Salvaging Information from Looted Sites: The Hokiahse Rockshelter

    The directors of ACS conducted an excavation of a rockshelter in northeast Oklahoma which had been partially looted. The rockshelter contained Late Archaic to Early Woodland (ca. 3,000 to 1,500 years ago), and Late Prehistoric (ca. 1,100 to 400 years ago) components, separated by a moderate occupational hiatus corresponding to a time when the shelter was too wet for habitation but was instead used as a burial site.

The Hokiahse Rockshelter

    Towards the interior of the shelter, a burial was exposed which represents a secondary interment as indicated by transposed and reversed skeletal elements arranged to reconstruct a semi-flexed position. The Plains Woodland burial feature was radiocarbon-dated to 1,420 + 70 B.P., corresponding to the occupational gap recorded in the front of the shelter. The moist conditions of the shelter today in an otherwise dry setting, together with paleoenvironmental evidence in the form of pollen cores and mollusc sequences for the surrounding region, indicate that the shelter may have been too moist for consistent occupation during much of the Plains Woodland era, accounting for the occupational gap and use of the shelter as a burial site during this period.

Graphic showing the chronological interpretation of occupations at the rockshelter. Concurrent time ranges of representative projectile points indicate a Late Archaic to Early Woodland occupation (ca. 3,000 to 1,500 years ago), followed by a Plains Woodland occupational hiatus during which time the shelter was used for a single burial (ca. 1,500 to 1,200 years ago), and a Late Prehistoric occupation (ca. 1,100 to 400 years ago).

    Conical mortars in the bedrock beneath the burial feature provided the first direct evidence for the region that balanophagy, or acorn processing and consumption, may have been practiced as early as the Late Archaic. Other subsistence evidence from the site revealed continuity through time, including a focus on deer and small mammals during fall or winter. Despite these aspects of subsistence continuity, the site revealed aspects of technological change including a variation in projectile systems and their curation, and the introduction of ceramics. The location of the site in an ecotone setting, consisting of tall grass prairies and oak-hickory forests, encouraged a continuity of subsistence practices through time despite technological changes which were the result of cultural trajectory and diffusion within the broader region.

Conical bedrock mortars within the Hokiahse Rockshelter.  These features were used to process acorns for consumption, a practice known as "balanophagy".