YALE BRIDGE PROJECT

            Situation:  In 1988 I was commissioned to conduct archaeological survey and testing of land along the Arkansas River that was being bought by the Kimberly-Clark Paper Company for construction of a tissue facility.  On that survey we discovered a very important archaeological habitation that relates to the French incursion onto the Eastern Plains in the 18^th century.  Known as the Lasley Vore site after the Creek Indian who constructed a house there in 1892, excavation yielded a large assemblage of Indian (probably Wichita-affiliated) artifacts and French trade goods.  These probably relate to the journey to this region in 1719 of the entrepreneur, Jean-Baptiste Bénard, Sieur de la Harpe, one of two known French excursions onto the eastern Plains during the early 18^th century (both the same year).  Discovering a village that may relate to this visit is a big deal, because La Harpe in his diary says that, at the end of his journey, he encountered a Tawakoni village of an estimated 6000 Indians on the Alcansas River.  Archaeologists (and even La Harpe himself, a couple years later) have been looking for remains of this village ever since he returned to his trading post.

            Archaeological excavation occurred for two months during the summer of 1988 while belly loaders were preparing the land for construction.  The next several years were consumed in analyzing the material, which resulted in several articles and a full-length book, entitled La Harpe’s Post, published in 2002. 

            It turns out, however, that this project didn’t cease once the Lasley Vore site was excavated and the book was published.  The year after our excavation, I received money for two of my graduate students, Ken Shingleton and Kent Dickerson, to conduct a bluff-line survey of the Arkansas River between Jenks and Bixby.  On that survey they discovered a protohistoric occupation about ¼ mile northwest of Lasley Vore -- the Hampton site – of the same period as Lasley Vore, and it even contained French trade beads.  A few years later Mr. Hampton sold the land on which the site was located to an individual whose interest lay in raising horses.  We had no idea whether or not the Hampton site still existed.

             Then, in the summer of 2005, I was contacted by Cinnabar Environmental Services, a company associated with Infrastructure Ventures, Inc., a firm that was negotiating to build a bridge across the Arkansas River at Yale Ave. and about 121^st St.  Although this company did not have a commitment from the city of Tulsa to build the bridge (as I write this at the beginning of 2007, it still doesn’t), they wanted me to do all of the archaeological compliance work to get that obligation out of the way once agreement was reached.  The interesting thing about the bridge alignment was that it went right by the Kimberly-Clark Paper

 

 

 Company and  the Lasley Vore site, and included the Hampton site. 

            Much of the summer of 2005 was consumed in conducting this pedestrian survey.  We also conducted a comprehensive metal detector survey and limited excavations.  As a result, we determined that 1) the Hampton site, for all practical purposes, no longer exists.  It was destroyed by Mr. Snyder in the course of leveling land for a horse arena and building a barn; and 2) a thin veneer of protohistoric occupation debris is scattered across this area.  Prospection yielded several more metallic French trade goods, particularly iron axe heads, and excavation yielded at least one, and probably two, pit features of the type excavated at Lasley Vore.  My guess is that this is an extension of the Lasley Vore village, which ran northward all the way to the bluff line and consisted of low-level occupation or activities.  Its discovery provides significant new insight into the settlement patterns of Wichita peoples at the very end of the prehistoric period.

            Future Prospects: Our work with Cinnabar is over.  We could dig some more holes in the ground, but they probably wouldn’t tell us anything new.  There are a few things that I would still like to do, however.  The most important of these is to take surveying equipment out to the properties we surveyed for the Yale Bridge Project and document the landforms on which finds and features were located.  This would show concentrations of cultural material on a low, southwest-by-northeasterly running ridge.  This work should be done soon, before the bridge is constructed.

            Publications: As mentioned above, the most comprehensive publication emanating from this project so far is the book, La Harpe’s Post (University of Alabama Press, 2002).  Results of the Arkansas bluffline survey were reported in a technical monograph (with J. Dixon, K. Dickerson, and K. Shingleton, U. of Tulsa, Contributions in Archaeology, no. 17, 1990). 

            Journal articles on various parts of the project have been written for American Antiquity (1992); Journal of Archaeological Science (with K. Shingleton and T. Harris, 1994); Journal of Field Archaeology (1999); Southeastern Archaeology (2001); and the Bulletin of the Oklahoma Anthropological Society (1998).  Articles for edited volumes have been written for Stone Tool Traditions in the Contact Era (edited by C. Cobb, U. of Alabama Press, 2003), and for France and the Americas: Culture, Politics and History (edited by B. Marshall, ABC-CLIO, Santa Barbara, 2005).  Another article, entitled “Interpreting Wichita Lifeways at the Cusp of Contact,” has been accepted for inclusion in Land of Our Ancestors: Studies in Protohistoric and Historic Wichita Cultures, edited by S. Perkins and T. Baugh as a Memoir of the Plains Anthropological Society.  It will probably appear some time in 2007.