What were they eating and how were they preparing it?

Nearby habitats with potential food sources included tallgrass prairie, upland and lowland forests, and riverine environments. The site itself was probably in a wooded area during most of its prehistoric occupation, although vegetation at and around the site would have shifted somewhat during climatic changes over the last 10,000 years.

Bone does not preserve well in the acidic soils of wooded areas. Only a few small scraps of bone were recovered during excavation of the site, and so little can be said about the hunting and fishing activities of the site's inhabitants, or about any bone tools they may have used. None of the fragments seem to be bison bone, however, which suggests that people there were mostly eating smaller game, such as deer or rabbits. Stone knives (Fig. 8) were found that could have been used to butcher the animals.

Direct evidence of plant use is equally sparse, at least in terms of the variety of species. Plant remains were found in both the water screen and flotation samples. Numerous charred fragments of black walnuts and corn were recovered. Corn was only found in the top two levels and belongs to the Late Prehistoric groups. (The earliest evidence of corn in the Central Plains dates to about A.D. 250-400.) Black walnuts appear in all of the levels, and these nuts may have been an important food source for which people visited the area.

We know a little more about what they were eating and how they were preparing it from phytolith analysis. Phytoliths are microscopic pieces of silica found within plants that generally preserve much better than the plants themselves. Because phytoliths take their shapes within the plant's cells, cell walls, and intercellular spaces, the original plant can often be identified from the shape of the phytoliths. Phytoliths are collected within soil samples.

To find out what plants were being ground with particular grinding tools, the dirt immediately next to the grinding surface was collected and analyzed for phytoliths. Two of the grinding stones from the DB site had phytoliths from wild grass seeds, suggesting that these tools were used to process these seeds (probably for food). Modern people grind seeds from cultivated grasses such as wheat and barley for food.

While there were a few formal manos at the site (Fig. 9)--hand-held grinding stones shaped into rectangles--most of the grinding stones present were glacial cobbles that were smooth on one or more sides. There were also several slabs of quartzite or sandstone upon which they ground different materials. While people in many parts of the world made, and still make, elaborately shaped and decorated grinding tools, the people at DB often simply used what was available naturally. There are some broken ceramic vessels at the site from the late prehistoric people, which indicates that these people were carrying or storing something (possibly food or water) at the site. They may also have been cooking meat or plant products in these vessels.

One important material is chert for stone tools. The word "chert" is a general term for all sedimentary rocks composed primarily of microcrystalline quartz. American archaeologists and geologists consider materials such as flint and jasper to be types of chert. Because chert fractures in a distinctive way, it can be flaked into various shapes to make points, knives, scrapers, drills, and other tools.

Chert can be found within limestone outcrops. It may also erode out of these outcrops and be redeposited in glacial till or stream beds. Different types of chert are named for the limestone member in which they occur and can often be generally identified based on color, texture, and presence or absence of fossils and other inclusions.

The chipped stone tools at the DB site from all time periods are made primarily from local cherts (available within a 10-15 km radius of the site). Dense hematite from nearby glacial till deposits was also flaked into rough bifaces and choppers.

Other types of chert, present in smaller proportions are available about 15-20 km away in the Kansas City area and south of Kansas City. Some long-distance exchange or movement is suggested by the presence of several chert types only found more than 45 km to the north and west and from the Flint Hills region at least 75 km to the west. Another important exotic material comes from west-central Missouri, about 130-140 km distant.