Prairie Dog Creek camping: Testing at White Cat Village (25HN37)
White Cat Village (25HN37) is a Dismal River (ancestral Ndee) site in western Nebraska. Dismal River sites (ca AD 1270–1800) are found in Colorado, Wyoming, Kansas, and Nebraska, with White Cat Village being one of the largest occupations. The site has been investigated several times beginning with the first systematic survey in 1946 and has suffered significant erosion since it is located on the edge of the Harlan County Reservoir. This article summarizes our work at the site that aimed to relocate previous archaeological excavation areas, determine the site’s current boundaries, identify if any intact subsurface deposits remain, determine the age of the site, and determine what potential it has for contributing new information on the Dismal River complex. While the site has continued to experience shoreline erosion, our fieldwork identified intact subsurface deposits, bank armoring was conducted in 2022, and we argue that it has the potential to yield significant insights into Dismal River lifeways.
Authors
- Matthew E. Hill (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4998-0057)
- Gina S. Powell
- Sarah Trabert (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9893-7296)
- Timothy Meade
Institutions
- University of Iowa (US)
- United States Army Corps of Engineers (US)
- University of Oklahoma (US)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Plains Anthropologist
- Published
- 2026-09-11
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1080/00320447.2026.2722899
- Primary Topic
- Wildlife Ecology and Conservation
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.00
Funders
- University of Oklahoma
- University of Iowa