Archaeological site may yield clues to its occupants

LAWRENCE, Kan. -- Nobody knows for certain where they came from or where they went. Nor can anyone say for certain what language they spoke or even what they called themselves.

Anthropologists named them the Steed-Kisker culture after the owners of the land near Farley, Mo., where the first site was unearthed in the 1930s.

What is known is they lived in western Missouri and eastern Kansas between 950 and 1400. Over the years about a dozen of their sites with houses have been found.

There still are more questions than answers about these people whose history is pretty much lost in the mist of time.

But anthropologist Brad Logan hopes to find some of those ancient answers.

His best hope is an archaeological site uncovered last June when Stranger Creek flooded near Tonganoxie and revealed a treasure of relics less than a foot below the surface.

"I'm excited about it. We're getting all kinds of artifacts," said Logan, University of Kansas Museum of Anthropology senior curator. "I've never seen so much pottery in such a small area."

Logan said he and his team will expand their work at the 600-square-foot site.

Besides thousands of pottery shards and arrowpoints, there's charred wood posts -- the remains of the first complete Steed-Kisker dwelling found in Kansas.

"It was abandoned and then burned. But we don't know if the burning was by them for reasons not known or an act of nature," he said. "It's rare to get a complete house of this culture."

But even rarer is what was found between the shards and parts of the fallen roof -- a single strand of gray hair, probably from a human.

"It's more than a curiosity. You can get some evidence from it," Logan said of the strand.