Medicine Creek: Seventy Years of Archaeological Investigations

5. Stratigraphic Studies at Paleoindian Sites Around Medicine Creek Reservoir

Geoarchaeological investigations of Paleoindian sites in the Medicine Creek valley of southwestern Nebraska began in the late 1940s with the work of paleontologist C. Bertrand Schultz and his students (e.g., Schultz et al. 1948) and were renewed in the late 1980s and 1990s by geomorphologist David May (e.g., Holen and May 1989). Although many of these investigations focused on the valley-¤ll stratigraphy at speci¤c archaeological sites, Schultz’s studies included a comprehensive , basin-wide analysis of ®uvial terraces and alluvial stratigraphy throughout the entire upper Republican River to which Medicine Creek is a major tributary (Figure 1.1). This chapter has two purposes. The¤rst is to review early geoarchaeological investigations in the Medicine Creek Reservoir area at three Paleoindian sites that were partially excavated in the late 1940s and early 1950s. These sites are the Allen site (25FT50) on Medicine Creek (Holder and Wike 1949; see also Bamforth, this volume), the Lime Creek site (25FT41) (Davis 1962; see also Frankforter , this volume), and the Red Smoke site (25FT42), which is also on Lime Creek (see Davis 1953a, 1954a; see also Davis, this volume and Knudson, this volume) (Figure 5.1). The second purpose of this chapter is to summarize recent geoarchaeological investigations at these three Paleoindian sites, as well as at two more recently discovered Paleoindian sites (Stafford and La Sena sites). C. Bertrand Schultz’s Contributions Geoarchaeological research in the Medicine Creek area was initiated by paleontologist C. Bertrand Schultz. The construction of the Medicine Creek Dam north of Cambridge, Nebraska, and Harlan County 5 Stratigraphic Studies at Paleoindian Sites Around Medicine Creek Reservoir David W. May Dam on the Republican River near Republican City (Figure 1.1) inspired Schultz and others from the University of Nebraska State Museum to search for fossils that might be destroyed in the Medicine Creek and Lime Creek valleys behind Medicine Creek Dam and in the Republican River valley upstream of Harlan County Dam. It was 5.1. Locations of ¤ve Paleoindian sites and a studied cutbank in the Medicine Creek Reservoir area. 38 / David W. May Schultz’s team of paleontologists who discovered the three deeply buried Lime Creek Paleoindian archaeological sites (Red Smoke, Allen, and Lime Creek) (Schultz et al. 1948:31). The Red Smoke archaeological site was discovered during the museum’s reconnaissance work in April 1947, and the Lime Creek and Allen archaeological sites were discovered after the ®ood of June 22, 1947, caused severe erosion of the banks of Lime and Medicine Creeks (Schultz and Frankforter 1948:44–46; see also Frankforter, this volume). C. Bertrand Schultz envisioned an unusual interdisciplinary effort at the three Lime Creek Paleoindian sites that would involve archaeologists , geomorphologists, vertebrate and invertebrate paleontologists, sedimentologists, paleobotanists, and pedologists (Schultz and Frankforter 1948:56; see May 2000:174–178 for a more complete discussion). As a result of his vision, archaeologists Preston Holder and Joyce Wike (1949) excavated the Allen site, and E. Mott Davis (1953a, 1954a, 1962) excavated the Lime Creek and Red Smoke sites (see also Davis, this volume). Schultz and others from the University of Nebraska State Museum studied terraces, valley ¤lls, buried soils, and vertebrate fossils in the ¤lls (Davis and Schultz 1952; Schultz and Frankforter 1948; Schultz et al. 1948, 1951). Two graduate students at the University of Nebraska wrote M.S. theses based on their research in the Medicine Creek Reservoir area. Gregory Elias (1949) addressed the stratigraphy and sedimentological properties of the alluvial ¤lls beneath terraces along Medicine Creek. Elias’s thesis contains a considerable amount of particle-size data for individual sedimentary units within each of the¤lls at representative stratigraphic sections. Howard Stacy (1949) studied the invertebrates found in the alluvial ¤lls described in Elias’s thesis . He inferred local paleoclimatic conditions from the species of invertebrates found in the valley ¤lls. In the 1930s and 1940s C. Bertrand Schultz and geologist Milan Stout were developing a generalized terrace model for valleys in the central Great Plains. They had already published a terrace-sequence model based in part on geoarchaeological and paleontological research in the Platte River valley and upper White River basin in northwestern Nebraska (Schultz and Stout 1945). Schultz et al. (1948:39) used paleontological data, terrace elevations, and soil stratigraphy within valley¤lls in the Medicine Creek valley to develop a terrace model that they believed applied to the Republican River valley (Figure 5.2). Shortly...