New Investigations of the Deer Creek Site, an Early Eighteenth Century Ancestral Wichita Village

Summary

Deer Creek (34KA3) is one of few known fortified villages on the Southern Plains and was occupied during a critical point in Wichita tribal history. While researchers have been interested in this site for almost one hundred years, it was only two years ago that archaeologists were allowed to formally excavate the site. Following removal of dense brush cover in 2014, archaeologists with the University of Oklahoma, Oklahoma State University, Oklahoma Archaeological Survey, and the Oklahoma Anthropological Society conducted limited excavations at the site in 2016 and 2017. This poster presents preliminary results from this project which included the excavation of an interior fortification ditch, two trash mounds, and two storage/trash pits. Some highlights of our work include the recovery of articulated horse remains, a lithics cache, a number of French trade goods, quantities of bison and turtle bones, and paleofeces.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 83rd Annual Meeting, Washington, DC (2018)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 20883