An Archaeologist's Four Favorite State Parks

Les Davis, Curator of Archaeology and Ethnology at the Museum of the Rockies, Bozeman, MT

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A prominent archaeologist and educator in Montana, Les Davis, taught decades of students at Montana State University about the archaeological riches of Montana. Today Davis is the curator of archaeology and ethnology at the Museum of the Rockies in Bozeman.   Based on his years of study and research in the field, Davis recommended the following four state parks as places to begin your personal exploration of Montana’s prehistoric times.                           

 Makoshika State Park

The lower Yellowstone River Valley badlands were occupied by hunters of bison, pronghorn antelope, and deer over a period from 10,300 to 300 years ago. The often stark appearing condition of that environment today is misleading if we assume it was always that way and could not have supported early humans.

 

Pictograph Cave

Human hunter-gatherers acquired shelter from the elements along the Yellowstone River southeast of Billings season by season from 9,000 to 300 years ago. The caves are best known for high-quality rock art, or hand-painted images (pictographs) on the cave walls. These motifs depict the lifestyles of past peoples during the last several hundred years of prehistory.

 

Madison Buffalo Jump

An especially scenic state park is that located at the Madison Buffalo Jump located on the east side of the Madison River Valley south of Logan. Bison were gathered above an 85-foot cliff by hunters on foot and hazed toward the cliffs until they lost their footing and fell down the slope to their deaths. Below the cliffs were butchering areas and campsites where tepees were used as shelter. The carcasses were skinned, dismembered, and used as raw materials and as food. Although the number of kill events has not been determined, they evidently took place within 300 to 500 years of when Lewis and Clark arrived in 1805. The people who operated this food procurement site might have been ancestral to historic Shoshone Indians.

 

Ulm Pishkun

Perhaps the most elaborate prehistoric food procurement site in Montana, Ulm Pishkun, west of Great Falls, was used somewhat longer than the Madison Buffalo Jump, but generally during part of that same period. A complex series of drivelanes (designed to guide stampeding bison off the cliff at specific places) were constructed of stone piles directed along a one-half mile cliff drop off. In that way, hunters were able to capture running bison at several rather than a single location, creating a highly efficient type of bison- capture facility.