Chapter Three
CHAPTER THREE Prehistoric and Protohistoric Overview of the White River Badlands Badlands Historic Resource Study • July 2006 • John Milner Associates, Inc. ______________________________________________________________________________________ CHAPTER 3 PREHISTORIC AND PROTOHISTORIC OVERVIEW OF THE WHITE RIVER BADLANDS White River Badlands as an Archeological Region The South Dakota State Plan for Archaeological Resources identifies 24 archeological regions within the state, 10 of which occur on the west side of the Missouri River.1 The White River Badlands archeological region includes all areas drained by the White River. As defined by Winham and Hannus, the eastern portion of the region also includes areas drained by the Bad and Little White rivers, and the northwest part of the region is drained by the South Fork Cheyenne River. The White River Badlands archeological region, which includes portions of Shannon, Pennington, Jackson, Bennett, Todd, and Mellette counties, is generally considered a sub-region of the Northern Plains. Although several cultural histories of the Northern Plains have been written, few have been prepared from the perspective of the Badlands. Rather, the White River Badlands are considered tangential to events occurring on the High Plains to the north, south, and west, or the Middle Missouri region to the east. By necessity, the prehistoric overview presented below represents a synthesis of previous studies within the White River Badlands archeological region, the Northern Plains region, and to a lesser extent the Middle Missouri region. The information presented in this chapter is primarily based on Hannus et al., but it also draws heavily from books and reports prepared by others.2 The purpose of the overview is to present a synthesis of the cultural context, time periods, site types, and cultural groups that occupied the study area during the last 12,000 years.
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