Featured: How and why the ancients enchanted Great Britain and Brittany

How and why the ancients enchanted Great Britain and Brittany

Random Image


Wettswil Grüt

Stone Circles, A Modern Builder's Guide

Stone Circles, A Modern Builder's Guide

Who's Online

There are currently, 452 guests and 2 members online.

You are a guest. To join in, please register for free by clicking here

Sponsors

<< Text Pages >> The Finch Site - Ancient Village or Settlement in United States in Great Lakes Midwest

Submitted by Andy B on Sunday, 26 September 2010  Page Views: 7548

DigsSite Name: The Finch Site
Country: United States
NOTE: This site is 19.473 km away from the location you searched for.

Region: Great Lakes Midwest Type: Ancient Village or Settlement
Nearest Town: Fort Atkinson
Latitude: 42.873200N  Longitude: 88.88437W
Condition:
5Perfect
4Almost Perfect
3Reasonable but with some damage
2Ruined but still recognisable as an ancient site
1Pretty much destroyed, possibly visible as crop marks
0No data.
-1Completely destroyed
4 Ambience:
5Superb
4Good
3Ordinary
2Not Good
1Awful
0No data.
3 Access:
5Can be driven to, probably with disabled access
4Short walk on a footpath
3Requiring a bit more of a walk
2A long walk
1In the middle of nowhere, a nightmare to find
0No data.
3 Accuracy:
5co-ordinates taken by GPS or official recorded co-ordinates
4co-ordinates scaled from a detailed map
3co-ordinates scaled from a bad map
2co-ordinates of the nearest village
1co-ordinates of the nearest town
0no data
4

Internal Links:
External Links:

Ancient Settlement in Jefferson County, Wisconsin.
Traffic will one day race over an archaeological treasure trove off Highway 26 near Lake Koshkonong, where a group of Milwaukee anthropologists believe they’ve found remnants left by some of Wisconsin’s earliest residents.

For weeks, crews from the Great Lakes Archeological Research Center, Milwaukee, have been recovering prehistoric American Indian artifacts on a saddle-shaped, 2-acre strip of wooded land at the corner of Pond Road and Highway 26 just south of Fort Atkinson.

The dig is being done through the Wisconsin Department of Transportation in anticipation of the expansion of Highway 26, which is slated for 2013, officials said.

Surveyed as the “Finch Site,” the area is formed by two wooded glacial hills wedged between the east side of Highway 26 and a low-lying marsh area.

Tentative state plans would put the northbound lanes of the new, expanded Highway 26 over about 80 percent of the site. Only the east edge of the site would remain untouched as state and privately owned property, officials said.

For now, the site is a hive of scientists in boots, floppy hats and dirt-caked jeans. They move around a growing maze of shallow pits being dug to unearth tools, weapon points, pottery and other artifacts with ages ranging at least as far back as 500 B.C. to the time of European explorations in the 1600’s.

The site is undisturbed by modern plows.

“Finding a pristine site like this is very exciting and very rare,” said Ricky Kubicek, an archeologist with the Great Lakes Archeological Research Center. “As we bring up (artifacts), most of them are as they were left off by the original (inhabitants).”

Kubicek supervises a crew of 15 archeologists who are under a tight deadline to recover as many artifacts from the site as possible. The crew will work until August and hopes to unearth about 50 percent of the artifacts surveyors believe exist on the property, department of transportation officials said.

The excavations isn’t being done willy-nilly, site archeologist Ryan Harke said. Crews are using soil analysis to find artifact deposits known as middens.

Harke said middens are recognizable because they create breaks in normal soil layering. He said they stick out like sore thumbs, and they’re chock full of artifacts.

“They’re like ancient garbage dumps,” Harke said.

Kubicek said some middens have concentrations of discarded items that show ancient people used certain spots at the site for specific tasks, such as tool making or pottery crafting.

With a shovel and a trowel, archeologist William Eichmann scraped away a 5-centimeter layer of black topsoil from a pit on the site’s north end.

Eichmann dropped the soil into a bucket and poured it through a large mesh sieve. The sieve caught some key artifacts: flakes of chert rock, possibly discarded by weapon makers in the Mississippian era of prehistoric Native Americans.

“Feel these remnants,” Eichmann said. “Even after being in the ground all this time, they’re still almost razor sharp.”

He said the people who likely left behind the shards ranged the glacial hills of southern Wisconsin to the Galena area in northwest Illinois from 1,200 to 500 years ago.

Eichmann said he could tell the shards were from weapon point production because their color shows they were heated, a process commonly used by ancient toolmakers.

While crews have found no human remains at the site, other items include pottery and tool fragments from the Woodland people, an ancient native group that lived in the region 2,500 to 800 years ago.

One significant artifact crews unearthed came from the south end of the site, on a tree-choked hill overlooking a bog to the east.

Kubicek said he believes it’s a Folsom point, a type of stone spear head used by hunters in the Paleo era—one of the earliest prehistoric cultures in Wisconsin.

“It’s probably isolated. It’s the only item we’ve found from that period,” he said.

Kubicek said if crews find pieces of carbon or burned plant material near an artifact, lab workers offsite could use carbon dating to come within decades of pinpointing its age.

“That system’s gotten better over the years. It’s usually pretty damn close,” Kubicek said.

Kubicek said if the weapon from the south hill actually is a Folsom point, it could be 10,000 years old.

The bulk of artifacts found at the site will be sent to UW-Milwaukee for further analysis of their composition, age and what cultures might have used them, Kubicek said.

Some of the items could end up in museums, or at state-supported historical societies, as part of an agreement between the state, Native American groups and scientists involved in the dig, officials said.

Currently, there are no plans to make the site a protected historical site.

“It’s a matter of getting a reported document of the pictures and the history of what was there. It’s about documentation now and preserving the documents that are recovered,” Department of Transportation highway project manager Mark Vesperman said in a phone interview.

After that’s done, Vesperman said, the Finch site’s days are numbered. It’s on private property, but sale is pending. Soon, the state will take over the bulk of the site.

Vesperman said he’s aware people passing on Highway 26 are curious about all the workers, tarps and buckets at the site.

“We could put a sign out warning people that it’s an archeological site, but that’s like the Wizard of Oz telling people not to look behind the curtain,” he said.

Vesperman said crews won’t necessarily turn away visitors who are curious about the dig, but people aren’t allowed to interfere with the work or do any digging of their own.

Kubicek said because the area is so undisturbed, crews are prepared for a continued flood of visitors to the site. He expects to find significant items until the very end of the dig.

As he walked along a foot-beat path past two open pits near the bottom of a hill, Kubicek stopped to pick up a small, white fragment lying in the dirt.

“Huh,” he said, tossing the piece back to the ground. “Nothing but a deer bone.”

Source: Gazette Extra

Note: Results of dig. Largest percentage of site still planned to be covered by highway expansion. See comment.
You may be viewing yesterday's version of this page. To see the most up to date information please register for a free account.


Do not use the above information on other web sites or publications without permission of the contributor.

Nearby Images from Flickr
Koshkonong Mounds Country Club
Koshkonong Mounds Country Club
Koshkonong Mounds Country Club
Koshkonong Mounds Country Club
Koshkonong Mounds Country Club
Koshkonong Mounds Country Club

The above images may not be of the site on this page, but were taken nearby. They are loaded from Flickr so please click on them for image credits.


Click here to see more info for this site

Nearby sites

Click here to view sites on an interactive map of the area

Key: Red: member's photo, Blue: 3rd party photo, Yellow: other image, Green: no photo - please go there and take one, Grey: site destroyed

Download sites to:
KML (Google Earth)
GPX (GPS waypoints)
CSV (Garmin/Navman)
CSV (Excel)

To unlock full downloads you need to sign up as a Contributory Member. Otherwise downloads are limited to 50 sites.


Turn off the page maps and other distractions

Nearby sites listing. In the following links * = Image available
 1.9km W 276° Lake Koshkonong Mounds* Artificial Mound
 21.5km N 5° Aztalan State Park* Ancient Village or Settlement
 42.9km SSW 196° Beloit College Mounds* Artificial Mound
 49.3km WNW 296° Forest Hill Cemetery* Artificial Mound
 55.1km ENE 74° Cutler Mound Group* Artificial Mound
 68.5km NNE 13° Nitschke Mounds State Park Artificial Mound
 68.7km SSW 194° Beattie Park Mound Group* Misc. Earthwork
 83.4km WNW 286° Circle Sanctuary Nature Preserve* Modern Stone Circle etc
 85.1km WNW 285° Brighid's Spring at Circle Sanctuary* Holy Well or Sacred Spring
 89.0km E 101° Mound Cemetery (Racine) Barrow Cemetery
 89.3km NE 42° Lizard Mound State Park* Artificial Mound
 90.3km NW 312° Devil's Lake Mounds* Artificial Mound
 93.6km NW 317° Man Mound Park* Artificial Mound
 135.5km SSW 208° Sinnissippi Mounds* Artificial Mound
 149.9km WSW 254° Dunleith Mounds* Artificial Mound
 152.9km SE 137° The Field Museum* Museum
 160.4km SE 138° University of Chicago Institute* Museum
 161.7km WNW 291° Tainter Cave Cave or Rock Shelter
 164.3km SW 223° Albany Mounds* Barrow Cemetery
 170.6km SSE 161° Briscoe Mounds* Artificial Mound
 172.2km NNW 327° Cranberry Creek Mound Group Artificial Mound
 176.5km WNW 281° Larsen Cave, Crawford Co* Rock Art
 181.9km W 274° Wyalusing Mounds* Artificial Mound
 188.7km W 278° Effigy Mounds National Monument* Artificial Mound
 193.7km NW 312° Fort McCoy Artificial Mound
View more nearby sites and additional images

<< Noccus Nuraghe

Chokepukio >>

Please add your thoughts on this site

Prehistoric Britain

Prehistoric Britain

Sponsors

Auto-Translation (Google)

Translate from English into:

"The Finch Site" | Login/Create an Account | 1 comment
  
Go back to top of page    Comments are owned by the poster. We aren't responsible for their content.
Wisconsin dig yields wealth of artifacts by bat400 on Sunday, 26 September 2010
(User Info | Send a Message)
Submitted by coldrum --

Although scientists cringe when terms such as “treasure trove” are applied to archaeological sites, it’s hard to describe the Finch Site at Highway 26 north of Milton any other way. What else would you call a two-acre strip of wooded hills that archaeologists say contains, at the very minimum, 100,000 Native American artifacts which scientists believe date from 5000 B.C. to 1200 A.D.?

But one thing’s certain: The Finch Site, which is located northeast of the intersection of Highway 26 and Pond Road in the Koshkonong Township, soon will be buried by a state highway.

Archaeologists who’ve been digging at the site since last year have nearly wrapped up work for the Wisconsin Department of Transportation. Their charge: To excavate 25 percent of the site and identify its contents before the state purchases and paves over most of it with the planned Highway 26 expansion in 2013.

Although 75 percent of the site remains untouched,
“What we’ve found here suggests extremely intense, long-term use of this site,” said Ricky Kubicek, an archaeologist from the Great Lakes Archaeological Research Center. “We’re not necessarily sure that there were villages or settlements here, but it’s clear that throughout time, different groups of people kept coming back,” Kubicek said.

Many of the items crews unearthed came from the Woodland Era, a period 2,500 to 800 years ago. Other items, including some knife and arrow points, come from the Mississippian Era and would have been used by native hunters in southern Wisconsin 1,200 to 500 years ago.

One key discovery was a 1,200-year-old deer bone. It has visible cut marks in it, probably from stone tools, Kubicek said. “They’re like prehistoric butcher marks,” he said.

To find such a concentrated and varied cache of ancient human materials is rare, Kubicek said, and was only possible because the hilly, wooded site was left undisturbed by modern plows. Kubicek said, researchers were able to find in soil samples tiny plant and animal remains, such as fish bones and burned seeds. That helped researchers to pinpoint what the site’s former inhabitants ate and even the seasons when native groups used the sites.

Archaeologist Katie Cera this week was using a water tub to separate rocks and plant material from soil samples at various pits at the site, a job she’s done for nearly a year.

Earlier this year, while she was dumping rocks that sifted to the bottom of her water tub, she found a big surprise—an 8,000-year-old spearhead known as a Folsom point. It’s a rare find and one that doesn’t match the chronology of other items at the dig site. Archaeologists at the dig say it’s not clear how the weapon found its way there.

The artifacts’ next stop is UW-Milwaukee, where researchers will curate and analyze them. The items could end up in museums or at historical societies as part of an agreement between the state, Native American groups and scientists involved in the dig, officials said. Meanwhile, Great Lakes Archaeological Research Center plans to continue work at the site through 2012, but at a slower pace, with an emphasis on more analysis of plant and animal remains.

“Anything else that we do in the coming months will be done on a volunteer basis,” Kubicek said.

Now that excavation work has slowed, Kubicek said his group is considering public outreaches, which could include supervised digs at some of the site’s excavation areas. Kubicek said that could give the public a chance to learn more about ancient people of southern Wisconsin before a future roadway alters the course of history. To learn more about the chance to work as a volunteer alongside professional archaeologists, email the Great Lakes Archaeological Research Center at kubicek@glarc.com.
/>


More at
Read the rest of this post...
[ Reply to This ]

Your Name: Anonymous [ Register Now ]
Subject:


Add your comment or contribution to this page. Spam or offensive posts are deleted immediately, don't even bother

<<< What is five plus one as a number? (Please type the answer to this question in the little box on the left)
You can also embed videos and other things. For Youtube please copy and paste the 'embed code'.
For Google Street View please include Street View in the text.
Create a web link like this: <a href="https://www.megalithic.co.uk">This is a link</a>  

Allowed HTML is:
<p> <b> <i> <a> <img> <em> <br> <strong> <blockquote> <tt> <li> <ol> <ul> <object> <param> <embed> <iframe>

We would like to know more about this location. Please feel free to add a brief description and any relevant information in your own language.
Wir möchten mehr über diese Stätte erfahren. Bitte zögern Sie nicht, eine kurze Beschreibung und relevante Informationen in Deutsch hinzuzufügen.
Nous aimerions en savoir encore un peu sur les lieux. S'il vous plaît n'hesitez pas à ajouter une courte description et tous les renseignements pertinents dans votre propre langue.
Quisieramos informarnos un poco más de las lugares. No dude en añadir una breve descripción y otros datos relevantes en su propio idioma.