Prehistoric people leave footprints in Loess Hills

(Photo contributed) An archaeologist applies magnetic survey to an Iowa cornfield revealing a prehistoric village 8 feet below the ground in Plymouth County. [Click to enlarge]

Eight hundred to 900 years ago the first corn farmers dwelled in the northern Loess Hills.

Evidence of the prehistoric Mill Creek native people, as archaeologists have deemed them, and their villages and cemetery sites have been found in parts of Plymouth County and northwest Iowa.

For the past 1 1/2 years a team of archeologists from the University of Iowa Office of the State Archaeologist has been studying existing sites and recording new ones in the Loess Hills.

(Photo contributed) An archaeologist applies magnetic survey to an Iowa cornfield revealing a prehistoric village 8 feet below the ground in Plymouth County. [Click to enlarge]

Lynn Alex, an archaeologist with the University of Iowa Office of the State Archaeologist shared information learned during the study with the public Tuesday at the Westfield Community Center.

"Our study let us tell the story of the people living out here," Alex said. "Our strategies were to preserve, protect and promote."

In Plymouth County 14 Mill Creek sites were recorded, six of which are residential villages and eight are burial plots, Alex said.

At Kimball Mound, north of Sioux City just into Plymouth County, archaeologists discovered about 20 tightly clustered lodges underground using magnetic survey and test excavation equipment.

Based on findings it appears that Mill Creek villages were built within defense fortifications like ditches, Alex said.

She showed photographs of some of the ancient tools recovered that the prehistoric people used like bone and shell tools, bison scapula for a hoe, bone fishing hooks and stone scraping tools.

Some of those items were found in large pits inside the lodges where the native people originally stored winter food supplies and later, after those pits rotted, put their refuse in.

"Archaeologists are always looking for someone else's garbage," Alex said.

She also spoke of unique items found like snail shells and painted pottery that isn't native to the area and was probably brought in through trading.

"The designs on the ceramics are the same as other larger sites elsewhere," Alex said.

The archaeologists also studied the Glenwood culture, whose people lived in earth lodges in the southern Loess Hills.

The Mill Creek prehistoric settlements were abandoned by 1300 A.D.

Archaeologists still speculate what caused their departure, Alex said.

It is thought descendants of these early residents of the Loess Hills are the Mandan, Hidasta and Arikara Nations in North Dakota and Pawnee Nation of Oklahoma, according to information from the Office of the State Archaeologist.

Because of its qualities and intact remains, a Mill Creek site in Plymouth County will be nominated for the National Register of Historic Places, Alex said.

In addition, new signs are being built adjacent to several sites along the Loess Hills National Scenic Byway and interpretive exhibits at the Sioux City Public Museum.

The work and study of prehistoric people that lived in the Loess Hills is far from over, said Cindy Peterson, archaeologist with the University of Iowa Office of the State Archaeologist.

"We think there are a lot more Mill Creek sites out there that have been unrecorded," Peterson said. "Fourteen sites in this small area is just the tip of the iceberg."