2022 Annual Meeting of the NDAA

Where: North Dakota Heritage Center & State Museum, Bismarck

When: Saturday, April 30, 2022. 12:30pm-4:00pm (central time)

Agenda: Doors to the room will open at Noon.

12:30 – Welcome

12:40 – Business Meeting NDAA Officer Reports Cynthia Kordecki Scholarship Committee Report

1:10 - 4:00 – Featured Speakers

1:10 pm — Lipid Residue Analysis of Pottery Fragments Recovered from the Arikara Village of Greenshield Kevin L. Braun and Noelle Heilpern, Virginia Military Institute

The  Greenshield site (32OL17), situated above the Missouri River on a high  Pleistocene terrace near the modern city of Washburn, was the earliest  and northernmost documented 18th-century Arikara village in North  Dakota. Occupied previously by the Mandans and the Arikara from 1795 to  1798, the earthlodge village site provides insight into a poorly  documented period of postcontact Arikara culture. The most extensive  Greenshield survey was conducted in 1929 by Alfred Bowers. Since Bowser  never published a critical analysis of the excavation and the recovered  artifacts, the site’s potential to provide insight on postcontact  Arikara cultural change has never been realized. In collaboration with  archaeologist Dr. William Green, our work has sought to shed new light  on this important Arikara site through lipid residue analysis conducted  on recovered pottery fragments. Specifically, we seek to determine if  increased European contact during the Arikara’s occupation of the  Greenshield site led to decreased dietary diversity. Unglazed ceramics  provide an exceptional repository for fats and oils, which accrue within  the porous matrix during cooking, food processing, commodity storage,  or ceremonial applications. Since plant and animal species synthesize  fats and oils using a unique combination of fatty acids, these molecules  serve as unique biomarkers that can provide insight into possible usage  patterns of the original ceramic item and enable the reconstruction of  cultural and economic practices and regional technologies. In this talk,  we will describe our novel lipid residue analysis method and present  our latest findings on the postcontact Arikara village of Greenshield.

2:05 pm — The Dispersal of Dogs in North America Ariane Thomas, University of Iowa

Domesticated  dogs accompanied humans during their earliest migrations to North  America and, after their arrival, dispersed widely throughout the  continent. However, few studies have examined the nature of this  dispersal and how regional cultural traditions may also play significant  roles in shaping the genetics, morphologies, and diets of dogs. In this  presentation, we explore the temporal, geographic, and cultural  influence on the biology of dogs from the Midwest and Atlantic regions  of North America. Our analyses show that dog variation is molded by a  complicated history of expansion and intercultural connections that  coincide with their roles in human society. Future genetic work on dogs  from these regions will provide greater resolution into the use and  movements of North American dog populations.

3:00 pm— Small Village or Special Use Site? Initial Results of the 2021 PCRG-SHSND Field Investigation at Harmon Village Mark D. Mitchell, Paleocultural Research Group

Harmon  Village is a Plains Village site located on the right bank of the  Missouri River roughly 15 km north of Mandan, North Dakota. Lidar and  magnetic data collected during 2019 suggest that the site—which has a  commanding view of the river’s floodplain—consists of about a dozen  earthlodges encircled by a bastioned fortification. Material culture  obtained during a 2021 testing project carried out by Paleocultural  Research Group and the State Historical Society of North Dakota  demonstrate that a single component dated to the mid-1700s is present at  the site. Excavation also revealed a unique artifact assemblage unlike  any other previously obtained from a Plains Village site in the Heart  River region. A primary focus of subsequent analyses will be to  determine whether Harmon Village was a small village that was under  construction at the time of its abandonment or an intermittently  occupied special purpose site.

Please make plans to join us – online or in-person!