Uncover the past at ‘one-of-a-kind’ historic site in Kansas

TOPEKA (KSNT) – If you have a desire to help shed light on Native American history, then look no further than this summer’s Kansas Archeology Training Program Field School (KATP).

Participants will get their hands dirty as they work alongside professional archaeologists to discover pieces of Native American historical artifacts trapped beneath the ground in western Kansas at the historic Lake Scott State Park. Archaeologists from the University of Oklahoma, University of Iowa and the Kansas Historical Society will head the project.

Shelby Beltz, a member of the Kansas Historical Society (KSHS), spoke with KSNT 27 News about this year’s excursion and what the group hopes to find. She said this location was the site of past archeological work. They believe it’s connected to the ancestors of the modern-day Apache and Pueblo peoples.

“This site has the potential for being listed on the national register of historic places,” Beltz said. “We’re trying to see if anything we find there can help us with that. The University of Iowa has been working at this site for a couple years to help us understand the site a little better.”

The area was last examined in detail in 2009 when it was partially excavated by another KATP field school group, according to the KSHS. This year, researchers hope to recover artifacts like stone tools and pottery, along with the remains of cooking hearths and activity spaces, according to Dr. Matthew Hill with the University of Iowa.

Hill, who studies Native American history in western Kansas and has been familiar with the Scott Lake area since the 1990s, said he hopes their findings this year will reveal more about what the daily life of Native Americans living at the site looked like. He described the site as being a truly remarkable place to study the lives of people who used to call the area home hundreds of years ago.

“It is really quite literally a one-of-a-kind,” Hill said. “The fact that you have Pueblo and migrants coming up from the Rio Grande Valley moving up to the plains and living with indigenous plains Apache, there’s really nowhere you see this anywhere else.”

Hill said experts think of the region as a melting pot where multiple Native American peoples came together for a long period of time. Puebloans, pushed from their native territories by the Spanish, settled near Scott Lake where they intermarried and mingled with the Apache present in the area. Hill said the joining of these cultures resulted in interesting results between the years of 1650-1750.

“It’s undoubtedly a reaction to the Spanish coming into New Mexico,” Hill said on the migration of the Pueblo peoples into Kansas. “Many native people in that area left and went to other Pueblos that weren’t being harassed so much. People moved hundreds of miles to western Kansas to live alongside Apache people. They brought their whole culture with them and it’s expressed in Scott County and you really don’t see it anywhere else.”

Hill said previous work at the site has yielded pottery, stone tools, bones and a historic gun flint. The pottery found so far has proven to be a unique blend not found anywhere else that mixes both Pueblo and Apache styles together. He said this shows the two groups of people interacted over a long period of time, swapping crafting styles with one another.

“What I always say is, the camaraderie with the activities are fun and different. It’s a beautiful area,” Hill said. “You can get a hands-on sense of the past. You can touch objects used hundreds of years ago. You can see native culture and tradition in a beautiful landscape. It’s hot and there’s all that, but there’s a glimpse into the past. You can’t go to a museum and see this.”

If you want to help explore the site, you can sign up for the 2023 KATP Field School by clicking here. The school will take place June 2-18 at the Historic Lake Scott State Park in Scott County. Registration opened March 1 and will remain open until May 22. Indoor camping options are available for participants via the Scott City middle school’s auxiliary gym.

Registration for the school is $35 for standard participants, $25 for participants 65 years of age or older and $15 for students currently enrolled at a middle school, high school or college. Nonmembers of the Kansas Anthropological Association (KAA) or the KSHS will pay $90. Participants must be at least 12-years-old and an adult must accompany anyone under age 17.

Field school participants must take part in orientation on the principles of archaeology. Beltz said it will help them become familiar with the site, logistical information and Kansas history.

The KATP is an annual event hosted by the KSHS. Last year, the field school examined the Brown v. Board of Education National Historic site in Topeka. The field school started in 1975 and is an opportunity for the public to examine the past alongside professional archaeologists.

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