Huff Indian Village Dates to AD 1443-1465

Huff Indian Village Dates to AD 1443-1465. Huff Indian Village State Historic Site. Only recently have we been able to accurately determine the age of Huff Village. Archeological deposits and the settlement layout suggests that the village was probably inhabited for only 20 years or so. Fourteen radiocarbon dates and several tree-ring dates failed to give consistent age results narrower than a century or two in duration. Six new radiocarbon assays were run in 2000, using new methods applied to individual fragments of charred corn and corncob. These dates are internally consistent and give a probable calendar age range from AD 1443 to AD 1465.

Archeologists, being human, often see what they expect to see in an archeological site. Houses at Huff Village are nearly all rectangular in form, and consequently are marked by an oblong or non-circular depression of the ground surface. Nonetheless, several maps of the site made between 1908 and 1919 depicted only circular house depressions at Huff Village. This was because all standing earthlodges known from eyewitness historic accounts were circular in shape, and rectangular houses had not yet been discovered by excavation in North Dakota. Later maps gave more accurate depictions. Huff Village, unlike most other known villages, shows a strong pattern in the arrangement of houses into tightly packed rows. Only the two most recent maps give an accurate depiction of this settlement plan.

Archeologists assign Huff Village to the Plains Village pattern, meaning peoples who resided primarily in large communities along the Missouri River and practiced a combination of farming and intensive bison hunting. Huff Village is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is designated as a National Historic Landmark.

Picture captions: , Lower left: Early maps of Huff Village , Upper middle: Huff Village aerial showing planned arrangement of houses inside the fortification ditch , Lower middle: Speculative reconstruction of an early Plains Village rectangular lodge , Upper right: 3-D image of Huff Village in its setting on a Missouri River terrace , Lower right: Map of Huff Village showing the 1938-1939,1959, and 1960 excavations . This historical marker was erected by State Historical Society of North Dakota. It is Near Huff in Morton County North Dakota