North American Database of Archaeological Geophysics
North American Database of Archaeological Geophysics
Abstract/Summary:
Project Name: Flaming Arrow (32ML4), ND;
Reference: Kvamme, K.L. (1998). Geophysical Explorations at Flaming Arrow Village (32ML4), McLean County, North Dakota, 1997 Field Season. Boston University, Department of Archaeology, Boston, Massachusetts. Submitted to the State Historical Society of North Dakota.
The Flaming Arrow site (32ML4) is a fortified earthlodge village located on the east bank of the Missouri River, about three kilometers south of present day Washburn, North Dakota. A great part of this site has been destroyed by the construction of U.S. Highway 83 to the east, and by a railroad line to the west. What remains is about 2.5 ha of the village on a level terrace, but a significant southern portion of this region is slated for the construction of a new house. Under cultivation since the early 1900s, all surface expression of this village has been obliterated and shallow cultural deposits are undoubtedly disturbed.
Flaming Arrow has special significance to northern Plains prehistory. It figures prominently in the oral traditions of the Awatixa Hidatsa where it is identified as their ancestral village of origin. A 1983 excavation by the University of North Dakota (UND) revealed a house, oval in plan and roughly 9 x 8 m in size. The house possessed an interior entranceway ramp and a hearth opposite the doorway. It lacked storage pits and was placed in a small basin excavated about 0.3 m into the ancient ground surface. These characteristics are very atypical of Plains Village sites in the region. The ceramics, too, were unusual because they were cord roughened like earlier Plains Woodland ceramics. Radiocarbon dates of about AD 1100 suggest that Flaming Arrow may be one of the earliest Plains Village sites in the region.
Aerial photography inspected by UND during their work allowed definition of two circular features about 10 m in diameter, quite possibly houses, and a long arcing linear feature about 10 in wide that cuts across the terrace at the south end of the village, most likely the locus of a fortification ditch. A magnetic survey of an area of about 40 x 40 in was also conducted the same year by the Midwest Archaeological Center of the U.S. National Park Service, which isolated the locus of another large oval shaped anomaly about 10 m in diameter, tentatively identified as a prehistoric house.
A small portion of Flaming Arrow was geophysically explored on July 21-22, 1997. Approximately 3,600 sq m was surveyed by magnetic gradiometry and 1,600 sq m was subjected to an electrical resistance survey. The placement of these grids was guided by Fern Swensen and Paul Picha of the State Historical Society of North Dakota to cross the locus of the suspected fortification ditch and one of the circular features suggested in the aerial photography in the hope of providing confirmation of their existence. The orientation of the survey grids was dictated by the average direction of the slightly arcing furrows in this cultivated field, which was planted in pinto beans at the time of the survey.
Magnetic gradiometry results at the Flaming Arrow site were very weak, although the resistance data were somewhat better. In concert, these data provide important verification of the locus of the site's fortification ditch, first suggested by aerial photography. The data also suggest the locations of two large features, one of which is oval shaped and may be a house. The other may indicate the locus of a large circular feature seen in the aerial photography, also presumably a house.