Every city has its share of dark secrets, shadowy history and skeletons lurking in the closets. Some have more than others…much more. Today we’ll go underground to a location near the heart of Rapid City where you’re liable to find the remains of…well, just about anything.
You might think this is an unlikely place for a bone repository…just across the street from the Rapid City Police Department…and just down the block from the Pennington County Courthouse. But you’d be wrong.
For it’s in this non-descript, one-story brick building that THE secrets of South Dakota’s past are kept.
“My name is Katie Lamie. I’m the Repository Manager at the South Dakota State Historical Society Archeological Research Center.”
It‘s a long title and, yes, Katie does fit it all on her business card. And that pretty much gives you an idea of just what her job comprises – all things archeological in South Dakota.
“The Records Manager maintains the library and also keeps files on each site reported in South Dakota,” Lamie notes. “Right now we have about 24,000 files for 24,000 archeological sites across the state of South Dakota.”
Well…we don’t have to go through all of them,” I respond.
Suffice to say that South Dakota is an archeologist’s dream.
“There are mammoth kill sites that are 12,000 years old…in the badlands region,” comments Lamie. “There’s some paleo-Indian on the periphery of the Black Hills…and then beautiful, huge earth lodge villages along the Missouri River. And then we’re even interested in historic homesteads, historic sites….basically, anything that’s older than 50 years.”
As we begin our tour of the South Dakota Archeological Research Center, Katie Lamie explains that collecting those 24,000 sites on file has been an evolutionary process that started with recognizing them in the late 1800s…followed by cataloging in the early 1900s. The erection of dams along the Missouri River in the mid-20th century brought a huge increase in archeological sites, while cultural concerns in the 1970s led to the creation of legislation that would protect sites and sensitive areas.
And Katie notes that unlike her home state of New York, archeological sites can still be easily found in South Dakota.
“In upstate New York, everything is covered with so much vegetation…so many deciduous trees…that you can’t walk along and discover a new archeological site,” Lamie remarks. “You just can’t see that much. But here in South Dakota…because the landscape’s a lot more dynamic…you find archeological sites all the time. The vegetation might be sparse in a particular area or there might be eroding cut-banks along a creek…and you can see the cultural materials that might be thousands and thousands of years old…right there.”
If you can’t – or don’t – happen to come across such a site…you could always stop by the South Dakota Archeological Research Center. Katie Lamie assures me that even though the center is interested in anything 50 years or older, I’m safe from an archeological investigation. As for the general public, people are permitted to visit the Research Center with their own finds for examinations.
After all, says Katie, you never know what might be just below the surface in your own back yard.
Related story: http://listen.sdpb.org/post/rapid-city-archeologist-covers-state
More info: http://history.sd.gov/Archaeology/
Tour the South Dakota State Historical Society Archeological Research Center, with Katie Lamie:
