Michael G. Michlovic

Shea Site: a Prehistoric Fortified Village On the Northeastern Plains

Archaeological excavations at the Shea site (32CS1O1) reveal a village lifeway on the Northeastern Plains during the late prehistoric period and clarify Late Woodland-Plains Village interrelationsh...

Cultural Evolutionism and Plains Archaeology

Archaeologists often describe cultural changes in the prehistoric Plains as historical episodes involving diffu sion events of stylistic innovations. Nevertheless, syn theses of Plains archaeology persistently include four sequent stages very much like the evolutionist scenarios from other portions of the New World, particularly the eastern United States. The archaeological record does not justify such an evolutionary model in the Plains; what it does indicate is two stages of development?forager and village agricultural. The reason for this conceptual problem in Plains archaeology may result from archae ologists tacitly accepting the idea that an unbiased archaeology requires a concept of evolutionary progress through independent innovation.

The Cheyenne migration and the Biesterfeldt site revisited

The Cheyenne migration to the Great Plains is re-examined in light of recent archaeological work at the Biesterfeldt site in southeastern North Dakota. Biesterfeldt is regarded as an intrusion from the west rather than as the product of a farming people moving from the southeast. Woods previous analysis of Biesterfeldt is reaffirmed with the additional suggestion the Cheyenne people, regarded as the authors of the site, were by this time already established residents in the Missouri River region. This conclusion is reinforced by historical and linguistic resources, and by recent archaeological work in Biesterfeldt region. The implications of this for ethnological and historical reconstructions are briefly considered.

Lithic Artifacts from the Early Archaic Component

The lithic artifact collection from the Rustad Early Archaic component consists of tools and debris. Over 200 tools, cores, and worked or heavily-used flakes with macroscopically observ able traces of use were found. Many of these are recognizable types of tools, including projectile points and point fragments, bifaces, and scrapers. The remainder of the tool collection consists of worked or used flakes that have no definable tool

Material Analysis of Lithic Flaking Debris

volve the use ofkeys, comparative collections, and sorting of materials into lots based on color, lus ter, texture, and inclusions (such as fossils, oo lites, and vugs). While Morrow does not apply his system to materials derived from till, Bakkens system is more or less explicitly directed at the examination of till-derived raw materials. Lithic collections may be characterized using two different methods, here termed the macro scopic and microscopic. The macroscopic method is dependent on the use of comparative lithic col lections, on comparison of lithic features visible to the unaided eye, or with the aid of a 1 Ox hand lens. The microscopic method is essentially pet rographic, involving the use of polarized light microscopes and the identification of mineralogi cal components in lithic thin sections. Over the past few decades various petrographic and geochemical descriptions of northern Plains lithic materials have appeared in the literature. Some relevant examples are Porter (1962) for Tongue River silica and Bijou Hills quartzite, Loendorf et al. (1984) for Rainy Buttes silicified wood, Church (1994) for Ogalalla orthoquartzite (formerly Bijou Hills quartzite), Campling (1980) for Swan River chert, and Clayton et al. (1970) for Knife River flint. Others have described or discussed northern Plains lithics in more conventional archaeologi cal terms. Examples are Ahler (1977), Anderson (1978), D. Fredlund (1976), and Low (1996). Bakken (1997) has assembled a review of lithics used in prehistoric Minnesota, and Morrow (1994) provides a key for identification of lithics com monly found in Iowa. While archaeologists are becoming more so phisticated in description and analysis of lithic material, many archaeological studies are done without the benefit of petrographic analysis of thin sections, X-ray Diffraction (XRD), Scanning Elec tron Microscopy (SEM), or other laboratory tech niques. The most useful of these techniques for archaeological identification of raw materials is petrographic description of thin sections. In many cases, optical microscopy using polarized light allows an investigator to identify the minerals that comprise a sample. Details of the textural rela tionships between mineral grains are clearly seen when they are magnified between l(M500x. The abundance of each mineral species present can be estimated, and in many cases, the composition and growth conditions of the rock can be interpreted. For extremely fine-grained rocks, optical micros copy does not provide the necessary magnifica tion, and SEM analysis must be undertaken. A review of the applications of petrography to ar chaeology is provided by Kempe and Harvey (1983). Given these two methods, questions sometime arise regarding the reliability of the macroscopic method. Specifically, are lithic raw material names assigned by archaeologists on the basis of macro scopic examination corroborated by thin section descriptions? For this reason a simple experiment was set up during the analysis of the Rustad lithic materials. The lithic collection was divided into raw material classes macroscopically, following a procedure similar to that described by Bakken (1997) and Morrow (1994). The procedure devel oped out of the recommendations of these research ers is to inspect lithic collections in aggregate, that is, to review large quantities of lithic material al together, noting the range of variation across the collection. As this is done, the rough outlines of a lithic classification are developed. Next, a com parative collection of lithic material is used, along with basic descriptive information about the rock types that appear to be represented. Items from each provenience unit are then placed in one or another of the categories, paying special attention

Excavations, Archaeological Stratigraphy, and Cultural Components

in three areas (see Figure 1.4 in Chapter 1), each consisting of a number of adjacent 1 x 2 m units. Area 1 was in the southeastern portion of the quarry pit and comprised about 112 m2. Area 2 on the west side of the quarry included about 40 m2. Area 3 was made up of 14 m2 placed in the north eastern wall of the quarry. It consisted of two dis junct portions of the eastern wall of the quarry, called 3 A (north) and 3B (south). Two units helped to determine the eastern and southern site bound