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A Guide to Stone Circles (New Edition), Aubrey Burl

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<< Text Pages >> Peterson Bison Kill - Natural Stone / Erratic / Other Natural Feature in United States in The Plains

Submitted by bat400 on Saturday, 29 November 2008  Page Views: 14216

Natural PlacesSite Name: Peterson Bison Kill
Country: United States Region: The Plains Type: Natural Stone / Erratic / Other Natural Feature
Nearest Town: Granite Falls, MN
Latitude: 44.810000N  Longitude: 95.54W
Condition:
5Perfect
4Almost Perfect
3Reasonable but with some damage
2Ruined but still recognisable as an ancient site
1Pretty much destroyed, possibly visible as crop marks
0No data.
-1Completely destroyed
no data Ambience:
5Superb
4Good
3Ordinary
2Not Good
1Awful
0No data.
no data Access:
5Can be driven to, probably with disabled access
4Short walk on a footpath
3Requiring a bit more of a walk
2A long walk
1In the middle of nowhere, a nightmare to find
0No data.
no data Accuracy:
5co-ordinates taken by GPS or official recorded co-ordinates
4co-ordinates scaled from a detailed map
3co-ordinates scaled from a bad map
2co-ordinates of the nearest village
1co-ordinates of the nearest town
0no data
2
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Natural Stone / Other Natural Feature in Yellow Medicine County, Minnesota.
A natural funnel created by two rock ledges was the site of Archaic hunters' repeated kills of the bison occidentals, a thousand kilo animal with horns spanning a meter or more. Here bones of the extinct animal and stone butchering tools have been found along with a short stone wall that might possibly be connected to guiding animals into the natural trap.

Little excavation has taken place at the site, which only discovered twenty years ago. The site on the property of the Person family does not appear to be open to the public although it is mentioned in some tourist information for the locality. The Peterson Bison Kill Site is a few miles south of Granite Falls, MN. The location given is for the town and does not mark the actual site.

Note: 5000 BC Bison Kill Site eyed by archaeologists to answer questions on Minnesota's archaic history.
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Nearby Images from Flickr
United Church of Christ Congregational - Granite Falls, MN
Pelicans, Granite Falls Dam - Granite Falls, MN
Post Office - Granite Falls, MN
Post Office - Granite Falls, MN
Pelicans, Granite Falls Dam - Granite Falls, MN
Pelicans, Granite Falls Dam - Granite Falls, MN

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Nearby sites listing. In the following links * = Image available
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"Peterson Bison Kill" | Login/Create an Account | 2 News and Comments
  
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Re: A 7,000-year-old find awaits detailed analysis by Anonymous on Thursday, 11 February 2010
Facinating bit of information.
jg
[ Reply to This ]

A 7,000-year-old find awaits detailed analysis by bat400 on Saturday, 29 November 2008
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Submitted by coldrum:

Too often, Janet and LeRoy Peterson have heard the tell-tale sounds of screeching tires and, soon after, a rap on their door. Another motorist has just discovered that the natural terrain around their river valley home makes a natural funnel for deer.
The Petersons told members of the Indian History Hunters at a Nov. 4 meeting that some 20 years ago, they discovered that Minnesota’s first inhabitants had this all figured out at least 7,000 years before the first car-deer crash. Except it wasn’t 100- to 200-pound whitetail deer that brought Minnesota’s first people to the Peterson’s three-acre parcel south of Granite Falls. They were hunting a now extinct species of giant bison known as the bison occidentals.

These bison weighed 2,000 to 3,000 pounds apiece, and had dangerous, pointed horns more like those of a longhorn steer than the bison we know today. The hunters carried stone-tipped spears and throwing sticks known as atlatls that allowed them to fling the spears like darts at the SUV-sized animals.

It appears that they cornered the bison between two rock ledges and possibly mired them in a bed of clay in what is now the Petersons’ pasture. From atop the rock ledges, they could toss rocks and spears and jab at the trapped beasts with sharpened sticks.

The Petersons’ bison kill site remains one of the more important archaeological finds in the state for what it can tell us about the earliest inhabitants, according to Dr. Scott Anfinson, director of the Minnesota State Historic Preservation office. He was among the first archaeologists to have examined the site.

“I’d love to go there and dig some more,’’ said Anfinson, a native of Benson. “It’s massive,’’ said the Petersons of what still waits to be discovered.

After an initial excavation, archaeologists drilled a series of core samples about their property. They came up with bison bones with every probe, said the Petersons. Their discovery of the site in August 1988 came quite by accident. LeRoy was using a backhoe to excavate a pit and got curious about how the water table had receded during the dry summer.

He uncovered giant bones and knew he had something. Phone calls brought amateur archaeologist H. Clyde Pedersen of Marshall to the site and soon afterward Anfinson.

They were interested in what was found amongst the bones: A biface stone knife and other pieces of stone tools and weapons used by the Archaic period people who hunted these bison. The bones were radiocarbon dated to 7,050 years ago, plus or minus 120 years.

“It was the peak of the prairie period in Minnesota,’’ Anfinson said.
Minnesota was a drier and warmer place at the time, covered largely by prairie that attracted herds of the giant bison. Anfinson said the early people are believed to have traveled in small bands and hunted the large animals.

The stones used as tools at this site were quarried in what is now western South Dakota and perhaps Montana. It’s possible the early people traveled great distances and quarried the stones on their own, but they could have traded for them as well, said Anfinson.

Archaeologists also unearthed a small wall built with flat stones. A child’s milk tooth was found by the stones, leading LeRoy Peterson to wonder: Did children build the wall as play while their parents butchered the bison?

It’s anybody’s guess, Anfinson said. It’s just as conceivable that the wall was somehow used to corral the bison into the trap, he said.
Both he and Peterson believe further exploration at the bison kill site could tell us a great deal about the early people. Anfinson said it is very likely that the people either had a hunting camp or a village very close to the site, as they would not likely haul their giant slabs of meat any great distance.

But even before further excavation is attempted, Anfinson said the pieces of the puzzle already uncovered

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