Conference Presentations
Poster and papers presented at conferences
Click on the title to view the poster/paper.
Society for Historical Archaeology January 2025
Archival Insight: The Archaeology of Native Cabins, Critical Fabulation, and Interpreting Survivance
Rachel M. Thimmig
In the mid-19th century, the Arikara, followed by the Mandan and Hidatsa (MHA), began utilizing Euroamerican cabin-style architecture alongside and instead of earthlodges. By the late 19th century, cabins became the primary domestic structure. However, the archaeological record on cabins is lacking compared to the archival and ethnographic records. The existing record mainly consists of reports summarizing findings and detailing construction methods rather than interpreting Native life. Building from the data provided by these reports, this paper aims to produce a more comprehensive portrayal of Native life during the mid-to-late 19th century, a tumultuous period of settler colonialism on the Plains. Through the combination of other sources (ethnographic, archival, photographic) with archaeology and the use of methods like critical fabulation, this paper uncovers stories of Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara resilience and survivance to redress salvage narratives of change and loss.
Plains Anthropolgical Society
October 2023
Rachel M. Thimmig
For hundreds of years the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara lived in circular earthlodges. In the mid-1800s, families began constructing cabins alongside their earthlodges, and cabins eventually replaced earthlodges as the dominant domestic structures over time. It is unclear what cabin construction techniques and use of space looked like archaeologically, but an abundance of archival evidence, mainly photographs, has the potential to aid in the reinterpretation of the few previously excavated Native cabins. Photographs treated as artifacts reattach lived experiences to the archaeological record, acting as touchstones to generate stories of continuity and support arguments for Native survivance (Schneider 2007). Following this assertion, this research uses archival photographs, ethnographic information, and archaeological data from Fort Clark (32ME2), Like-A-Fishhook Village (32ML2), Star Village (32ME16), and Crow-Flies-High Village (32MZ1) to share stories of Native survivance, persistence, and adaptability during the transition from circular earthlodges to rectangular cabins.
Plains Anthropological Society
October 2022
Rachel M. Thimmig
The archaeological study of children began in the 1970s but did not become popular until the 1990s. Thus, it is understandable that Missouri River Basin Survey archaeologists did not analyze evidence of children at sites like Crow-Flies-High Village (32MZ1) during their 1950s excavations. The site, occupied between 1884-1893, was the second locale of the Crow-Flies-High band of Hidatsa, Mandan, and Arikara that resisted reservation life for over two decades. A multitude of toys indicate the presence of children at this off-reservation site and provide an opportunity to reexamine the collection through an updated theoretical lens of survivance and futurity. Children bridge the generation that grew up without the constraints of the reservation system and those who know no other way of life. Their futures included contemporary mass-produced toys, but also toys of the community’s own creation, a testament to the creativity and will of the community to adapt and persist.
Society for Historical Archaeology
January 2022
Rachel M. Thimmig
Much of what we know archaeologically about the Reservation Period (1850s-present) on northern Plains village groups like the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara is found in government-sponsored salvage excavations conducted in the 1940s and 1950s. The resulting reports are primarily based on acculturative approaches, which assess the relative loss of Indigeneity and growing Europeanization based on ratios of ‘European’ objects and traditional ‘Native’ artifacts. This research breaks free of those outdated ideas by reexamining salvaged collections through the lens of contemporary critiques and theoretical developments. Using a more nuanced consideration of persistence at three related Reservation Period sites: Like-A-Fishhook Village (32ML2), Garden Coulee (32WI18), and Crow-Flies-High Village (32MZ1), this paper’s acknowledgment of change as part of persistence and its incorporation of survivance, residence, practice, and memory, provides a more comprehensive and complex understanding of the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara colonial experience.
Plains Anthropological Society
October 2021
Rachel M. Thimmig
The primary settler-colonial period on the Plains, the Reservation Period (1850s-present), receives far less attention than early contact and Fur Trade sites. The archaeology that has been done comes from government-sponsored salvage excavations conducted in the 1940s and 1950s. One such site, Crow-Flies-High Village (32MZ1), occupied between 1884-1893, was the second locale of the Crow-Flies-High band that resisted reservation life for over two decades. Carling Malouf’s salvage excavation uncovered rectangular cabins and an abundance of “White” objects with “little of Native origin,” which led to his conclusion of a loss of Indigenous identity. This research reexamines the Crow-Flies-High Village materials through the lens of contemporary theoretical critiques including change as persistence, survivance, futurity, practice, and memory, to provide a more comprehensive and complex understanding of the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara colonial experience.
Society for Historical Archaeology January 2020
Rachel M. Thimmig, Kacy L. Hollenback, and Kathryn A. Cross
For over five hundred years, circular earthlodges were the traditional homes of the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara on the northern Plains. Construction, layout, and use of these structures were imbued with ceremonial and ritual significance. The last traditional earthlodge village was forcibly broken up with allotment in 1886. Yet prior to forced acculturation, some families willingly transitioned to Euroamerican rectangular log cabins. We do not know what processes drove such transformations, but we can begin to explore both change and continuity in the use of domestic spaces, not recorded in historic or ethnographic records, through archaeological and archaeometric techniques. This poster explores evidence of an early Arikara cabin (ca. AD 1850s) from the Forth Clark State Historical Site, North Dakota.
