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JapaneseThe De Spiegler Site of the Arvilla Focus yielded two C-14 dates from human bone at 1350 + 110 BP and 670 + 100 BP. The burials from which the C-14 dates were taken were in deep subsurface circular pits, covered with low circular or linear mounds. These burials are located north and west of the Red River Valley and it's tributaries, and are mostly found on the Campbell Beach of Lake Agassiz.
These burials contained one or more individuals buried either flexed, sitting, or lying on side or back, extended or disarticulated and partially missing. The individuals who were not complete were scattered (not limited to one burial) and others were gathered into bundles. Most of the adult skulls found in these burial mounds had a variety of cut marks on the bone suggesting that probably the brains and eyes and perhaps even the flesh had been removed. This may have been a result of funeral preparation, ritual trophy collecting, cannibalism, or vandalism.
Burial practices of the Arvilla Focus included grave goods such as marine shell columella bead ornaments, shell pendants, perforated snail shells, shell disk beads, perforated canine teeth (from either dog or wolf), bear claws, bone armbands, short bone tubes, or copper breast plate. Other grave goods that were found in burial mounds in the Arvilla Focus that were less common were clam shells, woodland pottery, stone tools, copper awls, copper spears or knives, antler and pottery pipes, antler tip points, beaver incisors, unilateral multiple-barbed harpoons, a serrated knife, bird bone whistle, a human parietal ladle, a human parietal disk, and a human ulna flaker.
Human bone was found to be made into various items such as a ladle, a disk, and a flaker, it is possible that human remains may have been recycled. This reuse of human bone explains the cut marks and the scattering of the bones at the burials.
References
Johnson, Elden. The Arvilla Complex In The Minnesota Prehistoric Archaeology Series .
Michlovic, Michael, James Batura, Thomas Connolloy, and Fred Wieck. 1977. "Is North Arvilla Ancestral Cheyenne?" The Minnesota Archaeologist Volume XXXVI Number 4.
Obey, Wilda Anderson. 1974. "The Arvilla People" The Minnesota Archaeologist Volume XXXIII Number 3 & 4.