Thesis Chapters by Andrew Clark
From the modern protests of the Dakota Access Pipeline to feuding between village dwelling hortic... more From the modern protests of the Dakota Access Pipeline to feuding between village dwelling horticulturalists, there is a long history of conflict along the banks of the Missouri River. This dissertation aims to investigate the interplay between the unique landscape of the semi-arid river valley and the continuing influx of culturally diverse people moving to the region, specifically, the semi-sedentary hunting farmers living in the Middle Missouri division of the North American Great Plains, between A.D. 1000 and 1750. I use a combination of ethnohistorical analysis, cross-cultural comparison, settlement history and spatial analysis (clustering, viewshed and topographic analyses) to explore the interactions between people and the environment. Prior to conducting the viewshed and topographic studies, I needed to resolve a complicating issue restricting the analyses. Due to the Flood Control Act of 1944, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers built a series of dams along the Missouri River, creating massive reservoirs and drastically altering the landscape. Modern digital elevation models (DEM) representing the Missouri River would not be suitable for this project. To rectify this, I created pre-inundation DEM of the Big Bend subdivision, using a combination of modern elevation data, digitized topographic maps and historic aerial photogrammetry.
Books by Andrew Clark
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Papers by Andrew Clark
Plains Anthropologist, 2016
The Flood Control Act of 1944 and the Pick-Sloan Plan 1 were intended to provide flood relief and... more The Flood Control Act of 1944 and the Pick-Sloan Plan 1 were intended to provide flood relief and reliable sources of hydropower and irrigation water for the Missouri River Basin. Construction of the plan's massive reservoirs, however, had devastating effects on the people, as well as cultural resources and heritage of the area (Lawson 1982). The condemning and inundation of the river's floodplain displaced whole communities, engulfed tens of thousands of hectares of land, and flooded countless archaeological sites. In the decades since, the salvage archaeology program of the Smithsonian Institution River Basin Surveys (RBS) and more recent tribal, state, and federally managed resources preservation efforts have partially mitigated the effects of the Missouri River reservoir system. Yet over half a century later, the former floodplain remains submerged and archaeological sites and landscapes continue to be lost to the Big Muddy (Missouri River) through bank erosion, as well as agricultural and urban development. Fortunately, new techniques allow lost landscapes to be reclaimed for archaeological research and contemporary descendant communities. The emerging sophistication of digital photogrammetric software packages makes possible reconstructions of pre-dam landscapes. Use of aerial photographs from the 1950s, combined with digitized and interpolated topographic maps and digital elevation data, provide archaeologically useful materials for reconstructions. To demonstrate the applicability of photogrammetric techniques for archaeological site prospection, as well as in the interpretation of ancestral landscapes, we provide examples at both site and regional scales. We describe the creation of a regional-scale historic, preinundation digital elevation model (DEM) of the Big Bend region and analyze three ancestral Sahnish archaeological sites: Arzberger (39HU6), Buffalo Pasture (39ST6), and Oahe (39HU2) villages to illustrate our approach (Figure 1).
Plains Anthropologist, 2016
The Flood Control Act of 1944 and the Pick-Sloan Plan 1 were intended to provide flood relief and... more The Flood Control Act of 1944 and the Pick-Sloan Plan 1 were intended to provide flood relief and reliable sources of hydropower and irrigation water for the Missouri River Basin. Construction of the plan's massive reservoirs, however, had devastating effects on the people, as well as cultural resources and heritage of the area . The condemning and inundation of the river's floodplain displaced whole communities, engulfed tens of thousands of hectares of land, and flooded countless archaeological sites. In the decades since, the salvage archaeology program of the Smithsonian Institution River Basin Surveys (RBS) and more recent tribal, state, and federally managed resources preservation efforts have partially mitigated the effects of the Missouri River reservoir system. Yet over half a century later, the former floodplain remains submerged and archaeological sites and landscapes continue to be lost to the Big Muddy (Missouri River) through bank erosion, as well as agricultural and urban development.
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Thesis Chapters by Andrew Clark
Books by Andrew Clark
Papers by Andrew Clark