The Whistling Elk
Subsurface Imaging Project
by Kenneth L. Kvamme
About the Whistling Elk Site: Summary
Whistling Elk (39HU242) is a large (170 x 110m), fortified, Initial Coalescent
village of the Plains Village pattern. It is located on the north bank of
the Missouri River about 30 km east of Pierre, South Dakota. It is buried
under nearly a meter of sediments with no surface expression of cultural
features visible aside from vegetation markings that occasionally appear in
aerial photographs. Most of the village area was designated a natural
wildlife refuge in the 1960s by the Army Corps of Engineers (COE) when this
section of the river was impounded to form Lake Sharpe, one of the many
reservoirs on the Missouri. The lake’s erosion of the site has recently
resulted in a COE bank stabilization program along its shoreline.
Fortification features are revealed in a 1946 aerial photograph (top),
and again in a 1968 (bottom) aerial photo (note the recession of
the shoreline in the latter).
Little is known about Whistling Elk aside from excavations of two prehistoric houses
performed at the eroding embankment by the University of Nebraska at Lincoln
during the late 1970s. These excavations showed that the houses were burned,
probably during an attack because the floors contained numerous utilitarian
artifacts and burned foodstuffs (maize, beans) in storage bins. A 1992 PhD
dissertation by Dennis Toom (Anthropology Research, University of North
Dakota) focused on these findings at Whistling Elk. The excavations reported
a depth to cultural features at the cut-bank of 0.8-1 m. Radiocarbon dates
cluster in the early AD 1300s.
This project was supported by a technology transfer grant from the National
Center for Preservation Technology and Training, National Park Service.