Geophysics and Excavations at a Tribally Owned Heritage Site in the Red Wing Region, Southeastern Minnesota

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

A multiyear collaborative process led to the Prairie Island Indian Community acquiring 120 contiguous acres containing two major villages and more than 90 known associated burial mounds on the north side of the Cannon River, near Red Wing, Minnesota. Archeologists have known about the site complex for more than 140 years, but other than partial mound mapping in 1885 no archeological investigations were conducted at the site until the current project, which started in 2019. In the last four years, we and our Tribal partners have collected multiple forms of geophysical data in an 8,000 m2 area, spanning areas of levelled mounds, intact mounds, and extending into an intensively occupied habitation area. Excavation of discrete surficial and subsurface geophysical anomalies reveals that most of the site is completely undisturbed, and these site data can help resolve long-standing questions about habitation processes, occupation sequences, and intercultural interactions left unclear by excavations at other sites in the region.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

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Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 37669.0