American Archaeology Magazine | Fall 2001 | Vol. 5 No. 3

GOD‘S PECULIAR PEOPLE • PHOTO CONTEST WINNERS • EUROPEAN DISEASES

american archaeology FALL 2001

a quarterly publication of The Archaeological Conservancy

Vol. 5 No. 3

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The Gault Site: A Clovis Treasure Trove

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american archaeology a quarterly publication of The Archaeological Conservancy

Vol. 5 No. 3

fall 2001 COVER FEATURE

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C H A L L E N G I N G T H E C L O V I S PA R A D I G M

BY CLAIRE POOLE

One of North America’s premier Clovis sites may yield new information about its inhabitants.

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AMERICAN ARCHAEOLOGY PHOTO CONTEST WINNERS

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GOD’S PECULIAR PEOPLE

BY BOB BROOKE

An investigation of one of America’s first religious communes corrects historical accounts.

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THE FIRST AMERICANS

BY BRIAN FAGAN

Making the case for the Clovis.

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THE CONSEQUENCES OF CONTA C T

BY TAMAR STIEBER

Did European diseases decimate Native American populations?

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new acquisition: DEFENDING KING A N D C O U N T RY An 18th-century British fort is preserved.

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new acquisition: BIG NEWS IN THE BARRIO The Barrio de Tubac is the southern portion of Arizona’s first permanent European settlement.

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point acquisition: A MIDDLE MISSISSIPPIAN METROPOLIS The Conservancy acquires an Arkansas mound center.

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point acquisition: SAV I N G M O U N D S IN MICHIGAN The Sumnerville mound group may help archaeologists learn about the Goodall Hopewell.

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2 Lay of the Land 3 Letters 5 Events 7 In the News Big Eddy Is Washing Away • Oregon Trail Tragedy Uncovered • Maya Art Shows Scribes’ Influence.

44 Field Notes 46 Expeditions 48 Reviews COVER: A Clovis point found at the Gault site in central Texas.

A remarkable number of Clovis artifacts have been found there.

Photograph by Darren Poore 1

Lay of the Land Uncovering the Details of History

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hen you mention the word commune today, most people think of the 1960s collectives of potsmoking, long-haired flower children.

Those are mostly gone now and soon to be forgotten. Lest we forget too much of the important role of communes in American history, American Archaeology covers fresh archaeological work at an important religious commune at Ephrata, in eastern Pennsylvania, that was founded in 1732.

Communes of all kinds were common in pre-Civil War America— religious, economic, free-thinking, utopian…. They played an important role in our history, but one that is little remembered. Historical archaeol-

ogists are working to help us understand that movement by combining history, the written record of the past, with archaeology, a science that until recently dealt almost exclusively with prehistory in the Americas.

Archaeologists deal with the material record of the past, the debris left behind. Historical archaeologists are finding that the written record tells only part of the story, and that it is often distorted by its authors for any number of reasons. Historical archaeology gives us the opportunity to add details as well as test the veracity of the sources.

We can be assured that the next generation of archaeologists will be

testing those communes of the 1960s and finding all kinds of things the written record omitted.

MARK MICHEL President

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CCAC’s programs and admission practices are open to applicants of any race, color, nationality, or ethnic origin.

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Letters Too Little of Little Bighorn As a member of the Conservancy, I enjoy all the issues of American Archaeology, but the Summer issue was really fantastic. One of the reasons I joined was because of my fascination with and concern for Southwestern prehistoric sites. The article “Driving into Prehistory” was especially wonderful.

However, it is Anita Stratos's article “Archaeology Goes to War” that is the subject of this request. The Little Bighorn story is another of my main interests. Stratos did a wonderful job within the confines of the magazine, but I would love to see more and read more from the two archaeologists in her story. Unfortunately, the map at the top of page 20 is so small as to be indistinct.The location of artifacts shown is vital to the story and to understanding who did what, where, and when.

Thank you for your dedication and mission. It makes life not only more enjoyable, but more rewarding to know of your vital work.

(Jared) Adam Lynch Monroeville, Pennsylvania

No Shortage of Spencers In the article “Archaeology Goes to War,” the author states that Spencer rifle/carbine ammunition hadn’t been manufactured for at least eight years prior to the Red River War of 1875. In fact, several companies of the 9th and 10th cavalry were still armed with Spencers as late as 1874.

The U.S. Army bought over 15,000 Spencer rifles between 1861 and 1865 and outfitted 10 regiments of cavalry with Spencer carbines between 1866 and 1871. While a new Winchester ’66 or ’73 cost about $30

american archaeology

to $35 retail west of the Mississippi, a Spencer, complete with 100 rounds of ammunition, could be bought for about $7 in the same area.

The presence of Spencer cartridges on the Indian side of the battle in 1875 should surprise no one, and it is certainly not evidence of Indians hoarding Spencer ammunition, which remained plentiful for at least another quarter of a century.

C. F. Eckhardt Seguin, Texas

Piecing the Puzzle Together Seeing the rock foundation of a Hohokam building on page 40 of the Summer issue was simply amazing.

Archaeologists are like detectives; they can take pieces of the puzzle and put them together and tell you what the ruins mean. In this case, they determined it was an agricultural building.

A tip of the proverbial hat to Del Webb for recognizing that this site needs to be preserved and being generous enough to donate it.

Robert Charles Mitchell II Sacramento, California

Sending Letters to

American Archaeology American Archaeology welcomes your letters. Write to us at 5301 Central Avenue NE, Suite 402, Albuquerque, NM 87108-1517, or send us e-mail at archcons@nm.net.

We reserve the right to edit and publish letters in the magazine’s Letters department as space permits. Please include your name, address, and telephone number with all correspondence, including e-mail messages.

Editor’s Corner Two of the feature articles in this issue— “The First Americans” and “Challenging the Clovis Paradigm”—touch upon one of the most interesting debates in American archaeology: Who were the first people to inhabit the New World? In the former article, archaeologist Brian Fagan makes the case for the Clovis being first; in the latter piece, archaeologist Michael Collins expresses a contrary view.

Not so long ago, as Fagan says, “Clovis first” was a truism. But over the last few decades, a number of researchers have questioned this “fact.”

Sites that claim to offer evidence of preClovis occupation, such as Monte Verde, Cactus Hill, Meadowcroft, and Topper (see the News article on page 10) fuel the debate.

Some archaeologists speak of a “Clovis police” that refuses to consider the possibility of a pre-Clovis people.

Fagan, clearly, is not a member of this force. He makes his case for Clovis with reluctance. I have spoken to several archaeologists about this debate and the majority of them believe the Clovis were the first Americans. But, with one exception, they were anything but dogmatic in their reasoning or dismissive of the work done at pre-Clovis sites.

Let the debate continue unconstrained by ideology and closed-mindedness. Without the free exchange of ideas, there is no debate.

Michael Bawaya Editor

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WELCOME TO THE ARCHAEOLOGIC AL CONSERVANC Y!

he Archaeological Conservancy is the only national non-profit organization that identifies, acquires, and preserves the most significant archaeological sites in the United States. Since its beginning in 1980, the Conservancy has preserved more than 210 sites across the nation, ranging in age from the earliest habitation sites in North America to a 19thcentury frontier army post. We are building a national system of archaeological preserves to ensure the survival of our irreplaceable cultural heritage.

Why Save Archaeological Sites? The ancient people of North America left virtually no written records of their cultures. Clues that might someday solve the mysteries of prehistoric America are still missing, and when a ruin is destroyed by looters, or leveled for a shopping center, precious information is lost.

By permanently preserving endangered ruins, we make sure they will be here for future generations to study and enjoy.

How We Raise Funds: Funds for the Conservancy come from membership dues, individual contributions, corporations, and foundations. Gifts and bequests of money, land, and securities are fully tax deductible under section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code. Planned giving provides donors with substantial tax deductions and a variety of beneficiary possibilities. For more information, call Mark Michel at (505) 266-1540.

The Role of the Magazine: American Archaeology is the only popular magazine devoted to presenting the rich diversity of archaeology in the Americas. The purpose of the magazine is to help readers appreciate and understand the archaeological wonders available to them, and to raise their awareness of the destruction of our cultural heritage.

By sharing new discoveries, research, and activities in an enjoyable and informative way, we hope we can make learning about ancient America as exciting as it is essential.

How to Say Hello: By mail: The Archaeological Conservancy, 5301 Central Avenue NE, Suite 402, Albuquerque, NM 87108-1517; by phone: (505) 266-1540; by e-mail: archcons@nm.net; or visit our Web site: www.americanarchaeology.org

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5301 Central Avenue NE, Suite 402 Albuquerque, NM 87108-1517 • (505) 266-1540 www.americanarchaeology.org Board of Directors Earl Gadbery, Pennsylvania, CHAIRMAN Olds Anderson, Michigan • Cecil F. Antone, Arizona • Janet Creighton, Washington Christopher B. Donnan, California • Janet EtsHokin, Illinois • Jerry EtsHokin, Illinois W. James Judge, Colorado • Jay T. Last, California Rosamond Stanton, New Mexico • Vincas Steponaitis, North Carolina Dee Ann Story, Texas • Stewart L. Udall, New Mexico Conser vancy Staff Mark Michel, President • Tione Joseph, Office Manager Erika Olsson, Membership Director • Shelley Smith, Membership Assistant Martha Mulvany, Special Projects Director • Yvonne Woolfolk, Administrative Assistant Heather Wooddell, Administrative Assistant Regional Offices and Directors Jim Walker, Southwest Region (505) 266-1540 5301 Central Avenue NE, Suite 402 • Albuquerque, New Mexico 87108-1517 Paul Gardner, Midwest Region (614) 267-1100 295 Acton Road • Columbus, Ohio 43214-3305 Alan Gruber, Southeast Region (770) 975-4344 5997 Cedar Crest Road • Acworth, Georgia 30101 Gene Hurych, Western Region (916) 399-1193 1 Shoal Court #67 • Sacramento, California 95831

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PUBLISHER: Mark Michel EDITOR: Michael Bawaya (505) 266-9668, archcons@nm.net SENIOR EDITOR: Rob Crisell ASSISTANT EDITOR: Tamara Stewart ART DIRECTOR: Vicki Marie Singer Editorial Advisor y Board James Bruseth, Texas Historical Commission • Allen Dart, Old Pueblo Archaeology Center Hester Davis, Arkansas Archeological Survey • David Dye, University of Memphis John Foster, California State Parks • Lynne Goldstein, Michigan State University Megg Heath, Bureau of Land Management • Susan Hector, San Diego County Parks Gwynn Henderson, Kentucky Archaeological Registry • John Henderson, Cornell University John Kelly, Washington University • Robert Kuhn, New York Historic Preservation William Lipe, Washington State University • Mark Lynott, National Park Service Bonnie McEwan, San Luis Historic Site • Giovanna Peebles, Vermont State Archaeologist Peter Pilles, U.S. Forest Service • John Roney, Bureau of Land Management Kenneth Sassaman, University of Florida • Dennis Stanford, Smithsonian Institution Kathryn Toepel, Heritage Research Associates • Richard Woodbury, University of Massachusetts National Advertising Office Richard Bublitz, Advertising Representative; 22247 Burbank Boulevard, Woodland Hills, California 91367; (800) 485-5029; fax (818) 716-1030 dick-rcb@juno.om American Archaeology (ISSN 1093-8400) is published quarterly by The Archaeological Conservancy, 5301 Central Avenue NE, Suite 402, Albuquerque, NM 87108-1517. Title registered U.S. Pat. and TM Office, © 2001 by TAC. Printed in the United States. Periodicals postage paid Albuquerque, NM, and additional mailing offices. Single copies are $3.95. A one-year membership to the Conservancy is $25 and includes receipt of American Archaeology. Of the member’s dues, $6 is designated for a one-year magazine subscription. READERS: For new memberships, renewals, or change of address, write to The Archaeological Conservancy, 5301 Central Avenue NE, Suite 402, Albuquerque, NM 87108-1517, or call (505) 266-1540. For changes of address, include old and new addresses. Articles are published for educational purposes and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Conservancy, its editorial board, or American Archaeology. Article proposals and artwork should be addressed to the editor. No responsibility assumed for unsolicited material. All articles receive expert review. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to American Archaeology, The Archaeological Conservancy, 5301 Central Avenue NE, Suite 402, Albuquerque, NM 87108-1517; (505) 266-1540. All rights reserved.

American Archaeology does not accept advertising from dealers in archaeological artifacts or antiquities.

fall • 2001

Museum exhibits

MINT MUSEUM OF ART

UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA

Meetings

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Tours

Education

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Festivals

Conferences

■ NEW EXHIBITS Canadian Museum of Civilization

Hull, Quebec, Canada—The superb new exhibition “Across Borders: Beadwork in Iroquois Life” explores many aspects of Iroquois beadwork from the 14th century to the present.

Over 300 rarely exhibited pieces are featured, many from the early 1800s. (800) 555-5621 (Through November 4)

HEARD MUSEUM

High Desert Museum

Bend, Ore.—Since ancient times, the Klamath tribes of southern Oregon and northern California have practiced a distinctive basketmaking tradition using natural fibers such as cattails, willows, and porcupine quills. Through an examination of trends in basketry, the new exhibit “Twined and Traded: Klamath Tribes Basketry, 1860-1920” details the cultural history of the Klamath, Modoc, and Yahooskin Band of Snake Indians through the late 19th and early 20th centuries. (541) 382-4754 (Opens November 3) Florida Museum of Natural History

Gainesville, Fla.—“Myths and Dreams: Exploring the Cultural Legacies of Florida and the Caribbean” uses artifacts, photographs, art, and maps to trace the evolution of the Americas from the first encounters of European explorers with native inhabitants to the present day. (352) 846-2000 (Through January 2002)

american archaeology

Events

University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology

Philadelphia, Pa.—The museum’s permanent Mesoamerican gallery has just been updated to incorporate some of the newest information and theories about the ancient Maya and other prehistoric Mesoamerican cultures.

With more than 200 artifacts, including five world-famous carved stone monuments, the renovated gallery offers an overview of the region’s cultures and detailed information about the principal Mesoamerican civilizations that flourished and influenced one another. (215) 8984000 (Newly renovated permanent gallery)

■ CONFERENCES & FESTIVALS Voices from the Past: Archaeology Lecture Series

September 3–December 17, selected Mondays at 6 P.M., Hotel Santa Fe, Santa Fe, N.M. Southwest Seminars presents this free public lecture series by top Southwestern archaeologists. For a list of speakers and dates see www.SouthwestSeminars.org or call (505) 466-2775

Mint Museum of Art

Charlotte, N.C.—“The Sport of Life and Death: The Mesoamerican Ballgame” is the first traveling exhibit in the United States to explore the world’s first team sport, which began around 1500 B.C. in southern Mexico with the early Olmec.

It includes 175 artifacts such as jade carvings of Olmec ballplayer kings, ceramic vessels, jewelry, costume accessories, and artifacts from major public and private collections in Mexico and the United States. (704) 337-2098, also see www.ballgame.org (September 22–December 30)

2001—A Chaco Odyssey: A New Look for the New Millennium

September 15, U.S. Navy Memorial and Naval Heritage Center, Washington, D.C. The 8th Annual Symposium of the PreColumbian Society of Washington, D.C. examines old questions, new research, and new ideas about Chaco and its environment.

For information, contact PCSWDC Registration: 11104 Bucknell Dr., Silver Spring, MD 20902 or e-mail chaco@ancientamerica.net

Heard Museum

Phoenix, Ariz.—The new exhibit “Brilliant: Navajo Germantown and Eyedazzler Textiles” examines the breathtaking colors and bold designs of Navajo textiles from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. (602) 2528848 (Through January 13, 2002)

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Events September 22–23, 9 A.M.–5 P.M., Museum of Northern Arizona, Flagstaff, Ariz.

Learn about the Yuman-speaking peoples, the Paiute tribes, and tribes of the Colorado River, including the Pai Pai, Yavapai, Hualapai, and the Havasupai. Artists will display basketry, pottery, jewelry, and dolls while musicians and Hualapai Dancers perform. (928) 774-5213 Moundville Native American Festival

Abbe Museum Grand Opening Celebration September 29, Bar Harbor, Maine. The Abbe will hold a grand opening celebration for its new year-round museum, with Maine Native American basketry demonstrations, drumming, singing, storytelling, and children’s activities. The museum has renovated and expanded an early 1890s landmark building in downtown Bar Harbor, adding 17,000 square feet of space and enabling the Abbe to expand its popular programs and collections storehouse. The new museum will open with the permanent exhibition “Wabanaki: People of the Dawn,” which explores 12,000 years of Maine Native American history. October is Archaeology Month in Maine, with special programs scheduled throughout the state.

(207) 288-3519

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September 24–28, Moundville Archaeological Park, Tuscaloosa, Ala. Using authentic raw materials, southeastern Native Americans and other experts will demonstrate more than 20 different arts, crafts, and technologies, including pottery making, basketry, shell and bead work, textiles, metalwork, jewelry, musical instruments, and the ancient game of stickball.

Southeastern Indians such as the Choctaw will perform traditional dances and songs and sell crafts and foods. (205) 371-2572 A Weekend in Ruins Archaeology of the Americas

October 5–6, Orlando Museum of Art, Orlando, Fla. Join top scholars for a free weekend of learning with lively discussions about the archaeology, history, culture, and art of the ancient Americas. Presentations will provide participants with information about current issues and the most recent archaeological discoveries in Florida, Belize, El Salvador, and Peru.

Call (407) 896-4231 for more information or visit the OMA’s website at www.OMArt.org Midwest Archaeological Conference

October 12–14, The La Crosse Center, La Crosse, Wis. The conference features various workshops and symposia. For more

information, call (608) 785-8463, or visit the Web site www.uwlax.edu/mac2001 Transformations of Place: Paa-ko in the Spanish Colonial World

October 25, 7 P.M., National Hispanic Cultural Center, Albuquerque, N.M. A lecture by Mark Lycett, professor of anthropology at the University of Chicago.

(505) 266-1540 Red! Hot! Alive!: United Through Culture—A Multicultural Celebration of Music and Dance

October 27–28, Heard Museum, Phoenix, Ariz. The Heard’s new fall festival celebrates the Southwest’s rich heritage through art, traditional foods, and music and dance performances from across Arizona and Mexico. Ballet Folklorico, Apache Ga:an and the dance traditions of Southern Sonora, Mexico, and Tohono O’odham waila music are just some of the exciting performances visitors will see.

Call (602) 252-8848 for more information or visit www.heard.org Eiteljorg Museum Harvest Celebration November 1–16, Indianapolis, Ind. Celebrate Native American Heritage Month with traditional music and cuisine, and learn how harvesttime has been celebrated by native peoples for generations.

(317) 636-9378 2001 Southeastern Archaeological Conference

November 14–17, Marriott Hotel, Chattanooga, Tenn. This annual conference will include a variety of presentations and special events. For more information, visit the Web site www.uark.edu/campus-resources/seac/seac2001.html or call the Marriott at (800) 228-9290.

fall • 2001

ABBE MUSEUM

Sixth Annual Festival of Pai Arts

Big Eddy Is Washing Away Archaeologists explore a remarkably well stratified site threatened by erosion.

in the

NEWS

CAR

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site in southwestern Missouri that could be one of the most important stratified PaleoIndian sites in America is being threatened by erosion. The Big Eddy site, which has numerous wellstratified occupations ranging from Mississippian and Woodland to possibly pre-Clovis, is being rapidly eroded by the Sac River.

The site was discovered in 1986, and archaeologists for the Center for Archaeological Research (CAR) at Southwest Missouri State University began excavating there in 1997.

“There are well-dated, well-stratified pre-Clovis-age deposits,” said Neal Lopinot, the director of CAR. Many groups of prehistoric Indians camped at the Big Eddy site over the course of thousands of years.

The adjacent Sac River provided fish, mussels, waterfowl, and edible plants, while the surrounding forests and CULTURAL LAYERS AT THE BIG EDDY SITE Mississippian and Woodland Periods 500 to 2,500 years old Late Archaic Period 3,000 to 5,000 years old Middle Archaic Period 5,000 to 7,000 years old Early Archaic Period 7,000 to 10,000 years old Dalton Culture 10,000 to 11,000 years old Clovis Culture 11,000 to 12,000 years old

Pre-Clovis Culture more than12,000 years old Dates are in radiocarbon years

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Archaeologists excavate an area of pre-Clovis-age deposits during the 1999 season. They’re digging about 14 feet below the surface.

prairies offered plants, and animals such as deer and turkey. Chert, the flint-like rock used to make stone tools, was found in the gravel bars of the Sac and in the steep bluff just across the river. Every major archaeological period is represented in the river terrace, with the oldest artifacts found at a depth of 11 to 13 feet.

Today, the river is a source of hydroelectric power. About six miles upstream from the site is the Stockton Dam, which for 30 years has released large amounts of water—nearly 5,000 cubic feet per second—to generate power, thereby eroding the site. The erosion rate during the 11-year period from 1986 to 1997 was calculated at 2.7 feet per year. This translates into the loss of 11,786 cubic feet of soil per

year, soil that may hold cultural deposits. This rate of erosion has apparently accelerated recently.

“There’s been a lot of discussion” about how to remedy this problem, Lopinot said.

But the possible solutions, such as ripraping—using crushed rock and boulders to cover and stabilize the exposed soil—are not very realistic or economically feasible.

“Nothing is likely to be done other than what we’re doing, which is full-scale excavation or mitigation,” he added.

CAR will conclude its excavation of the site next year, when it will focus on the Paleo-Indian and upper preClovis deposits. Very little excavation of those deposits has been done so far.

—Michael Bawaya

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Scribe capture, torture, and execution were a prominent feature of Maya warfare.

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rowing evidence from ancient Maya glyphic texts and sculpture is showing how scribes played a key role in promoting their king’s position, especially during the Classic period from A.D. 600 to 900.

This prominent political role awarded scribes much prestige, while at the same time putting them at great risk for torture and execution, as they were frequently targeted by enemy warriors for capture during battle.

Kevin Johnston, a Maya archaeologist at Ohio State University, is closely examining ancient texts, murals, and stelae—elaborately carved stone monuments often containing historical or political information—to better understand the fate of Maya scribes captured in battle. Johnston’s research was inspired by an illustration published in a 1995 National Geographic article on the Maya polychrome murals of Bonampak, Mexico, showing the public display of tortured captives by their captors.

“The reconstruction included a detail that previous renderings had not:

A stela from Piedras Negras, in Guatemala, depicts a captured scribe holding a bundle of quill pens.

One of the captives carries in his right hand a quill pen, indicating that he and the other captives are scribes,” Johnston says. “All of the captives look in fear and agony at their hands, which

An illustration of part of a mural found in Bonampak, Chiapas, in southern Mexico, depicting captured Maya scribes having their fingers broken and their fingernails torn off. In the foreground is the head of a decapitated scribe.

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are mutilated and bleed copiously.”

Similar images are found at Palenque and Piedras Negras. All three sites are located on the western edge of the southern Maya lowlands along the Río Usumacinta.

Captured scribes were first publicly humiliated, then their fingernails were pulled out and the ligaments snapped at the joints in order to destroy their fingers, symbolically muting the political power of the king who employed them. Following this torture, the scribes were executed, either by decapitation or heart sacrifice. Although other archaeologists have noted that several captives in Maya art appear to be scribes, none had previously demonstrated that scribe capture was a prominent feature of Maya warfare.

“Just as the ability to produce texts through scribes was an important component of the king’s power, so the loss of his ability to generate texts through scribes revealed and created a significant loss of power,” explains Johnston.

“So closely associated were warfare and writing as sources of power that they came together in a single political practice: the capture in battle of scribes and the public destruction of their capacity to produce texts.”

According to Johnston, the 50 or so small, independent Maya states of southern Mexico, Belize, northern Guatemala, and western Honduras, were inherently politically unstable. Because kings lacked standing armies, they did not have coercive authority over their subordinates and therefore primarily exercised their authority through public ritual display and political writings.

—Tamara Stewart fall • 2001

KEVIN JOHNSTON

NEWS

Maya Art Shows Scribes’ Great Political Influence

JARROD BURKS

in the

Oregon Trail Tragedy Uncovered

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NEWS

Archaeologists excavate a site that played a crucial role in the Mormon migration.

DANNY WALKER

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his summer, archaeologists located and began excavations of Seminoe Fort, a trading post on the Oregon Trail that was operated between 1852 and 1856, and abandoned after a series of Indian raids.The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints has been looking for the site for years because of its religious, rather than its archaeological significance.

Seminoe Fort was the site of one of the largest overland migration tragedies in American history.

In the 1850s, thousands of members of the LDS Church, also known as Mormons, migrated from Illinois to the new church headquarters in Salt Lake City. There was a backlog of newly converted European immigrants who wished to make the pilgrimage, but the church couldn’t pay for everyone to have a wagon.The Church arrived at a less costly solution—two-wheeled handcarts that would be pulled along the 1,300 mile journey from a train station in Iowa to Salt Lake City.

The idea worked for the most part, said Danny Walker,Wyoming’s assistant state archaeologist, but it didn’t work for one handcart company.

Several handcart companies made the journey in 1856 with few casualties; but one, Edward Martin’s handcart company, left Iowa at the end of August, too late to make it across the plains to Utah before winter storms set in.

“If they’d just been three weeks earlier, they would have made it,” said Walker.

Martin’s company of about 575

american archaeology

Diaries from the 1850s describe an American flag flying over Seminoe Fort. Excavations verified these accounts by locating the base of the flagpole, which is located at the center of the "x" shown here.

people got caught in a November blizzard in central Wyoming. Search parties came out from Salt Lake City to take people back to the fort, and to a natural shelter nearby called Martin’s Cove. About 50 died in the storm and another 100 perished on other parts of the trail. The LDS Church holds sacred the place where these pioneers died, because of their dedication to the faith.

The excavation of the site has uncovered six cabins, four with their foundations mainly intact. Artifacts include construction materials such as square nails and window glass,

and trade goods like buttons, beads, pipes, bullets, and fine china.Archaeologists, for the most part, haven’t been able to identify any Mormon items, but Walker thinks they may have found at least one: a brass temperance token. It states that the person carrying it swears not to use intoxicating beverages.

The LDS Church hopes to use information found at the site to accurately reconstruct Seminoe Fort as part of an interpretive center on the Mormons’ western migration and the Martin’s handcart disaster.

—Martha Mulvany

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esearchers working at the Mescal Wash site, about 30 miles southeast of Tucson, have uncovered evidence of a large pithouse village that was intermittently occupied from about 1200 B.C. until about A.D. 1450. Although the site has been known of for about 50 years, it was only recently that researchers have had the opportunity to excavate and study the site in depth.

In June and July of last year, archaeologists with Statistical Research, Inc., a Tucson-based firm, conducted limited testing of the more than 200 features at the site that would be impacted by a planned Arizona Department of Transportation interchange reconstruction and railroad bridge replacement project. The test results led to the second phase of the project, which began in January and was completed last June.

“This project has given us a rare

Excavations Shed Light on Little-Known Area of the Southwest Site was occupied intermittently for at least 3,200 years. opportunity to see what was going on in this part of the Southwest,” says Jeffrey Altschul, president of Statistical Research.

There have been news reports stating that the site, which is located at the confluence of Mescal Wash and A 1,000-year-old pithouse with a recessed hearth/entryCienega Creek, represents a way that probably served as a communal facility. new, mysterious culture.

According to Altschul, however, the unique traits of the site are a burial practices,” says Altschul. result of the village’s location on the Researchers have uncovered fringe of three prehistoric cultural about 115 pithouses and other strucgroups, the Hohokam, the Mogollon, tures. The archaeologists encountered and the Chihuahuan or Casas an unusual architectural style characGrandes cultures of northern Mexico. terized by a rectangular pithouse with “What we’re seeing is an agrarian a circular recessed hearth/entryway. community that borrowed cultural This style has been documented at concepts from other groups in the only two other sites in southeast southern Southwest, resulting in a Arizona and is not previously known great variability in cultural traits such from the Hohokam region. as architectural styles, ceramics, and —Tamara Stewart

Topper Site Said to Be Pre-Clovis The South Carolina site may be more than 16,000 years old.

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team of scientists specializing in the dating of geological layers recently completed an analysis of the Topper site near Allendale, South Carolina, concluding that the site’s oldest artifacts are least 16,000 years old. The pre-Clovis layer was discovered at the site by Albert Goodyear, director of the Allendale Paleoindian Expedition for the South Carolina Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology, in 1998 (see “Finds on Opposite Coasts Among Oldest Known,” American Archaeology, Fall 1999).

Goodyear was unable to radiocarbon date material from the site. There is a layer of sand that lies about three feet above a number of stone tools and, using a technique called optically stimulated luminescence (OSL), which measures environmental radiation, he determined the sand is 15,000 to 16,000 years old. Goodyear said OSL, coupled with the geological study of the statigraphy and related

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landforms, indicates the site to be of pre-Clovis age. He estimated that the stone tools found below the sand layer could be a few thousand years older.

“The Topper site is another example on the eastern seaboard of a pre-Clovis site,” said Goodyear. “We are going through a process of confirmation that must continue in order to build confidence about the site’s validity and antiquity.”

Many researchers believe that the Clovis people were the first Americans, and that they migrated from the Old World to the New World about 13,500 years ago via a land bridge across the Bering Strait. But evidence for sites that claim to predate the Clovis period, such as Cactus Hill in Virginia, Meadowcroft Rockshelter in Pennsylvania, Monte Verde in Chile, and the Topper site, challenge this notion.

“Now we really need to put our thinking caps on to figure out when and where the first settlers of the Americas came from,” Goodyear said. – Tamara Stewart

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STATISTICAL RESEARCH, INC.

in the

in the

NEWS

Recording Rock Art A group of volunteers is working to capture threatened images for future study.

DEBRA ISAAC

JOANNE VAN TILBURG

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team led by archaeologist JoAnne Van Tilburg is working to photograph and map endangered rock art images at Little Lake, a spring-fed oasis in the Mojave Desert in California.

The area, which is about 160 miles north of Los Angeles on state highway 395, contains one of California’s largest concentrations of rock art. Thousands of images are found on volcanic escarpments and cliffs next to the lake and along its edge. The Little Lake area is also known for its earthquakes, with a network of small faults running underground. It suffers from “nearly constant seismic activity,” said Van Tilburg, who is director of the Rock Art Archive, Cotsen Institute of Archaeology at UCLA. Some of the oldest rock art on the site is found on boulders that are easily disturbed by the earthquakes.

“There are few archaeological sites in California” that are so vulnerable to this threat, she said.

So Van Tilburg assembled a team of volunteers that has been working since 1997 to record the rock art for their own research and for future scholars to study. The rock art, which consists of petroglyphs, painted petroglyphs, and pictographs, is photographed with digital cameras and then entered into a database. Graphic designers edit the photographs—but not the rock art image itself—so that they are clear enough to study. The rock art is also mapped so that its original location will be known in the event it’s subsequently moved or destroyed.

Gordon Hull, a computer programmer and volunteer who set up the database, said they have recorded approximately half of the Little Lake images.

american archaeology

A crew member traces a petroglyph on a piece of thin plastic. Though all the petroglyphs are photographed, sometimes the images aren’t very clear. In such cases the petroglyph is traced, which serves as another means of recording it.

The project has been so successful that Van Tilburg and her volunteers were named winners of this year’s Governor’s Historic Preservation Award by the State Historical Resources Commission.

Van Tilburg believes the rock art dates from the mid-1800s to at least 8,000 years ago and is the work of several different tribes. According to studies done in the early 1900s, the rock art dealt with the search for food.

But some researchers now think it reflects the trance-like states of medicine men called shamans. The trances, which were part of religious rituals, probably resulted from water, sleep, and food deprivation.

The rock art depicts “symbolic activity,” Van Tilburg said. Its meaning will be the subject of further study.

“We’re trying to collect the information,” she said, “so that we and other investigators can examine and test these theories.”

In June, an earthquake measuring 5.9 on the Richter scale hit

the area. Because of the heat, no work is done at the site during summer. Van Tilburg won’t know what damage, if any, it caused until she and her team return to the site, which could be as soon as this fall.

--Michael Bawaya

The crew’s work often includes climbing up cliffs to find and record the rock art. This cliff is more than 100 feet high.

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First Place: Moon House Ruin, Utah Ernie Long, Sacramento, California $150 prize

American Archaeology Photo Contest Winners Thanks to everyone who entered our photography contest. We received 79 entries.

Vicki Singer, our art director, and I chose the winners, and it wasn’t easy. As is the case with all such contests, declaring a winner is really nothing more than stating an opinion.

But Vicki and I think everyone will agree that these three photographs are excellent.

—Michael Bawaya, Editor 12

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Second Place: Ruins at Cerrode Santa Clara, New Mexico Terry Edward Ballone, Albuquerque, New Mexico $75 prize

Third Place: Moon House Ruin, Utah Walter Kleweno, Albuquerque, New Mexico $25 prize

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BOB BROOKE

The Saal, one of the cloister buildings that still stands, is set for a replication of the love feast. The cloister members engaged in this ritual, which included a meal and foot washing, in preparation for the Second Coming of Christ.

God’s Peculiar People An archaeologist searches for the truth at one of America’s first religious communes.

BY BOB BROOKE

I will not give sleep to mine eyes, or slumber to mine eyelids, until I find out a place for the Lord, a habitation for the mighty God of Jacob. Lo, we heard of it at Ephrata: we found it in the fields of the wood.

PHMC

Psalm 132

An early-20th-century photograph of the surviving buildings at Ephrata Cloister.

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n 1732, the followers of Conrad Beissel, the orphaned son of a German baker, founded a religious commune along the Cocalico Creek, 68 miles from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where they waited for the Second Coming. People who visited the commune, known as the Cloister at Ephrata, often thought they heard the singing of a “choir of angels” coming from its prayer house.

Now, amid the roar of semis and the clip-clop of Amish buggies, a group of students led by Stephen Warfel, senior curator of archaeology at the State Museum of Pennsylvania, is trying to uncover information about the commune. This summer Warfel’s team investigated a large cellar partially discovered during an excavation in 1963.

“This cellar may have been a vault built to entomb the dead,” Warfel said as he took a soil sample with an auger.

“Because it’s associated with a dormitory addition that was never completed, we don’t expect to find human remains.

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(Middle) Reconstructed earthenware pottery vessels found in a refuse-filled clay borrow pit during the 1994 field season at the Kedar site. The assemblage, including serving bowls, a pitcher, a plate with German script, and a two-handled cup, is reminiscent of late-17th-century European earthenwares and was likely used for communal food service and dining.

(Bottom) These reconstructed pottery vessels were recovered from a cellar found under the brothers' dormitory building on Mount Zion during the 2000 field season. The pottery includes plain and hand-painted creamwares, and blue shell-edged and hand-painted pearlwares. Creamwares and pearlwares are European-made ceramics.

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Forsaking Worldly Ways

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orn in 1691 in Eberbach, Germany, Conrad Beissel became an orphan at the age of nine. At age 24, he experienced a spiritual awakening which caused him to shun worldly ways and become a mystic.When he immifall • 2001

PHMC

(Top) These prehistoric artifacts were recovered from Mount Zion during the 2000 field season: (Top row, from left) a quartz bifurcate base spear point; a quartzite bifurcate base spear point; a quartzite side-notched spear point; a jasper spear point or knife. (Bottom row, from left) A jasper knife; a quartz end scraper; a quartzite thumbnail end scraper.

It may, however, contain undisturbed refuse deposits resulting from one or more of the dormitory’s occupants.”

Adjusting his baseball cap while leaning on a shovel,Warfel surveyed his work with pride. His students—some coming from as far away as Iowa—have sought out Warfel to learn archaeology, as Beissel’s followers sought him out to learn piousness.

“We live somewhat of a cloistered life,” said Warfel.

Indeed, after working hard for eight hours in the hot sun, he and his students retire to nearby Franklin and Marshall College, from which Warfel graduated, where they continue their studies into the evening, discussing the daily progress of the dig and learning to identify artifacts.

For eight weeks, they work together, eat together, and sleep in an off-campus house, much like the brothers and sisters of Ephrata did in the 18th century.

Ephrata Cloister was one of America's earliest and longest-lasting communal societies.At its peak, the cloister had about 300 members engaged in farming and various industries such as papermaking, carpentry, and printing. It declined following Beissel's death in 1768; in 1814 the few remaining members incorporated as the Seventh Day German Baptist Church of Ephrata, which survived until 1934. The cloister property was eventually divided into farmsteads operated by congregation members.The Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission (PHMC) assumed ownership of the cloister in 1941, and today preserves and interprets it. Now a state historic site, it contains 11 original buildings and two cemeteries.

In 1988, an archaeological investigation was required prior to the installation of a fire detection and suppression system in the buildings.The investigation, on which Warfel worked, revealed building foundations and the edge of a trash-filled pit, containing a wide variety of buried artifacts dating to the cloister's beginnings.This rich archaeological evidence challenged the traditional interpretation of the cloister. Consequently,Warfel, working for the PHMC, proposed his own archaeological investigation, which also served as a field school for college students. He hoped to discover the locations of former structures, determine their age and function, and interpret the lifestyle of community members.

Until Warfel’s investigation, the PHMC based its interpretation of the cloister solely on information gleaned from historical documents. Unfortunately, these documents, prepared by members of, and visitors to, the cloister, often were biased and omitted important information.

PHMC

BOB BROOKE

Steve Warfel (right) discusses an artifact with David Burke, one of the full-time crew members.

grated to Pennsylvania with thousands of others seeking freedom from religious persecution in 1720, his intent was to live as a hermit in the wilderness. However, men and women of the Brethren Baptist faith, with whom he eventually settled, were drawn by Beissel’s charisma.They followed him when, in 1732, he again tried to live a solitary life by moving to Cocalico Creek.

Ephrata Cloister was founded on principles that required its members to abandon their traditional lifestyles.

The commune had two celibate orders: the women's Roses of Sharon, known as the Sisterhood, and the men's Brothers of Bethania.The married members were called Householders and lived on farms surrounding the cloister.

Beissel’s experiment incorporated the ideals of the Quakers, the Sabbatarians, the Labadists, the Dunkers, the Inspired, the Rosicrucians, and other religious groups. From the Dunkers, he took the love feast, foot washing, rejection of oaths and lawsuits, and plain dress.The Inspired offered the idea of divine inspiration.

Beissel preached celibacy and Seventh Day (Saturday) worship. Though he didn’t prohibit marriage, he believed it distracted people from God. The brothers wore a shirt, trousers, vest, and a long, white, hooded robe. The sisters wore the same but substituted flannel petticoats for pants.

People joining the cloister had to be baptized, at which time they took biblical names such as Jabez, Euphemias, or Zenubia. Beissel became known as Father Friedsam Gottlecht. That was one of the many reasons why they called themselves “God's peculiar people.”

Cloister life was hard and strange; its purpose was to bring the members closer to God. The members rose at

american archaeology

Trash or Treasure?

During the 1995 excavation, a student discovered an unusual glass object in a trash pit. At first, it was thought to be an apparatus used for alchemy. The object was put on display at Ephrata and, by chance, an ethnomusicologist, Guy Oldham, happened to see it.

Oldham said the object appeared to be a replica of a Baroque trumpet—a trumpet that has no valve or slide and was common in the late 16th and early 17th centuries.

Music was an important part of cloister life—some of America’s first musical compositions were written at Ephrata—but Oldham’s conclusion seemed implausible because these compositions were all written for a cappella voices. Instrumentation wasn’t part of the cloister’s musical tradition.

Though it had been placed in the trash, “someone must have taken special care with its disposal,” Warfel observed. “Had it been simply thrown in the pit, glass pieces would have been more numerous and widely scattered. Since only a small portion of tubing is missing, damage likely occurred elsewhere on the site before someone discarded it.”

Warfel speculated that the object was either a gift to the cloister or was brought there by a new member. It was disposed of because it served no purpose. —Bob Brooke

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This 1908 photograph shows the Saron (left) and the Saal. The Saron was built in 1743 for householder couples who chose to live as celibate brothers

This is one of two storage cellars found under the brothers' dormitory.

It was carved out of limestone bedrock, lined with cut stone, plastered, and whitewashed. These cellars suggest that the Brotherhood planned for the future, even though they arose with other community members each night to await the Second Coming of Christ.

five in the morning and prayed in the Bethaus, or prayer house, for an hour, then they worked until nine, at which time they paused for another hour of prayer. Work resumed at ten for another two hours, stopping for a one hour worship service followed by four more hours of work. At five o’clock, they spent another hour of praying, then the following hour was devoted to dinner in the Kedar, their communal dormitory.

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After eating, they sang in five-part harmony in the Bethaus for two hours, went to bed at nine, awoke at midnight to attended a two-hour worship service during which they waited for the Second Coming, then returned to bed, only to rise again at five in the morning.Their beds were wooden benches, their pillows wooden blocks.

The cloister was self-sufficient.The brothers erected buildings, farmed, performed various handicrafts, and cooked and cleaned.The sisters busied themselves with such tasks as sewing, singing, canning, and calligraphy.

Ephrata’s members were not always able to maintain its ideals. According to the Chronicon Ephratense, the official history of the cloister written by Brothers Lamech and Agrippa in 1786, all property was to be held in common, yet Warfel found fragments of two dozen earthenware vessels with members’ initials scratched into them.

“There’s no doubt these were labels, identifying the objects as personal possessions,”Warfel explained.“Such behavior was inconsistent with the values of the Ephrata society.”

Ephrata’s members were to avoid meat during their sole meal of the day because meat promoted the temptations of the flesh. But the discovery of hundreds of animal bones suggests the members were unable to abstain.

With regard to temptations of the flesh, there were allegations that the brothers and sisters succumbed to them.

People living near the cloister expressed concerns that unmarried men and women were living under the same roof in the Kedar, and consequently a separate dormitory was fall • 2001

PHMC

and sisters. It was a brief experiment, and when the householders departed, the building was remodeled to accommodate the Sisterhood.

PHMC

The Kedar site was excavated in 1995. Once the sod was removed with shovels, all excavating was done with small hand tools. The building to the right is believed to be Conrad Beissel's house. Its construction date is not known. The Saron and the Saal are in the background.

18th-century coins were recovered by Warfel’s team on Mount Zion, proof that Eckerlin engaged in commerce.

In order to regain control, Beissel expelled Eckerlin in 1745. Beissel also removed the brothers from Mount Zion, ordering them to build a new dormitory, called Bethania, and a prayer house in the meadow near the cabin where he lived.According to Lamech and Agrippa, Beissel ordered all references to the Brotherhood’s dormitory and prayer house on Mount Zion erased from the records.The society never got over this schism and slowly began to decline.

BOB BROOKE

Telling a More Truthful Story The Saron has workrooms, such as this one, on each of its three main floors. Each floor also has a kitchen, a dining room, and 12 sleeping rooms.

built for the brothers in 1738.Three years later, Beissel ordered the destruction of the Bethaus, presumably due to his suspicion that illicit activities occurred there.

Beissel, who called himself “the superintendent,” ruled the cloister with an iron hand, banishing anyone who didn’t yield to his authority. His relationship with Israel Eckerlin, the head of the Brotherhood, eventually became hostile. It was Eckerlin’s idea to add a mill and an orchard to make the community self-supporting, which conflicted with Beissel’s principles of self-denial and poverty. Many

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arfel began his investigation, known as the Ephrata Cloister Archaeology Project, in 1993, conducting a remote sensing survey of the 25acre property. He used ground-penetrating radar, proton magnetometry, and terrain conductivity, all of which are capable of detecting irregularities at a depth of six to nine feet.These tools are relatively new to archaeology and, according to Warfel, his excavation is one of the few that has employed all three.

Warfel used them to detect various types of underground disturbances.A proton magnetometer works like a high-powered metal detector. It can also detect fired or heated rocks and clays. Ground-penetrating radar uses the transmission and reception of low-frequency radio waves to find materials with nonconductive surfaces.Terrain con-

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Second Coming to be imminent, it’s thought that Ephrata’s members may have decided to build the Kedar on such an impermanent foundation.

During the 1996 and 1997 seasons, Warfel’s team located the complete foundations of the Kedar and the Bethaus. Although it was built only a year after the Kedar, the Bethaus had a limestone foundation.The sturdier construction may be due to its religious significance in a community dedicated to God. It may also indicate that the members had come to think that the Second Coming might be some time in coming. A layer of fill soil containing demolition debris and datable ceramic artifacts covered parts of both structures’ foundations, verifying that Ephrata’s householders cleared the site for farming in the early 19th century, after the last celibate member died.

Warfel’s team has been digging on Mount Zion since 1999.The 1963 excavation on the hilltop claimed to have discovered the location of the Brotherhood’s prayer house, which was built near the dormitory in 1739, but Warfel’s findings challenge that claim. His 1999 excavation investigated a large area adjoining the earlier dig site and exposed new architectural features, including two cellars with built-in shelves. It’s now clear that the foundation discovered in 1963 is not the prayer house, but an unfinished addition to the dormitory.

The exact location of the Brotherhood’s prayer house is still in question. Warfel had the good fortune of obtain-

PHMC

ductivity measures the soil's ability to conduct an electrical charge, detecting disruptions in subsurface soils caused by a trench, a foundation, or a deposit of artifacts.

After completing the survey,Warfel’s team began an excavation of the trash pit discovered in 1988 and found that it lay beneath the remains of the Kedar, which was constructed in 1735.

The search for the Kedar’s foundation began there, in the center of the cloister compound, in 1994. Historic documents mentioned the Kedar, but not its location. Using ground-penetrating radar, Warfel detected a large feature with a “tail-like” appendage.

“We originally thought this feature to be the remains of a communal structure, since such structures at the cloister are massive and have at least one subsurface drain,” he said.

But what they found, upon excavating, was a borrow pit from which the cloister members took clay that was used to build their structures. It wasn’t until the 1995 season that they discovered a portion of the Kedar’s foundation.The Kedar, the cloister’s first large communal dormitory, was post-built—a technique that used wooden posts, which were sunk into the ground, to support the framework of the building. The method, which was not very durable, was commonly used by 17th- and 18th-century American immigrants. Eventually, these posts would rot, making the building unstable. Because they believed the

God’s Acre Cemetery and the rear of the bakery (left), which still stands, are seen in this 1908 photograph. The Saal and Saron are in the background.

In 18th-century Ephrata, each person ate approximately a pound of bread a day. The loaves they baked weighed about four pounds.

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fall • 2001

BOB BROOKE

Several members of the crew sift through excavated dirt in search of small artifiacts.

ing an 1815 map of the cloister that was found in an attic by a descendant of a householder family nearly six years ago. Using the map, Warfel’s team began a search for the building west of the dormitory site.They uncovered evidence of another structure that could be the prayer house, but further investigation is necessary to identify it, and the excavation has concluded for this season.

The buildings on Mount Zion served as a Revolutionary War military hospital during the winter of 1777—the same winter Washington quartered the Continental Army at Valley Forge—through the spring of 1778. Historians writing about the cloister in the 19th century stated that Mount Zion buildings were burned to rid the site of typhoid fever, which claimed the lives of numerous sick and wounded soldiers as well as several cloister members who nursed them. At that time, it was thought that burning materials that came in contact with infected people was the only way to stop the spread of the fever. But so far, Warfel has found no evidence of burning on the site.

What he has found—datable ceramics and early-19th-century coins so worn that they appear to have been in circulation for decades—lead him to determine that the dormitory was used as late as 1840.

“In the past two seasons, we’ve recovered over a hundred glass medicine vials,” said Warfel,“as well as newly cast and used musket balls, some of which may have been surgically removed from wounded soldiers.”

In addition, the discovery of buttons, straight pins, hook and eye fasteners, thimbles, and six pairs of scissors

american archaeology

indicate that the brothers may have helped repair the soldiers’ clothing.The large number of shoe buckles, leather punches, and iron tacks also suggests that they made and repaired shoes.

Over half a million artifacts have been recovered from Mount Zion alone.Warfel has found samples of stone tools and spear points, some of which date to at least 3500 B.C., indicating the property was once occupied by Native Americans who camped along the banks of the Cocalico Creek for short periods while hunting. But most of the artifacts speak of the strange life in Ephrata Cloister.

Though the excavation has uncovered a wealth of information, the entire story of Ephrata Cloister remains to be told. Next season,Warfel’s team will continue its search for the elusive foundation of the Brotherhood’s prayer house on Mount Zion.

“Historical archaeology is sometimes criticized for being the handmaiden to history,” Warfel said, “because many projects only seek to confirm what’s already recorded.”

But Warfel is rewriting history at Ephrata.

“I think that if there’s one contribution we’re making, it’s that we’re able to tell a more truthful story about the lifestyles of the men and women that lived here,” he added.“The people who inhabited the cloister seemed to be superhuman because of their extraordinary lifestyle.

However, they were much like everyone else.”

BOB BROOKE is a writer who lives near Ephrata Cloister.

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Challenging the Clovis Paradigm The Gault site has yielded a wealth of Clovis artifacts.

Archaeologist Michael Collins believes it’s also yielding new truths about the Clovis people.

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t’s early July in central Texas, and the temperature is approaching 100 degrees in the shade. But you’d never know it from looking at Michael Collins. Clad in khaki, with his cowboy hat keeping the sun off his brow and his work boots keeping the fire ants at bay, the 60-year-old archaeologist moves through the hilly brush and the fields as if it’s a mild spring day.

“It doesn’t bother me,” he says of the heat.

Collins has far greater concerns.The researcher from the Texas Archeological Research Laboratory at the University of Texas at Austin has been leading a team of archaeologists in uncovering a treasure trove of Clovis artifacts at the 25-acre Gault site, located about 50 miles north of Austin in southwestern Bell County. Many experts believe the Clovis were the first people to inhabit the Americas, and Collins’s efforts may shed some light on these nomadic big-game hunters.

Collins and his team have logged more than 300,000 artifacts, making Gault one of the most important Clovis sites in North America. Consequently, his excavation has received national and international press coverage.

Collins’s work has attracted money as well as the media.

He has received approximately $600,00 from foundations and private donors.At this point, there’s enough money to fund 11 more months of digging.Then come the analysis and the writing of reports, which require more funding.

“It often takes three years to get funding for a largescale project,” he says.

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fall • 2001

DARREN POORE

BY CLAIRE POOLE

DARREN POORE

C. Scott Speal, a member of the Gault excavation team, digs a three-foot-by-three-foot test trench. He’s digging into light colored clay deposits of early Paleo-Indian age.

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MICHAEL COLLINS MICHAEL COLLINS

of charcoal, the flow of ground water has eroded collagen from the animal bones they’ve found. As a result, they can’t be radiocarbon dated.

So Collins has cross dated Gault artifacts with those taken from other Clovis sites that have been radiocarbon dated, and he’s concluded that Gault’s Clovis occupation dates from approximately 12,900 to 13,200 years ago. He may also test burnt chert using a technique called thermoluminescence dating. After chert is burned, minute traces of light energy build up in the stone over time. By measuring that light, the material can be dated. But the technology can be unreliable.

The findings at Gault may contradict some widely accepted notions about the This extraordinarily large overshot flake came from a huge biface stone implement. Overshot flakClovis, who were named after a small town ing—which requires striking an object with a continuous motion that carries over from one side in New Mexico where their artifacts were of the object to the other—is a distinctive and difficult trait of Clovis flint knapping. first discovered. Collins says, “Nothing about this site jibes with the model.”

Among the most impressive artifacts are elegantly The Clovis are thought to have been nomadic, mamchipped blades,delicately point-ed gravers, and an adze. The moth-hunting people, yet they seemed to return to the chipped blades resemble steak knives, and their purpose Gault site time and time again.The Clovis were probably may have been to cut meat.The gravers are flake-like tools drawn by its rich chert, which was used in tool making, that were possibly used for tattooing, and the adze, a woodand also by its shady bluffs, the cool waters of a creek working tool, was probably used for shaving or chiseling. and surrounding springs and seeps, the small game that They also found a blade that, under microscopic inspection, frequented those waters, and the collectable plants. The revealed a silica residue that resulted from cutting grass.That site, located where the Gulf Coast Plain meets the Edindicates the Clovis were cutting some kind of plants, probwards Plateau, is what ecologists call an ecotone—a tranably grass or cane. Collins’s team has also found scores of sition area between two different plant communities. It Clovis projectile points (which seems the Clovis found Gault are renowned for their exquisite to be a kind of nirvana where craftsmanship), blades, blade desirable rock, animals, and cores, bifaces, and the bones of plant life were abundant. large and small animals.

“At most Clovis sites, you’d In addition to Clovis, the find exotic stone from somesite has yielded evidence of a where else—sometimes twenty number of later occupations. percent to one hundred perCollins is frustrated that he hascent exotics,” Collins says. n’t found any Clovis material “Here, they’d use the stone that can be radiocarbon dated. and come back later for more.

Artifacts have also been found There’s very little exotic: less below the Clovis layer, which than five percent. It was a difsuggests they may be pre-Cloferent pattern of mobility.” vis. But in order to verify this, Findings of small animal radiocarbon dates are essential. bones, many of which were “The only charcoal we’ve subjected to high heat, suggest found is in the level above the another difference.

Clovis.” Collins says.“It would be “That means they hunted nice if we could get [charcoal], This broken Clovis point made of clear quartz crystal was found in or trapped various animals, that but I don’t know where we’d Clovis deposits at the Gault site. It’s not unusual to find quartz they weren’t just hunting for points at Clovis sites, but it is rare to find quartz flakes, and three find it. I don’t think it’s here.” mammoth,” Collins says.“Clovis In addition to the absence flakes have been found at Gault. were more sophisticated than

DARREN POORE

the broad-based, popular theory that they were purely nomadic game hunters.”

The sophistication of the Clovis and their mastery of their environment leads Collins to conclude they were not the first Americans, that they learned from their precursors.

“Sites like this show that the Clovis adapted.You don’t get that much diversity in such a short period of time,” he says.“Besides, you never find the first of something.”

He also points to sites that some experts believe predate Clovis, such as Meadowcroft, in Pennsylvania, and Wilson-Leonard, in Texas.

How the Clovis got to central Texas is subject to conjecture. Most archaeologists believe they came to the Americas from Asia via the Bering Strait land bridge that at one time linked Siberia with Alaska. But Collins thinks they could have come by skin boats from Europe across the north Pacific or even the north Atlantic, and then followed the coastline southward.

“Everyone says they must have walked here,” he says.

But he observes that people used some kind of watercraft to reach the Australian continent thousands of years before Clovis.

“Archaeologists don’t give these people enough credit.They had the brain power; they were as smart as we are now.”

Members of the Texas Archeological Society work at the site. During the past two years, hundreds of people have contributed thousands of hours to this project.

THE DISCOVERY OF THE SITE

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itting on a folding chair in the shade of his truck, surrounded by horses and cows, Collins gives a brief history of the Gault site, which was named after one of its original owners, H. C. Gault.When the land was cleared around the turn of the century, big piles of fire-cracked rocks were found, probably from rock ovens that were used over the last 9,000 years or so.

J. E. Pearce, a former archaeologist at the University of Texas, found abundant evidence of prehistoric peoples there. Pearce’s modus operandi was to visit an area he wanted to explore, hang out with the men in town, and eventually ask them about a good place to find arrowheads. He would then go to that place, obtaining permission from the landowners to dig.

In the winter of 1929, he began digging at the Gault site.Though he took few notes, Pearce took photographs and made extensive collections of his findings, which consisted of stone tools, projectile points, and one Clovis artifact: a blade.

Collectors and looters raided the site for decades.

During the 1980s and 1990s, the landowner allowed peo-

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ple to dig there for a fee of $25 per day. Collins says some looters were making a living selling what they found.They did a lot of damage, breaking up the deposits and leaving broken arrowheads, beer and soda cans, and cigarette butts in their wake. In some areas, they removed the upper 70 centimeters of the stratigraphy.

In 1990, David Olmstead, a collector from nearby Temple, found an area of the site that hadn’t been disturbed, and began to dig there. He dug about five feet into what he called “gray, gritty dirt” and hit a jackpot: two Clovis points and four elaborately engraved stones, with straight lines that ran parallel or intersected. He got in touch with a man named Pete Bostrom, who cast and photographed them. Bostrom then called Collins and Tom Hester, who was then the director of the Texas Archeological Research Laboratory at the University of Texas, and suggested they get in touch with Olmstead.

Olmstead took them to the site, and they made arrangements for a brief excavation in June 1991. During a two week period, they found a projectile point and three engraved stones, as well as several blades and blade cores.

“This was a manufacturing site,” Collins remembers thinking. “It had wonderful flint, the creek and lots of plants and animals to eat.”

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(From left) A coarsely serrated blade used to cut meat; a blade used to cut grass or cane; a typical Clovis blade; a small serrated blade used to cut meat. Microscopic analysis of the blades helped to determine their uses. The purpose of the typical Clovis blade is unknown.

After Hester and Collins left, the looters returned and took everything they could find. The looting stopped when the Lindsey family of Florence,Texas, acquired the site in 1998.The Lindseys found some mammoth bones, including a mandible with four teeth.They called the University of Texas in May 1998 to come out and take a look.

“There were more Clovis artifacts than I had seen in my entire life,” Collins says.

Two of the country’s best paleoarcheologists, Vance Haynes of the University of Arizona and George Frison of the University of Wyoming, visited the site in the spring of 2000, and they were amazed at its size and the plentitude of Clovis artifacts. Collins got access to the site by leasing it for three years, an agreement that expires May 31, 2002.

“I knew time was short, so I quickly raised support money and began inviting field schools and volunteers to get to work on the site,” he says.

MICHAEL COLLINS

has had volunteer field crews come from as far away as New Hampshire to lend a hand.Texas A&M archaeologists Mike Waters and Harry Shafer led a field class that spent an entire semester there in the spring of 2000.They worked Sunday nights through Thursday nights at the site, sleeping in cabins at a nearby church school camp, and then returned to the university on Fridays to work in the lab.

They dug down in five-centimeter increments with trowels, spatulas, and even bamboo fashioned into trowelshaped tools (which they purchased from Pier 1) so as not to scratch or chip the artifacts. By the end of the semester, they had dug all the way to bedrock.Their work yielded 30,000 items, ranging from blades and points to bison and raccoon bones.

But, even with the extra help, things don’t always go smoothly.

“People work for short periods, and we have a few volunteers without experience,” Collins says.

Though the heat is oppressive, rain can be far worse.

The Texas Archeological Society held a field school the second week of June, with several hundred volunteers digging for six days. On the morning of the seventh day, five and one half inches of rain fell in two hours.The following week brought two more inches of rain.Though the exca-

HELP ARRIVES

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ypically people want to monopolize a find like this,” David Carlson says of Gault. “But Collins did something rare: He invited other people to work the site.

He wanted as many people as he could get from related disciplines to maximize the time he had.”

Carlson, a Texas A&M archaeologist, is leading a fiveweek field school of about 15 students at Gault. They camp out at Collins’s farm, which is about 20 minutes from the site, working from 7:15 A.M. until around 2 P.M. After dinner at the farm, they spend several hours doing lab work.

“We want to get a better sample of Folsom-age artifacts, which are right above the Clovis,” he says.“I wanted what we we’re doing to complement what they had already done.”

A considerable amount of work has been done. Collins

DARREN POORE

“

Al Redder, a member of the Texas Archeological Society, carefully brushes dirt from artifacts. Redder found numerous artifacts during the week he spent working this spot.

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(Above) Water screening helps to break down rock-hard clay and facilitates the recovery of delicate objects with far less damage than generally occurs with dry screening. The mesh of the screen is as small as one-eighth of an inch, which allows it to capture tiny objects.

(Left) Marilyn Shoberg, a member of Collins’s team, holds a bone in a plaster jacket. Bone in the Clovis deposits at Gault is often fragmentary and DARREN POORE

has to be removed along with the surrounding dirt in these jackets. The bones are then taken to the laboratory, where they are exposed and hardened with preservatives before being removed from the plaster.

vation sites were covered with tarps, Collins and his staff have spent over a month cleaning up after the storms.

“We lost one hundred and fifty person days,” he laments.

THE IMPACT OF GAULT

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ollins hopes that eventually Gault will become an archeological preserve or research center. In any event, the data generated by the present investigations will occupy scholars for years to come.

Collins, who has been excavating for decades, will continue to busy himself at Gault—at least until his lease expires. He spends two or three days a week at the site, Saturdays included, and the rest of his time in Austin in the lab.

“We hardly see each other,” he says of his wife, who is equally busy with her career.“She gets in at 10 P.M., when I’m already asleep, because I’ve been getting up at 4 A.M.” Collins has written one book, and he believes there’s another one to be written about Gault. So far, his team has produced some preliminary reports about the site.

“The sheer size of the site—there’s nothing like it in North America,” says Waters.“And the sheer density of artifacts at the site—there were Clovis artifacts in multiple stratigraphic units. It was a foot thick with Clovis material.”

Like Collins, Waters and Shafer think the Gault site was probably a workshop of some kind, maybe even a training ground for novices.

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“The springs, the biological resources, the large number of animals and the fine-grained rock material— that’s why the Clovis kept coming back,” Waters says.

“That’s why we ended up with such a great density of artifacts and debitage there.You could see the whole tool manufacturing process.”

Waters shares Collins’s disappointment about not being able to radiocarbon date Clovis material from the site.

“Is this early Clovis, or late Clovis, the whole Clovis range? That’s the heartbreak of Gault: We don’t know where it falls in terms of time. Gault will give us good comparisons. Hopefully, someone will find a Clovis hearth with a bunch of charcoal.”

Waters believes that the Gault site will contribute to our knowledge of the earliest inhabitants of Texas and the Americas.

“We have these conflicts between evidence and theories,” Collins says while munching on the last of his lunch, a bag of Oreos.“It’s time to back up and say,‘What does the evidence say?’ We need to look at alternative theories and analyze them.”

Some crucial evidence may come from under the ground he is standing on.

CLAIRE POOLE has written for Forbes and other national publications.

Her article “La Salle, La Belle, and the Lone Star State” appeared in the Fall 2000 issue of American Archaeology.

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MONA MILLS

The First Americans Despite the growing number of pre-Clovis sites, a prominent archaeologist argues that the Clovis were the first to inhabit the New World.

BY BRIAN FAGAN

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hink of landscape on a grand scale, of vast steppe-tundra, snow- and ice-covered mountains, of rugged, ice-mantled coasts, and unexpected oases of more temperate vegetation.Think of foraging across endless grass-covered plains, through tropical and temperate woodland, across harsh deserts, never seeing another person from one day to the next. Imagine being one of the first humans to settle in a virgin continent, perhaps meeting no more than a few dozen people a year. Contemplate a life continually on the move, with the threat of predators on every side. Above all, think of a huge continent with only a few thousand inhabitants, scattered from the Arctic Ocean to the Strait of Magellan, living in every kind of environment imaginable. Small wonder we know almost nothing about the first Americans.They left almost nothing behind them. As Canadian archaeologist Richard Morlan remarks, searching for the first Americans is like “a search for a needle in a haystack— and a frozen one at that.”

The first settlement of the Americas remains one of the great controversies of archaeology, remarkable as much for its rhetoric and wild claims as for hard evidence.

Until 1926, most experts believed that the New World was settled about 4,000 years ago.Then archaeologist Jesse Figgins excavated the Folsom site in New Mexico, where he found Paleo-Indian stone points in association with the bones of extinct bison (embedded in the rib cages of the skeltons). Folsom was a landmark discovery, which added at least 6,000 years to North American prehistory.

Then, in 1932, amateur collectors found projectile points and extinct mammal bones lying along the shores of long-dried-up shallow lakes at Clovis, also in New Mexico.

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Between 1949 and 1951, large-scale excavations there revealed four mammoths associated with Clovis points, stratified under Folsom artifacts. With the advent of radiocarbon dating in 1949, Clovis sites were dated to about 10,000 to 11,000 years ago. Today, with accelerator mass spectrometry carbon dating and tree-ring calibrations, the Clovis people are dated to between 13,000 and 13,500 years ago.The great Ice Age megafauna became extinct at about the same time; indeed Clovis hunters may have helped in the process. After 13,000, Clovis gave way abruptly to a much greater variety of Paleo-Indian cultures.

In the years since the original Clovis excavations, similar distinctive fluted points have come from sites in all of the lower 48 states, and also from Mexico. Well-documented Clovis sites and hundreds of isolated projectile point finds paint a picture of a widespread, highly mobile culture, which subsisted not only on big-game hunting, but on plant foods and smaller game as well. Clovis groups soon spread rapidly into unexploited territories where the carrying capacity of the land was very low. Furthermore, Clovis artifacts have at least loose ties to late Ice Age technologies in the Old World. For a generation or more, the Clovis people were the first Americans, portrayed as PaleoIndian big-game hunters with deadly stone-tipped spears, who traveled from Canada to Tierra del Fuego in a few breathless centuries, decimating megafauna on every side.

“Clovis is first” achieved the status of archaeological dogma—yet no Clovis points occur in South America.

But was Clovis the earliest of all, or did humans arrive in the Americas sometime earlier? Almost all the experts now agree that first settlement took place either during the closing millennia of the late Ice Age, some 15,000 to

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question:Why was America settled so late, compared with Australia (over 35,000 years ago) and even Okinawa (30,000 years ago)? The answer must surely be environmental. Despite prolonged searching, Russian archaeologists have found no signs of human occupation in northeastern Siberia before about 18,000 years ago, when the last Ice Age was at its height. If northeast Asia was uninhabited in earlier times, then we have a secure baseline for the first Americans—if they crossed on land.

For years, archaeological canon proclaimed that the first Americans arrived dry-shod, across the Bering Strait. From Alaska, they then spread southward into the heart of North America as the great ice sheets of the north retreated rapidly. Many people still believe this is the most likely route.

But what about a sea crossing? Could people have bypassed Siberia and crossed from, say, Japan or Kamchatka, to Alaska and the Aleutians? Theoretically, they could have.

During the late Ice Age, world sea levels were as many as 300 feet below modern levels. In theory, the first settlers could have moved southward along Ice Age coasts, using the continental shelf and subsisting off fish and sea mammals as well as game.The coastal route would have allowed people to move southward during the coldest millennia of the late Ice Age, perhaps as early as 20,000 years ago, or even earlier. Long stretches of the northern coastline were more passable 13,000 years ago than they are today.

Some regions may even have supported biologically rich coastal environments ideal for late Ice Age huntergatherer groups. Furthermore, much of southeastern Alaska and British Columbia were deglaciated by 12,000 years ago.The Canadian archaeologist Knud Fladmark has uncovered traces of early human occupation on the Queen Charlotte Islands and suspects that humans lived in this region as early as 12,000 years ago.

Unfortunately, the coastal hypothesis is virtually impossible to support with hard evidence, not only because of high sea levels that have covered archaeological sites, but for other reasons, too. We know that the first human inhabitants of the Americas were terrestrial hunter-gatherers. But did they also hunt sea The El Llano Archaeological Society, a group of amateur archaeologists, excavate Mammoth 1 at Blackwater Draw in 1962. Five mammoths and a bison were found in this area, and Mammoth 1 was the first to be excavated. Two Clovis points were found in the remains.

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20,000 years ago, or perhaps very slightly earlier than that, or with the Clovis incursion, about 13,500 years ago. Are there, then, any sites which date to these critical six and one-half millennia?

Three sites are the strongest claimants. James Adovasio excavated Meadowcroft Rockshelter on a tributary of the Ohio River southwest of Pittsburgh in the 1970s and 1980s.

Adovasio dug the site with meticulous care and revealed 11 strata, with claimed radiocarbon dates for human occupation dating to at least 19,600 years ago.

Some authorities, among them Vance Haynes of the University of Arizona, the world's leading Clovis expert, contended that these early dates were contaminated by calcium carbonate in the surrounding deposits, and are therefore invalid. Adovasio countered with an averaged earliest occupation of 13,955 to 14,555 years ago, slightly earlier than Clovis.

Monte Verde in Chile is another early site, occupied by people living off game animals and plant foods about 14,500 years ago.The occupation includes wooden huts, hearths, and simple stone artifacts; some little modified from their natural state. None of the Monte Verde implements bear any resemblance to Clovis tool kits. Although doubts have been raised about Monte Verde, most archaeologists accept it as one of the earliest humanly occupied sites in the Americas.

Every year sees new sites that are claimed to be preClovis sites, most of them little more than isolated scatters of stone tools. For example, Cactus Hill in southern Virginia has yielded a small group of stone tools said to lie under a Clovis occupation and to date to about 18,000 years ago, but few details have been published. At present, Monte Verde is the only widely accepted “smoking gun,” a location thousands of miles south of Clovis country.

If Clovis is indeed the first, we must confront another

Clovis and Pre-Clovis Sites Bering Land Bridge Route

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Coastal Route

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KATHLEEN SPARKES • WHITE HART DESIGN

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Murray Springs & Escapule, AZ Lehner, Naco, Leikem & Navarette, AZ Clovis, NM Lubbock Lake, TX Sheaman, WY Lange/Ferguson, SD Domebo, OK Aubrey, TX Rogers Rockshelter, MO Kimmswick, MO Dietz, OR East Wenatchee, WA Hiscock & Arc, NY Shawnee–Minisink, PA Meadowcroft, PA (Pre-Clovis site) Thunderbird, VA Williamson, VA Cactus Hill, VA (Pre-Clovis site) Monte Verde, Chile (Pre-Clovis site) Gault, TX Dent, CO Colby, WY Anzick, MI Wells Creek, TN ARCHAEOLOGICAL CONSERVANCY SITES Chesrow, WI

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Silver Mound, WI Borax Lake, CA Did the first Americans come by land, or by sea, or both? These are theoretical coastal and inland

Nevers, NH

migration routes. The Clovis people definitely traveled inland, as these Clovis sites show.

mammals and fish from the Pacific Coast? The CroMagnons of western Europe hunted sea mammals and fished salmon, as did late Ice Age Africans and Solomon Islanders in the southwestern Pacific. But the real intensification of fishing and sea mammal hunting around the world took place much later, after about 10,000 years ago.

Far to the south of Alaska, the Daisy and Eel Caves on southern California's Channel Islands provide evidence for maritime adaptations by 9,000 years ago. But were these adaptations developed locally, or did they result from the diffusion of maritime economies down the Pacific Coast, which arrived in the north much earlier? We simply do not know. Nor do we have any evidence for watercraft such as skin boats or planked canoes from the late Ice Age north, technologies which require a high degree of seamanship to operate in chilly northern waters, where a person falling in the icy water has but minutes to live. Compelling as a coastal route might be, there is absolutely no archaeological evidence to support it, nor is much likely to be found in the future.

The issue of settlement routes is still unresolved, and so is the date of first settlement, even if we have become more conservative in recent years. A date in the 15,000year range seems entirely possible, while many people, this writer included, would be delighted to learn of a well-

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stratified and accurately dated site dating to 25,000 years ago or more. So far, however, the case for anything other than a few small-scale settlements before 15,000 years ago is unproven.

Over 10,000 archaeologists work in the Americas.

Many of them are engaged almost entirely in administrative functions, but the number of people in the field actively looking for Paleo-Indian settlements is still impressive. Much of Central and South America remains unexplored, and it is in these regions that very early sites are most likely to be found—if they exist at all. One could logically expect to find even earlier sites in North America, but the region has now been thoroughly explored, yet no traces of any human settlement earlier than, at the outside, 14,000 years ago have yet come to light.Those that have are, at best, scatters of stone artifacts and sometimes some animal bones. As the years pass, the existence of older sites is increasingly doubtful simply because there are so many people looking without success.

We cannot dismiss a pre-Clovis people out of hand.

The first archaeological sites in the Americas may simply be invisible.The archaeological “signature” left by the first settlers would have been exiguous at best, given that they would have been tiny populations that moved rapidly over enormous distances. For the most part, they appear to

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have dwelt in transitory open sites, which soon vanished Alaska and settled there by about 15,000 years ago, or perafter abandonment.To judge by modern hunter-gatherer haps earlier. As global warming proceeded, the ice sheets groups, their tool kits were simple, highly portable, and mantling northern North America receded.Tiny numbers often made almost entirely of wood and other perishables of human settlers moved southward—either inland, or that did not survive over the millennia.The artifacts they along the coast.Within a few centuries, a handful of bands possessed were few. Anthropologist Richard Lee once had settled as far south as Chile, where they had adapted noted that the highly mobile !Kung San hunter-gatherers to tropical conditions with very different tool kits. Who of southern Africa's Kalahari Desert had but 24 items in these earliest settlers were in cultural terms is completely their tool kits.The same argument can be applied to the unknown, but their cultures were highly diverse. Human earliest Paleo-Indians. populations rose rapidly after they Are Meadowcroft, Monte Verde, arrived, reflected in an explosion of and other pre-Clovis sites someClovis sites throughout North thing different? Do they preserve a America, and many still little known record of primordial Americans contemporary, but very different quite different from their succescultures to the south. sors? Monte Verde, the best-preThis process of first settlement served settlement, has an entirely was neither simple nor a single midifferent tool kit. As Tom Dillehay gration. Rather, it was the result of and others have pointed out, the constant natural movements of first Americans adapted to very dihunter-gatherer people across verse environments, many of them Beringia and into the continent, heavily forested, and often in the which ebbed and flowed over tropics. The culture of the first many centuries, few of them leavAmericans may have been remarking any traces of their passing.The first settlers were the direct, and ably similar over enormous areas— very diverse, ancestors of the Clowitness the distinctive Clovis points vis people and other Paleo-Indian found over the lower 48 states and societies, whose lifeways and tool throughout much of southern kit originated in ancient Stone Age Canada. But the environmental dicultural traditions in Asia. I suspect versity of the Americas, especially that, when the metaphorical dust south of the Rio Grande, must have These Clovis blades were found in 1962 by F. E. Green of settles and a lot more fieldwork has led to highly diverse human adaptations and cultures quite different Texas Technological College (now Texas Tech University). been done, pre-Clovis and Clovis may prove to be the same thing, from the familiar Clovis tradition, part and parcel of intricate, small-scale population movebut of the same, or even slightly earlier, date. Says Dillehay ments. In short, the Clovis people and their immediate of South America: “Each region had its own history.” Maybe predecessors are the first Americans. If there were earlier we should abandon the term Clovis, or define it more settlers, we would have found them by now—and I hope closely, to reflect a much more diverse reality.

I am wrong in saying this.

Three-quarters of a century after Folsom, I believe we The question of first settlement is closely tied to have the outlines of a potential scenario for first settleother fascinating questions surrounding the initial peoment, as follows: During the late Ice Age, the Bering Land Bridge joined Siberia to Alaska. Low-lying, bitterly cold, and pling of an uninhabited continent. As Bob Kelly, president windy, Beringia was an inhospitable place, which supof the Society for American Archaeology says, perhaps the ported only a tiny human population—people with biomost interesting question of all is: “How did humans with logical and cultural roots in the Stone Age cultural tradia foraging economy occupy unoccupied land?” How did tions of Asia. We know nothing of these hunter-gatherers, they adapt to new animals, unfamiliar environments, and nor do we know when humans first settled on the land exotic edible flora? To these questions and many others, bridge.The southern coast of the land bridge was stormy we still lack answers. Unfortunately, the search for the and gradually shelving, constantly exposed to southwestfirst Americans will always be a chase after elusive shaderly gales, a dangerous lee shore for any Stone Age navigaows. It will depend not on rhetoric, but on meticulous tors. I believe first settlement was probably inland, even if fieldwork, impeccable stratigraphic work and dating, and, coasts were exploited very early on the American side. above all, careful observation.

Sometime around 16,000 years ago, rising sea levels BRIAN FAGAN is a professor of archaeology at the University of California, began to inundate the land bridge. Both human and mamSanta Barbara, and the author of many books on archaeology. mal populations moved eastward onto higher ground in

The Consequences of Contact

ANN F. RAMENOFSKY

It was once thought that European diseases decimated Native American populations. Recent research is examining this notion.

In this 16th-century illustration, a medicine man ministers to Aztecs infected by smallpox, the deadly legacy of the Spanish invaders.

F

BY TAMAR STIEBER rom the opening of its first crude one-room schoolhouse until about 35 years ago, America weaned its sons and daughters on the notion that relatively few Indians inhabited North America when Christopher Columbus “discovered” the New World. In 1894, the U.S. Census Bureau decided only 490,000 indigenous people lived in the United States 300 years before the American Revolution.

With time and research, however, the retroactive pop-

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ulation count began to climb—gently at first to 1,150,000 in 1928, when the esteemed Smithsonian ethnologist James Mooney published estimates based largely on oral history and scant historical records. His count was followed by several sharply revised estimates over the next 40 years. Alfred Kroeber, one of the founding fathers of modern anthropology, pronounced in 1939 that 4.2 million people populated the continent when the first Europeans arrived.Three decades later, Henry Dobyns made the con-

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FLMNH ARCHIVES

Tatham Mound is an early-16th-century Indian burial site in the cove of the Withlacoochee River, near Tampa, Florida. Analysis of the burials and artifacts indicated European contact. Some of the skeletons had bone lesions that could have resulted from a non-venereal form of syphilis.

troversial argument that America was home to 12.2 million (he later claimed 18 million) Indians in 1492.

In his seminal 1966 paper,“Estimating Aboriginal American Populations: An Appraisal of Techniques with a New Hemisphere Estimate,” Dobyns claimed that along with horses and guns, Spanish conquistadores, followed in short order by explorers from England and France, introduced a panoply of infectious diseases into the Americas to which the natives had virtually no immunity.Almost immediately, a tidal wave of virulent epidemics—primarily measles, smallpox, scarlet fever, and influenza—swept swiftly across the continent, wiping out more than 95 percent of the indigenous population over the next century and a half, according to Dobyns. Only the Black Death, which killed off about 75 percent of Europe and Asia during the mid-14th century, approached this magnitude of devastation.

Tantamount to anthropological heresy, Dobyns’s model stood in direct counterpoint to Kroeber’s, which presented a far more benign picture of post-Columbian Native America. Like most cultural anthropologists of his era, Kroeber was enchanted by the romance of the American Indian. He chose to emphasize the ideal of the “noble savage” to the near exclusion of the atrocities Europe visited—intentionally and not—upon the New World. Kroeber readily acknowledged that he “could not stand all the tears” such stories elicited from Indians he interviewed.

Despite myriad disagreements about Native American

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history, some experts seem to concur on one point: 150 years after Columbus, fewer than 300,000 Indians remained on these shores. Of course, anthropologists, as they’re wont to do, are still arguing over the exact chain of events leading to the near-extinction of Native Americans. But their differences have narrowed markedly in the 35 years since Dobyns first proposed his revolutionary theories that would eventually replace Kroeber’s idyllic reconstruction of pre-Columbian native life. Now, however, it’s Dobyns’s turn to be nudged off the pedestal.

Over the past decade, a new generation of archaeologists—in concert with cultural anthropologists, biologists, demographers, ethnohistorians, and other social and physical scientists—has unearthed evidence that sheds doubt, if not completely discredits, many of Dobyns’s conclusions. While none dispute that disease did, indeed, decimate Native America, they’re finding that it wasn’t so much a tidal wave as a mosaic of epidemics moving haphazardly across space and time. Measles, for example, one of the most deadly of these imports, could wipe out an entire village within a few months, while leaving a neighboring community completely unscathed.

“I think the spread of any particular smallpox or measles epidemic was much more irregular, affecting some groups but not others,” said George R. Milner, an osteologist and professor of archaeology at Pennsylvania State University.With only erratic contact between neighfall • 2001

WILL OWENS

boring groups, he said, the likelihood of an epidemic spreading from one village to the next “was not always that high.”

Which leads Milner and a growing number of his colleagues to believe that far fewer Indians succumbed to European disease than Dobyns calculated.The issue remains roiled in controversy because it leaves vital questions unanswered: How many Indians lived here immediately prior to Columbus? How many died prematurely after contact with Europeans?

What were the primary causes of death?

“It’s a very complex topic,” states University of New Mexico archaeologist Ann Ramenofsky. “Look at North America, for example.

Where you see Indians surviving into the 20th century, does that mean disease wasn’t present or that the Spanish policy was not so severe?”

In her 1987 book, Vectors of Death: The Archaeology of European Contact, Ramenofsky concludes with what is becoming common currency among contact-era anthropologists: Rather than any one single event or cause, it was a unique confluence of circumstances, including such variables of nature as geography and native population density, that helped forge the ultimately destructive path of European infectious disease contact in the Americas.

In America’s southeastern woodlands, for example, the size and density of the native population at the time of first contact was far greater than most other parts of the country.

Naturally, this provided an ideal environment for the rapid spread of disease—as did frequent contact with European ships, which often made America’s southeastern shores their second port of call after the Caribbean.

Noting the proximity of the Caribbean and south Atlantic, Ramenofsky pointed out that “this was not the case in the Southwest.”

“Native population density was lower in the Southwest than in the Southeast, and contact with disease pools was less frequent.The Franciscan supply trains from Mexico City, for instance, came up to the New Mexico colony every three years,” she explained.

The route took them along the Camino Real—3,000 arduous miles across inhospitable terrain to the high desert of northern and central New Mexico.

That’s not to say that the Pueblo Indians didn’t suffer as a result of their contact with Europeans.

“There’s no question that there’s a significant population decline in the Southwest,” Ra-

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A Pioneer in Bioarchaeology

For bioarchaeologist Clark Spencer Larsen, the transfer of European germs from the Old World to the New isn’t just about death; it’s also about life.

“I look at these populations as if they’re living and breathing,” declared Larsen, who heads the anthropology department at Ohio State University.

A pioneer in the field of bioarchaeology, and perhaps its preeminent scholar, Larsen has spent the past 20 years directing the La Florida Archaeology Project—a long-term research effort looking at the health impacts of European contact in Spanish Florida, which is now northern Florida and coastal Georgia. The project’s list of participants reads like a veritable Who’s Who in the emerging field of bioarchaeology.

Larsen said the group’s work clearly shows that the health of indigenous Americans declined rapidly after European contact, though perhaps not directly from killer epidemics.

“The main thrust of our work is to show there’s much more to this discussion than just epidemic disease,” Larsen said. “That’s what historians focus on because that’s what’s in the historical record. And it’s sensational because you tend to talk about thousands dying.”

By their very nature, epidemics are acute, often killing their hosts before they can make their mark on the skeleton. So Larsen and others are turning their attention to long-term chronic conditions such as anemia and osteoarthritis, which leave distinct skeletal signatures, to learn about indigenous life after the Spanish arrived.

Larsen’s new book, Skeletons in Our Closet: Revealing Our Past through Bioarchaeology, describes 16th-century Native Americans as suffering from overwork and malnutrition under Spanish colonization and thus predisposed to the variety of infectious diseases assailing the New World. This doesn’t negate the destruction wreaked on the New World by European epidemics.

“To be sure, many lost their lives because of infectious disease,” he said. “But skeletons give us a more comprehensive picture.”

—Tamar Stieber

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ing foreigners, who repaid their hosts’ hospitality with killer germs. Almost immediately, local populations began dying en masse of measles and smallpox and other newly introduced diseases.

As Ramenofsky readily acknowledges, disease is not the only factor in the disappearance. Warfare, enslavement, starvation, and wanton murder certainly contributed heavily to the near-extinction of indigenous Americans.

Which was the greater villain—the practices and policies of colonialism or the spread of disease—remains enigmatic. Nor are they mutually exclusive. The list of atrocities and indignities Native Americans suffered at the hands of the colonists, not least of which included being wrenched from their traditional ways, weakened their immune systems, rendering survivors all the more vulnerable to the vortex of new disIn order to refine their population estimates, George Milner and Dean Snow plot the distribution of eastern ease arriving with every inNorth American archaeological sites that date to about A.D. 1500. coming ship.

This is not unique to the menofsky stressed.“But I don’t think it happens in 1520 or Americas. Europeans suffered similar conditions in the 1540. I think the watershed of major change demographi14th century—a time of war, poverty, and great upheaval cally and socially in the Southwest is the Pueblo Revolt of that provided a prime breeding ground for bubonic 1680.” plague. Unlike the Americas two centuries later, however, It was only immediately before and after the 1680 upEurope repopulated relatively quickly. Native America rising, in which the Pueblos prevailed, that there are siznever truly recovered. able drops in the numbers of inhabited pueblos and pop“They [Europeans] rebounded so well that they ‘disulation size. Entire regions like the Galisteo Basin or the covered’ the New World while American Indians almost lower Rio Grande are completely abandoned. The reasons became extinct.Why?” Ramenofsky asked rhetorically. for the diaspora remain subject to great debate.They may Why, indeed? And why did epidemics, particularly well be related to why the puebloans survived relatively measles and smallpox, pass over some indigenous Ameriunscathed from the pre-18th-century epidemics that killed can populations—much as the “tenth plague” against the so many Indians so quickly in other areas.

Israelites of ancient Egypt, death to all newborn boys, “I think the best way to see it is to say that European passed over households marked with the blood of the contact posed a gauntlet or a bottleneck that these popuPaschal Lamb—while cutting a swath of death through lations had to get through,” Ramenofsky said. Bolstering other communities in their paths?

Milner’s argument, she noted that “some individuals made “I have ideas about what happened here,” Ramenofit in some places and not others.” sky said of her aforementioned theories.“But it’s hard to empirically show.”

A large proportion of those that didn’t survive this It’s unlikely we’ll ever know with any certainty how gauntlet inhabited the southeastern lowlands of North many native people died, or, for that matter, how many America. People in this region had the misfortune of being were alive and well before the European incursion.While among the first indigenous Americans to greet the seafar-

and smallpox only indicate long-term exposure, not whether they killed the person.And in a classic Catch-22, diseases acute enough to kill overnight won’t have a chance to leave their mark, even if bone lesions are their usual modus operandi.

“Right off the bat, we’re starting at negative,” commented Hutchinson.“So you’ve got to look for inferential sets of evidence, rather than some big lesion under ultraviolet light that screams out,‘I killed someone!’”

While Hutchinson has no doubts that European-introduced disease killed off much of Native America, he points out that there are a “whole series of variables” affecting precisely what happened, where it happened, and to whom it happened. He sees his job as no less than developing a set of criteria by which to gauge all such variables. The difficulty of this task was underscored for Hutchinson during his work at Tatham Mound.

Located near Tampa, Florida,Tatham Mound is a 16thcentury Indian burial site roughly contemporaneous with the explorations of Hernando de Soto. It was here that Hutchinson and colleague Jeffrey Mitchem of the Arkansas Archaeological Survey discovered a large grave containing some 300 corpses packed tightly together. Seventy bodies had been buried shortly after death, which Hutchinson noted was unusual for Indians at this time and place. Some of the skeletons they found exhibited bone lesions consistent with treponemal infection, a non-venereal and rela-

THE NEW WORLD THE FIRST PICTURES OF AMERICA

contact-era population and depopulation figures have become a fixation for some anthropologists, others have given up on the numbers game entirely. East Carolina University osteologist Dale Hutchinson makes it clear as to which camp he’s in.

“Everybody throws their hands up in different places,” Hutchinson said. “I would have to say I throw mine up at contact-period population figures.”

First of all, said Hutchinson, any population estimates are “based on fragmentary evidence.”

“You only have Europeans observing Native Americans during the first fifty years of contact and in very specific places,” he argued.“It’s really only seventy-five years or perhaps even greater into the contact experience that you begin getting good population figures.”

Not just the human element, but the elusive nature of disease itself is problematic to archaeologists, for whom the human skeleton is the primary “database,” as Hutchinson describes it. Except in rare cases, the soft tissue is long gone by the time archaeologists get into the act.

“That’s why every new discovery of a frozen body or mummy generates great excitement among anthropologists,” said Hutchinson.“They’re so much richer for the information we’re interested in: TB lesions in the lungs, even actual pathogens may be available in soft tissue. We don’t get that in hard tissue and that’s a problem.”

Even common tell-tale bone lesions left by syphilis

The book The New World The First Pictures of America includes an illustration of Theodore De Bry's 1591 engraving depicting illness among Indian groups encountered along the Georgia coast and the Northeast Florida coast. This image is titled "How They Treat Their Sick." This excerpt is from the caption in the book: "They build a bench long enough and wide enough for the sick person, and he is laid upon it, either on his back or on his stomach.... For the sick, whom they lay face downward, a fire of hot coals is prepared, onto which seeds are thrown. The sick man inhales the smoke through his nose and mouth; this is to act as a purge, expelling the poison from the body and thus curing the disease."

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SILVER HORN

Drawings were used by Plains Indians to maintain formal calendar records as well as to illustrate stories. This Kiowa calendar depicts the measles epidemic of 1892. Most adults survived the epidemic, but many children died.

tively benign form of syphilis common in pre-Columbian America.This raised the specter of a controversial theory called the Columbus Exchange.

Dating back to the 1940s, the Columbus Exchange posits that the 15th- and 16th-century explorers who unknowingly introduced all manner of killer diseases to the Western Hemisphere were reciprocated in kind. In addition to gold and silver, chocolate and potatoes, they also returned home with syphilis, allegedly unknown in the Old World prior to this time. Advocates of the theory believe explorers contracted chronic, non-venereal syphilis in the New World and carried it to Europe where, within a few generations—the blink of an eye in evolutionary terms—it mutated into the venereal infection familiar to us today. Eventually, the theory goes, this new and far more virulent disease journeyed back to the Americas on European ships, infecting the natives.

However intriguing the theory, for Hutchinson and Mitchem it remains just that—a theory. Despite their best efforts at Tatham, they found no hard evidence pointing to the origin of syphilis, its transference, or even whether it was the cause of death. All they knew for certain was that some of the corpses had been exposed to the disease.

Their joint paper,“Correlates of Contact: Epidemic Disease in Archaeological Context,” presents Tatham Mound as an example of the difficulties, due to the lack of hard data, of

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studying epidemics in archaeological contexts.

But state-of-the-art technology borrowed from other sciences—DNA mapping, molecular hard and soft tissue analysis, even computer modeling predicting how disease affects a population—is, in the words of Penn State’s George Milner “revolutionizing the field.” Hutchinson has high hopes for these sorts of activities, though he said their growth has been “slower than expected.” Both men agree, however, that the success of such methods depends upon close communication between the physical and social sciences.

Indeed, the lines between the sciences are getting blurrier, to which the birth of a new discipline—bioarchaeology—attests. Also called physical archaeology, it’s a nascent field that explores the intersection of biology and behavior. Among the experts in the field is Dean Snow, head of Pennsylvania State University’s anthropology department, where he works closely with Milner.

Snow had an easier time than most of his colleagues in digging up an archaeological record of disease. He uncovered clear evidence of sudden, large-scale death-by-disease in the Mohawk Valley of upstate New York during a project to measure the rise of the Mohawk population— the easternmost of the five Iroquois nations—and its subsequent collapse after the first European epidemics arrived around 1634. fall • 2001

SILVER HORN

The Kiowa had a particularly complex calendar system with events recorded for both summer and winter of each year. This calendar shows the summer following the smallpox epidemic of the winter of 1839-40, when many people still had the disease.

“That was the first big smallpox epidemic that hit the Northeast,” said Snow.“What we found was a depopulation of about sixty percent. The epidemic ran its course in about one hundred days.”

Scarlet fever was also rampant in the Mohawk Valley at that time—in part, Snow explained, because the Iroquois ate from communal pots.“One longhouse would all get sick while the one next door wouldn’t. Nobody knew what was causing this.”

Snow was able to determine the type, scope, and transmission of epidemics by consulting the historical record, much of it documented by 17th-century Jesuit missionaries.While these sorts of records are among the most common tools of the trade, Snow was among the first anthropologists to measure population change by archaeological means, including computer simulations.

“We know a little from the historical record about how people move around,” he said, recalling a specific incident in which “Jesuit missionaries could identify the guy who showed up with the disease.”

Combining this knowledge with data from a similar, well-documented epidemic in India and Pakistan, the research team plugged the information into a computer simulation program designed by well-known UCLA historical demographer Russell Thornton. As a result, Snow said,“We were able to get a handle on what happened to each of these communities when they did get infected and what

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the odds are that infections wouldn’t reach them.”

Snow modestly attributes his success to the “peculiar nature of Iroquoian archaeology.”

“Iroquois sites tend to be single component sites, meaning they were lived on for brief periods and not complicated by earlier or later populations,” he explained.

In fact, he added, they’re so highly organized that “we can measure the area of a site and it will tell us within about ten percent the number of people who lived there.”

Confident there are no unaccounted-for villages— largely because prior investigation into the archaeological record of the Mohawk Valley was so thorough—Snow was willing, however tentatively, to extrapolate that between 2 million and 4 million people lived in North America in 1492—a long way from Dobyns’s 18 million and near the most commonly cited range these days of 5 to 15 million.

Snow pays due homage to a host of other factors—climate and terrain, for example—that can change the odds of whether and how a disease affected a particular community. Of course, he noted,“Nobody can come up with a model complex enough to accommodate all those variables.” But even by looking at just a few of them, it’s clear that “they all do make a difference.”After that, he added, “it’s just a matter of history and chance.”

TAMAR STIEBER is a freelance writer living in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

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n e w a cq u i s i t i o n

Defending King and Country The Conservancy acquires an 18th-century British fort in upstate New York.

T

he archaeological ruins of the Royal Blockhouse site stand sentinel atop a wooded hill overlooking the town of Fort Edward.The bluff commands majestic views of the Hudson River. At the base of the hill stands the town of Fort Edward, site of the former British encampment of the same name.

During the French and Indian War in the mid-1700s, the British Colonial forces constructed the Royal Blockhouse— a two-story palisaded fort situated on high ground above the main fort—to guard against French incursions from the north. The Royal Blockhouse, which accommodated 50 British Colonial soldiers and two small cannons, was manned between 1758 and 1762.The fort was one of only two such structures built in America, and the massive earthen palisades and gun emplacement of the Royal Blockhouse are still visible on the landscape.

The Royal Blockhouse was assigned the vital role of protecting nearby Fort Edward, which was strategically located at the mouth of Lake George, near the southern entrance of Lake Champlain. Fort Edward became the British Colonial force’s most important bulwark against French invasions following the fall of Fort Ticonderoga and Fort William Henry. Key players in the impending American Revolution were stationed at Fort Edward, men such as Paul Revere, Benedict Arnold, John Burgoyne, and Israel Putnam.

Owners Ruth and Harold Rist bought the 12-acre property decades ago with the idea of preserving it.The property is and a unique example of British Colonial military technology. A neighboring landowner, Joseph Feingold, has

Conservancy Plan of Action CULTURE & TIME PERIOD: French and Indian War (1758-1763) STATUS: The site is on prime development property overlooking the Hudson River. Looting is a problem.

ACQUISITION: The Conservancy has one year to raise $65,000 to purchase the property and pay for its management. Five acres are being donated.

HOW YOU CAN HELP: Send your contributions to The Archaeological Conservancy, Attn: Royal Blockhouse, 5301 Central Avenue NE, Suite 402, Albuquerque, NM 87108-1517.

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The Royal Blockhouse site is the Conservancy’s first French and Indian War site in the Eastern region.

agreed to donate a 5-acre parcel adjacent to the main blockhouse property.

No professional archaeologists have investigated the Royal Blockhouse. As is typical of nearly all Colonial sites in the Lake Champlain area, looters have left their mark on the ruins.When compared to other French and Indian and Revolutionary War sites, however, the integrity of the blockhouse is excellent. Archaeologist David Starbuck, who first brought the site to the Conservancy’s attention in 1998, feels that the Royal Blockhouse has the potential to reveal information critical to understanding issues of technology, strategy, and lifestyle of the British Colonial military. —Rob Crisell

French and Indian War in New York The town of Fort Edward opened a new visitors center this year dedicated to interpreting several

Syracuse

of the nearby

Albany

historical sites, including

Royal Blockhouse

NEW YORK

Rogers Island, the Royal Blockhouse, and the original fort.

New York

For more information, call (518) 747-3693.

fall • 2001

Big News in the Barrio

n e w a cq u i s i t i o n

The Conservancy acquires the Barrio de Tubac, the southern portion of Arizona’s first permanent European settlement.

T

he Santa Cruz Valley south of Tucson,Arizona, has a rich history of continuous occupation that spans nearly 5,000 years.Archaic period inhabitants were followed by the Hohokam (ancestors of today’s O’odham people), and then the Spanish Colonial settlers of the late 18th century, and, beginning in the mid-19th century,American settlers.

Spanish exploration of the region began as early as 1536, and the Santa Cruz Valley was part of a major exploration and transportation route through northern Sonora, Mexico, and southern Arizona beginning in the late 17th century. In 1732, Jesuit priests from the nearby mission of Guevavi regularly traveled to Piman Indian villages, called rancherias, in the vicinity of Tubac to convert the inhabitants to Christianity and to hold Mass. In 1739, a mission farm was established at Tubac where Spanish settlers lived in a Pima rancheria, supervising a small economic outpost.

Due largely to hostilities between the Spanish settlers and native peoples, the Tubac settlement suffered periodic abandonment throughout the Spanish Colonial period. In 1751, these hostilities culminated in the Pima Revolt, when the northern Pima Indians rose up against the Spanish.Although the rebels surrendered the following year, the uprising forced the Spanish to take additional steps to protect the missions, and they established a presidio at Tubac in June 1752, the first permanent European settlement in what would become the state of Arizona.

By 1767, the Tubac presidio boasted a population of more than 500, with nearly all of the Hispanic inhabitants in southern Arizona located at the settlement.

Although the presidio is protected as the Tubac Presidio State Historical Park,the southern neighborhood,known as the Barrio de Tubac, contains ARIZONA the remains of approximately 32 historic buildings and thouFlagstaff sands of artifacts, and 40 is vulnerable to erosion, vandalism, and 17 encroaching development. Barrio de Tubac Phoenix 10 was the village that supported the pre10 8 sidio and its garrison Tucson 10 of troops. The site is considered by most scholars 19 to be one of the best remaining Tubac

american archaeology

Pottery recovered at Tubac during excavations that took place between 1988 and 1996.

Spanish Colonial and Mexican period sites in the Southwest.

Developers Roy Ross, Gary Brasher, and Baca Float Land Development, Ltd. recently agreed to sell the barrio site to the Conservancy in a bargain-sale-to-charity to ensure its preservation.The Conservancy acquired the site with the help of a grant from the Arizona Heritage Fund.The site will be fenced, stabilized, and nominated to the National Register of Historic Places.Artifacts that were previously recovered from the site will be processed and curated as part of the project, and an interpretive trail will be created, with trained docents leading regularly scheduled public tours through the preserve.

“This project offers us an unparalleled opportunity to protect our shared past and make generations of Arizonans and visitors aware of our Hispanic and O’odham heritage,” says Thomas Sheridan, director of the Documentary Relations of the Southwest program at the Arizona State Museum.

—Tamara Stewart

Conservancy Plan of Action

CULTURE & TIME PERIOD: Archaic to Historic (6,000 B.C.-A.D. 1870) STATUS: Erosion, vandalism, and development threaten the site.

ACQUISITION: The owners have agreed to sell the 10-acre site to the Conservancy as a bargain sale. A $64,150 Arizona State Park Heritage Fund grant was awarded for the site’s acquisition and preservation, and the Conservancy must raise $41,000 in matching funds by December 2002.

HOW YOU CAN HELP: Please send your contributions to The Archaeological Conservancy, Attn: Project Tubac; 5301 Central Avenue NE, Suite 402; Albuquerque, NM 87108-1517.

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new POINT a cq u i s i t i o n s

A Middle Mississippian Metropolis The Conservancy acquires an Arkansas mound center.

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ALAN GRUBER

T

o some, it was just another farm in Poinsett County in northeastern Arkansas, but it got the attention of the Conservancy.Though seemingly unremarkable, the farm contained a cache of cultural treasure.

What appeared to be a clump of trees in the field is in fact an earthen mound looming large over the flat terrain. Indeed, it is one of the largest and best-preserved mounds remaining in the northeastern quarter of the state.Three smaller mounds, reduced by years of plowing, and thousands of pot sherds, chunks of daub, and stone flakes are now found where a large Middle Mississippian period (A.D. 1200–1400) town once stood.This is the McClellan site.

The Mississippian period in Arkansas began around A.D. 1000 when cultural influences from upstream Cahokia took root in the vicinity of the McClellan site. The age, which is named after the river, is best defined as a time when great cultural changes took place. Populations increased and moved into towns located predominantly along the Mississippi’s tributaries, where the rich soils yielded corn.

In addition to agriculture, artwork and trade with far-flung places also flourished. New, complex ceremonial forms developed. In many cases, a new social order evolved into a system of nobles and com-

This mound, the largest at the McClellan site, stands nearly 22 feet high and covers more than an acre. It is one of the last intact mounds of its size in northeastern Arkansas. This mound was constructed around A.D. 800.

moners.These social changes manifested themselves in the construction of earthen mounds, usually around an open plaza, whereby the dwellings of the elite and important civic buildings could be raised both figuratively and literally above the common people. But as fast as the Mississippians appeared, they suddenly vanished around 1550.There is much speculation, but very few concrete answers, as to why.

Based on pottery collected from the site, McClellan seems to have been occupied during the middle of the Mississippian period. Archaeologists are confident that investigations of McClellan will reveal information about the beginnings, evolution, and possibly the demise of the Mississippian culture. Little pro-

fessional research has been done on McClellan. This is surprising given that it boasts more than 40 acres of heavily concentrated archaeological deposits, that a former landowner took pride in preserving the site, and that Arkansas runs one of the best research programs in the country— the Arkansas Archeological Survey.

Hence, most of what is known about the McClellan site is inferred from work on other sites.

Each year, dozens of important sites in the region are destroyed through the practices of laser land leveling of fields, field contouring for rice production, and development.

The preservation of McClellan gives archaeologists an opportunity to examine a site with vast research potential. —Alan Gruber fall • 2001

Saving Mounds in Michigan T

PAUL GARDNER

The Sumnerville mound group may help archaeologists learn about the Goodall Hopewell. he Hopewell culture is one of the best-known prehistoric cultures in the eastern United States. The flamboyant Ohio Hopewell sites, with their large geometric earthworks, far-flung trade networks, and superbly crafted art objects used as mortuary offerings, have attracted much public interest. Almost as well known is the Havana Hopewell of Illinois, which displays all the elaborate cultural hallmarks of the Ohio Hopewell, but substitutes mound groups for geometric earthworks.

Largely escaping popular attention— though not that of local archaeologists—is an Indiana-Michigan brand of Hopewell known as the Goodall.

Goodall sites, which are distributed across northern Indiana and southern Michigan, are rather plain as Hopewell sites go. Archaeologists originally speculated that the Goodall represented a migration of Havana Hopewell people up the Kankakee River, which runs through northern Illinois and Indiana, to a new homeland. More recent research has demonstrated that the Goodall inhabited Indiana for as long

POINT Acquisitions

One of the two well-preserved mounds of the Sumnerville mound group. The mound is approximately 1,800 years old.

as the Havana Hopewell inhabited Illinois. It now seems more likely that the Goodall, who probably derived from Indiana’s Middle Woodland people, adopted aspects of the Havana Hopewell lifestyle.

One Goodall site long known to archaeologists is the Sumnerville mound group in southwestern Michigan. Originally encompassing about six acres and including six or

White Potato Lake Indian Village on Pawnee Fork

Sumnerville McClellan

Cambria A. C. Saunders

american archaeology

Parchman Place Graveline Mound

Hunting Creek

more conical mounds, the Sumnerville mound group has been considered a late manifestation of the Goodall tradition.

This summer, the Conservancy purchased the best-preserved portion of the mound group in southern Michigan. Although the site has been heavily disturbed by the development of the town of Sumnerville, the Conservancy purchased nearly three acres of undeveloped land that include two conical burial mounds about four feet high and fifty feet in diameter. Adjacent to the wood-lot preserving the mounds is a cleared, fallow area with considerable archaeological research potential.A small exploratory excavation in the 1980s by archaeologists from Western Michigan University indicated that this portion of the site had been used for nonmound burials, perhaps postdating the Hopewellian mound construction by a few generations.

—Paul Gardner

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C O N S E R V A N C Y

Field Notes SOUTHWEST—Zuni tribal officials and staff and members of the Conservancy gathered to celebrate the transfer of the Box S site to the Pueblo of Zuni. Box S, which is known to the Zunis as Heshodan Imk’oskwi’a, or Emerging Village, is a large masonry pueblo that was occupied by Zuni ancestors between A.D. 1260 and 1285.

The Zunis obtained the site from the Conservancy with the help of a grant from the Lannan Foundation. In recent years, the site had been looted, but the majority of the approximately 1,100 masonry rooms remain intact.

The Conservancy acquired the pueblo

in 1999, after almost 20 years of negotiations with the landowner.The Zunis worked with the Conservancy to stabilize the site, backfill the looted rooms, and plant native grasses.

The celebration included tours of the site’s archaeological features, a Zuni meal, and a traditional Zuni dance. Zuni Governor Malcolm Bowekaty spoke to the group, expressing his gratitude to all the people who helped to protect this sacred place. He spoke first to his tribal members in Zuni, and then, turning to the rest of the audience said,“For you, this place represents the past. But for us, it is still living. Many important

Conservancy members toured archaeological features such as roomblocks and a kiva at

people are buried here, and we still turn to them when we need them.”

The Zunis will maintain the site for tribal and spiritual purposes, as well as for educational and scientific ones. By allowing the public to visit, the Zunis hope to educate people about the importance of preserving ancestral Native American sites.

A Small Piece of a Big Puzzle MIDWEST—One might be tempted to think that an archaeological site that is a state park, a National Historic Landmark, and a World Heritage Site would be safely preserved for future generations. Unfortunately, nothing could be further from the truth if the site is Cahokia Mounds, the remains of the largest prehistoric town north of Mexico. Although the State of Illinois preserved the center of Cahokia by making it a state historic site, Cahokia’s outlying areas are endangered by the industrial, commercial, and residential development of nearby East St. Louis and the surrounding communities.

The Conservancy created its second Illinois preserve on the western edge of Cahokia. Surrounded by highways, a golf course, modest homes, and small businesses, this three-acre preserve had been used for agriculture until John Kelly, an archaeologist with Washington University of St. Louis and

Box S Pueblo.

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fall • 2001

MARK MICHEL

Celebration at Zuni Site

hokia’s far-flung trade networks.

Preservation of the Fingerhut tract may provide another piece of the puzzle that is Cahokia.

JOHN KELLY

Happenings at Howiri

These chert cores (top) and drills and blades (bottom) were found at the Fingerhut tract. The drills and blades were primarily used to make beads, which the people of Cahokia bartered. The chert came from quarries in Missouri roughly 30 miles away.

Conservancy friend extraordinaire purchased it last year.

Kelly bought the land as a part of a larger parcel that included a house. The house will now serve as the field headquarters for the Powell Archaeological Research Center, an organization established by Kelly and his associates to conduct archaeological research in the Cahokia area. The remaining land was sold at cost to the Conservancy for permanent preservation.

The preserve is located in the area of Cahokia referred to as the Fingerhut tract, which was named in honor of an earlier landowner. Immediately south is the former location of the Powell mound, the third highest mound at Cahokia. It was leveled in the 1930s by a landowner indifferent to the pleas of archaeologists. Another, smaller mound lies

american archaeology

immediately southeast of the Conservancy’s parcel, preserved in a residential backyard.

Although no excavations have taken place within the confines of the Conservancy’s preserve, an archaeological survey of the surface produced artifacts dating to roughly the 12th century A.D., when Cahokia was at its height. As well as the usual occupation debris, the survey produced a sizable quantity of small stone drills which may have been used to manufacture shell beads, and numerous flakes of basalt, a likely by-product of the manufacture of stone axes.

These items are intriguing, since some archaeologists have made a controversial argument that certain goods, beads in particular, may have been produced by specialists who worked exclusively on making the goods that were exchanged via Ca-

SOUTHWEST—The Conservancy is making progress on the Howiri Pueblo project in northern New Mexico. First described by archaeologist Adolph Bandelier in 1892, Howiri is a 1,700 room biscuit ware pueblo occupied from A.D. 1325 to 1600, situated on 17 vacant residential lots (22 acres) near Ojo Caliente, New Mexico. The term biscuit ware refers to a prominent pottery type manufactured by a group of 20 to 30 pueblos that occupied the lower Chama River valley during the 14th and 15th centuries.

The pottery resembles unglazed vitreous china, which is also called biscuit ware. Anthropologists trace the living descendants of Howiri to the people who now reside in nearby San Juan Pueblo.

Last June in Santa Fe, New Mexico, the Conservancy sponsored a lecture by Kurt Anschuetz entitled “Beyond Biscuit Ware: New Perspectives on the Pueblo Archaeology of the Rio Chama.” Anschuetz is with the Rio Grande Foundation for Communities and Cultural Landscapes.

Later that month, Conservancy staff members Jim Walker and Steve Koczan led tours of the site.

The Conservancy has just completed the construction of a perimeter fence protecting the preserve, and volunteer site stewards who live nearby have been recruited to guard the pueblo. The Conservancy still needs just over $100,000 to complete the project.

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T H E

A R C H A E O L O G I C A L

C O N S E R V A N C Y

Viva Veracruz VERACRUZ

When: February 14–24, 2002 Where: Veracruz How Much: $2,395 per person

($385 single supplement) Join us in Mexico’s oldest port city,Veracruz, for an exciting look at the Olmec, Totonac, Huastec, Maya, Aztec, and Spanish cultures that have dominated the region for thousands of years.You will visit Zempoala, a Totonac town conquered by the Aztecs, where Cortés lived during the first months of the Spanish invasion.At El Tajin, one of the great cities of Mexico, you will find its famous architecture and its numerous ballcourts. You

The ruins of Tikal, located in the Petén rain forest.

The Wondrous World of the Maya GUATEMALA

Our tour delves into the world of the Maya—from Guatemala City to the rain forest of the Petén, which holds the vast ruins of Tikal.You’ll spend several days exploring this ancient city, which once spanned 25 square miles and had a population exceeding 75,000.You will visit Iximché, the capital city of the Cakchiquel Maya from the late 1400s until the early 1500s. At Yaxhá, you will explore one of Guatemala’s largest sites, containing more than 500 structures. Other than Tikal, Yaxhá has the only known twin pyramid complex. Other destinations include the market town of Chichicastenango and the colonial city of Antigua. John Henderson, noted Maya scholar and author of The World of the Ancient Maya, will guide the tour.

BETSY GREENLEE

When: January 16–26, 2002 Where: Guatemala How Much: $2,495 ($340 single supplement)

The Pyramid of the Niches at El Tajin.

will tour the immense city of Cantona, which prospered after the collapse of Teotihuacán.You’ll also visit Tres Zapotes, where the discovery of the first great Olmec head sculpture in 1869 set off speculation about lost tribes from Africa. John Henderson, a leading scholar on the cultures of Mesoamerica, will lead the tour.

UPCOMING TOURS A z t e c s , To l t e c s a n d Te o t i h u a c á n o s —April 2002 Explore the ancient cultures of central Mexico.

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Peoples of the Mississippi Va l l e y — A p r i l 2 0 0 2

Ya m p a R i v e r —J u n e 2 0 0 2

Tour prehistoric and historic archaeological sites of the Mississippi Valley region.

Experience incredible river scenery and archaeology near Dinosaur National Monument. fall • 2001

Patrons of Preservation The Archaeological Conservancy would like to thank the following individuals, foundations, and corporations for their generous support during the period of May through July 2001.

Their generosity,along with the generosity of the Conservancy’s other members, makes our work possible.

Life Member Gifts of $1,000 or more Betty Banks, Washington Lois Chaffey, California Joseph J. Collmer, Texas Helen Darby, California Virginia Ives and Paul Orsay, Missouri Sarah O’Connor, Ohio (in memory of Allen O’Connor) T. N. Parks, Utah Leila D. J. Poullada, Minnesota H. Warren Ross, California Thomas Richards, Virginia Sheila Sherman, Missouri Catherine Symchych, Wyoming Richard Woodbury, Massachusetts

Anasazi Circle Gifts of $2,000 or more Anonymous (1) Carol M. Baker, Texas Howard Berlin, New Jersey Donna Cosulich, New York Janet Creighton, Washington J. L. and Martha Foght, Illinois Bernize Glozek, Nevada

TO MAKE A DONATION OR BECOME A MEMBER CONTACT :

The Archaeological Conservancy 5301 Central Ave. NE, Suite 402 Albuquerque, NM 87108 (505) 266-1540 www.americanarchaeology.org

american archaeology

David Jones, Minnesota David and Sue Knop, California Roland and Martha Mace, New Mexico Jack and Pat McCreery, California Betty Mitchell, Illinois Lawrence and Kathleen Peterson, Colorado Gavine Pitner, Ohio Melvin and Giulia Simpson, New York Conrad and Marcella Stahly, New Mexico Rosamond Stanton, New Mexico Kathryn Wanlass, Utah Gordon and Judy Wilson, New Mexico

Foundation/Corporate Gifts of $1,000–$4,999 Albuquerque Community Foundation/T. J. Sivley and Mary Ray Sivley Perpetual Endowment Fund, New Mexico Deupree Family Foundation, Arizona Klutts Family Foundation, Louisiana Archie D. and Bertha H. Walker Foundation, Minnesota

Foundation/Corporate Gifts of $5,000–$14,999 Greenlee Family Foundation, Colorado Oakleaf Foundation, Minnesota Moore Family Foundation, California

Leaving a Legacy Earlier this year, the Conservancy received a bequest from the estate of a long-time, loyal member.

Julia Clark of Maine had been a regular donor for many years.

She gave consistently to help support the Conservancy’s work—$25, $50, often as much as $100. We were grateful for her generosity, and never expected anything more.

Imagine our surprise, then, when we learned that Ms. Clark had left the Conser vancy a bequest of $275,000. We were touched and honored to know that our work had meant so much to her. Her final gift was an expression of her values; she knew how important it is to preserve the past. But it was also a reflection of her means. By leaving the Conservancy in her will, Ms. Clark was able to make a contribution that she couldn’t have made during her lifetime.

This year, Ms. Clark’s generosity has helped to protect archaeological sites around the countr y. We are ver y sorr y to have lost her, but glad to know that her wishes live on. —Martha Mulvany

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Reviews Casas Grandes and Its Hinterland

Ancient Encounters: Kennewick Man and the First Americans

By James C. Chatters (Simon & Schuster, 2001; 303 pgs., illus., $26 cloth; 800-223-2348) Forensic anthropolgist James Chatters tells his story of the discovery and examination of the famous skeleton found at Kennewick, Washington, on the banks of the Columbia River in 1996.

After careful examination, Chatters concluded the remains, radiocarbon dated to 9,500 years ago, are Caucasoid.

He gives a riveting account of the ensuing legal battle with local tribes over the bones, and makes a strong case for continuing this research in the interest of our common humanity.

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Ancient Pioneers: The First Americans

By Michael E. Whalen and Paul E. Minnis

By George E. Stuart

(University of Arizona Press, 2001; 250 pgs., illus., $45 cloth; 800-426-3797)

(National Geographic Society, 2001; 199 pgs., illus., $12 paper, $20 cloth, $4 shipping; mail order only at 800-647-5463)

One hundred thirty miles south of the United States border, in the Mexican state of Chihuahua, lie the ruins of the impressive prehistoric town of Casas Grandes (Great Houses) or Paquimé. From about A.D. 1300 to 1450, it was probably the largest and grandest town in the entire Southwest. Extensive excavations at the core site from 1958 to 1961 by Charles Di Peso revealed a well-engineered water system and massive Pueblo-style roomblocks, as well as Mesoamerican-style ballcourts and platform mounds. Exotic trade goods like copper bells and macaws were abundant. Di Peso interpreted all this to mean that Casas Grandes was a Mesoamerican outpost on the edge of Mexican civilization, complete with ruling elites and a stratified social system.

In this book,Whalen and Minnis, archaeologists at the universities of Tulsa and Oklahoma respectively, offer an insightful challenge to Di Peso’s interpretation. Armed with new data, they see a much less centralized and stratified polity. Instead of a foreign outpost, Casas Grandes rests squarely in the cultural tradition of the greater Southwest in general and northern Chihuahua in particular, albeit with Mesoamerican touches.Whalen and Minnis see it as a society of intermediate complexity that lacked well-defined power structures.The outlying settlements were influenced by central Casas Grandes, but not ruled by it.

When compared to the work done at Chaco Canyon and Mesa Verde, research in the Casas Grandes region is still in its infancy. But in Casas Grandes and Its Hinterland,Whalen and Minnis have made an outstanding contribution to our understanding of this intriguing culture.

If you're looking for a readable, general introduction to American archaeology that is beautifully illustrated by the renowned photographers and illustrators of National Geographic, this is it. George Stuart, longtime staff archaeologist at the National Geographic Society and president of the Center for Maya Research, has written a book for the beginner that should interest most anyone. From the frozen Arctic to the steaming jungles of Central America to the Andes and beyond, Stuart tells the incredible stories of these regions and the cultures they produced—Ice Age nomads, Anasazi, Moundbuilders, hunters and fishermen, Maya and Aztec. He also introduces us to the techniques of modern archaeology and explains how investigators are unraveling the many mysteries of ancient America.

Inspiring photographs capture the panoramic vistas that set the stage for human occupation and struggle. Lavish illustrations recreate the lives of real people at work. Striking photos dramatize the artifacts of past cultures, ranging from 10,000-yearold spear points to elaborate Moche gold jewelry. Ancient Pioneers is one of the best introductions to American archaeology ever produced. —Mark Michel

fall • 2001

Archaeologist Archaeologist (American Indian Liaison) responsible for administering and coordinating USDA programs with American Indian Tribes and Cultural Resource Programs in the State of South Dakota.

In-state travelrequired.

Masters degree in archaeology.

Federal position with excellent salary and fringe benefits.

Contact Marlene Elko, NRCS at 605-352-1224 or e-mail marlene.elko@sd.usda.gov for application procedure.

EOE

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Some Conservancy members think the only way to help save archaeological sites is through membership dues. While dues are a constant lifeline, there are many ways you can support the Conservancy’s work, both today and well into the future. And by supporting the Conservancy, you not only safeguard our past for your children and grandchildren, you also may save some money.

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