UTILIZING PRIOR MAGNETIC SURVEY DATA TO EVALUATE CHANGES AT THE KNIFE RIVER INDIAN VILLAGE NATIONAL HISTORIC SITE: A TRIBUTE TO DR. JOHN WEYMOUTH

The Knife River Indian Villages National Historic Site, located near Stanton, North Dakota, has been the ancestral home of the Hidatsa people for over 500 years. The late Dr. John Weymouth, beginning in the late 1970’s to the early 1980’s, pioneered magnetic surveys at this site. More recently, magnetic surveys were completed in July of 2012 by the National Park Service’s Midwest Archeological Center over much of the same area completed by Dr. Weymouth. For this research project, we re-evaluated John Weymouth’s data with the same software used to process our data at two of the sites located within the park, the Sakakawea Village and the Lower Hidatsa Village. The results were very successful and show that even with the vast improvements in technology, both datasets are still comparable and can be used to evaluate changes that have occurred to the sites over the past forty years.