Surviving Cold Northern Plains Winters: Mandan & Hidatsa Winter Earth Lodge Villages

Signe Snortland will present a program on winter camps along the Missouri River.  

Typically, during the Plains Village period, Mandan and Hidatsa people built summer earth lodge villages on high bluffs overlooking the confluence of the Missouri River.  But winter villages, occupied seasonally during long, cold winters, were constructed on sheltered floodplains.  Very few of these archaeological sites have been found because homes and their contents washed away during spring flooding. In 2023 Metcalf Archaeological Consultants, a Terracon Company, test excavated a cluster of four earth lodge sites on bottomland near the Square Butte Creek confluence with the Missouri River north of Mandan, North Dakota. Pottery sherds indicate occupation began A.D 1300-1500 and reoccurred intermittently until the 1880s. Artifacts found here differ from than those found in summer earth lodge villages. Ethnohistorical accounts of Mandan and Hidatsa winter villages in settings like the Square Butte Creek Valley support an interpretation that these tested sites were winter occupations rather than summer villages, offering an opportunity to explore seasonal differences in material cultural and technology.

Program is free and open to the general public.