A Story about Shapes

And the Shape of the Story

Earlier this fall I was late posting an essay because I participated in several meetings for archaeologists. The next couple of posts will tell you about the “story” that I shared at those meetings. It relates to the “Bijou Blades” that I think might tie Lone Tree Farm to the Blood Run National Historic Landmark (NHL) and the associated Good Earth State Park. Located about 30 miles west of the Farm, Good Earth and Blood Run document the Oneota cultural tradition along the Big Sioux River just east of Sioux Falls, SD.

There are actually several lines of evidence that suggest that the people who once lived along Kanaranzi Creek at the Farm were related to the people who lived 30 miles west along the Big Sioux River. The last post listed bison bones and corn cobs, a piece of pipestone and a round rock, and a radiometric date of 1600 AD as indications that there was an Oneota outpost at the Farm. However, the simple shape of that story seems to be getting a little more intricate. And the shape of the story relates to the shape of artifacts made of a relatively uncommon and “exotic” rock type called Bijou Hills Orthoquartzite.

Figure 1----A) Grandchildren Grayson and Nora Shurr display the blades that they found. B) Plot describing shapes of bifaces from Blood Run; measurements on the Farm blades are shown in green.

For more than 150 years, six generations of Shurr kids have hunted for artifacts along the Kanaranzi Creek. I put in my time over the decades, but only found one lone arrowhead. However, in 2016 and 2018, the great-great-great grandchildren (does that make six generations?) of the original homesteaders found two pristine blades made of Bijou Hills Orthoquartzite (Figure 1-A). Both Gray and Nora made their discoveries while I was standing right next to them! But, they were closer to the ground and faster than I was, so they picked them up before I could! A few years before the kids collected these two beautiful blades, the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources predicted increased erosion in the Kanaranzi due to changes in flow regime. All through the 2010s, probably as a result of that increased base flow, a number of artifacts and bison bones did erode out of the steep banks and were collected from sand bars along the channel. And it’s those things, including the two blades, that suggest a connection to Blood Run.

Red pipestone is an important component of the collections made at Blood Run, but so is the distinctive blue-green Bijou Hills Orthoquartzite. In particular there’s a type of artifact that’s generally similar in shape to the Farm blades. Technically, these artifacts are known as “bifaces” because they show flaking on at least two edges where they’ve been chipped into their distinctive elongate shapes. The “blades” from the Farm are a type of biface. I measured the length and width on about 20 Blood Run bifaces and those are summarized in Figure 1-B. The Farm blades appear to conform with the overall trend, so they have the same general shape but do tend to be a bit smaller than most of the Blood Run bifaces. Even though the artifacts from the two places may be related, there are also some clear shape differences.

Figure 2---- A) Bifaces from Blood Run in the collections of Darrell Frerichs. B) Plot showing Blood Run bifaces (see Figure 1-B) contrasted with blades from the Correctionville complex (Henning, 2023, and Fishel, 1999).

The bifaces from Blood Run are not the beautiful, pristine works of art that the Farm blades are. Most of the bifaces have blunt ends (Figure 2-A) and are made of a lighter-colored material that may be more granular and less dense than the Farm blades. The bifaces also are less elongate and more “clunky” than the blades. There’s a general overall similarity between the shapes and material of the Blood Run bifaces and the Farm blades, but there are also some definite differences in detail that clearly emerge in the measurements of length and width. However, there’s another Oneota complex located along the Little Sioux River near Correctionville in northwestern Iowa that also has Bijou blades in the collections. Even though these sites are about 90 miles from the Farm, the Correctionville blades seem to be more similar to the Farm blades than the Blood Run bifaces.

If we put the length and width measurements together on the same plot, it looks like there are two different clusters with two different trends (Figure 2-B) associated with the blades and bifaces. The trends contrast the smaller, more elongate narrow “blades” with the larger “bifaces” that are wider. Unfortunately, the green dots representing measurements on blades from the Farm, are located in the area of overlap. That suggests that the overall shape of the Farm blades can’t be used to uniquely assign them to either the Blood Run bifaces or the Correctionville blades. Although, both Blood Run and Correctionville are Oneota cultural sites, Correctionville dates to 1300-1400 AD and Blood Run is around 1600 AD. We have dates on bison bones from the Farm that include both of those time frames! So, there may have been people associated with the Oneota culture living at the Farm, but it may have been about 1300 AD rather than 1600 AD. Those nuances with bifaces, blades, and dates also extend westward into South Dakota and Nebraska.

Figure 3---- A) Differences between a blade from southeastern South Dakota and a biface from northeastern Nebraska (left and right, respectively). B) Summary of length and width measurements that includes Iowa (see Figure 2-B) and data from South Dakota and Nebraska.

Blades and bifaces made of Bijou Hills Orthoquartzite are found in South Dakota and Nebraska (Figure 3-A) and they look like the blades and bifaces from Iowa. Blades are smaller and more slim with pointed ends; bifaces are larger and fatter with blunt ends. The clusters that describe these two types of artifacts again overlap in the range of the dimensions of the Farm blades (green dots in Figure 3-B). But the sites in South Dakota and Nebraska are not all associated with the Oneota culture. So, the story has to be tweaked to accommodate differences in culture, as well as differences in dates and artifact shapes. The next post will unpack some of these complications, but for now let’s look at a map.

Figure 4----Map showing locations of possible Bijou Hills quarries, collection sites in South Dakota and Nebraska, and the Farm, Blood Run, and Correctionville. The large arrows indicate how the Bijou Hills Orthoquartzite and the Oneota culture came together in northwestern Iowa.

The Bijou Hills Orthoquartzite probably originally came from quarries along the Missouri River, especially the two in southern South Dakota and northern Nebraska (Figure 4). Blades and bifaces summarized in the three previous plots came from collections marked by red circles and solid red squares. It’s generally accepted that the Oneota cultural traditions were brought into northwestern Iowa from the east and at Blood Run the people used Bijou Hills material from the west to make bifaces. The Bijou Hills material from the west was also used to make the blades from the Farm and Correctionville, but it seems to be a different quality rock type. The collections from sites along the Missouri River include both blades and bifaces, but the cultural traditions were different than the Oneota. In addition to artifact shape, cultural traditions, and dates of occupation, the blades and bifaces may also have been used by people for different jobs. Those possible different uses or functions will be the next thing that we’ll look at to get the story in a little better shape.

Acknowledgements: Thanks to Dr. Dale Henning for his help in sorting out the distinctions between blades and bifaces.

HAPPY HOLIDAYS!