Back to MWAC Publications

Midwest Archeological Center personnel undertook four separate investigations in Badlands National Park, South Dakota, in April and September 2000. All four of the projects were related to the remediation of a landslide on the Cedar Pass segment of the Loop Road in the North Unit of the park.

The first project entailed controlled-interval shovel-testing across Area 932 of the Johnny site, 39JK4, a Late Prehistoric/Plains Village occupation in the vicinity of a buttress construction project just west of the Loop Road on Cedar Pass. The Johnny site is currently the only archeological site in the park that has been determined eligible for nomination to the National Register of Historic Places. The April investigations at 39JK4 determined that cultural material in Area 932 extended across the northern twothirds of the erosional remnant on which the component lies. The southern third of the remnant was found to lack any in situ cultural material, and an access alignment was defined across this latter area for shortterm use by heavy equipment during project construction.

The second archeological project required inventory of a short section of new road corridor on Cedar Pass, an alternative to the buttress construction. The third project involved archeological inventory along the centerline of a temporary access road that would extend from the Loop Road at the foot of the Badlands Wall to the buttress construction site. Neither of the two archeological inventories identified significant archeological materials, and no further investigations are recommended for these two projects.

The fourth project entailed archeological monitoring of construction at the southwestern edge of the Johnny site. The monitoring took place in late September during the initial construction activity in South Draw adjacent to Area 932 and generated a small amount of artifactual material related to the Initial Middle Missouri occupation in this part of the site.