blue River (Schmits et al. 1984).

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): US Army Corps of Engineers Mandatory Center of Expertise for the Curation and Management of Archaeological Collections, St. Louis District

Principal Investigator(s): Larry Schmits

Landowner(s): US Army Corps of Engineers, Kansas City District

Repository(s): Fort Osage

Prepared By(s): Environmental Systems Analysis, Inc.

Submitted To(s): US Army Corps of Engineers, Kansas City District

Record Identifiers

Contract No. (s): DACW41-83-C-0095

ESA Project No.(s): 1063

Notes

General Note: The digital materials in this collection were processed by the Veterans Curation Program (VCP), and include select archival photographs and artifact photographs, artifact database, artifact report, finding aid, original investigation report, photographic material database, and scanned asset key. Additional digital materials held by the VCP include additional archival and artifact photographs, box labels, document folder listing, initial data collection, notes, photographic material labels, and records removal sheet. For additional information on these materials, refer to the finding aid.

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