Archaeologist Don Blakeslee and his crew of seven field school students are back at work on a hillock just east of the Walnut River in Arkansas City to unearth more artifacts from the long-lost city of Etzanoa.
They are searching for additional clues about how one of the largest prehistoric Native American communities in North America lived some 400 years ago.
“This was a swanky neighborhood,” said Blakeslee, describing the dig site.Blakeslee has conducted summer field schools each year since 2015 in Ark City to learn more about Etzanoa, a settlement of at least 20,000 ancestors of the Wichita Nation.
Between 1450 to 1715, Etzanoa thrived as a community of 20,000 farmers and bison hunters who lived in clusters of beehive-shaped grass-and-wood houses surrounded by agricultural fields of corn, beans and squash.
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