Latest MSUM dig finds ‘mind boggling’ large area of material from early bison hunters
MOORHEAD – A three-week archaeological survey on land that once was part of the Ponderosa Golf Course in Glyndon has discovered large “surface scatter” areas — up to a quarter mile long — filled with bison bones and dart tips left behind by native people that hunted there 800 to 2,000 years ago.
The latest dig by Minnesota State University Moorhead researchers started July 13, and was a follow-up to deeper excavations that found bones and tools of people who lived in the area about 8,000 years ago.
Rather than going down 5 feet as done in June, the recent work by anthropology professor George Holley and three undergraduate students involved digging about 700 holes a foot wide and a foot and a half deep at MSUM’s Regional Science Center.
The breadth of the site was a shock, Holley said.
“I didn’t expect to see anything” that big, he said Friday as he and his assistants cleaned, sorted and stored “bags and bags of bones,” dart points and tools they found. “It was mind boggling.”
The popularity of the area for hunting bison over many thousands of years has to do with the geology, Holley said. The area features beach ridges formed by glacial Lake Agassiz, and is a dividing point between the wooded uplands of Lakes Country, and the grassy plains to the west. Those ridges are cut by the oxbows of the Buffalo River and streams that eroded through them, creating unique habitats for plants and wildlife, Holley said.
It was “an oasis,” both for the “Archaic” period Native Americans who lived there between 8,000 and 2,500 years ago, and the Late Woodland period people.
“You have a perfect place for people to live. It has water, and wood, and stone. For Native Americans, a lot of the resources they would use,” Holley said.
But it wasn’t an easy life. For example, the Late Woodlands people used spear throwers to drive multiple darts into bison, then chased them until blood loss weakened the animal. That could mean following a wounded animal for 10 miles, Holley said.
“It’s like being a professional football player all the time. You’re really moving, challenging yourself. Going up and down hills and chasing after the buffalo, working and cutting it up, and carrying the meat distances,” he said.
“The work required to take apart a bison is not an easy task,” Holley said. “And that’s your livelihood. You have to act quick, and it takes concerted effort, people working together. It’s not a solitary hunter thing. It’s a group project.”
At the same time, he said the diet was healthy, with lean bison meat and fruit when it was in season. He called it an “idyllic life,” as small groups of families banded together to hunt, fish and grow food without the stresses of the modern world.
Holley said there are three possible scenarios to explain the extensive finds in the Late Woodlands dig site.
One possibility is that people stayed in the area year-round, living on the uplands in the summer, and moving to the floodplain lowlands in winter.
Another is that small groups hunting in the Red River Valley brought their game to the site to be cut up and dried, then took it to Lakes Country.
A third possibility is that it was a place where small clans joined to conduct large hunts.
“Right now, I have no idea,” Holley said. “There will be a great story here when we finally put the pieces together,” but that will take a lot of excavating and dating and analysis of the artifacts.
The site also leaves questions. Why didn’t they find evidence of people between the Archaic and Late Woodlands periods?
That, he said, may simply depend on the randomness of the survey. With small holes dug every 20 meters (a little more than 60 feet) apart in an area the size of four football fields, a lot of material can be missed.
Also, there is no evidence of work at the sites after 1200 A.D., when the Red River Valley is filled with evidence of habitation after 1200.
“So, that’s a puzzle,” Holley said.
Making sense of the sites may require a full excavation, which would be an expensive proposition, he said.
No human remains have been found, he said. That indicates the residential population wasn’t large, because larger groups would honor their dead and claim territory.
Holley said the site will get further study, with classes and field schools visiting the area.
“It’s a perfect laboratory for us.”