A photograph of the first excavation at the Kimball Village Site in 1939. The artifacts pictured with this story all were excavated during this 1939 dig.
A portion of a pottery vessel from the Kimball Site. The vessel displays an engraved sun circle. This photo and all subsequent photos from University of Iowa Office of the State Archaeologist.
During first dig, the WPA team dug trenches eight feet deep into the site and made an astonishing discovery: houses, hearths, storage pits, burial features and more than 9,000 artifacts, including more than 100 tools made from bone, shell and stone beads, and ceramic pottery dating back about 800 years. The 2009 investigations revealed that the village covered about two acres. Today’s modern investigative techniques allow for research that does not disturb what is below the ground. A geophysical technique called magnetic gradiometry shows evidence of as many as 21 possible earth lodges surrounded by a ditch and wall. The state archaeologist stated that the Mill Creek Culture was highly distinctive and short-lived. The Mill Creek people “followed a way of life completely different from those before them.”
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In addition, “The Mill Creek culture is part of a larger group of horticultural villages that start to appear around 1000 near the Missouri River from northwest Iowa to central South Dakota. The 35 known Mill Creek villages cluster in two distinct areas in northwest Iowa: along the Little Sioux River and its three tributaries (Brooke Creek, Mill Creek, and Waterman Creek) and along the Big Sioux River and its tributaries in Plymouth County.” The Mill Creek inhabitants “practiced a mixed economy, relying upon both horticulture and hunting as food sources. Maize
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