10 A new use for old photos: Archaeological landscape reconstruction in the Big Bend Andrew J. Clark State University of New York, Albany Jesse Casana Dartmouth College The Flood Control Act of 1944 and the Pick-Sloan Plan 1 were intended to provide flood relief and reliable sources of hydropower and irrigation water for the Missouri River Basin. Construction of the plan’ s massive reservoirs, however, had devastating effects on the people, as well as cultural resources and heritage of the area (Lawson 1982). The condemning and inundation of the river’ s floodplain displaced whole communities, engulfed tens of thousands of hectares of land, and flooded countless archaeological sites. In the decades since, the salvage archaeology program of the Smithsonian Institution River Basin Surveys (RBS) and more recent tribal, state, and federally managed resources preservation efforts have partially mitigated the effects of the Missouri River reservoir system. Yet over half a century later, the former floodplain remains submerged and archaeological sites and landscapes con- tinue to be lost to the Big Muddy (Missouri River) through bank erosion, as well as agricultural and urban development. Fortunately, new techniques allow lost landscapes to be reclaimed for archaeological research and contemporary descendant communities. The emerging sophistication of digital photogrammetric software packages makes possible recon- structions of pre-dam landscapes. Use of aerial photographs from the 1950s, com- bined with digitized and interpolated topographic maps and digital elevation data, provide archaeologically useful materials for reconstructions. To demonstrate the applicability of photogrammetric techniques for archaeological site prospection, as well as in the interpretation of ancestral landscapes, we provide examples at both site and regional scales. We describe the creation of a regional-scale historic, pre- inundation digital elevation model (DEM) of the Big Bend region and analyze three ancestral Sahnish archaeological sites: Arzberger (39HU6), Buffalo Pasture (39ST6), and Oahe (39HU2) villages to illustrate our approach (Figure 1). plains anthropologist, Vol. 61 No. 240, November, 2016, 469–489 © Plains Anthropological Society 2016 DOI 10.1080/00320447.2016.1245967 Downloaded by [Dartmouth College Library] at 09:49 19 September 2017