Despite the name, this site has nothing to do with bison licking anything--the site is owned by Mr. Gary Licking and is located near Buffalo, South Dakota. At this spot prehistoric hunters killed a small herd of bison. The site was found by Joe Nonnast, an avocational archaeologist, while he was on a lunch break from a nearby highway construction project.
This site was a puzzle to the archaeologists from the first. The dart points are reminiscent of those made more than 6,000 years ago at various sites in the Plains, but the geological situation of the site suggests that it might be no more than about 2,000 years old--in fact, the initial explorations revealed a site similar to Late Archaic period Besant phase kill sites in nearby states. The mystery was finally cleared up with a radiocarbon date placing the site at about 6500 B.P. The points and the date confirm that the Licking site is an Early Archaic period site contemporaneous with the Hawken site, located about 90 miles to the south in the Black Hills of Wyoming.
Articles on the 1995 excavation and the 2000 excavation are available.
