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The Megalithic Portal and Megalith Map : Index >>
Stones Forum >> North American Finds Discovered by Development
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North American Finds Discovered by Development |
coldrum
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|  Posted 23-10-2011 at 23:19
Researchers dig for clues of early life at INL
Before Idaho National Laboratory existed, before the vast fields of potatoes, the key feature of eastern Idaho's economy was the Big Southern Butte.
For thousands of years, archaeologists say, nomadic tribes made regular trips to the butte to mine its deep deposits of obsidian — a black volcanic glass that forms sharp edges when broken. The tribesmen took full advantage of this phenomenon and shaped obsidian into all manner of tools and weapons.
Through time, eastern Idaho's abundance of obsidian grew famous, and the tribes began to trade tools and weapons formed from it as something of a currency. Evidence of their activity is littered about the INL site in the form of broken obsidian flakes and, sometimes, fully formed spear and arrow tips.
But the question remains: Just how old are the oldest artifacts that have been found in the area?
For the past two summers, an INL archaeologist and a graduate student have been digging — literally — for answers to that question. Their excavation site — a tiered hole on the bank of the Lost River that measures about 8 feet at its deepest — is the first archaeological dig on the INL site born purely of a push to research the land's history.
For years, archaeologists have drooled over the promise of what lies just beneath the surface of the INL site. It's not just the fact that millions of obsidian chunks are strewn across the landscape. Or that, thousands of years ago, the climate of eastern Idaho made the INL site an extremely habitable place in certain seasons.
Almost as important is the fact that, for the past 60 years, most of the site has remained virtually untouched by human hands.
"The INL site is like a treasure trove because, yeah, it's been protected by the government since the 1940s," Texas A&M student Josh Keene said. "It's a really, really ideal place to work."
As Keene and his cohort, Clayton Marler, wrap up this year's work at the dig, Keene suspects some of the artifacts they've unearthed are as old as 10,000 years. That's an impressive number, no doubt, but they have yet to find what could be called the Holy Grail of archaeology in the Americas: evidence of human life that predates the so-called Clovis era.
Archaeological orthodoxy long held that the 13,000-year-old Clovis era — named for a dig near Clovis, N.M. — represented the earliest appearance of humans in either North or South America. That began to change when archaeologists dug up human artifacts in southern Chile that some believe predate the Clovis era.
Since those discoveries of the late 1990s, other digs thought to contain pre-Clovis artifacts have begun popping up around the Americas. Keene said the archaeological community's increasing acceptance of the theory that humans could have arrived in the Americas as early as 15,000 or 16,000 years ago has led some to revisit Clovis-era sites.
"Now, basically, people have more open minds about it," he said. "People are also more accepting of people publishing pre-Clovis stuff. Whereas in the past, a lot of the stuff, they just blew it off without thinking about it."
At their dig on the banks of the dried-up Lost River, Keene and Marler found thousands of arrow points, animal bones and fire-cracked rocks in the first 3 to 6 feet of excavation. They then hit a layer of stones called a "cobble layer" that contains artifacts perhaps as old as 10,000 years. They went deeper into older layers, curious of whether they'd find any evidence of pre-Clovis human life at the site.
No dice.
"The artifacts stop at the cobble layer," Keene said. "Underneath it is nothing. It's a really stark contrast."
The fact that Keene and Marler haven't found any pre-Clovis evidence of humans at their dig hasn't dampened their enthusiasm for it. Keene said he eventually wants to return to the Intermountain West to continue with similar digs.
Marler said the fact that he's been able to focus on simply following the traces of the area's earliest humans has been reward enough.
"This has been a blast the last couple of summers," he said.
http://www.idahopress.com/news/state/researchers-dig-for-clues-of-early-life-at-inl/article_ce7390cd-a4e3-53c2-a9fc-ef5819d0b1a1.html
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coldrum
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| Posted 23-10-2011 at 23:22
Crow, Northern Cheyenne earn archaeological credentials
In what was once the vegetable garden of cantankerous cattle rancher and novelist Caroline Lockhart, Crow and Northern Cheyenne archaeology students on Thursday cleared rust-colored topsoil from a Bighorn Canyon hearth that probably predated her by 2,000 years.
Stones from the ancient fire pit were clustered together at the bottom of a survey square barely a foot below the surface and just 100 yards or so from a buffalo jump discovered by National Park Service archaeologist Chris Finley two years ago.
The students — two of them Northern Cheyenne, seven of them Crow — were in the last days of a six-week program through Northwest College in Powell, Wyo. With 300 hours of classroom and field work behind them, they'll receive six college credits and certificates that show they are qualified to work on archaeological projects anywhere in the country.
Finley suspects that there will be plenty of work for them locally. Both the Northern Cheyenne and Crow tribes are looking to beef up their historic preservation offices, and the Western Area Power Administration will be hiring archaeological contractors in advance of rebuilding power lines though National Park Service land on the Montana-Wyoming line. Energy development in both states also will mean more work for archaeological teams hired to identify historic and prehistoric sites before heavy equipment starts to roll.
"They'll be pretty desirable for archaeological contractors," Finley said of the students. "Most contracts will require Native American monitors. We've given them the skills to participate, not just monitor."
Bighorn Canyon was traditionally Crow Country and was at one time part of a vast reservation that sprawled across the two states. Stone tepee rings thickly scattered throughout the national recreation area have been identified as Crow.
Other tribes hunted in the canyon, too. Artifacts as old as 8,000 years have been identified in the semi-desert fringe of the Pryor Mountains. Charcoal from two tepee ring hearths has been dated at more than 2,000 years old.
Native peoples probably made annual visits through the canyon area, following the migration of huge herds of bison from the Wyoming plains to the prairies of Montana.
On the Lockhart Ranch, once one of the biggest ranches in the Dryhead area, students digging test squares and shifting dirt through screens have found two projectile points that appear to be from the Late Archaic Period, or about 2,000 years old, Finley said.
The Park Service's tireless archaeologist identified a buffalo jump above the historic ranch in 2009.
"There were two drive lines on top," he said pointing to a bluff high above a narrow gully. "One came out of the southwest and the other the southeast and they came together on top of the hill."
Drive lines were marked by cairns — piles of stone used to direct the huge beasts to the edge of the cliff.
"We expected to see remains at the bottom," he said. "But we tested and didn't find anything. I suspected that they had been flushed downhill during flash floods."
But one day a couple of months ago, he was walking in the drainage and spotted something unusual. Suddenly everything became a little clearer.
"I looked up and could see where there had been a ramp dug out," he said. "They could have dragged the animals up to the flat for processing. We've never seen anything on a jump like this before."
He'd been looking in the wrong place for signs of bison butchering. When he and his archaeologist son Judson Finley got the field school together this summer, they knew exactly where they wanted to work.
So far, only some small bone fragments have been found, and the search continues.
The field school is a story in itself. Finley has been working for years to find ways to involve the Crow and other tribes in the cultural aspects of the recreation area. In previous years, they've worked with schoolchildren at St. Xavier and put together archaeological field schools for teenagers just graduating from high school.
This group of students is different. Most are in their early 20s and are either students or potential students at Little Bighorn College on the Crow Reservation or Chief Dull Knife College on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation.
Both Montana tribes asked the Park Service to develop training programs that would qualify tribal members as archaeology technicians — part of a larger program to improve budding historic preservation efforts on their reservations.
It was no simple matter, according to Judson Finley, an assistant professor of earth science at the University of Memphis in Tennessee. Judson normally spends his summers working with his father in the spectacular scenery of Bighorn Canyon.
Through complicated transactions involving the University of Memphis, Northwest College, Little Bighorn College, Chief Dull Knife College and the National Park Service, the school came together.
"It took a lot of work to make it happen," the younger Finley said.
Judson's official role this summer was designing and teaching the curriculum. His father worked to find the money and make connections with the tribes.
Ten scholarships were made available through Northwest College to pay tuition and fees.
It's been a family history coming to life for Crow student Johnny Tim Yellowtail, who has decided to enroll at Northwest College and study archaeology.
"When I was younger I used to go on this side of the mountain with my grandpa and grandma," he said. "They showed me tepee rings and said our people used to live here."
His uncles continued his exploration of the area. After meeting Chris Finley, "I got especially interested," he said.
Nathan Young Swallow, another Crow student, sat in the warm sunshine, smiling.
"I'm really enjoying this," he said. "I finally got so I can identify artifacts."
His girlfriend, Allison Taylor, nudged him and smiled.
"Everything looked like just a rock to him at first," she said.
Taylor found a hide scraper and bits of charcoal, but most of what they've seen are flakes — small pieces chipped from stones being fashioned into tools.
"We instruct them in flint knapping as part of the school so they can see how things were made and recognize the debris," Chris Finley said.
Burdick Two Leggins, the Crow Tribe's cultural director, has been with the students during the entire six weeks. He says he's encouraged by the fire he sees growing in the tribe's future cultural leaders.
"They don't even want to take a break for lunch," he said.
"They don't even want to come in at night," Chris Finley added.
Read more: http://billingsgazette.com/news/state-and-regional/montana/article_c87fc235-88c0-5c0b-8ae3-2ae0f143c52e.html#ixzz1YUYRNcmL
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coldrum
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| Posted 23-10-2011 at 23:29
Archaeological finds boost profile of Arundel's Pig Point
Three years of digging at a prehistoric Indian site in Anne Arundel County has unearthed the oldest structures and human habitations in Maryland and is making this bluff above the Patuxent River one of the most important archaeological sites in the Mid-Atlantic.
Last week, archaeologists learned from carbon-14 dating that a stone hearth they uncovered this summer was last used 9,290 years ago. That makes the site, called Pig Point, twice as old as the earliest carbon-dated human habitation found previously in Maryland.
Yet the carbon-14 date is just the latest in a series of extraordinary discoveries at the South County site that are drawing the interest of archaeologists from throughout the region.
Beginning in 2009, the team led by Anne Arundel County archaeologist Al Luckenbach has found oval patterns of wigwam post holes dating from 800 to 3,000 years ago, the oldest human structures ever found in Maryland.
They have found highly decorated pottery, tools of stone and bone, personal ornaments, copper beads from the Great Lakes, exotic tools and ceramics from the Ohio and Delaware valleys, fossil shark teeth from Southern Maryland and shells from the ocean beaches.
"If you go to [archaeology] meetings like the Mid-Atlantic Conference, folks are just drooling over this stuff," said Dennis Curry, an archaeologist with the Maryland Historical Trust.
And it could get even better.
Luckenbach's team is still finding evidence of human occupations from the Early Archaic period, 10,000 to 8,000 years ago.
As they dig even deeper into the bluff, and back in time, the next period they would reach is the "Paleo Indian" or "Clovis" time, roughly 10,000 to 20,000 years ago. Those people were the earliest whose arrival in North America, via the Bering "land bridge" from Siberia to Alaska, is universally accepted.
Last year, neighbors showed Luckenbach several fluted Clovis spear points they picked up in a field at the foot of the bluff. So his team is now on the lookout for more Paleo-Indian artifacts in their excavations, finds they could document and date.
And as they dig, they have begun to consider the chances of finding even earlier artifacts, below the Paleo level.
Claims of "pre-Paleo" discoveries elsewhere in the United States and South America have been enormously controversial among scientists. But at Pig Point, where deep, "layer cake" deposits with solid C-14 dating make chronologies quite clear, such a find would be difficult to dispute.
That would be "the absolute jackpot," said Joe Dent, an associate professor and expert in Mid-Atlantic prehistory at American University in Washington. "If they encountered pre-Paleo, this would be an international site. Archaeologists worldwide would beat a path to it."
Luckenbach has said he believes Pig Point is already "the most important prehistoric archaeological site in Maryland."
Setting aside the extraordinary artifacts, archaeologists say Pig Point is most unique and valuable because of its nearly 10,000-year record of continuous human habitation.
"Most [Native American] sites in Maryland are 10 inches deep," Luckenbach said. The shallow deposits hold a mix of artifacts from successive Native American groups who lived there over hundreds or thousands of years, with little if any chronological separation. Often the shallow deposits have been churned for centuries by plows.
That makes it impossible to separate and study the material cultures and chronology of the people who left them behind.
There are a few deeply stratified archaeological sites. Curry cited one called the Monocacy Site, excavated in the late 1960s and early 1970s at the confluence of the Potomac and Monocacy rivers, near Dickerson.
"It's got probably 10 feet of stratified stuff," thanks to periodic river flooding, he said. "But most of that 10 feet is sterile soil [without artifacts], and covers maybe a thousand years."
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/bs-md-pig-point-archaeology-20110814,0,3824207.story
[ This message was edited by: coldrum on 2011-10-23 23:46 ]
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coldrum
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| Posted 23-10-2011 at 23:48
Texas A&M study: Hunters present at least 800 years earlier than previously thought
COLLEGE STATION, Oct. 20, 2011 — The tip of a bone point fragment found embedded in a mastodon rib from an archaeological site in Washington state shows that hunters were present in North America at least 800 years before Clovis, confirming that the first inhabitants arrived earlier to North America than previously thought, says a team of researchers led by a Texas A&M University archaeologist.
Michael Waters, director of the Center for the Study of the First Americans in the Department of Anthropology at Texas A&M, and colleagues from Colorado, Washington and Denmark believe the find at the Manis site in Washington demonstrates that humans were in the area around 13,800 years ago, or 800 years earlier than was believed. Their work is published in the current issue of Science magazine.
In the late 1970s, an adult male mastodon was excavated from a pond at the Manis site. The distribution of the bones and the discovery that some of the bones were broken suggested that the elephant had been killed and butchered by human hunters, Waters explains. However, no stone tools or weapons were found at the site. The key artifact from the site was what appeared to be a bone point sticking out of one of the ribs, but the artifact and the age of the site were disputed.
Waters contacted team member and original excavator, Carl Gustafson, about performing new tests on the rib with the bone point. New radiocarbon dates confirmed that the site was 13,800 years old. High resolution CT scanning and three-dimensional modeling confirmed that the embedded bone was a spear point, and DNA and bone protein analysis showed that the bone point was made of mastodon bone.
"The Manis site is an early kill site" Waters says.
"The evidence from the Manis site shows that people were hunting mastodons with bone weapons before the Clovis stone spear point."
The new evidence from Manis supports extinction theories of large mammals at the end of the last Ice Age, Waters says. During the last cold period, herds of mammoth, mastodon, camels, horses and other animals roamed Texas and North America. At the end of the Ice Age, these animals became extinct.
"While these animals were stressed by the changing climate and vegetation patterns at the end of the Ice Age, it is now clear from sites like Manis that humans were also hunting these animals and may have been a factor in their demise," Waters adds. He also notes that "there are at least two other pre-Clovis kill sites in Wisconsin where hunters killed mammoths."
'Clovis' is the name given to the distinctive tools made by people starting around 13,000 years ago. The Clovis people invented the 'Clovis point', a spear-shaped weapon made of stone that is found in Texas and the rest of the United States and northern Mexico. These weapons were used to hunt animals, including mammoths and mastodons, from 13,000 to 12,700 years ago.
Waters says that "the evidence from the Manis site is helping to reshape our understanding of the earliest inhabitants of the Americas, the last continent to be occupied by modern humans."
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2011-10/tau-tas102011.php
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Andy B
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| Posted 31-10-2011 at 09:22
Artifacts older than expected
Some of more than 40,000 artifacts recently discovered at the mouth of Game Creek suggest prehistoric people might have lived in Jackson Hole year round, archeologists say.
Further, radio-carbon dating shows that some of the unearthed artifacts are thousands of years older than expected.
Archeologists began excavating the site last summer after the Wyoming Department of Transportation made plans to widen Highway 26/89/191.
Now, after two summers of digging, the artifacts are beginning to develop a picture of life at the site that ranges over thousands of years, from a roasting pit dated at 10,100 years old to a .38-caliber bullet that is likely from the early 1900s, said Michael Page, a senior archeologist with the Wyoming state archeologist office.
During some periods, the abundance of projectile points crafted from local sources could mean that people lived in the region year round, Page said. By contrast, projectile points from outside the area could suggest people migrated out of the region during some part of the year, most likely winter.
“A lot of the obsidian turns out to be fairly local, and a lot of it probably came from cobbles,” he said. “They could have walked down to the Snake River and found all the obsidian they needed.
“We also found other material types — cherts and quartzites and quite a bit of petrified wood,” Page said.
The petrified wood is probably local, Page says, explaining that a rock hunter found a match in the Gros Ventre drainage.
The idea of year-round inhabitants in Jackson Hole isn’t so far fetched. Climate models show that, 5,000 to 7,000 years ago, Jackson Hole was warmer and wetter in the summer, and colder and drier in the winter. Warmer, wetter weather in the summer means more forage, and more forage means more animals for humans to eat. Drier weather in winter also could mean more available forage for animals.
“The more food sources there are, the higher the carrying capacity — the more people who could live here,” Page said.
But those are just guesses at this point, and further analysis of the materials will either prove or disprove Page’s theory.
Laboratory analyses of the artifacts already have produced some surprises. A roasting pit thought to be roughly 2,000 years old came back from the lab dating more than 5,000 years old.
“I sent off a bunch of charcoal for radio-carbon dating, and I found out I was wrong,” Page said. “I definitely had to rethink the whole thing.”
Another roasting pit dates just after the ice age.
“We found a fire pit down at the very bottom that turned out to be older than we thought, 10,100 years, plus or minus,” Page said. “But, we still hadn’t found these diagnostic point types down at that level.”
Those diagnostic point types — arrowheads and spear heads of the Agate Basin variety — would help confirm the roasting pit’s age and perhaps provide information about the people who made it. For now, the evidence points to prehistoric humans from the Great Basin and Columbia River, which makes sense, because the Snake River flows into the Columbia. Ancient people may have followed the river system up into Jackson Hole.
Next summer, Page aims to excavate more on the west side of the road, where archeologists have discovered a treasure trove of new artifacts.
“We were finding twice as much in half the soil,” he said.
Diggers have found a bison skull, a fox skull and elk, beaver and probably deer bones. One large bird bone could have come from a trumpeter swan. Animal artifact experts might be able to determine what time of year the animals were killed by looking at things such as emerging teeth. Carbonized seeds also can point to seasonality because seeds only ripen at certain times of year.
The in-depth look at Jackson Hole’s prehistory is exciting, said J.P. Schubert, an archeologist for the Bridger-Teton National Forest.
Forest Service archeologists typically assess what’s on the surface, and that information is later used for planning purposes, Schubert said.
“It’s neat when people can actually spend some time,” he said. “There’s stuff way down in there that is super fascinating.”
http://www.jhnewsandguide.com/article.php?art_id=7749
(with thanks to Coldrum)
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bat400
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| Posted 09-11-2011 at 04:00
Old American theory is 'speared'
An ancient bone with a projectile point lodged within it appears to up-end - once and for all - a long-held idea of how the Americas were first populated.
The rib, from a tusked beast known as a mastodon, has been dated precisely to 13,800 years ago. This places it before the so-called Clovis hunters, who many academics had argued were the North American continent's original inhabitants.
News of the dating results is reported in Science Magazine.
In truth, the "Clovis first" model, which holds to the idea that America's original human population swept across a land-bridge from Siberia some 13,000 years ago, has looked untenable for some time. A succession of archaeological finds right across the United States and northern Mexico have indicated there was human activity much earlier than this - perhaps as early as 15-16,000 years ago.
The specimen has actually been known about for more than 30 years. It is plainly from an old male animal that had been attacked with some kind of weaponry. It was found in the late 1970s at the Manis site near Sequim, north-west of Seattle, in Washington State.
Although scientists at the time correctly identified the specimen's antiquity, adherents to the Clovis-first model questioned the dating and interpretation of the site. To try to settle any lingering uncertainty, Prof Michael Waters of Texas A&M University and colleagues called upon a range of up-to-date analytical tools and revisited the specimen. These investigations included new radio carbon tests using atomic accelerators.
"The beauty of atomic accelerators is that you can date very small samples and also very chemically pure samples," Prof Waters told BBC News.
Computed tomography, which creates exquisite 3D X-ray images of objects, was used to study the embedded point. The visualisation reveals how the projectile end had been deliberately sharpened to give a needle-like quality. And it also enabled the scientists to estimate the projectile end's likely original size - at least 27cm long, they believe.
"The other thing that's really interesting is that as it went in, the very tip broke and rotated off to the side," said the Texas A&M researcher.
DNA investigation also threw up a remarkable irony - the point itself was made from mastodon bone, proving that the people who fashioned it were systematically hunting or scavenging animal bones to make their tools.
The timing of humanity's presence in North America is important because it plays into the debate over why so many great beasts from the end of the last Ice Age in that quarter of the globe went extinct.
A rapidly changing climate in North America is assumed to have played a key role - as is the sophisticated stone-tool weaponry used by the Clovis hunters. But the fact that there are also humans with effective bone and antler killing technologies present in North America deeper in time suggests the hunting pressure on these animals may have been even greater than previously thought.
Thanks to coldrum for the submission: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15391388. Click to the link for photos.
[ This message was edited by: bat400 on 2011-11-09 04:06 ]
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bat400
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| Posted 12-11-2011 at 06:11
Archeologists explore 13,000-year-old mysteries beneath Lake Minnewanka
Parks Canada staff are plunging under water for a history lesson, hoping to learn more about a 13,000-year-old camp site beneath Lake Minnewank.
The same underwater archeology team that located the HMS Investigator in Canada’s arctic is in Banff National Park until Wednesday to explore and unearth more information about a site that first became exposed on the shores of the lake about 50 years ago.
Over the years, visitors have found artifacts such as stone tools, spearheads, evidence of cooking, as well as Rocky Mountain sheep bones and about a decade ago archeologists began excavating what was exposed.
Because of a dam located at the lake, water levels have risen over the last 100 years about 35 metres, which flooded the campsite and submerged it, said Marc-Andre Bernier, Ottawa-based archeologist for Parks Canada.
Now archeologists want to get a better handle on what is left of the campsite that holds real historical significance, said Bill Perry, a Calgary-based Parks Canada archeologist.
“These were the first people as ice sheets were melting away,” Perry said. “These people continued coming back — it was a well-situated campsite that put them in touch with resources like sheep and would have had nearby lakes and rivers and hot springs.
“It is a hugely significant thing to be found and Parks Canada is very committed to protecting it.”
Thanks to coldrum for the link. For more and photo, see: http://www.calgarysun.com/2011
The dam that caused this prehistoric site to be covered also flooded the village of Minnewanka Landing. Because of the presence of the submerged village the lake is popular among recreational scuba divers. This partially explains the concern about preserving the Clovis site.
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bat400
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| Posted 13-11-2011 at 05:46
Dept of Transportation archaeologists find ancient Native American sites at bridge near Palmyra, Missouri.
What started as a routine survey of the land surrounding a historic bridge has ended up unearthing two significant sites in the region's Native American history.
Larry Grantham, an archaeologist with the Missouri Department of Transportation's Environmental Studies and Historic Preservation department, said his team has discovered a pair of Native American sites bookending the Mo. 168 bridge over the North River just west of Palmyra.
On the east side of the bridge is a 1,200- to 1,500-year-old site from the late Woodland period. The site on the west side of the bridge, however, is much older -- 3,000 to 5,000 years old, dating to the late Archaic period.
The MoDOT archaeologists found the twin historical sites while conducting an archaeological survey around the 79-year-old North River Bridge, which will be replaced next year under the auspices of MoDOT's Safe and Sound Bridge Improvement Program.
MoDOT's archaeologists are more concerned with the ground itself, which will be significantly altered as crews even out the grade in the vicinity of the bridge. "Anytime we have a project that involves earth disturbance, we go out and do an archaeological survey," Grantham said. "In this case ... they're going to raise the grade by 4 feet. On one side there's going to be a lot of cut, and on the other side there's going to be a lot of fill."
Given the differing time periods of the sites, their findings at each have been dramatically different.
At the late Woodland site, which dates to roughly AD 650 to 900, the group is looking for evidence of structures on the site. The Native Americans who inhabited that site were much less nomadic than earlier peoples, Grantham said.
"By the late Woodland (period), they're building houses, and they're being semi-sedentary," Grantham said. He said cooking pits and storage pits also are likely to turn up.
The late Archaic site, which dates to roughly 3000 to 1000 BC, is yielding more of the artifacts that traditionally are associated with Native American digs. The archaeologists are hand-digging the site in 3-foot squares of just a few inches' depth.
Among the artifacts the archaeologists have turned up are projectile points, drills and other tools, all made from chert, a type of rock found along the Mississippi River.
That suggests to Grantham that the late Archaic inhabitants moved around the northern half of Missouri in a seasonal cycle, returning to Northeast Missouri for a short time to pick up their weapons materials. Chert wouldn't have been found in most of the interior of northern Missouri.
"Part of the seasonal cycle involves coming this far down to get chert to make tools with," Grantham said. "They're taking these chert (pieces), taking a lot of material off and making what we call pre-forms. They don't want to carry any more than they have to. They'll take a lot of flakes off it and get it close to a final form."
For more, see: http://www.whig.com/story/news/Palmyra-Archaeological-Dig-110711.
Thanks to coldrum for the story.
[ This message was edited by: bat400 on 2011-11-13 05:50 ]
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bat400
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| Posted 10-05-2012 at 17:37
Professors sue to stop ancient bones transfer
Two skeletons that rested undisturbed on a San Diego cliff top for nearly 10,000 years are at the center of a modern court battle.
The University of California, San Diego, had intended to transfer the skeletons of a man and woman to a American Indian tribe for traditional burial. But lawsuits are complicating the plan.
The bones were discovered in 1976 during an excavation at University House, the traditional La Jolla home of the UC San Diego chancellor. The university was preparing to hand over the bones to the local Kumeyaay tribe when three UC professors filed a lawsuit Monday in Northern California to block the transfer.
Margaret Schoeninger of UC San Diego, Robert Bettinger of UC Davis and Timothy White of UC Berkeley argue that the bones are precious research objects and there is no evidence that they are Native American remains.
In a declaration, Schoeninger said the skeletons were not buried in a way consistent with ancient Kumeyaay practices and collagen taken from the bones indicated the two ate ocean fish and mammals different from that of the tribe.
"These are not Native Americans," said James McManis, a San Jose lawyer for the professors. "We're sure where they're from," he told U-T San Diego. "They had primarily a seafood diet, not the diet of any way of these tribes. They were a seafaring people. They could be traveling Irishmen who touched on the continent.
"The idea that we're going to turn this incredible treasure over to some local tribe because they think it's Grandma's bones is crazy."
Respecting Native American preferences, the university has not permitted DNA testing of the bones, which are being kept at the San Diego Archaeological Center in Escondido.
In anticipation of the professors' suit, a dozen bands of Kumeyaay filed their own federal suit earlier this month, demanding transfer of the skeletons.
By law, Native American remains held by federal agencies or institutions receiving federal funds must be given to Native Americans. That includes unidentified remains found on aboriginal lands, said Dorothy Alther, an attorney for the Kumeyaay Cultural Repatriation Committee, which represents the 12 bands.
"A lot of the tribes were concerned that their ancestors were lying around in the basements of museums and not being properly interred," she said.
"What we're saying is that these are Native American remains," Alther said. "But even if someone says they are not, they were found on aboriginal lands. They go to the Kumeyaay."
The university is aware of the competing lawsuits, spokesman Jeff Gattas said in a statement.
"We believe the University process has achieved a decision that is in accordance with both the law and our commitment to the respectful handling of human remains and associated artifacts," he said.
Thanks to coldrum for the link: http://www.chicoer.com/news/ci_20477032/professors-sue-stop-ancient-bones-transfer
[ This message was edited by: bat400 on 2012-09-26 15:24 ]
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bat400
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| Posted 26-09-2012 at 16:04
Experts urge protection of Pitkin County archaeological site [near Aspin, Colorado]
Archaic Seasonal Camp May be Represented by Tool Finds
A rural Pitkin County site where archaeological artifacts have spurred a land-use debate appears to contain remnants of stone tools and associated debris spanning more than 8,000 years of use, according to a consultant who viewed the site early this month.
The Albuquerque, N.M.-based Archaeological Conservancy has drafted a management plan for the site that is now in the hands of the property's owners and Pitkin County staffers. Its recommendations regarding security at the site, access and accommodating research will be the subject of discussions with the landowners, according to Dale Will, county open space and trails director.
Will enlisted the help of the conservancy, which offered to draft a plan at no cost. The county's Open Space and Trails program has not, as yet, been tabbed as an active participant in preservation of the site.
Rather, property owners David Brown and Jody Anthes have asked county commissioners to declare the site constrained — undevelopable or severely restricted under the county's land-use code — and to issue two transferable development rights that they could sell to offset the money they invested in the parcel. Development rights on the site would be sterilized as part of the arrangement.
Discussion of the proposal for transferable development rights has been postponed at least twice to allow for the drafting and review of the management plan. Commissioners are now scheduled to take potential action on the request on Sept. 12.
An Aug. 2 site visit by representatives of the nonprofit Archaeological Conservancy and the state archaeologist of Colorado led both entities to push for its permanent protection.
According to Chaz Evans, southwest field representative for the conservancy, the site represents more than 8,000 years of repeated use and occupation and appears to be undisturbed.
The presence of tools and manufacturing debris made of non-local materials, coupled with the site's high-altitude setting and location, indicates “a very specialized land-use patterning that has not been adequately documented anywhere in Colorado,” he wrote in an Aug. 7 letter to Will.
The site is archaeologically significant not just for Pitkin County but for the greater region, according to a letter to Will from Richard Wilshusen, state archaeologist. Kevin Black, assistant state archaeologist, visited the site on Wilshusen's behalf.
The diversity of tool styles and materials, including rocks available locally and some from more distant sources, suggests the site was important for prehistoric inhabitants of the area over a span of many thousands of years, starting at least 6,000 years ago, Wilshusen wrote.
“The rarity of well-preserved archaeological sites in the mountainous settings such as in Pitkin County makes them particularly valuable for understanding this very interesting, yet still not well-known, aspect of our state's prehistory,” Wilshusen wrote.
The site under review is located on private property, off a gated road, but protecting it is a matter of concern. County commissioners, who also have paid a visit to the parcel, stressed their desire for a plan to preserve the artifacts as part of any land-use deal to come.
Thanks to colrum for the link. For more, see these articles from the Aspen Times:
20120510/NEWS/120509844]
20120608/NEWS/120609914
20120628/NEWS/120629855
20120713/NEWS/120719932
20120814/NEWS/120819952
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bat400
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| Posted 08-10-2012 at 19:11
Thousands of First Nations artifacts found near Vernon, British Columbia
Archaeologists near Vernon, B.C., have uncovered thousands of First Nations artifacts — some of which could be more than 6,000 years old — on a stretch of highway in Lake Country. Archaeologists have been working the site since January, pulling thousands of artifacts from the ground.
"One of the cool things we found … was what we think are the remains of a fishing net," archaeologist Clinton Coates told CBC News. "We found these 30 flat, notched rocks spread out over about three metres. The net was left there with the rocks and over time the net would rot away."
Thousands of arrowheads, spear points and hammer stones are among the finds.
"The styles that we found are consistent with ones that are as recent as 200 years ago and there's one that may go back 5,000 or 6,000 years," Coates said. "We don’t know for sure until we've done some carbon dating."
For area First Nations, the find is exciting — but also confirms what they already knew.
Okanagan Indian Band Chief Byron Louis says he hopes the discovery will re-write area history to include a time before settlers arrived. "There's always been this perception that history starts with [Father] Pandosy and comes forward and yet ignores the thousands of years prior to that there was habitation in this area," Louis said.
Many of the artifacts were found up to 2.5 meters underground, which helped preserve the pieces.
"Being able to do a project at this level of detail gives us a lot of data we can start to cross-reference and correlate with other information and maybe start to answer more in-depth questions about what people were doing here 4,000 or 5,000 years ago," Coates said.
The recovery at the site is almost complete but the painstaking task of cataloguing all the artifacts has yet to begin.
Source: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/story/2012/10/06/bc-vernon-artifacts.html
null.
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bat400
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| Posted 12-12-2012 at 18:21
Archeological dig underway at road expansion site, Puce River Ontario.
An archeological excavation is well underway on the banks of the Puce River after aboriginal items that may be 1,000 years old were found in preparation for the expansion of County Road 22.
The items, including arrowheads and pieces of pottery, were discovered last December on the banks of the Puce River near the County Road 22 bridge.
“The artifacts that initially were found were projectile heads, or arrowheads, as well as clay pottery,” said Essex County’s engineering contracts manager Peter Bziuk.
“There were fragments of pottery that date back to the late woodland period. There’s a wide range for that period, but it’s approximately 1,000 years old.”
“The [provincially mandated ] environmental assessment process identified the possibility of archeologically significant artifacts and from that process, the excavation was started and during the excavation process artifacts were found,” said Bziuk.
Initially, in Stage 2 of the process, small holes are dug about a foot in diameter, spaced out about the site.
“It was in that stage two that the projectile points and clay pottery was found,” said Bziuk.
The process then moves to Stage 3, which requires holes one metre square placed five metres apart.
“Then more artifacts were found,” said Bziuk.
At each stage of the process a report is prepared, which is why the process has taken a year.
“Under Stage 4 you do your full-block excavation or you avoid the area altogether, but that’s not really an option for us,” said Bziuk.
“Basically their job is finding the limits of where there are no more archeological findings.”
Bziuk said said the excavation should continue for the next two weeks and won’t delay the road improvements.
“We don’t anticipate any delays,” said Bziuk.
“The project has been moving forward and at some point the archeologists and the contractor will be working side by side.”
The excavation is being conducted by Hamilton-based Fisher Archaeological Consulting.
Exactly what indigenous tribe left the items may be difficult to determine, according to the Ontario Archaeological Society.
The society says that Western Basin Algonquin tribes were occupying Southwestern Ontario around 1000 A.D., the end of the late woodland stage.
“It is by the late woodland stage that ethnic identities are known for some of the people who created the prehistoric archaeological sites,” the society says on its website.
“The indigenous inhabitants of Southwestern Ontario, however, had disappeared by the time European explorers entered the area. Because of the absence of a native population by the contact period, archaeologists can never be absolutely certain who actually lived in Southwestern Ontario.”
For more, see the article at The Windsor Star.
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