Burial Mounds in the Baldhill Area, North Dakota

Abstract

Two burial mounds on the east bluff overlooking the left bank of the Sheyenne River, east-central North Dakota, were excavated between June 25 and August 1, 1948, by a field party of the University of North Dakota, working in cooperation with the North Dakota State Historical Society. The archaeological resources of the area of the Baldhill Reservoir had been appraised in 1947 by a party of four, headed by M. F. Kivett, for the Missouri Valley Project of the River Basin Surveys. This survey resulted in the mapping of ten sites, three of them mounds or moundgroups, and the partial excavation of one mound to salvage skeletal material already partly exposed.Construction of Baldhill Dam, about 9 miles north of Valley City, was already far advanced in 1948, and several occupational sites in the Sheyenne River bottomland were in danger of flooding within a few years (see Fig. 81, a and b).