94a. Archeological Investigations at Jewel Cave National Monument Custer County, South Dakota 2000-2003
Bruce A. Jones

Midwest Archeological Center personnel undertook limited evaluative test excavations at nine recorded historic and prehistoric sites in Jewel Cave National Monument as part of a three-year field project conducted in 2000-2002, followed by a written synthesis that was begun in 2003. The sites which were examined in the Monument included nine with prehistoric components, and three with evidence of both prehistoric and historic occupations.
The nine prehistoric sites included five that lay in springside settings, one that lay atop a high ridge overlooking a canyon, one rock shelter, and two sites on a canyon floor. None of the prehistoric sites in the Monument produced large quantities of cultural material. Instead, they reflect repeated short-term occupation and use of specific settings that ensured success in food and other resource exploitation, and appear to reflect part of a long-lived seasonal round by small groups of hunter-gatherers. The presence of non-local lithic materials at several of these sites further documents the movement of these populations throughout the Plains. The prehistoric components studied thus far at Jewel Cave range in age from as early as the Middle Plains Archaic to as recently as the Late Prehistoric. Based upon four radiocarbon assays of charcoal collected from these sites, the Monument occupations date from 4500-4200 BC until roughly AD 1250.

The major historic site in the Monument is that of 39CU844, the Jewel Cave Hotel, the location where a complex of structures was built to accommodate visitors to the cave in the early twentieth century. Testing at the hotel site produced artifactual material that both predates and post-dates the probable time span of its use, but is completely consistent with the general time period of occupation. The site has been heavily impacted by cleanup efforts that were undertaken in the 1930s by Emergency Conservation Work Act (later Civilian Conservation Corps) personnel and by the construction of U.S. Highway 16.

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