Southwestern Minnesota archaeology : 12,000 years in the Prairie Lake Region /

Anfinson has limited his field of inquiry to the Prairie Lake Region, some few thousand square miles of extreme eastern South Dakota, southwestern Minnesota, and northern Iowa. For the last five millennia this area has been characterized by shallow lakes and wetlands, with prairie grasses covering the uplands; earlier it was much drier, though still a part of the Plains region and biome. The archaeology, much of which is contained in unpublished excavation and field survey reports, has been assembled and reported here for the first time. It offers sufficient evidence to argue for a three-part culture history: an early prehistoric period (10,000-3000 BCE), distinctive in its own right, and, at least at its end, focused on bison hunting; a middle prehistoric period (3000 BCE-900 CE) of somewhat more sedentary hunters and gatherers; and a late prehistoric period (900-1650 CE) consisting of sequent and overlapping agricultural phases, of which Oneota is pivotal and the historic Dakota terminal. Finely crafted, clearly written, and nicely illustrated, this study is an important resource for anyone interested in the archaeology of the eastern Plains. Upper-division undergraduates and above. C. S. Peebles; Indiana University-Bloomington