Mandan earth lodges

[larson1951]

here is a link to images of the huge earth lodges the Mandans built
most had about two dozen people living inside along with their dogs and buffalo ponies

Mandan Indian Earth Lodges - Bing Images

 

[natchitoches]

very cool,

 

[old digger]

If that field of yours contained a village, then it's no wonder there are artifacts all over. Thanks for the link, quite informative.

 

[larson1951]

If that field of yours contained a village, then it's no wonder there are artifacts all over. Thanks for the link, quite informative.

yup the thirty some acres we take care of had about 90, yes ninety earth lodges on it

 

[Gold Maven]

Pawnee Indian Museum State Historic Site - Republic, Kansas

Here's another link showing lodge construction and 11KBPs print.

 

[larson1951]

Pawnee Indian Museum State Historic Site - Republic, Kansas

Here's another link showing lodge construction and 11KBPs print.

hey thanks mave
nice link

 

[11KBP]

It's a nice museum Gold Maven with an excavated Pawnee lodge in the center of
the museum.

 

[johnfile]

Thanks....I added this to my Favourites!

 

[Gold Maven]

So what did you find, KBP?

 

[Tnmountains]

There are a couple of points that need to be made concerning the finds Maven.
First of all the adjoining land around the Museum (State land) which was surveyed
via metal detectors is all privately owned and being farmed. Being privately owned it
had been searched for many years by a number of metal detector enthusiasts.
Therefore the finds were limited to only what was not previously found and that was
very little, lol. However, these types of sites are never completely cleaned out as the
smallest metallic items are difficult to detect. We were able to find enough small brass
fragments from brass trade kettles and pans to give us a general idea of the
approximate village site boundaries. Other items included small iron awls, brass
tinklers and the largest item I found was a one foot section of gun barrel which I was
surprised it had not been found long ago.

Other similar historic sites I have detected were much more productive with interesting
finds such as those seen below. -11KBP

In a way it is sad when you see the points made from kettles and scrap iron. Such a transition for them away from stone. Nice collection. I have found a trade axe but no points of metal. Very nice collection and history. Thanks for sharing. I wish Steve would metal detect his site.

 

[pickaway]

I could sleep well in one of those lodges...

 

[coteau]

The traditional Mandan sites were pretty spectacular in their day, that's for sure. Even today, the features that remain from sites that haven't been destroyed by farming, development, bank erosion, dams, etc. are pretty awesome.

This picture was taken at one of the best preserved Mandan sites. When Lewis & Clark stopped at this site there were no Mandans living there, only a few Sioux. Note the large midden mounds and the inner fortification ditch (the ditch was much deeper hundreds of years ago of course). This site was occupied by the Mandan for at least three hundred years. There were about 160 earth lodges and 1900 people living at this village in the late 1400s, but by 1785 only 32 lodges and 400 people were still living here.

Quiz: Do you know the name of this site?

 

[larson1951]

yup

That is double ditch village
along the missouri river
i 1959 i found my first KRF scraper and a bunch of pottery shards there
i still have them in a frame in my garage
there are two fortification ditches like the one in the center of the picture which is why it is called double ditch indian village
you can see the mandan oil refinery in the back ground if you click two or three times
that is where Twitko worked until he retired
there are hundreds and hundreds of thousands of artifacts there