Sully (39SL4) is a Plains Village archaeological site located along the Missouri River in central South Dakota. The village of over 200 circular houses was continuously occupied by ancestral Arikara from about AD 1460–1735 and is assigned to the Extended and Post-Contact variants of the Coalescent tradition. It covers approximately 50 acres (20.2 hectares), excluding four separate burial or cemetery areas comprising 16 acres (6.4 hectares) adjacent to and northeast of the village. Major Smithsonian Institution River Basin Surveys salvage excavations focused on the village in 1956, 1957, and 1958 under the overall direction of Robert Stephenson, with additional work in the adjacent cemeteries by William Bass continuing into 1961 and 1962. Village excavations revealed a complex series of superimposed house constructions. The village was first occupied at its western end and later settled in various other areas by one or more separate groups. The Extended Coalescent occupation lasted for approximately 190 years followed by the more extensive and intensive Post-Contact Coalescent component of about 85 years. During its occupation, there were incremental changes in material culture, along with the addition of Euro-American trade artifacts during the proto-historic period. This report demonstrates that current research questions can be addressed with artifact assemblages recovered under mid-Twentieth century salvage protocols.

The Dismal River complex refers to the archaeological expression of the ancestral Plains Apachean (Ndee) groups living in the central Great Plains between roughly AD 1400 and 1870. This paper reports the results of the zooarchaeological analysis of the faunal collection from the Lovitt site (25CH1) excavated by Hill and Metcalf in 1939. The site, whose Dismal River component dates between AD 1520 and 1670, produced a moderately sized faunal collection dominated by bison, turtle, beaver, dog, and pronghorn. Based on seasonality and osteometric analyses, bison procurement appears to be organized around episodic hunting of individual bull bison rather than communal hunting targeting cow-calf herds. Hunters at Lovitt seem to have timed their bison hunting episodes to the summer through early winter, a period when bison are in good physical condition and naturally aggregate into larger herds. Bison skeletal part representation patterns suggest small groups of hunters traveled away from the site to procure bison and returned to camp with primarily high-utility skeletal parts. Smaller-bodied game, especially turtles, beavers, and dogs were also likely an important contribution to the diet.

In the recent past, the Front Ranges of the Northern Rocky Mountains formed a permeable boundary that people repeatedly crossed for trade, subsistence, or warfare, and where people occupying different parts of western North America interacted. In this paper we apply a landscape approach to study pre-contact projectile point morphologies and raw materials, and related changes in the geographic affiliations of peoples using the Billy Big Spring Site, located near the Front Ranges in the Blackfeet Indian Reservation of Montana. This site contains numerous points recovered in chronostratigraphic contexts ranging in age from Late Paleoindian to Late Precontact. The sample includes types and raw materials alternatively typical of the Rockies/Plateau, the Front Ranges, and/or the Plains. Variation in the projectile point record at Billy Big Spring is consistent with the notion that, as observed in the recent past, information networks spanned a wide geographic area that englobed the Plains, the Front Ranges, and the Plateau/Rockies during most of the pre-contact period. Exceptions and changes in the geographic affiliations of people using the site can in turn be related to major environmental and demographic events that occurred in the region.

We present a study of obsidian artifacts found in Folsom contexts from the Great Divide Paleoindian sites (Great Divide Basin, Wyoming) to evaluate Paleoindian mobility patterns in the central and southern Rocky Mountains. Obsidian sourcing using pXRF demonstrates conveyance from Obsidian Cliff (400 km), Teton Pass (300 km), and the Green River/Engineer Quarry source. Other chipped stone raw materials from Folsom localities derive from sources in the upper Green River Basin, thus partially establishing a Folsom mobility pattern between the Yellowstone Plateau, upper Green River Basin, and Great Divide Basin of Wyoming. This study supports the notion that Paleoindians regularly transported lithic raw materials great distances even in relatively raw material rich regions like the interior of the Rocky Mountains and is further evidence for a sparsely documented Younger Dryas-aged use of the Yellowstone Plateau.

The Scott County Pueblo (14SC1) is a seven-room masonry pueblo situated on the High Plains in western Kansas. Recent analyses identify at least two occupations prior to the Pueblo Revolt of 1680: an earlier Dismal River Complex (ancestral Apache, Ndee) occupation dating between AD 1470 and 1640, and a later multiethnic occupation of ancestral Apache (Ndee) and Rio Grande Puebloan peoples dating around AD 1630–1690. This paper reports the results of the zooarchaeological analysis of a faunal collection excavated by James H. Gunnerson in 1965. Our results indicate Scott County hunters preyed upon an array of species, although bison, canids, and turtles were the most common taxa procured. Based on bison skeletal part representation, we hypothesize small groups of hunters traveled to procure bison, and the differential transport of high utility body parts reflects a subsistence strategy to accommodate for the limited labor available for carcass transport.

"Practical Heritage Management: Preserving a Tangible Past." Plains Anthropologist, ahead-of-print(ahead-of-print), pp. 1–2

Beads in many forms were used as decorative items on the Great Plains during the historic and prehistoric periods. Cluny Fortified Village (EePf-1) on the Northwestern Plains is a unique Late Prehistoric period site where excavations have revealed over 1,600 shell artifacts including beads, bead preforms or “blanks,” and substantial waste from shell bead production. These shell artifacts provide insight into local prehistoric bead production using two local bivalve species Lampsilis siliquoidea (fatmucket) and Lasmigona complanata (white heelsplitter). Experimental drilling on shell produced distinctive stepping and striation patterns that identify the method of drilling: either holding the drill in the hand or mounting the drill on a shaft. Most beads from the site exhibit patterns indicative of hafted drill use. In addition, the distribution of shell at the site indicates bead production areas as well as a cache of finished and unfinished beads.

"The 79th meeting of the Plains Anthropological Conference." Plains Anthropologist, 67(262), p. 217