Woodland

Although first used in the Archaic period, pottery was first made on a large scale by Woodland peoples. Similarly, burial mounds are a common feature of the period after 1 AD. Subsistence, at least initially, was very similar to the later Archaic peoples. The bow and arrow was introduced in this period. However, before 1000 AD Woodland peoples probably began to use domesticated plants such as corn, beans and squash, and cultivated many Native plants.

This period is generally seen as a time of innovation in technology, and increased economic and social complexity, with many ideas thought to have spread to this area from the eastern Woodlands. An extensive trade network, which archaeologists refer to as the Hopewell Interaction Sphere, developed. Trading involved materials such as Knife River flint (from North Dakota), obsidian (from the Yellowstone Park area), marine shell (from the Gulf of Mexico and Pacific Northwest), copper (from the Great Lakes area), mica, and pipestone.

Grooved mauls and other Ground Stone Tools appear

In the Sioux Falls area numerous mound groups once existed, probably reflecting several small, dispersed settlements, but with a clear focus along the Big Sioux River and the tributaries of Split Rock Creek and Beaver Creek. The Sherman Park Mounds are the most visible today. Nearby, towards Brandon, lie the Split Rock Creek mound group (38+ mounds), the Beaver Creek mound group (7+), the Ericson Group (29+) and several others. As part of an archeological survey between 1881 and 1895, T. H. Lewis recorded in the Sioux Falls vicinity three single mounds, including Tuthill Mound, and five mound groups, including a group of three NNE of the Falls, all of which have probably been destroyed. More recently, two burial pits, probably Woodland, were encountered during the expansion of the Central Plains Clinic.

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