Early Woodland In the Trans-Missouri West

The recent discovery of several sites, in proximity to the Missouri River on the east and also to the west of the river, demonstrates an Early Woodland presence of significance between 500B. C. and A.D. 1. Sites, as far west as the Flint Hills of Kansas, previously identified as Late Archaic, may also be a part of this presence. A search for sites with cordmarked pottery, overlain with textured designs, and trian gular-bladed comer-notched projectile points will likely identify many additional examples of this ear liest Woodland interaction on the Plains. In 1967, by means of a contract with the Na tional Park Service, a field party from the Museum of Anthropology at the University of Kansas conducted an archaeological survey within the Little Delaware-Mission Creek Watershed Management Area in Brown, Atchison, and Jackson counties, northeastern Kansas. The purpose of the survey was to deter mine if important cultural resources were threatened by the anticipated construction of a series of water-retention structures. The struc tures were to be built by the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Soil Conservation Service (Eoff and Johnson 1968). One of the sites located by the survey in an area not threatened by construction activity is 14BN26. Marked by a surface scatter of cultural debris in an agricultural field, 14BN26 is on the east side of Otter Creek, a northern tributary of the Delaware River (Fig. 1). The Delaware, in turn, flows into the Kansas River near Perry, Kansas between Lawrence and Topeka. Tem porally diagnostic artifacts collected from the site in 1967, and during a revisit in 1990, demonstrate the presence of two prehistoric oc cupations, one assignable to the early Plains Vil lage tradition and the other to Plains Woodland. A single projectile point fragment and a frag ment of crockery also suggest usages during the Archaic and Historic periods. Of these various periods of use, the one of interest to the present study is the Plains Wood land occupation. Artifacts assignable to this oc cupation include a single body sherd, 6 projec tile points or fragments, and one bifacial knife. The sherd, reconstructed from three small frag ments, measures 55 mm x 66 mm in overall size and 11 mm in thickness. It is heavily tempered with rounded sand grains. The exterior surface bears horizontally-placed cordmarks, overlain by diagonal cordmarks, on which are superim posed a series of horizontal lines of partially obliterated punctates, probably produced by the circular end of a hollow reed (Fig. 2a). Two complete projectile points have trian gular blades, corner notches, and straight bases (Fig. 2b, d). Four fragments, all broken across the stems and lacking tips, retain enough similarities to indicate conformation with the morphology of the complete points. One point fragment is of gray chert that probably originated in the Flint Hills of east-central Kan sas, while the remaining points and fragments are manufactured from a variety of chert types not known from the surrounding area. Dimen sions for the points are presented in Table 1, along with those from several contemporaneous sites believed to be affiliated. The remaining artifact that can be identified with the Woodland occupation at 14BN26 is a contracting-stemmed biface apparently used as a hafted knife (Fig. 2c). The stem, which at its point of origin is only slightly inset from the blade, has ground lateral edges and traces of wear and polish on both faces. Both the edge grinding and the facial wear are believed related