American Archaeology Magazine | Fall 2003 | Vol. 7 No. 3 by American Archaeology Magazine

VIRTUAL ARCHAEOLOGY’S IMPACT • A MAYA PIONEER • OUR PHOTO CONTEST WINNERS

american archaeology FALL 2003

a quarterly publication of The Archaeological Conservancy

The Barton Site: Thousands of Years of Occupation

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Vol. 7 No. 3

archaeological tours

led by noted scholars

superb itineraries, unsurpassed service For the past 28 years, Archaeological Tours has been arranging specialized tours for a discriminating clientele. Our tours feature distinguished scholars who stress the historical, anthropological and archaeological aspects of the areas visited. We offer a unique opportunity for tour participants to see and understand historically important and culturally significant areas of the world. Robert Bianchi in Egypt

2003 TOURS

MAYA SUPERPOWERS

SRI LANKA

MUSEUMS OF SPAIN

Among the first great Buddhist kingdoms, the island of Bilbao, Barcelona & Madrid Sri Lanka offers wonders far exceeding its small size. October 2 – 12, 2003 11 Days As we explore this mystical place, we will have a glimpse of life under kings who created sophisticated Led by Prof. Ori Z. Soltes, Georgetown University irrigation systems, built magnificent temples and huge OASES OF THE WESTERN DESERT dagobas, carved 40-foot-tall Buddhas and one who Alexandria, Siwa, Bahariya, Dakhla & Kharga, Luxor chose to build his royal residence, gardens and pools October 3 – 20, 2003 18 Days on the top of a 600-foot rock outcropping. Our journey Led by Prof. Lanny Bell, Brown University will take us to six World Heritage sites as well as wildlife sanctuaries, tea plantations, colonial hill stations, ANATOLIA (CROSSROADS OF EUROPE monasteries, colorful rituals and festivals giving us an AND ASIA) understanding of Sri Lankan culture and history. Ankara, Hattusa, Cappadocia, Antalya, Pamukkale, 18 DAYS Aphrodisias, Sardis, Ephesus, Izmir, Pergamon, Troy, JANUARY 3 – 20, 2004 FEBRUARY 7 – 24, 2004 Bursa and Istanbul. October 12 – November 1, 2003 21 Days Led by Prof. Sudharshan Seneviratne, U. of Peradeniya Led by Dr. Mattanyah Zohar, Hebrew University SOUTHERN INDIA

This exciting tour examines the ferocious political struggles between the Maya superpowers in the Late Classical period including bitter antagonism between Tikal in northern Guatemala and Calakmul across the border in Mexico. New roads will allow us to visit these ancient cities, as well as Copan in Honduras, Lamanai and the large archaeological project at Caracol in Belize and Kohunlich and Edzna in Mexico. The tour will also provide opportunities to see the still-pristine tropical forest in the Maya Biosphere Reserves. Our adventure ends in colonial Campeche, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. MARCH 12 – 28, 2004 17 DAYS NOVEMBER 12 – 28, 2004 Led by Prof. John Henderson, Cornell University MALTA, SARDINIA & CORSICA

This unusual tour will explore the ancient civilizations of these three islands. Tour highlights include immense megalithic temples on Malta, Sardinia’s unique nuraghes, and the mysterious cult sites on Corsica, as well as the ancient remains of the Phoenicians, Romans, Greeks and Crusader knights. The islands’ wild and beautiful settings and their wonderful cuisines will enhance our touring of these archaeological sites.

THE SPLENDORS OF ANCIENT EGYPT Our tour begins in Bombay and includes the Ellora and IN TWO WEEKS Ajanta rock-cut cave temples and Kanchipuram, one of Cairo, Faiyum Oasis, Luxor, Dendera, Abydos, Aswan the seven sacred cities of India. We will visit the famous and Abu Simbel, with five-day Nile Cruise on the Sonesta shore temples outside Madras and the temples and Moon Goddess. palaces of Trichy, Madurai, Mysore, Goa and sail along October 19 – November 2, 2003 15 Days the backwaters of Kerala to Cochin. A highlight of the tour Led by Dr. Hratch Papazian, The University of Chicago will be the extraordinary Vijayanagar ruins at Hampi, a World Heritage site. We will explore bazaars, sample APRIL 28 – MAY 15, 2004 18 DAYS ETHIOPIA (THE ANCIENT KINGDOM OF exotic foods and attend classical dance performances. Led by Dr. Mattanyah Zohar, Hebrew University AXUM) 24 DAYS Addis Ababa Gondar, Mekele, Lalibela, Axum, Bahir Dar FEBRUARY 9 – MARCH 4, 2004 CHINA’S LIVING LANDSCAPES: Led by Prof. John M. Fritz, University of Pennsylvania and the Simien Mountains Sacred Mountains & The Yangtze River November 7 – 23, 2003 17 Days THE SPLENDORS OF ANCIENT EGYPT Led by Dr. Mattanyah Zohar, Hebrew University This very special tour encompasses one of China’s An in-depth tour of ancient Egypt, begins with six days most sacred Buddhist mountains, Emeishan, and most GUATEMALA & COPÁN in Cairo, a visit to Tanis in the Delta and the collapsed beautiful, Huangshan. Additional highlights include the November 6 – 21, 2003 16 Days pyramid of Meydum and Roman Karanis in the Faiyum Forbidden City in Beijing, the archaeological splendors Led by Prof. John Henderson, Cornell University Oasis. With five full days in Luxor we will have a thorough and terra-cotta army of the First Emperor in Xian, the exploration of the temples and tombs of Thebes, fabulous Dazu grottoes carved with thousands of NORTHERN INDIA Dendera and Abydos before a five-day Nile cruise on the Buddhas, the newly installed Shanghai Museum — plus Agra, Varanasi, Khajuraho, Sanchi, Udaipur, Jodhpur, deluxe Oberoi Philae. The tour concludes with three four magnificent days on the Yangtze River, sailing from Jaisalmer and Jaipur days in Aswan, the Nubian Museum and Abu Simbel. Chongqing to Wuhan through the famous Three Gorges.

October 30 – November 23, 2003 25 Days NOVEMBER 4 – 23, 2003 20 DAYS Led by Prof. John Fritz, University of Pennsylvania Led by Prof. Lanny Bell, Brown University KHMER KINGDOMS FEBRUARY 6 – 25, 2004 Myanmar, Thailand, Laos & Cambodia Led by Dr. Robert Bianchi, Egyptologist December 28, 2003 – January 19, 2004 23 Days BYZANTINE TO BAROQUE Led by Prof. Richard Cooler, Northern Illinois U. 2004 TOURS MALI WITH BURKINA FASO

Our West African tour introduces the art, architecture and cultures of the ancient kingdoms that flourished along the Niger River. We will visit Mopti, Djenné and Timbuktu, medieval trade cities renowned for their spectacular mud architecture, the legendary Kangaba griots and the Dogon’s cliff-perched villages. Additional highlights include three days in Burkina Faso, a boat trip on the Niger and special dance performances.

MAY 2 – 22, 2004 21 DAYS Led by Prof. Robert Thorp, Washington University ADDITIONAL TOURS

Cyprus, Crete & Santorini; Bulgaria & Romania; Tibet; Silk Road; Scotland; Sicily & So. Italy; Coastal Turkey & As we travel from Assisi to Venice, this spectacular tour No. Cyprus; Peru; Portugal, Caves & Castles...and more will offer a unique opportunity to observe the development of art and history in both the Eastern and Western Christian worlds. We begin with four days in Assisi, including a day trip to medieval Cortona. We then continue to Arezzo, Padua and Ravenna, ending with three glorious days in Venice, gateway to the Orient. Throughout we will experience the sources of visual inspiration for a thousand years of art while sampling the food and drink that have enhanced the Italian world since it was the center of the Roman Empire.

12 DAYS DECEMBER 27, 2003 – JANUARY 12, 2004 17 DAYS MARCH 3 – 14, 2004 Led by Prof. Ori Z. Soltes, Georgetown University Led by Prof. Trevor Marchand, SOAS, U. of London

NEW

american archaeology a quarterly publication of The Archaeological Conservancy

Vol. 7 No. 3

fall 2003

COVER FEATURE

C O V E R I N G T H E G A M U T O F P R E H I S T O RY

BY DAVID MALAKOFF

Evidence of thousands of years of occupation has been found at the Barton site in Maryland.

A POTENTIAL THREAT TO ARCHAEOLOGICAL SITES BY ELAINE ROBBINS

Though most metal detector users are law abiding, some have used these increasingly sophisticated instruments to loot archaeological sites.

AMERICAN ARCHAEOLOGY’S PHOTO CONTEST WINNERS

OLD SITE, NEW INFORMAT I O N BY NANCY S. GRANT

Annis Village was first excavated more than 60 years ago. The current investigation of Annis is revealing information about this small Mississippian site as well as highlighting the differences between archaeology then and now.

A PIONEER IN MAYA A R C H A E O L O G Y BY CHAR SOLOMON

In the mid-20th century Maya archaeology was exclusively a man’s game. Then Tatiana Proskouriakoff came along.

Virtual technology could have a tremendous impact on archaeology.

new acquisition THE CONSERVA N C Y ACQUIRES ITS FIRST SITE IN V I R G I N I A

The Conover site offers evidence of the state’s prehistory.

new acquisition DEVELOPER DONATES IMPORTA N T ARCHAEOLOGICAL SITE

Village mound site is one of very few remaining along the Sacramento River.

new acquisition PROTECTING A M O U N D C O M P L E X

The Page site in Kentucky is home to unusual mortuary mounds.

new acquisition THE MYSTERY OF SACRED CIRCLES

The Conservancy obtains an Adena site with great research potential. COVER: An excavator screens dirt to capture small artifacts at the Barton site. Photograph by Rick Kozak

american archaeology

new acquisition RARE ROCKSHELTER PRESERV E D Archaeologist’s family donates the site that he purchased and researched.

T H E VIRTUES OF V I R T U A L A R C H A E O L O G Y BY MICHAEL BAWAYA

point acquisition EXAMINING THE LATE PITHOUSE PERIOD A site in southern New Mexico could offer important information about the Mogollon.

2 Lay of the Land 3 Letters 5 Events 7 In the News Rare 16th-Century Mexican Manuscript Rediscovered • NASA Advances Maya Research • Changing Thinking About the Folsom?

50 Field Notes 52 Reviews 54 Expeditions 1

Lay of the Land

odern technologies can be both a boon and a bane to archaeology. In this issue we tackle the benefits and problems presented by modern metal detectors. When properly used, they can help archaeologists map a site and identify what is far underneath the ground without the need to dig. Archaeologists are making good use of this technology to better understand battlefields, for example, even to the point of being able to actually map the battle itself (see “Archaeology Goes to War,” American Archaeology, summer 2001). But the new metal detectors are so good that looters are making use

of them to find metal objects on important archaeological sites that heretofore were beyond their reach, and this is causing increasing problems around the country. Hobbyists are also lobbying for a relaxation of rules protecting parks and other public property. The vast majority of metal detector users are merely pursuing a harmless hobby, but the few who turn to artifact looting are doing lots of damage. Archaeologists need to work with the legitimate hobbyists to devise rules that protect cultural resources while permitting the hobby to flourish. Getting hobbyists involved with serious archaeological in-

DARREN POORE

Making Good Use of Technology

MARK MICHEL, President

vestigations is just one way to bridge this gap, and working together to write sensible rules for metal detector use is another.

fall • 2003

Letters Central Authority at Chaco Thank you for the excellent coverage of archaeological research being conducted throughout the San Juan Basin. Tamara Stewart’s article in the Summer issue, “The Changing Perspectives of Chaco Canyon,” is the most recent example. Too often arguments for a centralized authority at Chaco are lost in discussions pertaining to pottery or the kiva. Yet, it’s the monumental structures within the canyon and region that scream “central authority.” Procurement of building materials, organizing and feeding a labor force, and managing construction of the buildings likely necessitated a staggering infrastructure. Great house construction in the San Juan Basin could have been the economic driver for the region, where construction projects provided palaces and prestige for the elite, and conceivably food and security for the populace. Outliers managed the rural workforce. Persuading locals to buy into this arrangement was essential, with impending brutality perhaps the principal motivation. Donald W. Hintz Richmond, Virginia

the largest Oneota site ever discovered. It was apparently a combination religious and market center in the 16th and 17th centuries, the western terminus of the French “fur-traders’ road” linking the Mississippi and Big Sioux rivers, a very early Canadian commercial outlet to the Great Plains. Unfortunately, Blood Run today continues to be chewed away by a gravel contractor as well as by suburban development. That it gets so little notice even in such venues as American Archaeology doesn’t help. Incidentally, the “mysterious” V-shaped line of rocks at Blue Mounds is not some “seasonal indicator” (probably the locals’ fantasy), but is a conventional, if particularly well-preserved, buffalo run designed to aid in funneling bison over the adjacent precipice. Many readers will have seen descriptions of this wellknown hunting technique. Robert R. Dykstra Worcester, Massachusetts

A Missed Attraction Something felt wrong with the Summer issue’s “Archaeological Tour in the Upper Midwest” when it showcased the mini-attractions at Blue Mounds but overlooked the huge (over 1,000-acre) Blood Run Site literally just down the road. Once embracing nearly 300 mounds, some 76 of them still visible on the surface, it’s

American Archaeology welcomes your letters. Write to us at 5301 Central Avenue NE, Suite 902, Albuquerque, NM 87108-1517, or send us e-mail at tacmag@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.

american archaeology

Sending Letters to American Archaeology

Editor’s Corner One of our features in this issue is about virtual technology and its potential impact on archaeology. Though virtual technology is not a new development, it is new to American archaeology, and its few practitioners seem convinced that, as one of them flatly declared, “It is the future.” The benefits of virtual archaeology are obvious to anyone familiar with the science. Its effects run the gamut from artifact preservation to NAGPRA to curation to education. Imagine the delight of an archaeologist who can per form precise examinations of Maya hieroglyphs in Guatemala while sitting at his computer in Cleveland. Imagine how the conflict between science and spirituality could be ameliorated if researchers can study virtual remains and artifacts long after the genuine items have been repatriated to affiliated Native Americans. There is no question that virtual archaeology has remarkable potential, but there are various obstacles to overcome before the potential becomes reality. It is, at this point, an expensive technology, and it’s likely that any number of institutions and individuals who would like to avail themselves of it find the cost prohibitive. And, curiously enough, the archaeological community here has been slow to embrace virtual technology. Two experts noted that we lag behind the Europeans in this regard. One of them said that archaeologists “don’t necessarily know how to use it.”

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 275 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 902, Albuquerque, NM 87108-1517; by phone: (505) 266-1540; by e-mail: tacmag@nm.net; or visit our Web site: www.americanarchaeology.org

5301 Central Avenue NE, Suite 902 Albuquerque, NM 87108-1517 • (505) 266-1540 www.americanarchaeology.org Board of Directors Vincas Steponaitis, North Carolina, CHAIRMAN Cecil F. Antone, Arizona • Carol Condie, New Mexico Janet Creighton, Washington • Janet EtsHokin, Illinois Jerry EtsHokin, Illinois • W. James Judge, Colorado Jay T. Last, California • Dorinda Oliver, New York Rosamond Stanton, Montana Dee Ann Story, Texas • Stewart L. Udall, New Mexico Conser vancy Staff Mark Michel, President • Tione Joseph, Business Manager Kerry Slater, Special Projects Director • Lorna Thickett, Membership Director Shelley Smith, Membership Assistant • Valerie Long, Administrative Assistant Yvonne Woolfolk, Administrative Assistant Regional Offices and Directors Jim Walker, Vice President, Southwest Region (505) 266-1540 5301 Central Avenue NE, Suite 902 • Albuquerque, New Mexico 87108 Tamara Stewart, Projects Coordinator • Steve Koczan, Site-Management Coordinator Amy Espinoza-Ar, Field Representative Paul Gardner, Vice President, Midwest Region (614) 267-1100 3620 N. High St. #207 • Columbus, Ohio 43214 Joe Navari, Field Representative Alan Gruber, Vice President, Southeast Region (770) 975-4344 5997 Cedar Crest Road • Acworth, Georgia 30101 Jessica Crawford, Delta Field Representative Gene Hurych, Western Region (916) 399-1193 1 Shoal Court #67 • Sacramento, California 95831 Donald Craib, Eastern Region (703) 780-4456 9104 Old Mt. Vernon Road • Alexandria, Virginia 22309

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PUBLISHER: Mark Michel EDITOR: Michael Bawaya (505) 266-9668, tacmag@nm.net ASSISTANT EDITOR: Tamara Stewart ART DIRECTOR: Vicki Marie Singer, vsinger3@comcast.net Editorial Advisor y Board Ernie Boszhardt, Mississippi Valley Archaeological Center Darrell Creel, University of Texas • Jonathan Damp, Zuni Cultural Resources Richard Daugherty, Washington State University • David Dye, University of Memphis Kristen Gremillion, Ohio State University • Megg Heath, Bureau of Land Management Susan Hector, San Diego • Richard Jenkins, California Dept. of Forestry John Kelly, Washington University • Robert Kuhn, New York Historic Preservation Mark Lynott, National Park Service • Linda Mayro, Pima County, Arizona Jeff Mitchem, Arkansas Archaeological Survey • Giovanna Peebles, Vermont State Archaeologist Janet Rafferty, Mississippi State University • Ann Rogers, Oregon State University Kenneth Sassaman, University of Florida • Donna Seifert, John Milner Associates Art Spiess, Maine Historic Preservation • Richard Woodbury, University of Massachusetts National Advertising Office Marcia Ulibarri, Advertising Representative 5401 6th Street NW, Albuquerque, New Mexico 87107; (505) 344-6018; Fax (505) 345-3430; mulibarri@earthlink.net American Archaeology (ISSN 1093-8400) is published quarterly by The Archaeological Conservancy, 5301 Central Avenue NE, Suite 902, Albuquerque, NM 87108-1517. Title registered U.S. Pat. and TM Office, © 2003 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 902, 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 902, Albuquerque, NM 87108-1517; (505) 266-1540. All rights reserved.

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

fall • 2003

Museum exhibits Meetings

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Tours

Education

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Conferences

■ NEW EXHIBITS Pueblo Grande Museum and Archaeological Park

Phoenix, Ariz.—Explore the important role that cotton played in the lives of the prehistoric and historic peoples of central Arizona in “Cotton: Common Threads.” From ancient times through the cotton boom of the early 1900s, people cultivated, traded, and found a multitude of uses for this plant. (877) 706-4408 (Through November)

Carnegie Museum of Natural History

Pittsburgh, Pa.—Hundreds of spectacular objects and 11,000 photographs form “Machu Picchu: Unveiling the Mystery of the Incas.” This unique scientific, historic, and artistic resource enables researchers to reconstruct the daily life at Machu Picchu in Peru during its zenith 500 years ago. Filled with stunning panoramic photographs and the finest surviving examples of Inca art on loan from Peru, Europe, and other major U.S. collections, this traveling exhibition from Yale’s Peabody Museum is not to be missed. (412) 622-3131 (October 18 through January 4, 2004)

Museum of Indian Arts and Culture

CARNEGIE MUSEUM

EDWARD S. CURTIS

MUSEUM OF INDIAN ARTS AND CULTURE

Events

Festivals

Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Research Center

Mashantucket, Conn.—Legendary photographs of Native America taken more than a century ago by Edward S. Curtis are displayed in a special new exhibit, “The Master Prints of Edward S. Curtis: Portraits of Native America.” Curtis was 33 years old in 1901 when he began to document the lives and cultures of North American Indians through photographs and interviews. The exhibit includes vivid portraits of leaders, warriors, women, and children, and is considered the finest museum compilation of Curtis prints. (800) 411-9671, www.pequotmuseum.org (October 25 through January 18, 2004)

american archaeology

■ CONFERENCES, LECTURES & FESTIVALS Southwest Seminars Fall Lecture Series

September 8–November 17, Monday nights at 6 p.m., Hotel Santa Fe, Santa Fe, N.M. “Native Voices 2003” features virtually all Native American presenters and is offered as a benefit for the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture in Santa Fe. Contact Connie at (505) 466-2775, www.southwestseminars.org

Santa Fe, N.M.—“Jewels of the Navajo Loom: the Rugs of Teec Nos Pos” includes the world’s finest collection of Navajo rugs from the Four Corners area, based on the intricate designs of Oriental rug prototypes. The exhibit explores the remarkable textile tradition that thrived around the Teec Nos Pos trading post in northeastern Arizona between 1910 and the 1940s. (505) 476-1250, www.miaclab.org (Through January 2004)

Events

Bishop Museum Honolulu, Hawaii—From rain forest treasure to luscious treat, the exciting traveling exhibit “Chocolate” presents the complete story behind this delicious phenomenon. Witness the evolution of this wonderful food from the times of the ancient Maya to the Aztecs to chocolate’s introduction into the upper classes of European society and its transformation into a mass-produced commodity. (808) 847-3511 (October 11 through January 4, 2004)

September 21, 2 p.m., Smoki Museum of American Indian Art & Culture, Prescott, Ariz. October 9, 7 p.m., Kingman Police Dept., Kingman, Ariz. This free program, presented by Allen Dart of Old Pueblo Archaeology Center, tells of the Hohokam culture that flourished in the valleys of the Salt, Verde, Gila, and Santa Cruz rivers from the 6th through the 15th centuries. It also explains how archaeologists use artifacts, architecture, and other material culture to study the Hohokam. The program includes a slide show and display of prehistoric artifacts. Contact L. John Tannous at (928) 445-1230, director@smokimuseum.org, or Diana Jansen at (928) 768-1472, djansen@ctaz.com 17th Annual Black Hills Pow Wow

October 10–12, Rushmore Plaza Civic Center, Rapid City, S.Dak. With hundreds of dancers and drummers from throughout the northern plains and Canada, this cultural celebration is an awesome gathering rich in Native American art and tradition. This year’s festival offers fine art, authentic handmade crafts, and contemporary indigenous music. (605) 341-0925, www.blackhillspowwow.com Maine Archaeology Month

Throughout the month of October events will be held to bring Maine’s past to life. Coordinated by the Maine Archaeology Society, Inc., these events and programs are presented by organizations throughout the state. Visit www.mainearchsociety.org. In conjunction with these programs, the Abbe Museum will hold “Vikings in North America” at the museum’s annual “Tea, Popovers, and Archaeology” program on October 14 from 7 to 9 p.m. at Acadia National Park’s Jordan Pond House. (207) 288-3519 6

13th Biennial Jornada Mogollon Conference

October 3–4, El Paso Museum of Archaeology, El Paso, Tex. This year’s focus is the synthesis of the current state of Jornada Mogollon archaeology 24 years after the initial conference. Contact David Cain at (915) 755-4332, caindp@ci.el-paso.tx.us 2003 Midwest Archaeological Conference

October 16–19, Milwaukee, Wis. A series of papers and symposia will cover a variety of topics centering on the archaeology of the midcontinent. Contact Robert Jeske at (414) 2294273, www.uwm.edu/Dept/ArchLab/ MAC Frontier Days

November 5–8, Fort Toulouse/Jackson Park, Wetumpka, Ala. Celebrate Alabama’s 1717– 1820 heritage at the fort’s largest annual event. The festival includes hundreds of living history re-enactors demonstrating details of daily life, including tool-making demonstrations and period food and music. Contact Frank Thomas at (334) 567-3002, ftedu@bellsouth.net 60th Annual Southeastern Archaeological Conference

November 12–15, Hilton University Place, Charlotte, N.C. This year’s meeting includes a Thursday evening reception at the Levine Museum of the New South in downtown Charlotte, research and poster presentations, a student paper competition, and a Saturday afternoon closing barbecue at the Schiele Museum of Natural History in Gastonia. www.southeasternarchaeology.org seac2003@email.uncc.edu 10th Annual New Mexico Archaeology Fair

September 19–20, Tucumcari Historical Museum, Tucumcari, N.M. This year’s theme is “A Journey Through Time in Quay County,” with an emphasis on what has been learned—and what remains to be learned—in eastern New Mexico and adjacent Texas, Colorado, and Oklahoma. The weekend includes archaeology exhibits, the Great American Indian dancers, traditional technology demonstrations, a spearthrowing competition, and food. Contact Bruce Nutt at (505) 461-4201, museum@cityoftucumcari.com fall • 2003

AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY

Arts and Culture of the Ancient Hohokam Indians

Rare 16th-Century Mexican Manuscript Rediscovered U.S. and Mexican scholars will jointly study the codex.

in the

NEWS This detail of one of the Mapa’s central panels characterizes the exemplary illustrations of Toltec and Chichimec warriors, natural features,

DIANA LOREN/PEABODY MUSEUM, HARVARD

architecture, and complex representations of myth and ritual. A Toltec (left) and Chichimec negotiate a river crossing. On the far right, a figure in an elaborate bird costume performs a ritual that is probably related to the carefully cultivated crops shown at the individual’s feet.

early 20 years since its disappearance, the Mapa de Cuauhtinchan No. 2, a very rare and richly illustrated manuscript, has resurfaced. Only four such ethnographic codices from Cuauhtinchan are known to exist, due to the burning of manuscripts by Spanish explorers in the 16th century. The Mapa de Cuauhtinchan, which contains information about the geography, mythology, and history of the community of Cuauhtinchan, a village in the modern Mexican state of Puebla, is the most beautifully illustrated, complex, and largest of the four, measuring approximately three feet by six feet. “While we do not know the individuals who created the Mapa, it is clear that it would have been close to the heart of the community, serving as a functional record of ancestry, myth, and history,” said Ann Seiferle-

american archaeology

Valencia, a Harvard graduate student who is writing a dissertation on the codex. “The Mapa serves as a window into indigenous and mestizo culture during the Early Colonial period. As such, it is an important rediscovery for scholars interested in Early Colonial Mexico, Nahua, and mestizo cultures, and the Puebla region.” An international team of scholars from Mexico and the United States, under the direction of Harvard’s David Carrasco, will collaborate in interpreting this priceless manuscript. Two conferences, cosponsored by Mexico’s Instituto Nacional de Anthropologia (INAH) and Harvard’s David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies, will summarize the study of this and related manuscripts, develop new models for interpreting the manuscript, and compile a book of inter-

pretive essays with illustrations in both English and Spanish. “The codex, or mapa, contains mythic, historical, botanical, and ritual information,” explained Carrasco, a professor of Latin American Studies. “Each section is a wonder in itself, revealing the botanical and geographical knowledge and ritual practices of these people as well as their dynamic world-view.” The codex was first discovered in the 1890s. It was declared a national treasure in 1963 and, at that time, was included in a few publications. Angeles Espinosa, a Mexican citizen with a strong interest in preserving and understanding Mesoamerican cultural objects and history, recently recovered it. Espinosa, a friend of the David Rockefeller Center, got the center involved in the project. The codex will remain in Mexico. —Tamara Stewart 7

in the

NEWS

Confederate Army Fort Uncovered The fort was crucial to Mobile, Alabama’s defense.

SCOTT BUTLER/BROCKINGTON AND ASSOCIATES

ort Sidney Johnston, a Confederate Army fort that served as Mobile’s strongest defense, was discovered by archaeologists last winter in advance of a rail yard construction project. The fort, which was built in 1864 and named after Confederate General Albert Sidney Johnston, was designed to defend Mobile from attack launched from Mobile Bay. “There are very few such Confederate forts still in existence,” said Edward Harkins, city archivist. “Even this site is not untouched—it had been plowed at some point, and an amusement park existed at the site from the late 19th to the mid-20th century.” The fort’s location overlooking Mobile Bay was known from historic maps. In 1862, the Confederates had started to establish a fortified line further from Mobile that consisted of trenches and rifle pits. A second line was established just outside the city in 1863. Then in 1864, the Confederates decided that the second line was too close, because artillery would still be able to reach the city, so a third line was started between the two, consisting of field forts connected by trench lines. “Fort Sidney Johnston was the lynchpin of the third line,” Harkins said. Due to its importance to the city’s defense, the fort is more complex than the typical fortifica-

Searching for the remnants of the fort, archaeologists used a trackhoe to dig a trench approximately 12 feet deep. What appears to be steps going up the right wall of the trench is actually the remains of a brick magazine wall.

tions built on the battlefields during the war. The 13cannon fort was built mostly of sand and logs with some brick. A large brick wall that may have been part of an underground artillery ammunition magazine or shelter was uncovered, as well as a massive wooden floor made of three-by-eight-inch timber. The wood’s preservation was aided by the slow burial of the structure under 12 feet of moist soil. —Tamara Stewart

Government Archaeologists’ Jobs Threatened THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION WANTS TO MAKE NPS JOBS COMPETITIVE.

he National Park Service (NPS), the largest employer within the Interior Department, could outsource 1,708 jobs, about 120 of them in archaeological services. This results from the Bush Administration’s requirement that federal agencies conduct a competitive review of approximately 15 percent of their jobs to determine if they could be more efficiently performed by private sector employees. The administration is hoping to “get the best value for the American taxpayer,” according to NPS outsourcing coordinator Donna Kalvels. Employees at the Southeast Archaeological Center in Tallahassee, Florida, and the Midwest Archeolog-

ical Center in Lincoln, Nebraska, said they have devoted thousands of manhours over the past year documenting their missions, projects, and job descriptions in an effort to prove their efficiency and cost effectiveness. The centers provide archaeological services to 122 National Parks and 780 National Landmarks in 22 states, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. They partner with American and international universities, contract archaeological firms, and hundreds of volunteers to protect and preserve cultural resources. The centers’ employees state that hundreds of years of combined institutional memory and experience would be lost if workers from the private sec-

tor replace them. “Our responsibility is to be the watch-dog to see that cultural resources are protected and preserved,” said John E. Ehrenhard, director of the Southeast center. “We make careers out of protecting the resource; we don’t use the resource to make a career.” Republican Congressman Doug Bereuter from Nebraska, who introduced an amendment prohibiting the use of funds to implement competitive sourcing at the two centers, charged that a “bean-counter” was behind the plan he called “mindless.” Bereuter’s amendment was attached to the Interior Department’s appropriations bill. The amendment passed overwhelmingly in the House of Representatives. —Elizabeth Wolf fall • 2003

NASA Satellite Imagery Aids Archaeologists in Maya Research

in the

NEWS

Images penetrate the dense jungle of the Petén, resolving ongoing debate.

NASA/MARSHALL SPACE FLIGHT CENTER

ith the aid of satellite remote sensing, a research team discovered more than 70 new archaeological sites in the Petén rain forest of northern Guatemala. These findings resulted from a NASA-funded project to better understand Maya adaptation to their environment. The project also attempted to resolve the ongoing debate as to whether the ancient Maya made use of the extensive seasonal wetlands, called bajos, that cover nearly half of the rain forest. The team also used geographic information system and global positioning system technology, and traditional archaeological field methods to investigate the wetlands. During the Late Classic period of A.D. 550 to 850 the population of the Petén region reached several million, a number so great that researchers now think they must have replaced their earlier technique of slash-and-burn farming, which can only support low density populations, with more intensive agricultural techniques. One way to increase agricultural productivity would have been to farm the extensive seasonal wetlands known as bajos during the dry season, as is done by modern farmers today. All of the sites the team discovered were in the bajos.

What appear to be small mounds in this satellite image of a bajo are islands. Archaeological sites were discovered on all of these islands.

“The Late Classic population was staggering, and how the Maya could have reached that population without farming the 40 percent of the land surface that is bajo cannot be explained,” said T. Patrick Culbert, one of the researchers. —Tamara Stewart

Old Reno Unveiled

A construction project yields a glimpse of the city’s past.

public works project by the City of Reno that began in September 2002 has led to 37 discoveries revealing the city’s history. “Preliminary testing, a ground penetrating radar survey, and archival research led to the discovery of several buried features including historic infrastructure, the evidence of the catastrophic fires of the 1870s, and the location of a pedestrian subway built in 1902,” reported archaeologist Ed Stoner of Western Cultural Resource Management. Among the discoveries was the Frank Brothers bottling plant. Con-

american archaeology

structed in 1913 and operating until 1939, Frank Brothers bottled a wide variety of products as evidenced by the over 70 different types of bottles identified. In a 60-square-foot pit hundreds of thousands of glass fragments and thousands of nearly intact bottles created a layer of glass nearly three feet thick. Bottle labels with the Frank Brothers logo as well as several large black stains on the ground were first exposed during construction of the temporary railroad track, said Stoner. Once mapped, the stain patterns matched the orientation of structures that had

been documented on maps of Reno’s historic businesses. According to Stoner, excavations of the Frank Brothers site revealed masonry walls, a burned residence, a charcoal filled pit, large pits lined with sawdust or redwood bark, and the floor of a meat packing plant, indicating that the bottling plant was one of many businesses that had occupied the site. The site is eligible to be listed on the National Register for Historic Places. Artifacts recovered from the site will be curated at the Nevada State Museum in Carson City. —Kerry Slater 9

in the

NEWS

Researchers May Have Found First Substantial Paleo-Indian House Folsom site rich with artifacts is being researched near Gunnison, Colorado.

fall • 2003

MARK STIGER

habitation structure that may date as far back as about 13,000 years ago has been found along with an incredible density of Folsomperiod artifacts on a mesa top southeast of Gunnison, Colorado. If the structure does date to the Folsom period, which dates from approximately 11,500 to 13,000 years ago, it would be the first of its kind to be recorded and could change thinking about the Folsom from highly mobile large game hunters to that of more sedentary people. Archaeologist Mark Stiger and other researchers with Western State College first discovered the Mountaineer site in 1994 during a survey of the university-owned mesa top. In The partially excavated rock structure can be seen. Archaeologists await the results of radiocarbon 2000 the researchers recorded the large dating to determine the structure’s age. site, during which time they discovered about 20 diagnostic Folsom projectile points. With the feet in diameter filled with burned house material, charhelp of a Colorado Historical Fund grant and assistance coal, and animal bones. It’s surrounded by large rocks from the City of Gunnison, in 2001 Stiger and a team of piled around the edges. Based on Archaic-period strucundergraduate students excavated the site. tures, Stiger hypothesized that upright poles held up a “After the first field season, we saw a strange rock fearoof of vegetation that was then covered with burned, ture that we first interpreted as a possible structure or smoothed daub, pieces of which have been found within roasting pit,” Stiger said. “We determined in May of this the structure. Charcoal obtained from the structure’s year that it is a habitation structure that is likely associated floor has been sent to a lab for radiocarbon dating. with the artifacts.” David Meltzer, a Paleo-Indian expert at Southern The structure consists of a basin-shaped floor about 12 Methodist University, and a team of graduate students have just finished recording what may be the remains of a Folsom campsite about 200 feet away on the same mesa top. So far more than 25,000 stone artifacts including 60 diagnostic Folsom projectile points and at least 30 stone scrapers have been recovered from Stiger’s excavation area. He plans to continue his investigation next summer. “There is a very heavy density of Folsom artifacts at this site,” said Steve Holen, curator of archaeology at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. “The material I saw is local, which is a very different pattern than Folsom sites on the Great Plains where lithic material used to make Folsom artifacts is often moved hundreds of kilometers, leading to the interpretation that they were highly mobile.” —Tamara Stewart These are some of the more complete Folsom points recovered from the site.

in the

FATE OF HAWAIIAN ARTIFACTS STILL UNCERTAIN

NEWS

Museum tries to reclaim artifacts loaned to group.

BISHOP MUSEUM

ncient artifacts illegally obtained from the Kawaihae Cave complex on the big island of Hawaii nearly 100 years ago and sold to the Bishop Museum in Honolulu are the focus of a struggle for custody. In 2000 the museum, under the auspices of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), secretly loaned the collection of artifacts to the Hui Malama I Na Kupuna O Hawaii Nei, a native Hawaiian organization, who insisted that three other native claimants were in agreement that Hui Malama should take the artifacts. The Bishop Museum soon learned that this was not the case and tried to reclaim the artifacts. But Hui Malama had returned them to the remote cave site where it is presumed the remains of Hawaiian chiefs are buried, and sealed the cave, saying that they were fulfilling their ancestors’ wishes and restoring the sanctity of the graves from which the artifacts were taken. In 2001 the museum stated that, in accordance with NAGPRA, it was repatriating the artifacts to the native Hawaiian groups claiming affiliation, which have grown to 13, including Hui Malama. In order to accomplish this, the museum intends to recover the artifacts. “In the past several months, informational meetings have been held with the claimants who wished to do so,” said DeSoto Brown, Bishop Museum NAGPRA project manager for the Kawaihae Cave project. “Under discussion at this time is the issue of what permits, either state or federal, will be needed to enter the cave complex to retrieve the objects. Once settled, any required permits will be secured and planning will begin for the actual recovery process.” The 83 artifacts include bowls embedded with human teeth, deity carvings, a female figurine with human hair, and scraps of cloth. It is not clear whether these were burial items, since they were not placed with or near the bodies. Though experts are uncertain of the exact age of the artifacts, they appear to date from the late 18th to early

american archaeology

This wooden image of a female figure is one of the artifacts that the Bishop Museum is attempting to reclaim.

19th centuries. This estimate is based on the good condition of the wood artifacts as well as the presence of foreign objects, which could only have come from Westerners who first arrived in 1778. The museum purchased the artifacts in 1905 from an explorer named David Forbes, who took them from the cave. —Tamara Stewart 11

A Potential Threat to Metal detectors are now sophisticated enough to identify a deeply buried Civil War bullet. Many hobbyists who use metal detectors are lobbying to get access to more public lands, some of which have archaeological sites.

n a humid evening in August a car with Pennsylvania plates pulled into a church parking lot on the edge of Virginia’s Manassas National Battlefield Park. Two men got out, gathered their knapsacks, and walked into the

woods. When they reached a spot deep in the woods a few hundred yards off of a park trail, they set up a base camp and waited for darkness to fall. A few hours later they changed out of their shorts and T-shirts and put on camouflage. They pulled the compofall • 2003

MANASSAS NATIONAL BATTLEFIELD PARK

This painting, titled “The Capture of Rickett’s Battery,” depicts the struggle on Henry Hill during the First Battle of Manassas on July 21, 1861, in Virginia. This was the first of two major Civil War battles that took place here. They are also referred to as the Battles of Bull Run.

Archaeological Sites Though most of these hobbyists are law abiding, metal detectors have been used to loot archaeological sites. Consequently, some archaeologists are concerned about these developments. By Elaine Robbins

Many archaeologists are concerned about the threat posed by metal detectors. But in some cases these instruments are used in the service of archaeology. At Arkansas’s huge Pea Ridge National Military Park, a group of volunteers uses metal detectors to find archaeological evidence. The volunteers work

ROBERT STILL

under the supervision of Doug Scott, an archaeologist with the National Park Service.

nents of two metal detectors out of their knapsacks and duct-taped them to walking sticks they had found on the ground. Making their way with small flashlights, they crept through the woods to an area of the park known as the Unfinished Railroad—a spot where Confederate american archaeology

troops hid behind the mounded grade of an unfinished rail line and ambushed Union troops. Poring over the ground with their metal detectors, they dug a hole with their buck knives whenever they got a promising hit. Manassas park ranger Scott Ryan had been on the 13

lets, belt buckles, and bayonets from the Revolutionary and Civil Wars are easily detectable by these devices. Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania County Battlefields Memorial National Military Park in Virginia, for example, suffered nine looting incidents last year—and a record 17 in 2001. “About 98 percent of the looting at Civil War sites is done with metal detectors,” says Stephen Potter, regional archaeologist for the National Park Service in the National Capital Region, an area popular with Civil War buffs that includes Manassas, Antietam National Battlefield, and Harpers Ferry National Historical Park. Although military battlefields are the hardest hit, other archaeological sites are also targets. In 2001, a park interpreter at Texas’s Goliad State Historical Park discovered 24 freshly dug holes surrounded by metal fragments near the Spanish mission and along the nature trail. In the months before the incident, old metal buttons “from the Goliad area” had been offered for sale on eBay—presumably collected during earlier forays into the park. Looting on public lands with metal detectors is not a new phenomenon: It’s been going on for as long as these gadgets have been around. But in recent years, the damage has become more pronounced because the devices are increasingly sophisticated. While the early metal detectors couldn’t tell a gold coin from a pull tab, today $900 buys a device complete with LCD graphic target analyzer and microprocessor-controlled operating system. The latest devices can also detect items buried deeper in the ground. “A few decades ago, an instrument might be able to find a bullet buried six inches in the ground,” says Potter. “But 14

today the best machines can discriminate a .58-caliber conical lead bullet—the most common bullet from the American Civil War—at 10 inches. Depending on soil conditions, some of the new generation of detectors can even pick up a small, lightweight brass hat cap [a firing mechanism on a rifle or musket] at six to eight inches.” With the creation of Internet sites like eBay, looters have easy access to a ready market of collectors. Cartridge cases fired at the Battle of Little

Big Horn, for example, might fetch $100 to $200 each. An artillery gunner’s quadrant from the Revolutionary War recently sold on eBay for $1,300. As managers of public lands grapple with the looting problem, they are now facing an even bigger threat: a campaign by metal detector groups to open more public lands to their hobby. In a movement that echoes the arguments of off-road vehicle groups and others calling for access to public lands, organizations like the Federation of Metal Detector and Archaeological Clubs (FMDAC) have pressured state park departments and state legislators to loosen the rules governing the use of metal detectors in state parks. “People vacation, and if they’re metal detecting people, they like to metal detect wherever they can,” says James Beyers, national vice president of the FMDAC and

GARRETT ELECTRONICS, INC.

lookout for the car with the Pennsylvania plates that night. The last couple of days he had noticed the vehicle parked suspiciously on the shoulder of a county road that ran through the park. The previous night he had peered into the parked car and noticed a telltale price guide to Civil War artifacts opened in the backseat. So when he spotted the car in the church parking lot, he parked, pulled on his night-vision goggles and headed into the pitch-black woods. By the time he caught up with the men and led them out of the woods in handcuffs, they had already dug more than 30 holes. Later, back at their base camp, he found nightvision goggles and a knapsack containing a .69caliber Minié ball made in Austria, a piece of a military button, and an ornamented brass object that came from the cover of a soldier’s box. Historic sites across the country are under siege by looters wielding metal detectors. Military battlefields are the most frequent targets, since metal bul-

(Top and above) This popular and sophisticated metal detector uses LCD color graphics to show the size and depth of buried objects. It also indicates whether the objects are coins, pulltabs, bottle caps, cans, or bigger items.

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MANASSAS NATIONAL BATTLEFIELD PARK

This landmark, known as the Stone House, is found at the center of Manassas National Battlefield Park. Originally a tavern, it’s believed to have been built sometime between 1828 and 1850. Wounded soldiers from both the Union and Confederate armies were housed there during the two battles at Manassas. Manassas, along with other Civil War battlefields, attracts looters using metal detectors.

secretary of the Seiders Springs club in Texas. “We’re not asking for [access to] whole parks. We’re just asking for public-use areas—a beach area, a picnic area, a camping area. We pay our taxes, we pay for these parks, and metal detecting is the only hobby banned from the parks.” Hobbyists feel unfairly targeted by rules that allow other forms of recreation that can have equal or greater impact on resources. “Metal detecting is a hobby, just like fishing, hunting, camping, or playing volleyball,” he says. “We clean up the parks as we go along. Everything we dig up we dispose of if we don’t keep it.” Last year representatives from the FMDAC, a confederation of 140 local clubs, met with state park directors in Texas and Arkansas to request that they loosen regulations that prohibit metal detecting in state parks. When the parks departments in both states decided to maintain their current policies, Beyers collected hundreds of signatures for petitions to state legislators. So far no legislation has been changed. In a preemptive move to protect their resources, several states are tightening laws governing metal detecting in their parks. In December, New Mexico implemented a american archaeology

new regulation prohibiting metal detecting in state parks. A few months ago South Dakota expanded its restriction against metal detecting to encompass not just parks but public hunting areas as well. Last May, after Michigan tightened its policy—it now prohibits metal detector use except at designated swimming beaches, day-use areas, campgrounds, parking lots, and boat-access areas—the parks department was besieged by a virtual rally held by angry hobbyists. “I was inundated with the metal detecting clubs and communities from around the country,” says Harold Herta, operations unit supervisor of Michigan’s Parks and Recreation Bureau. “It was really bad. They flooded me with over 400 e-mails, and they locked up my voicemail. They said we were ruining their sport, and that they’re never coming here again. One of the letters even said this policy was unpatriotic, because the president has asked everyone to be on the lookout for al Qaeda, and how are they going to find terrorist groups if they’re not welcome in the woods?” he relates exasperatedly. “Well, we’re not discouraging you from looking for terrorist groups if you want to do that. Just don’t take your metal detector.” 15

“What’s the difference between a Northern fairy tale and a ple who are well-read about their passion.” Southern fairy tale? A Northern fairy tale begins ‘Once upon a To a hobbyist like Malcolm Price, the Manassas dig offered the time.’ A Southern fairy tale begins ‘Y’all ain’t going to believe this.’ chance of a lifetime. “I found Civil War bullets, artillery shell fragThat’s how Don Long, then president of the Northern Virginia ments, and buttons from Louisiana, Virginia, and New York.” But for Relic Hunters Association, described how he felt the night he got Price, it was the experience, not the treasures, that was the bigger a call from project director Matthew Reeves inviting his memthrill. “I got to metal detect in a place I never thought I’d get access bers to participate in an archaeological dig at Manassas National to in my life.” —Elaine Robbins Battlefield Park. “The first thing I thought was, ‘Yeah, right. Dig on Manassas Battlefield. This guy has to be nuts.’” In fact, he wasn’t. The National Park Service has sought metal detector hobbyists on a number of occasions to help with their surveys. “It’s been very successful,” says Bob Sonderman, a National Park Service archaeologist. “If you’re working in a larger place where you have a huge survey area, we can do our work in onethird the time using volunteer enthusiasts. And we provide them with an opportunity to understand why we do what we do, and why it’s important to do it that way.” Archaeologist Stephen Potter, who is also with the National Park Service, agrees. “They’ve had a tremendous posi- The crew who worked at the Little Bighorn battlefield in 1999 consisted of professional archaeolotive effect on our archaeological pro- gists, retired government employees, a scrap metal business owner, a professional archivist, a grams and research. Most of these folks housewife, a Native American, and a house painter. This voluneteer crew also used metal detectors are Civil War buffs, so you’re getting peo- to recover archaeological evidence.

This grass-roots campaign has had its greatest victory to date in Washington State, where a law was passed in 1998 requiring the parks department to open an additional 50 acres of parkland a year for five years to metal detecting. A few years ago metal detector groups launched a more frontal attack: They found a sponsor for a bill that would have opened all state parks to metal detecting except in areas known to have historical resources. Although the law didn’t pass, the campaign has left archaeologists in Washington concerned that it will be reintroduced in the future. The proposed rule change would force resource protection staff to survey its 220,000 acres of parkland and identify areas that should remain off-limits. “The problem with that, from our standpoint, is it puts the onus on managing agencies to not only protect these resources but to identify all those areas where archaeological and historical sites are,” says Washington State Parks archaeologist Dan Meatte. “And of course the problem with that is that we as a management strategy do not go out and identify where all these historic and prehistoric sites are. One of 16

the tools of managing these sites is, in many cases, not advertising their presence.” One of the problems with greater access to public lands is that legalized metal detecting gives looters a good cover. “If you open public lands to metal detecting, you put the law enforcement people in an untenable position,” says Potter. “How are they going to know if someone is out there looking for lost jewelry or coins, or if they’re really out there looking for archaeological resources? It’s going to put a tremendous burden on an already overburdened law enforcement organization, whether at the local, county, state, or federal level. Those people already have enough to do, with crimes that once occurred only in our inner cities now happening in our parks—and now with homeland security concerns. It seems to me that it’s irresponsible of public lawmakers to put law enforcement people in that situation.” Archaeologists are quick to point out that most metal detector users are simply enjoying a harmless pastime and are certainly not looters. “What the majority of people are fall • 2003

DOUGLAS SCOTT

Working Together

ROBERT STILL

These artifacts were taken from Pea Ridge National Military Park by a looter using a metal detector. A park ranger apprehended the looter. The artifacts in the left row, from top, are a time fuse for a cannon ball, two base plates for cannon projectiles, and a harness buckle. The artifacts in the right row are nails, the head of an adjustable wrench, a square nut, and a fragment of a watering bridle bit. The artifacts in the right row are associated with a 19th-century occupation.

doing is simply using it as a tool for finding lost items, jewelry, and coins,” says Meatte. “They prefer to go to day-use areas and campgrounds, where people are most likely to lose things.” In fact, many clubs post codes of ethics on their Web sites, and last spring, after reports of looting at Harpers Ferry and Gettysburg, FMDAC offered a $500 reward for information leading to the arrest of looters on federal property. But even law-abiding users can inflict damage to a site without realizing what they’re doing. “Say someone wants to metal detect an 18th-century farmstead in Virginia, or an 1880 soddie in Nebraska, or a Colorado mining camp,” says Douglas Scott, a National Park Service archaeologist. “They’re looking for coins or marbles, bottles, jewelry, or tobacco tags. They go in and they say, ‘Oh, it’s just a bunch of nails here,’ and pick them up and throw them away and kind of clean up the site. What they’ve done is begin to destroy the record of how that house was built, what people did in that house—they played marbles or checkers or chess. And if they picked up the door hinges and the window-sash weights and things, we begin to lose the context of what was there, how the place was built, what their social and economic status in life was.” Scott, one of the nation’s leading battlefield archaeologists, experienced the devastating effects of destruction of an archaeological site a few years ago at Pea Ridge National Military Park in Pea Ridge, Arkansas. Just weeks before he was to begin the first archaeological survey ever made of Clemens Field, an important Civil War battlefield, park ranger Robert Still caught a man in broad dayamerican archaeology

light looting the battlefield with a metal detector, his 12year-old daughter in tow. The man had dug up 18 artifacts, most of them Civil War bullets. When his wife later arrived to pick up their daughter, she voluntarily returned 81 other artifacts he had stolen from the park, including bullets, cannonball fragments, artillery pieces, and an 1858 Brass Eagle button. Although the man was convicted and sentenced to jail—“the sentencing judge had five relatives who fought at that battle,” says Scott—the damage had already been done. “When we went out and surveyed that field,” he says, “we came up with over 200 additional objects, which we precisely plotted in patterns to help us understand how the battle took place. We were using the position of the cannonball fragments to do a reverse view-shed analysis using GIS to determine where the gun positions were. But the fact that this gentleman had collected another 99 artifacts, which we no longer have as part of our record, meant that we’ve lost the context. We’ve lost one-third of our data set, and it has hampered our interpretation to some degree. “This is our combined heritage,” Scott says. “If private landowners want to let their historic sites be destroyed, that’s their business. Don’t like it, but it’s their business. But public lands may be the only place where we can preserve our national heritage in a reasonably intact way. This is what people go to the national parks to see.” ELAINE ROBBINS has written for Sierra, Utne, and Preservation magazines from her base in Austin, Texas. 17

American Archaeology Photo Contest Winners Thanks to everyone who entered our second photography contest. Vicki Singer, our art director, and I chose the winners. There were many excellent pictures and that made it difficult to choose only three. But finally we did, and here they are. —Michael Bawaya, Editor

First Place, $150 Prize Petroglyphs in Sheep Canyon near Ridgecrest, California Jim Carlblom, San Marino, California 18

fall • 2003

Second Place, $75 Prize Mask of the Maya Rain God Chac, Labná, Yucatán, Mexico. John Hagenbuch, Tucson, Arizona

Third Place, $25 Prize An old kiva in a side canyon on Cedar Mesa in Utah. Steve Huish, Mesa, Arizona american archaeology

COVERING THE GAMUT of Prehistory

T h e excavation of the Barton site in northwestern Maryland has yielded artifacts representing thousands of years of human occupation.

ver the last 20 years, archaeologist Robert Wall and a loose-knit team of professional and amateur researchers have been investigating a floodplain along the North Branch of the Potomac River near Cumberland. Their labor has yielded thousands of artifacts, from crumbling pottery sherds and chert chips to exquisite bone combs and stone pendants. And it has revealed a constellation of settlements— dubbed the Barton complex—along more than a mile of riverbank. The finds have helped archaeologists finetune, and in some cases rethink, their understanding of the region’s human prehistory, which Wall thinks may go back some 12,000 years. But Wall says he’s only scratched Barton’s surface. He believes the site’s unusually deep, undisturbed soils still hold a trove of untold tales about the people who once inhabited the slender valley. “It has a little something from nearly every phase of prehistory,” he says. “That’s what makes it interesting.” And the exploration of this cornfield could even help solve some long-running mysteries, such as why some early inhabitants abruptly disappeared some 400 years ago. Wall isn’t the first archaeologist to be drawn to this rugged wedge of westernmost Maryland, pinched between Pennsylvania’s coal fields to the north and West Virginia’s snaggle-toothed ridges to the south and west. In

the late 1800s, researchers from the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.—150 miles downstream—discovered clay pots and human remains during periodic forays. Decades later, local collectors led other scientists to spots where the collectors had found elegant stone points. But there were still few serious archaeological studies of the region’s prehistory in 1980, when the Maryland Bureau of Mines hired Wall, who was completing his doctorate at the time, to orchestrate a major archaeological survey of areas that could be mined for coal. Over three years, he and his team documented hundreds of prehistoric sites. Not many, however, boasted the thick, loamy soils and sheer density of artifacts he encountered at Barton. “It was already a pretty well-known site, but I did a little bit of surface collecting just to try it out,” the tall, easy-going, 52-year-old archaeologist recalls as he makes his way across the weathered cornstalks that mark the site, a major chunk of which was recently protected by The Archaeological Conservancy. To the untrained eye, there isn’t much to see: the gently sloping terrace sits below a roadside motel, boxed in by a raised highway, railroad tracks, the river, and a small tributary. But the wry and irreverent Wall has a marvelous ability to highlight its hidden qualities. One is a selling point you might hear from a realtor: “This is a really great location, especially if you are living This Clovis point was found by a collector at the site. It’s evidence that the site may have been used some 12,000 years ago.

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BOB WALL/TOWSON UNIVERSITY

B y D a v i d M a l a koff

Archaeologist Bob Wall photographs a pit feature in the Keyser village as two members of his crew observe. Based on pottery found in the feature, Wall

RICK KOZAK

believes it dates to the 1300s.

off the land,” he says. The site sits at a geographical crossroads of sorts, Wall notes. To the west are the high, narrow ravines of the Allegheny Plateau, while the gentler, and warmer, mountains of Appalachia’s Ridge and Valley Province stretch out to the east. To the north and south are uplands rich in game and stone outcrops, and stream valleys that carve natural paths through the mountains. Then there are fish and shellfish in the Potomac, which roars out the mountains just upstream and then eases into the flatter valley, where it has built some of the broadest floodplain terraces in the area. “No doubt the locale was a major attraction,” agrees archaeologist Joe Dent of American University in Washamerican archaeology

ington, another of the few researchers actively studying Potomac prehistory. “The river has always been a meeting place, and an important corridor. You can follow it west [from the Chesapeake Bay] to within spitting distance of the Ohio River Valley.” Just when ancient travelers arrived at this little Nirvana on the North Branch, however, isn’t clear. At the site, Wall points out an almost imperceptible hump where a collector years ago found a stone point that might answer the question. It was a finely-fluted point in the Clovis style that experts associate with the early Paleo-Indian inhabitants of North America. It’s one of the few Clovis artifacts ever found in western Maryland. As stone can’t be 21

radiocarbon-dated, and there was no item associated with the point that could be dated either, the point is an indication, rather than conclusive proof, that these early visitors may have used the Barton site some 12,000 years ago.

A number of volunteers worked at the site this season. Volunteers have made a significant contribution to the work done at Barton over the years.

This sign covers a hearth that dates to the Page occupation.

It wasn’t until 1987, however, that Wall got a chance to explore the site in-depth. Working with volunteers from the regional chapter of the Archaeological Society of Maryland—and with the blessing of landowner John Barton—Wall dug several deep test pits. He liked what he saw. Intact floodplain sediments were stacked six feet or deeper in places, a rarity in the region. And the lowest layers appeared to be very old, meaning they might entomb evidence of early occupations. Wall and his crew were further cheered by the discovery of a few stone spear points of a design dated to the late Archaic period, 3,000 to 4,000 years ago. But the work was mind-numbing. “It appeared to be a very light occupation, and you could go days putting hard balls of clay through the screens and not find any artifacts,” Wall says. “People were grumbling.” Still, Barton looked like a promising place to build a solid occupational chronology, since the age of buried artifacts could be cross-checked by radiocarbon-dating burned organic matter in the surrounding soil. Over the last decade, Wall has managed to return to the site almost every year in pursuit of that goal. His teams, including some volunteers who have dedicated their vacations to his digs for more than a decade, have so far systematically excavated a tiny portion of the 30-acre site. Sometimes they excavate mere inches a day, carefully mapping evidence of hearths, structures, and the occasional human burial (they have found three, all respectfully left in place). Most of what they find is a few inches below the surface, but they sometimes excavate to a depth of three feet or more in search of evidence of the earliest inhabitants. And at the end of the dig, Wall loads any unearthed artifacts—from tiny potsherds to hefty stone tools—into his pickup for the three-hour drive back to Towson University near Baltimore, where he has a parttime appointment. In his Towson lab, Wall and his helpers painstakingly sort these artifacts. Pottery, for instance, is grouped by design, decoration, and the technique used to harden the clay; some Barton cultures used stone grit, for instance, while others mixed in bits of limestone or shell. The researchers also weigh the ceramics, since sheer bulk can provide clues to the number of people living on a site, and even their gender (women probably made the pots). Stone tools are also grouped by design or raw material, then put under a magnifying lens to look for clues to their fall • 2003

BOB WALL/TOWSON UNIVERSITY

Inch by inch, sherd by sherd

A student sketches artifacts found at the site. This is part of the process of recording them. All of the artifacts will also be photographed, but that usually won’t occur until they’re being analyzed

RICK KOZAK

in a laboratory.

purpose. Tools with edge angles of 50 degrees or more, for example, are considered best for cutting hard materials such as bone, while those with sharper edges were probably used for softer materials, such as skin or sinew. Mapping the distribution of leftover stone chips, known as debitage, can also aid in efforts to pinpoint workshops. Once finished, Wall transfers the artifacts to the Maryland Archaeological Conservation Laboratory in St. Leonard.

An Emerging Picture Such meticulous processing has enabled Wall and his collaborators to piece together at least a partial picture of the Barton site’s complex prehistory. In general, there are no big surprises: the site appears to have become home to bigger and more established settlements over time, as early hunter-gatherers moved down from the uplands and began to take up agriculture and trade. But there are some interesting twists and gaps in the story. In the early Paleo-Indian period, for instance, there is so far little evidence of occupation beyond that lone Clovis point. Still, Wall holds out hope. An apparently ancient layer of soil nearly six feet down has yielded a “somewhat iffy” radiocarbon date of nearly 16,000 years old, he notes, so “there’s potential to find good evidence of early occupaamerican archaeology

tions.” But that radiocarbon date—drawn from soil samples— could be skewed by groundwater intrusions, and although the deep layer contained some intriguing stone chips, he hasn’t yet found any diagnostic artifacts. Evidence for periodic habitation during the Archaic period, 9,500 to 3,000 years ago, is much stronger. In the early 1990s, Wall’s crew found serrated and notched projectile points that match Early and Middle Archaic artifacts documented at other sites in the region. But many were plucked from the surface or the shallow plow zone, and were not in stratigraphic context. A few Late Archaic artifacts, however, were found in stratigraphic context. The quantity of artifacts increases dramatically in shallower soils that date to the Woodland period, which stretched from 3,000 to about 350 years ago. Here, just a few inches below the surface, pottery first appears in large quantities. Indeed, Wall says Woodland pottery can be “monotonously” common on North Branch prehistoric sites. At Barton, it is easily picked out of the corn furrows. Excavators also find numerous Woodland stone points, tools, and slate gorgets—decorative items that apparently hung by two holes from a string. There are also the occasional bone tools. Sometimes, telltale styling can enable an experienced eye to date an artifact to the Early, Middle, or Late Woodland periods, although Wall admits the distinctions are often fuzzy. Adena-style points found at Barton, for instance, are believed to have been made during Early Woodland period. Similarly, the site’s relatively heavylipped Vinette pottery—named after a site in New York State—is considered an Early Woodland vintage. Its makers used crushed rock to temper the clay, and “cordmarked” the vessels inside and out with a paddle wrapped with fibrous cord. In contrast, a common Late Woodland pottery style, dubbed Keyser after the Virginia farm where it was first described, is tempered with shell and has different cordmarks and “pie crust” lips. Using such markers, Wall has discovered solid evi23

dence of Early and Late Woodland settlements at Barton. For some reason, however, Middle Woodland artifacts are in short supply. Filling that gap, Wall says, “would be a nice contribution.”

The Village People That gap, however, is more than compensated for by the fascinating Late Woodland village that Wall’s team began excavating in the mid-1990s. By about A.D.1000, he says, there is “overwhelming” evidence that the Barton site supported a succession of small, loosely organized hamlets, inhabited by people known as the Mason Island culture. The telltale leavings of these Late Woodland inhabitants include limestone-tempered “Page” ceramics, bone tools, and some evidence of corn horticulture. Around 1400, however, the Mason Island hamlets gave way to something quite different: a nucleated village surrounded by a heavy log stockade, inhabited by people who made shell-tempered Keyser ceramics and other unique tools. Wall had long suspected that the village—or at least some interesting feature—was there. Aerial photos showed a noticeable patch of dark soil, and the surface was littered with an unusually high concentration of Keyser sherds. Excavations confirmed his hunch, turning up hearths, patches of structural postholes, and a wealth of artifacts. Over several field seasons, the curved stockade came into focus, along with a trench that appeared to be filled with trash. Overall, the village appears to cover at least two acres. “It’s definitely one of our most interesting features,” he says. The appearance of the Keyser village, however, raises a host of questions. Where did these people come from? Why did they build the stockade? And, ultimately, where did they go? Dent, for one, speculates that the Keyserites drifted in from the north and west, perhaps filling a void created by 24

RICK KOZAK BOB WALL/TOWSON UNIVERSITY

Archaeologist Bob Wall has been investigating the Barton site for 10 years.

infighting or disease among the Mason Island communities. But based on his study of pottery styles, Wall believes that they may have come from the south, from what is now West Virginia. And he suggests that the stockade probably was for defense against other expanding groups, although that is hard to prove short of “finding an arrowhead stuck into a log,” he says. The inhabitants might have also built the stockade to define their village or pen livestock, he notes. It’s also not clear if the Keyser people were around to see the arrival of the first European explorers in the late 1500s. At Barton, there is plenty of evidence of that great cultural contact: just north of the Keyser village, excavations have turned up dozens of sparkling blue trade beads, metal animal cutouts, copper tubes, and other evidence of European commerce. But the contact site has also yielded the exquisitely incised pottery of the Susquehannock people, who moved south into the area in the mid-1500s. In a recent paper, Wall and Heather Lapham of Southern Illinois University in Carbondale wonder whether the Keyser community was subsumed by the Susquehannocks or another tribe. Or, perhaps, the Susquehannocks arrived to find the Keyser village already abandoned and barely visible beneath the creeping floodplain vegetation.

These artifacts were recovered from the site: (above) a polished antler comb fragment and pendant, (below) Susquehannock pottery sherds.

fall • 2003

RICK KOZAK

Students and trained volunteers record features uncovered in a test unit.

Either way, the Susquehannocks themselves were soon on the way out, eventually to be replaced by a wandering band of Shawnee that set up camp on the site and then abandoned it. Ultimately came the settlers and miners, the men who built the railroad and highway that now define the edges of the Barton site, and the farmers who periodically plow its surface.

Unfinished Business This year, the team sifting the Barton site faced especially challenging conditions. After three years of drought, the rains returned in June with a vengeance, buckling tarps and turning excavations into soupy watering holes. Even on dry days Wall’s team had to abandon several pits they were excavating after finding that the water table lurked just inches below the surface. Still, they made some progress, mapping new postholes, pits, and hearths. And as the rain turned a nearby parking lot into a lake, Wall methodically lays some of the week’s more dramatic finds out on a Formica tabletop in a local diner. Among the most memorable: a polished bone knife that looked to all the world like an ivory letter opener you’d buy as a fancy gift, and a slate american archaeology

pendant with beveled edges that would be at home in any jeweler’s window. Wall clearly enjoys such objects. But he also has his eye on making less flashy but probably more important discoveries. Working with a paleobotanist, he’d like to sift ancient pollen grains from prehistoric soils in order to learn more about the plants that fed and surrounded Barton’s prehistoric residents. He might look again at the raw materials used to make stone tools, seeking new insights into trade patterns, cultural contacts, and industrial practices. Excavating more of the Keyser village might reveal clues to social structure—was there a wealthy chief with a big house, or a more egalitarian community? “There are so many questions you could look at, and you could spend years on any one of them,” Wall says as he carefully packs up his Barton treasures. He then describes a planned fall campaign to excavate some new units. Of course, there’s never enough funding to do everything. But that’s never stopped the self-employed Wall, says Dent. “There’s not a lot of money for studying prehistory along the Potomac,” he says. “But Bob’s in love with the region, so he just keeps at it. It’s back-breaking work—but he’s been pathfinding.” DAVID MALAKOFF covers research discoveries and the politics of science for Science magazine. 25

WILLIAM S. WEBB MUSEUM OF ANTHROPOLOGY, UNIVERSITY OF KENTUCKY

Old Site,

In 1939 and 1940, WPA workers excavated a large mound within Annis Village. The mound was built in three stages; the top of the initial stage is being cleared of overlying soil. The men worked around numerous pillars that are evidence of a subsequent stage of construction.

Annis Village, a Mississippian site in western Kentucky, was first excavated more than 60 years ago. Archaeologists believe the current excavation of this site will inform them about the social structure of small, isolated sites like Annis. This excavation is also highlighting the differences between archaeological methodology and technology then and now. 26

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DAN DRY

New Information

Archaeologists Scott Hammerstedt (left) and George Milner undertook excavations in 2002 and 2003 to build on the WPA archaeologists’ earlier work. Hammerstedt and Milner think the WPA did excellent work at Annis Village.

By Nancy S. Grant

wide band of wild vegetation forms a buffer between the freshly planted, perfect rows of modern farm fields and the curving banks of Kentucky’s Green River. The water, a rich chocolate brown from unusually heavy rains in late spring, flows high. Sunlight filtering through the soaring treetops forms dapples of shade and sun. In a small clearing crisscrossed with gridlines and an expanding network of excavation units in the clayey soil, Penn State faculty and students work during a field school. Working in the sticky heat in rural Butler County,

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they dig quietly and steadily in seclusion at the Mississippian site of Annis Village. During the Late Prehistoric Period, this site, which was removed from the larger population centers of that time, was a thriving settlement, a Mississippian village consisting of an earthen platform mound, a small sand mound, palisades, and more than a dozen structures. The settlements of the Mississippian period scattered across the southern Midwest and Southeast shared many similarities, but were politically autonomous and economically self-sufficient. 27

the Depression. Milner notes that most WPA workers were untrained, and that they used less sophisticated methodology and technology than today’s. For example, radiocarbon dating was not available then. As a result, the WPA work done throughout the country has sometimes been dismissed by contemporary archaeologists. But he adds that the WPA archaeology projects in Kentucky, under the leadership of William S. Webb and, at Annis, Ralph Brown, were of high quality. A professor of physics at the University of Kentucky, Webb also had a keen interest in anthropology. In 1931 Webb cofounded the Webb Museum of Anthropology at the University of Kentucky in Lexington. “The major interest of archaeologists back in the 1930s was getting the basic outline, a time and space framework of what happened when and where, and they were good at that,” Milner says. “They were very good at identifying the types of stone tools, pottery, and houses that were used.” Brown, in particular, excelled in mapmaking, keeping page after page of drawings and detailed grids, taking blackand-white photos, and documenting the work at every stage of progress. “The voluminous records Brown kept and his careful attention to preserving the artifacts make the Annis

SCOTT W. HAMMERSTEDT

Archaeologists’ knowledge of the social order of Mississippians is to a large extent defined by the investigations conducted at large ceremonial sites such as Cahokia, Etowah, and Moundville. Comparatively little is known about the societies of the many smaller mound sites such as Annis. This imbalance of knowledge prompted Penn State archaeologist George Milner, graduate students Scott Hammerstedt and Thomas Nielsen, and their crew of field school students to excavate Annis Village. “Annis Village is an unusual site because it is a mound center which is, as far as we know, very distant from any other such mound center,” Milner says. “The relationship between Annis and surrounding smaller sites, such as isolated houses, is not complicated by overlapping and unrelated occupations. A great deal of work has been conducted in the Green River area for a long time, starting in the early 20th century with Clarence B. Moore, who dug at several mound sites.” He adds, “We’re reasonably sure that if other Mississippian mound sites existed nearby they’d have been detected by now.” Another important consideration in choosing the site was the work that had been done here over 60 years ago by the Work Projects Administration (WPA) during

Penn State students Ryan Hudson (foreground) and Adrian Eakes cut a palisade trench in half to determine its depth and stratigraphy.

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Village an outstanding choice for us to reinvestigate today,” Milner adds. THE WPA WORKED AT ANNIS VILLAGE DURING THE FALL and winter of 1939-40. Brown and his crew mapped and excavated the site (showing the locations of 16 structures in the village and three additional structures in the mound), and recovered about 65,000 artifacts including pottery and other items. This collection is housed at the Webb Museum of Anthropology. Based on the analysis of ceramics found at the site, it was thought that the village’s principal occupation occurred sometime between approximately A.D. 1100 and1400. The big mound was rebuilt over a period of time with three successive construction episodes consisting of ever-larger earthen platforms. Some of the village houses had been rebuilt over a period of time, as shown by repaired walls. And at least three sequential palisades enclosed the site. “The physical arrangement of the palisades and structures indicate a fortified village,” Milner says. “These structures indicate that the people who lived here made an investment of time and effort to build and maintain their houses, and this points to continued, long-term occupation of the site.” Other findings, such as one-and-a-half-inch-long maize cobs and some storage pits, indicate that the people of Annis Village were agriculturists who lived at the site year-round for several consecutive years, he adds. “The Mississippian period in general Much of an excavator’s time is spent taking meticulous notes, as is done here by Pete Wisniewski, in this area of Kentucky is poorly under- another of the field school students. stood,” Hammerstedt points out. Milner understanding,” Hammerstedt says. In order to find the adds, “The nearest other Mississippian period sites are acunexcavated portion of this site, Milner’s crew, armed with tually quite distant from Annis Village, places such as Angel the WPA’s map of Annis, had to find the excavated area. Mound in southern Indiana, Kincaid in southern Illinois, and Cahokia in East St. Louis. Although there are many In 2002 Milner, Hammerstedt, and a small volunteer similarities among those sites, there were also many differcrew first visited the site with the objective of identifying ences, and Annis Village is much smaller than those sites.” at least one place where the WPA dug. After two and a They note that Annis Village differs from more heavhalf weeks of searching that included digging test holes ily populated Mississippian sites, some of which were built along the rusty, vine-encrusted remnants of a fence, they and rebuilt over long periods of time. Nothing from a later succeeded in finding a pit dug by the Mississippians. “We time period was ever superimposed over Annis Village. knew the WPA excavated this pit up to the fence line, but “Because of its distance from other centers,” Hammerstedt left the other half of the pit intact,” Hammerstedt exsays, “Annis Village is a nice snapshot in time and there’s plains. “We were able to find the exact line they used to unlikely to be as much confusion as at other sites. bisect the feature.” “The WPA workers did not excavate the entire site, Milner picks up the story from there. “That gave us one leaving much intact that we can dig now to improve our fixed point, but theoretically their entire grid could spin american archaeology

WILLIAM S. WEBB MUSEUM OF ANTHROPOLOGY, UNIVERSITY OF KENTUCKY

The WPA crew excavated the large mound in its entirety. A worker in the right of the picture is holding a stadia rod, which was used to measure depth. Though most of the workers were untrained, they did a good job of exposing large areas.

around it like a record on a spindle. We knew, more or less, their angle of north within their grid system, and had a general notion of the alignment of their grid. As we worked last year we discovered a few other partially excavated features we could more or less identify on the original maps.” Later, Hammerstedt spent many weeks feeding data from those original maps into a computer to create a digital map of the site. “This year we established a grid system that seemed to work best with what we’d found last year,” Milner says as he points to the WPA-excavated pit’s location in the left section of the map. The students learn how to measure and map using the same centuries-old surveying techniques available to the WPA workers (using a transit which relies on simple optics), then repeated the process using a modern laser transit. In order to fully understand the principles of surveying, students this summer were taught to use both kinds of instruments when laying out a grid system for excavation. “We spent a lot of effort on work that was specifically designed to reconcile the larger WPA dig with the smaller area where we are digging this season,” Milner says. “The WPA workers were really good at opening up large expanses of ground, excavating structures, and collecting large things. But we have finer controls on our excavations and use techniques that were developed since those guys finished. Because of the large-scale work the WPA did, we 30

are able to put our smaller excavations into the context of the overall village already mapped. If we didn’t have their work to refer to, we’d just be digging in a small area without knowing how it fits in with a larger village.” Recognizing old features is just part of this year’s field school; the students must learn to differentiate soil types and colors, and to distinguish damage by animals and tree roots from evidence of human activities as they dig in previously unexplored parts of the site. The students have learned to recognize patterns of soil color and texture in freshly exposed earth. Comparing a trowelful of soil from the site to the samples in a Munsell soil chart—another tool invented long after the WPA excavation—allows for a precise identification of color, texture, and other properties, which helps researchers determine if the soil has been affected by human or natural causes. As Milner observes, edges of old pits that were once sharp and easy to distinguish visually are now partly obscured after a long period of disturbances by insects and other animals, as well as plant roots (he likens it to looking at an Impressionist painting). THE WPA MAPS INDICATED TWO PALISADES, THE OUTERMOST lying farthest from the river, the inner palisade closer to the banks. Milner and his crew determined that the inner palisade extended all the way to the present riverbank, where centuries of erosion have fall • 2003

Living With Archaeology Doris (she prefers her last name not be used) remembers when WPA project supervisor Ralph Brown came to live with her family in the fall of 1939. “At that time there were only gravel and dirt roads in all of Butler County,” Doris recalls, “and the nearest hotel was 30 miles away, so Mr. Brown paid room and board to my parents so he could be near the site. The other workers hired for the WPA project were local men who lived with their own families. “I was eight years old, an only child who'd already skipped a grade or two in school, fairly impish, and very curious. Ralph Brown was fascinating. I remember his personality and his persona—that

Doris holds a picture of herself as a girl with her grandparents. In 2004, Doris’s family will have owned

DAN DRY

the farm for 100 years.

A collection of old photographs—including one of Ralph Brown (center), who supervised the WPA dig—serves as a reminder of that time.

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was more meaningful to me than what he was doing. “I went down to the dig area occasionally,” she says. “I remember seeing the men down in the excavations with little brushes, carefully removing bits of soil from whatever they'd uncovered. I became fascinated with the pottery shards. Although there really was no place for Mr. Brown to work, I do remember that sometimes he'd bring pottery shards into the house and he'd attempt to reconstruct small objects they'd found. They didn't find much whole material, just bits and pieces, although I do remember seeing a skeleton or two in place as they unearthed them.” Doris left home to enroll in college; the farm remained in her father's care until she began inheriting parts of the land in the mid-1970s. “Someone in our extended family has lived here throughout 100 years,” Doris notes. “My husband and I consider land as a resource, not a commodity. “As an adult, I am much more interested in archaeology now that my perspective has broadened,” Doris says. “My husband and I are delighted that people who know how to properly excavate and evaluate the site are working on it now.” —Nancy S. Grant

WILLIAM S. WEBB MUSEUM OF ANTHROPOLOGY, UNIVERSITY OF KENTUCKY

Clay human figurines were among the many artifacts found during the WPA excavation. These faces, part of larger artifacts, came from both

DAN DRY

the mound and village.

Thomas Nielsen, a Penn State graduate student from Denmark, excavates with a trowel. A screen used to capture small artifacts can be seen in the background.

long since destroyed its original termination point. The most important find of the season is a deep trench, which they believe to be the base of a third palisade line that is even closer to the river. “The WPA workers found such a short segment of this feature elsewhere they didn’t know what it was,” Milner says. “We believe it was the earliest palisade because it was covered by an enlargement of the mound. The second palisade was, in turn, abandoned and covered by a few houses when the outermost, and last, wall was built. “We’ve found remains of charcoal from the posts of the newly found innermost palisade that we can use to date its construction,” he continues. “We’ve also found material we can send to the lab from the second palisade, the one the WPA knew about. With carbon dating from these major features we can begin to nail down the dates of site occupation.” Thinking of the Depression-era focus on excavating, Hammerstedt says, “Today it’s almost impossible to correctly pursue archaeology without having a multidisciplinary approach, bringing in people with different areas of expertise and having a research team who can handle all 32

this stuff.” In addition to selecting the best samples for radiocarbon dating, he’ll send plant material to a paleoethnobotanist and animal bones to a faunal specialist. Hammerstedt expects to have the results from these analyses in less than a year. The plant and bone analysis should reveal information about the diet of the villagers; he and Milner are particularly curious to see if there are any variations in diet among high and low status households. Milner adds, “We are also actively analyzing the earlier material from the WPA dig simultaneously with our new finds. This tandem approach is yet another distinctive feature of our work at this site.” He and Hammerstedt expect to return next season, when they might conduct a systematic survey both farther upstream and downstream from Annis Village. If evidence of other villages is found, that information could be studied so as to give archaeologists a better picture of Mississippian life in the region. “We excavate artifacts and animal bones, carbonized plants, and remnants of houses, but we’re not really interested in those things simply as objects,” Milner says, explaining some of the changes in archaeology between the WPA’s era and now. “What we’re really interested in today is what those things can tell us about how humans actually lived in the past. Taking the next step, we’re asking the question ‘How did their societies change over time?’” As different as archaeology then and now might be, Milner, an admirer of the WPA’s work, is happy to take the time and effort to integrate his dig with theirs. There were few field schools back then. The WPA workers learned their techniques on the fly and often under difficult circumstances. “It was really tough compared to what we have today,” he observes. “If you look at things from the perspective of what they were interested in, they did a good job.” NANCY S. GRANT is a freelance writer and a columnist for Kentucky Living magazine. For more information about the Annis Village excavation, visit the Web site www.anthro.psu.edu/fieldschool.html fall • 2003

LEGENDS

ARCHAEOLOGY

A Pioneer in Maya Archaeology Making her way in a field dominated by men, Tatiana Proskouriakoff revolutionized the study of Maya hieroglyphics. By Char Solomon

MIKE BEETEM

arely is a scholar able to change the direction of research in his or her chosen field, yet this is precisely what Tatiana Proskouriakoff did during her 50-year career in Mesoamerican archaeology. While she was first known for her artistic reconstruction renderings of Maya architecture, it was her work with Maya hieroglyphic texts that earned her the highest awards in the field. Proskouriakoff pursued her research on the Maya with thoroughness and integrity, following the evidence wherever it led, even when it ran contrary to accepted beliefs of the leading scholars of her time. That she, a single woman, rose to the pinnacle of Maya studies at a time when the field was still dominated by Ivy League–educated men of means, was something she characteristically downplayed in her life. In 1972, fresh out of college, I began working for Proskouriakoff as a volunteer in her office at Harvard’s Peabody Museum. She was in her 60s, petite, with brown, tightly curled hair, and customarily attired in skirt, blouse, and stockings. When we talked, she looked unwaveringly at me from behind large reading glasses, and, though she treated me kindly, I at first felt intimidated. As we worked at her desk with the intricate jades dredged from the Sacred Cenote at Chichén Itzá in Mexico, she soon set This photo, believed to be taken in the 1940s, shows Proskouriakoff at El Tajin in Veracruz, Mexico.

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PEABODY MUSEUM / HARVARD UNIVERSITY

Proskouriakoff was a highly skilled artist. This is her rendition of how the Acropolis at Copån, Honduras, once appeared. The renowned hieroglyphic stairway is seen at the main pyramid in the center of the drawing.

me at ease with her gentle humor. I began asking her questions about her background and was entranced by the stories she shared of her early childhood in Russia and her years working in Mexico and Central America. Proskouriakoff ’s eyes sparkled as she described her first visit to the ruins of Copán, Honduras. Sylvanus G. Morley of the Carnegie Institution of Washington (CIW) had sent her in 1939 to make reconstruction drawings of the ruins. While she had already been on two previous expeditions to the Maya region, this was her first time traveling there alone. She was to join the project that was already in progress under the direction of the colorful and complex Norwegian Gustav Stromsvik. After a rough week at sea, she disembarked at Puerto Barrios on Guatemala’s Caribbean coast, where she caught the train inland. From there she hired a driver to take her over rugged mountain passes to Copán. The roads they traversed were narrow, rutted, and muddy with blind hairpin turns and sheer cliffs, but the vistas were breathtaking. When they finally arrived at the place a CIW guide was to meet them, the driver announced he had to leave at once in order to reach his village before nightfall. Her guide was not yet there, and fearing she would be stranded in that desolate place, she convinced the driver to stay a while longer to share her boxed lunch. 34

While they ate, a figure slowly approached, winding down a distant mountain path. Stromsvik had sent a young boy and mule to carry her the rest of the way to headquarters. Once there, the archaeologists cordially invited her to join them for cocktails and a game of poker, but concerned about the impression this might make, she declined and went to unpack, anticipating the next day and her first view of the ruins. During the ensuing months at Copán, she was the only female staff member. While the men shared a comfortable camaraderie, she learned to deal with intense loneliness. She had “real grit,” the British Mayanist and explorer Ian Graham recalled. She had to delicately confront Stromsvik, who was her senior in age and experience, in the field on several matters. He went on frequent drinking binges that led to late night serenades at her window and drunken proposals of marriage. The late Edwin Shook, a close friend of both, believed that Stromsvik fell deeply in love with her during this time but was never able to express it to her when sober. Though neither ever married, they formed a lifelong friendship based on their mutual respect for hard work, good humor, and the love of a well-told story. Proskouriakoff faced these and other difficult situations as a woman in a male-dominated profession without comfall • 2003

This photograph of members of the Carnegie Institution of Washington was taken at Mayapån in Mexico. Due to her skill and determination,

PEABODY MUSEUM / HARVARD UNIVERSITY

Proskouriakoff gained entry into a field dominated by men.

Proskouriakoff catalogues jade in her office at Harvard’s Peabody Museum in this photo taken in 1974.

promising her own standards, and in so doing, she helped to open the doors for women in the decades to come. The route that led to her passion for the Maya was a circuitous one. Born in Tomsk, Siberia, in 1909 to highly educated parents, she had a rich early childhood. Reading by the age of three, she received instruction in French, music, and most importantly, art. However, the onset of World War I brought an abrupt end to this happy period american archaeology

in her life. Her father, a chemist, was unable to enlist in the Imperial Army due to a heart condition, but in 1915 he was commissioned by Czar Nicholas II to oversee Russian munitions production in the United States. The family attempted to depart by ship from the nearly icebound northern port of Arkhangel’sk, but the captain, learning that Proskouriakoff and her sister were sick with scarlet fever, ordered soldiers to carry them back to the shore. Their mother, a physician, remained behind to nurse them back to health. The family was reunited months later in New York; but within a year, the czar abdicated his throne, and Russia was torn apart by revolution. Their ties to the former government preventing their return, the Proskouriakoffs chose to make a new home in the Philadelphia area. Here, Proskouriakoff excelled in school. Under the tutelage of her talented aunt, who had studied architecture before fleeing Russia, Proskouriakoff improved her skills in drawing and watercolor in a studio on the third floor of the spacious family home. In 1926, she attended Pennsylvania State College, where the School of Engineering offered courses in design that interested her. It was an unusual direction for a young woman at the time, but she was surrounded by strong women in her family who were pursuing careers in medicine, chemistry, and art. Proskouriakoff made this choice without regard to the gender expectations of the time. It was a pattern she would continue throughout her life. Receiving a degree in architecture in 1930, she discovered that the depressed economy had drastically slowed new construction projects. Work was scarce. She eventually found a design job at a needlepoint studio, making intricate patterns for wealthy clients unaffected by the depression. One client commissioned an Egyptian design, which led her to research material at the Museum of the University of Pennsylvania. She soon began doing volunteer drafting work for the Classics Department there. As word of the excellence of her work spread, she was asked to produce drawings of Maya artifacts for Linton Satterthwaite, head of a major project at Piedras Negras deep in the Petén rain forest in northern Guatemala. In 1936, Satterthwaite invited her to join his project to complete a survey and map of the site. It took about two weeks of traveling by train, boat, and pack mule to get to the remote site, and en route, she visited the breathtaking ruins of Palenque. There Proskouriakoff saw firsthand the elegance of Maya architecture and knew that she had found her life’s work. While surveying at Piedras Negras, Proskouriakoff also began making sketches of the structures, drawing what she felt, with Satterthwaite’s input, the site would have looked like more than 1,000 years earlier. On one structure, she told him she believed a stairway would have existed where he said there was none, so he challenged her to dig and find the evidence. When she uncovered the 35

argument with Morley over the dating of a particular stela, her book A Study of Maya Sculpture (1950) solidified her reputation for rigorous research and analysis. But despite earning the respect of her colleagues in the field, she continued to labor in relative obscurity. This would change, however, in 1960 after the publication of her seminal article on Maya hieroglyphic inscriptions, in which Proskouriakoff put forth her belief that the glyphs dealt with actual events in the lives of specific rulers. The article, titled “Historical Implications of a Pattern of Dates at Piedras Negras, Guatemala,” refuted the prevalent view among prominent scholars who believed that these inscriptions were astronomical or religious texts concerned primarily with the passage of time. She made such a convincing case that no significant academic debate arose in response. This and her subsequent articles pointed Maya hieroglyphic research in a new direction. Decipherment of Maya texts quickly escalated. Today, according to David Stuart, a leading authority on Maya hieroglyphs, nearly 80 percent are readable, and thus the modern Maya, along with the growing legions of Maya enthusiasts around the world, can learn the history of this ancient civilization. As a result of her work, the American

PEABODY MUSEUM / HARVARD UNIVERSITY

remains of the staircase, she was delighted that she had proven her point. Back at the University of Pennsylvania Museum, Proskouriakoff completed a watercolor of the acropolis at Piedras Negras, and Satterthwaite knew it was something quite special. He decided to bring it to the attention of Morley, who, certain that such renderings would stir broader public interest in the Maya, decided she should make further expeditions to the region to make similar drawings. So began her affiliation with the CIW’s Division of Historical Research, which, under the direction of the noted archaeologist Alfred V. Kidder, helped to shape her long career. In 1946, the CIW published her Album of Maya Architecture, which firmly established her reputation in Mesoamerican archaeology. The result of 11 years of work throughout Mexico and Central America, it contains meticulous reconstruction renderings of the pyramids, temples, grand plazas, and ballcourts for which the Maya are famous. She next turned her attention to Maya art, specifically the carvings of rulers and warriors on the monumental stone sculptures, called stelae, found at many of the archaeological sites in Mesoamerica. The result of a friendly

Proskouriakoff’s rendition of Xpuhil, in Mexico, captures the site’s Rio Bec style of architecture. Rio Bec architecture is characterized by lavish ornamentation.

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PEABODY MUSEUM / HARVARD UNIVERSITY

This watercolor by Proskouriakoff depicts Piedras Negras in Guatemala. Her ashes were buried in the highest temple in the background of the picture in 1998, 13 years after her death. The delay was due to the threat guerrillas posed at that time to visitors to the site.

Anthropological Association gave Proskouriakoff the Alfred Vincent Kidder Award for Eminence in the Field of Mesoamerican Archaeology in 1962. She is the only woman so honored. In the 1970s, public interest in these new discoveries about the Maya intensified, and magazines and newspapers such as the New York Times began to run front-page articles on the subject. Journalists and documentary filmmakers requested interviews with Proskouriakoff, but she mostly referred them to her more gregarious colleague, Ian Graham. During these years, she maintained a busy schedule of teaching and advising students at Harvard, many of whom have gone on to successful careers in Maya studies. She also completed her book, Jades from the Cenote of Sacrifice: Chichén Itzá, and was instrumental in seeing that much of this collection was returned to Mexico. During the last years of her life, Proskouriakoff suffered Alzheimer’s cisease. She died in 1985. Early in her career she questioned if a woman in her field could ever “get a square deal.” She later answered this american archaeology

question by winning the highest awards and accolades given in her profession. She was elected to membership in the American Philosophical Society, granted an honorary doctorate by Tulane University, and received Guatemala’s highest honor, the Order of the Quetzal. What may well have mattered the most to her, however, was the reception she received on her final trip through Central America in 1978, where she reconnected with friends and colleagues she had not seen in many years. After a speech she delivered in Spanish to a packed auditorium at the Universidad Autónoma de Yucatán in Mérida, Mexico, Proskouriakoff was thronged by admirers and lionized by the press. It was a fitting end to a brilliant career, one that was unwaveringly devoted to the study and understanding of ancient Maya civilization. CHAR SOLOMON is the author of Tatiana Proskouriakoff: Interpreting the Ancient Maya, published by the University of Oklahoma Press. 37

THE VIRTUES OF

virtual archaeology The ability to produce precise, 3-D digital replicas of archaeological items and display them on the Web could have a tremendous impact on the science.

ARLEYN SIMON/ASU PRISM

By Michael Bawaya

A 3-D recreation of a horned toad effigy vessel is virtually rotated in this series of images. This virtual vessel was created from a 3-D scan of the genuine vessel. The data from the scan was then fed into a computer-aided geometric design program, which precisely reproduced the shape and dimensions of the vessel. While the virtual vessel is part of the archaeology exhibit at Arizona State University, the genuine article, due to NAGPRA, has been repatriated.

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effrey Clark will tell you that constructing a 19thcentury Plains Indian village ain’t what it used to be. He and his colleagues had no need for countless wooden poles or tons of thatch. What they used instead was an expensive 3-D laser scanner, an intimate knowledge of the village, and a Web site on which to place it. In the mid-1800s, Like-A-Fishhook village was located north of the confluence of the Missouri and Knife rivers in central North Dakota. Clark’s virtual rendition of the village, replete with a historically accurate earth lodge, manipulatable 3-D artifacts, and moving inhabitants can soon be found at the Heritage Interpretive Center, which is run by the North Dakota Historical Society. Like-A-Fishhook is an example of virtual archaeology, and Clark, who directs the Archaeology Technologies Laboratory at North Dakota State University, is one of its few practitioners in the United States. Be that as it may, virtual technology could have a tremendous impact on American archaeology. This technology was introduced to archaeology in the 1990s, when researchers designed pilot projects and secured grants to study methods for developing 3-D models and on-line databases of cultural artifacts. These researchers saw the benefits of digitally reproducing and manipulating images of everything from pottery to arrowheads to human skulls. No one thinks studying virtual artifacts and features will ever preclude studying the genuine articles. A researcher can’t, for example, perform a chemical analysis of a virtual artifact, or radiocarbon-date it. Still, virtual archaeology offers numerous benefits. Ancient artifacts are often very fragile and they can deteriorate when handled by researchers. Manipulatable, 3-D replicas not only eliminate the problem of deterioration, they can also provide precise models. Museum curators could therefore open their virtual collections to researchers without literally opening their collections, thereby eliminating wear and tear. Virtual collections could also make some aspects of research much easier for archaeologists and other scientists. “When you go out and dig up a bone and you think it’s from a particular species, you need to write down very carefully all the measurements you want to make and send it to the museum where the type specimen is stored, then you have to wait for them to get the time to do comparisons and measurements,” says Ken McGwire, an associate professor at the Desert Research Institute in Reno, Nevada, who last year completed a three-year project funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) to develop methods for creating and analyzing digital models of paleontological specimens. “Even then, there are no guarantees that (the other museum) will measure things the same way you did. But if you have a type specimen that was scanned completely accurately just once, then you can compare your own specimen to that. “I’m not going to say that this replaces every application of seeing things in the real world, but for a large number of tasks, it will go a long way toward making things more efficient.” In some cases, a virtual examination of artifacts or features could preclude the need to actually see them. This could be american archaeology

This image, which is taken from a computer screen, shows an early phase of the virtual 3-D reconstruction of an

The earthlodge is an interactive museum exhibit produced by the Archaeology Technologies Laboratory at North Dakota State University. The software used to produce this image is also used to create 3-D special effects in movies and video games.

extremely convenient, as seeing these items might require anything from driving across town to flying to Central America. Virtual collections could also help alleviate the curation crisis confronting archaeology. Government guidelines regulating excavation work—and requiring artifacts to be preserved and made accessible for public use—have created vast reserves of valuable artifacts, to be sure, but also a staggering amount of redundancy. Some museums, especially those affiliated with universities and local historical societies, which were not built with the idea of storing large collections, now limit the new collections they’ll accept because they lack the space and manpower to properly house and curate them. Some museums are returning collections to the agencies that deposited them, or writing up agreements that specify who has responsibility for the collections should the curation expense become prohibitive. According to a National Park Service report, curation costs can run as high as $1,500 per cubic foot.

ONE-STOP VIRTUAL SHOPS A few researchers endeavor to develop centralized networks that would serve as one-stop shops by offering the virtual, manipulatable collections of any number of participating museums. Such networks could offer a variety of thematic databases, such as Southwestern pottery or Clovis points. McGwire and his colleague, Stephanie Livingston, spent four years exploring the feasibility of a comprehensive prototype network of digital archives, accessible from a central source using one universally compatible search engine. 40

They realized that bandwidth poses a major problem. The more precise the scanned image, the larger the digital file, the longer the transmission time to the end-user. In fact, an end-user with a slow Internet connection may find accessing such images to be impractical. There is also the matter of who the end-user is. A network geared to researchers will require far more precise images and sophisticated manipulation capabilities than one geared to the general public. And even then, McGwire remarks, “One has to be cautious about the assumed precision of what’s coming out the other end.” Such a network would ideally be geared to both, but that also makes it more complicated to design. The Digital Archive Network for Anthropology and World Heritage is already up and running. This network, coordinated by Jeff Clark’s Archaeology Technologies Laboratory at North Dakota State University in Fargo, links data from various collections around the world, including artifacts from Columbia and Minnesota State universities. Some images are 3-D and manipulatable, and the content as a whole is fairly limited. But Clark thinks more museums and universities will become involved as virtual archaeology gains popularity. “Many (institutions) have been reluctant to participate because they want to feel like they’re getting recognition for what they’ve developed,” says Clark, who was surprised at some of the resistance he encountered. His network is now using icons to designate the sources of the images, so Clark hopes that will remedy the problem. He and his colleagues have been spending a fair amount of fall • 2003

ARCHAEOLOGY TECHNOLOGIES LABORATORY, NDSU

earthlodge once located at the Like-A-Fishhook village.

ARCHAEOLOGY TECHNOLOGIES LABORATORY, NDSU

These images display the completed 3-D reconstruction of the earthlodge. The interactive exhibit allows people to explore the villages, lodges, and forts of the time, much in the same manner that modern video game consoles allow users to participate in fictional 3-D worlds.

time making presentations and explaining how such collaboration can benefit researchers and students. Assuming information can be shared in a way that protects proprietary data, he thinks most institutions eventually will come around. Clark, who also hopes to collaborate with institutions in Europe, notes that “the Europeans are much farther along in this area than we are.” McGwire says museums also have concerns about the quality of the representation, but he thinks that can be remedied: rather than hands-off outsourcing, the museums would need to make a commitment to oversee the scanning and archiving work. Museums could share the cost of putting collections on-line, as well as the cost of quality control, says Arleyn Simon. She is the curator of a virtual archaeology exhibit at the Archaeological Research Institute at Arizona State University in Tempe. Simon also believes that government agencies such as the Bureau of Land Management and the National Park Service, which fund the majority of archaeology projects in the United States, could encourage development of these networks by requiring that a percentage of a project’s budget be used to establish a digital archive of the collection derived from american archaeology

that project and that the various collections be accessible through a single network. This is often done in Britain.

UTILIZING A NEW, EXPENSIVE TECHNOLOGY As promising as virtual archaeology is, there are obvious reasons why the technology is not yet widely implemented. As is often the case, gee-whiz technology comes at a gee-whiz price. The hardware and software necessary to scan artifacts still can cost well over $100,000, depending on whether the software is stock or custom. That doesn’t include the skilled labor necessary to operate the system. Producing correct scans, even in the case where the scanner costs $40,000, is a complicated task. Scanning an object can average a half-hour to several hours, depending on its complexity. Accurate color is difficult to reproduce with a laser scanner. The resolution of the images isn’t always as sharp as researchers would like. “Most of these scanners aren’t made for what we do,” Clark says. Archiving the images in a database and making that database accessible on-line is another expense, possibly as much as $150,000 when you factor in technology and 41

These two images are interactive 3-D representations of an elk antler attachment to a headdress worn by the Hidatsas, a Plains’s tribe, while performing a dance. The bottom image, called a wireframe, gives the observer a very accurate impression of the geometry of the object. The top image is a representation of the same object that includes its color.

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ARCHAEOLOGY TECHNOLOGIES LABORATORY, NDSU

labor. Researchers have yet to find, or create, the perfect software system that provides a truly user-friendly interface for inputting data, a seamless method for creating and networking databases, and foolproof techniques for measuring and manipulating images. “The computer power is just not there for this stuff,” says Jim Holmlund, referring to what it would take for a museum to mount a virtual, interactive display of its collections. “It’s really not practical yet on a large scale.” Holmlund, of Geo-Map Inc. in Tucson, Arizona, has been doing virtual site mapping and 3-D artifact scanning for clients—including the Arizona State Museum at the University of Arizona and several national parks—for about three years. He predicts that the situation could change in five years due to advances in computing power. These expenses can indeed be prohibitive for nonprofit educational institutions. So how can an institution that wants to utilize this new technology afford to both obtain and maintain it? Some museums may decide to charge user fees for accessing collections, but that poses the challenge of establishing a system for payment. The institutions could also sell the technology they’ve developed or provide consulting services about this technology to other interested parties—as a way of financing their own virtual archaeology projects. Both the Desert Research Institute and Arizona State’s Archaeological Research Institute are considering commercializing their technology. In addition to funding the Desert Research Institute’s project, the NSF is also funding the efforts of the Archaeological Research Institute and a research division at Arizona State called PRISM. These organizations have a limited on-line interactive exhibit now. Mounting such an exhibit requires an abundance of money and expertise. Archaeologists, physical anthropologists, biologists, software engineers, and multimedia artists brought their knowledge to bear in this $2 million, four-year project. “We as archaeologists don’t typically have the highlevel math and programming skills or time to write software from scratch,” says Simon, who curates the exhibit. “The computer scientists have all these wonderful algorithms and graphic design principles, but they’re looking for data sets they can apply this to, and problems they can help solve. So that makes for a wonderful partnership. We have the subject matter, and they have the tool kit.” “I think the key thing is designing it from the vantage point of the user,” Simon says of virtual archaeology projects. In order to obtain information about their collections via the Web, many museums require that researchers use a series of cryptic codes to search the database. Consequently, the researcher has to have a knowledge of those codes in order to get the desired information. Anyone visiting the Archaeological Research Institute’s Web site will be able to query the database by, for example, simply drawing a pot. They will also be able to zoom in on images and use virtual calipers to measure virtual artifacts.

Resolving NAGPRA Conflicts?

he Kennewick Man case is the best known example of how the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) can pit Native American interests against those of researchers. A coalition of tribes has claimed affiliation to the 9,400-year-old remains that were found in southeast Washington in 1996. Invoking NAGPRA, they have asked that the remains, which are kept at the Burke Museum in Seattle, be repatriated to them for reburial.Their claim has been opposed in court by a group of scientists who want to study the remains. Virtual archaeology could help to resolve such conflicts by allowing researchers to study exact 3-D replicas of the repatriated items.The Archaeological Research Institute at Arizona State University has a virtual collection, and many of its items are mortuary vessels that have been repatriated to Native American groups due to NAGPRA. One of NAGPRA’s stipulations is that museums and federal agencies inventory their Native American collections and assess claims of affiliation by tribes to these collections, which can result in the repatriation of items. “Virtual archaeology will help with NAGPRA situations,” according to Vin Steponaitis, an archaeologist at the University of North Carolina who helped craft the legislation. “It’s not a complete solution,” he adds, noting that there are limits to what can be accomplished through a virtual examination. Another potential problem is that NAGPRA became law in 1990 and virtual archaeology is a subsequent development that the law didn’t anticipate. Consequently, if the courts were to rule that Kennewick Man is to be repatriated and the tribes objected to the study of a virtual Kennewick Man for spiritual reasons, the replicated remains could possibly engender another legal battle. Though he states that there are “very slim legal grounds” for contesting the study of virtual images,Alan Schneider, an attorney for the scientists in the Kennewick Man case, believes this issue could well make its way to the courts. He observes that two of the tribes seeking the repatriation of Kennewick Man have argued that any information derived from the study of the remains should also be repatriated. —Michael Bawaya

According to Simon, the NSF is willing to fund the development of technologies like virtual archaeology, but, once developed, it won’t finance their operation. She says her virtual archaeology display uses unique technology that she hopes to patent. If the technology is patented, “The potential will be there to distribute this to other organizations,” she observes, which could provide the revenue necessary to maintain the exhibit. Simon has talked to about six universities and museums that have expressed an interest. She says there is “a real need” for the type of one-stop shop that McGwire and Livingston researched, but she also considers such a project to be “very ambitious. It would require a lot of resources to do that.” That said, Simon and other proponents of virtual archaeology believe the technology will eventually gain wide popularity. “I think within five years a lot of museums will be doing this,” she states, “and within 10 years we will see some very complete on-line digital libraries.” Should that come to pass, there could be some negative consequences as well. Due to the expense and amount of labor involved in 3-D scanning, museums could decide to pick and choose from their huge inventory, and some scientists fear that administrators would select flashier items over more representative ones. There is also the concern that money-minded administrators, possessing virtual replicas, could deaccession the real collections. “It’s part of this neoconservatism that’s invading the country, and now starting to invade museums and universities, where the fiscal bottom line is most important,” says archaeologist Steve Shackley of the Phoebe Hearst Museum of Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley. “That’s a real fear a lot of us have.” But it would seem that virtual archaeology has the poamerican archaeology

tential to do far more good than harm. “There’s the research end to this, and there’s the teaching end,” says Clark. His project emphasizes both, and he adds that virtual archaeology can be an extremely effective means of educating elementary and high school students about the science. “Having shown that this can be done on some level, it’s now up to museums to sit down and work together and say we want to pursue this,” says McGwire. “My responsibility now is to make it known.” This raises the issue of supply and demand. Due in part to the country’s weak economy, many public institutions such as museums are struggling with budget cuts, which could indeed reduce the demand for virtual archaeology. If there is little demand for this technology, who will make the substantial investments of money and effort required to supply it? According to Holmlund, “There isn’t a real demand because the museums can’t afford it.” He estimates about 20 percent of his business involves using this technology. But Holmlund and others think it’s just a matter of time before these financial obstacles are overcome. “If [museums] have the resources to expand into it, I think they will,” states Simon. Though the technology is still expensive, it’s less so than when she began using it in the late 1990s. “It is the future,” Clark declares. “It is inevitable.” Michael Bawaya is the editor of American Archaeology. For more information about virtual archaeology displays, visit the following Web sites: North Dakota State University Archaeology Technologies Laboratory: http://atl.ndsu.edu/home.htm Desert Research Institute: www.dpan.dri.edu Archaeological Research Institute: http://3dk.asu.edu 43

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The Conservancy Acquires Its First Site in Virginia

Knowledge about Virginia’s Paleo-Indian period is limited. The Conover site, which covers six acres, could significantly expand upon that knowledge.

irginia is perhaps best known for its connections to colonial America, and sites such as Jamestown, Mt. Vernon, and Monticello have provided archaeologists with an opportunity to better understand life during that period. Few people are aware, however, that Virginia has a rich and diverse prehistory and that this period contains some of the earliest known dates in the country. The Conservancy’s recent acquisition of the Conover Paleo-Indian site will ensure that this part of Virginia’s past is protected.

The site is in an upland coastal plain setting situated in southeastern Dinwiddie County, about 40 miles south of Richmond. Discovered in 1982 by land owner Harold Conover, the site possesses both Paleo-Indian and Archaic period materials, and has extremely high potential for contributing significantly to the very limited research data about Virginia’s Paleo-Indian period. Chert artifacts collected at the site include fluted projectile points, bifaces, unifacial tools, and flakes, some of which have been modified through use or reworking.

The site is approximately eight miles to the northeast of the Williamson site, which represents one of the largest Paleo-Indian quarry sites discovered in North America. A few miles east of Conover is the Cactus Hill site, which has radiocarbon dates to 15,000 years ago. Virginia archaeologist Joseph McAvoy has written that the Conover site was likely a small hunting camp that also might have been used as “an alternative to the Williamson site as a manufacturing location where old tools were discarded as new tools were made.” The Conover site represents one of the few identified locations in Virginia yielding diverse artifactual data from the Paleo-Indian period. The wide range of lithic tool types and manufactured by-products recovered from either random or controlled surface collections supports the notion that the site was utilized as a quarry-related base camp or base camp maintenance station. In situ subsurface cultural deposits dating to the Paleo-Indian period are particularly rare and their possible presence at the site further enhances its research potential and significance. —Donald Craib

Conservancy Plan of Action

Conover

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SITE: Conover CULTURE & TIME PERIOD: Paleo-Indian, B.C. 9500–8000 STATUS: Encroaching residential development threatens the site. ACQUISITION: The Conservancy must raise $57,000 for acqui-

sition of the site and associated costs. HOW YOU CAN HELP: Please send contributions to The Archae-

ological Conservancy, Attn: Project Conover, 5301 Central Ave. NE, Suite 902, Albuquerque, NM 87108-1517.

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DONALD CRAIB

The Conover site offers evidence of the state’s prehistory.

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Developer Donates Important Archaeological Site Village mound site is one of very few remaining along the Sacramento River.

ANN PEAK

hat was long known as a local landmark to residents of the Pocket area of south Sacramento has become the Conservancy’s latest preserve in California. Souza Mound, a major village site that was occupied for more than 2,000 years and may have had as many as 500 inhabitants at its peak sometime prior to A.D. 600, was recently donated to the Conservancy for permanent preservation by Sacramento developer Angelo Tsakopoulos of AKT Developments, Inc. One of the few Sacramento River sites still in existence, it has tremendous research potential. “Very few of the large mound sites along the Sacramento River have ever been Gene Hurych, the Conservancy’s Western Region director, stands at the edge of Souza Mound. excavated, and the majority that have been The site was occupied for more than 2,000 years. were excavated in the 1930s when archaeological techniques and analyses were considerably less reThe site is located on two residential lots. While fined,” explained archaeologist Melinda Peak of Peak & Tsakopoulos’s donation of one lot represents half of the Associates, Inc. “The acquisition of this significant site is site, the Conservancy is hopeful that the other half, which to be considered a major event for archaeology. Not only is is owned by another developer, will be donated for preserit estimated that there are over 1,000 human interments at vation in the near future. —Tamara Stewart the mound, the site contains an impressive array of artifacts and ecofacts that can be used to unravel the past panoply of human activities in this area,” adds Peak. The Souza Mound site was first recorded in the 1930s when the mound stood as high as 15 feet, rising abruptly from the flat fields surrounding it. At this time two houses had already been built on the mound, one of which still remains, and the Sacramento River ran just west of the site. Over the years the site saw partial leveling for development, ✪ and in 1984 a developer cut into the mound with mechanSouza Mound ical equipment, revealing a number of human burials. Peak & Associates was contracted to salvage the disturbed midden, and they recovered the skeletal remains of 125 individuals that were turned over to the Native American Heritage Commission. Limited study of the site revealed that, despite past disturbances, it is very well preserved. It contains evidence of a wide range of human activities, including food preparation, tool manufacture and maintenance, human burials, and probable ceremonial expressions. More extensive research at the site could help to establish the cultural and temporal chronology of a poorly understood area of the Sacramento Valley. american archaeology

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Protecting a Mound Complex The Page site in Kentucky is home to unusual mortuary mounds.

Mudd River

CHARLOTTE HILL-COBB

ne of Kentucky’s most fascinating archaeological sites, the Page site, is situated along a bluff overlooking the Mud River in the Western Coal Fields region of Kentucky. The site is the most extensive mound complex in the state. The Archaeological Conservancy is purchasing a 22-acre tract at the site that includes the majority of the extant mounds. Although the Page site was mentioned in Constantine S. Rafinesque’s 1824 Ancient History, or Annals of Kentucky, it was not until 1929 that the site was investigated or even mapped. At that time, at least 67 mounds were still visible, and there was evidence that other mounds had already been destroyed. The excavations by pioneering Kentucky archaeologists William Webb and William Funkhouser focused exclusively on the mounds, leaving the non-mound areas unexplored to this day. Their research determined that one mound, and perhaps more, at the Page site are Mississippian culture platform mounds. The vast majority of the Page site mounds, however, enclose stone mortuary facilities. Although some of the mounds enclose relatively simple stone graves, many of the mounds cover elaborate stone cists. One cist created by a stone slab wall and excavated by Webb and Funkhouser was 15 feet long, 6 feet wide, and 5 feet high. Its interior was almost entirely filled with human bones, cremains, charcoal, and ashes. Stratified deposits within the cist indicated it had been used on three occasions for a mass cremation. Following the final cremation, the cist was enclosed in an earthen mound 60 feet long by 40 feet wide by 7 feet high.

Dirt Road

This illustration shows the Page site from above. The large and small circles represent the site’s numerous mounds. It’s not known how many mounds exist today.

Few artifacts were recovered during the 1929 excavations. Those that were found suggest that the site dates to the early Mississippian period, perhaps A.D. 900 to 1100. At about the same time period, a few other sites in southwestern Kentucky show a similar emphasis on stone mortuary facilities within earthen mounds. Some archaeologists consider them to form a distinctive late prehistoric complex within the region, but one that little is known about. In 1934, five local men acquired the site and developed it as a tourist attraction. Marketed as “Lost City,” it was one of the earliest attempts at promoting heritage tourism as a means of attracting automobile travelers. Lost City had a small museum and offered a driving or hiking tour of the “Royal Mound,” the “Gigantic Crematory,” the “Flint Shop,” and other prehistoric and natural features at the site. Unfortunately, gas rationing at the onset of World War II spelled the end to this fascinating experiment in 1941. The site

was closed to the public and passed into relative obscurity. The Conservancy is purchasing from Clifton Gibbs, the son of Lost City’s principal developer, the main mortuary area of the site. When reflecting on his father’s work at Lost City, Gibbs remarked that “protecting it forever was always his main idea.” The Archaeological Conservancy is happy to be able to provide that protection. —Paul Gardner

Conservancy Plan of Action SITE: Page, also known as Lost City CULTURE & TIME PERIOD: Early

Mississippian period, A.D. 900–1100 STATUS: Threatened by residential development and agriculture. ACQUISITION: The Conservancy is purchasing 22 acres for $20,000. HOW YOU CAN HELP: Please send contributions to The Archaeological Conservancy, Attn: Project Page, 5301 Central Ave. NE, Suite 902, Albuquerque, NM 87108-1517.

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The Mystery of Sacred Circles The Conservancy obtains an Adena site with great research potential.

CHARLOTTE HILL-COBB

he rolling hills of Kentucky’s Silver Creek Watershed south of Lexington are home to some of the southernmost Adena earthworks in the country. The valley’s concentration of prehistoric mounds, rockshelters, and open land made it attractive to Adena People. Amid the many classic Adena conical mounds surrounding Silver Creek is the Bogie Circles earthwork. Sitting on a prominent ridge, Bogie Circle gives beautiful views of the valley below. One of the site’s two circles was destroyed by barn construction generations ago. The Archaeological Conservancy has acquired the remaining circle and is working to acquire other sites in the Silver Creek locale. The Conservancy previously acquired the Round Hill Mound, an Adena conical mound located about 10 miles downstream from the Bogie Circle. The Bogie Circle is one of the best-preserved examples of an Adena “Sacred Circle” in Kentucky. A ditch about 3 feet deep and 75 feet in diameter was excavated on the ridge top, and the dirt from the ditch piled to the outside creating a mound about 3 feet high. A causeway about six feet wide bridges the ditch. There is no obvious mound present in the center, but a historic cemetery is located there. The function of sacred circles is not known. Antiquarians of the 19th century, who were among the first to discover and map many of these mounds and earthworks, originally thought the earthworks to be defensive structures enclosing villages or hamlets. Archaeologists, however, have demonstrated that most Adena earthworks yield only small amounts of domestic refuse, suggesting that they

An artist’s depiction of the site as it once was. The Conservancy preserved the extant circle on the right. The other circle was destroyed long ago by barn construction.

were not habitation sites. The most plausible explanation for the earthworks is that prehistoric peoples performed rituals and ceremonies within them, although the exact nature of the rituals that took place within them remains unknown. Bogie Circle is one of the last remaining sacred circle sites in Kentucky. The site’s owners, Clyde and Peggy Long, recognize its considerable research potential and that the urban sprawl from nearby Richmond, Kentucky, threatens the whole Silver Creek Watershed. As a result, they agreed to sell the site to the Conservancy to protect it. Earthworks like Bogie Circle have much to teach us. —Joe Navari

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Bogie Circle

Conservancy Plan of Action SITE: Bogie Circle CULTURE & TIME PERIOD: Adena, 200 B.C.–A.D. 300 STATUS: Threatened by urban sprawl. ACQUISITION: The Conservancy is purchasing 2.2 acres for

$26,000. HOW YOU CAN HELP: Please send contributions to The Archaeolog-

ical Conservancy, Attn: Project Bogie Circle, 5301 Central Ave. NE, Suite 902, Albuquerque, NM 87108-1517.

american archaeology

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Rare Rockshelter Preserved Archaeologist’s family donates the site that he purchased and researched.

Hughes Rockshelter

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MARTHA E. HUGHES

ew rockshelter sites have been reported in the High Plains region of the Texas panhandle. Those that do exist are frequently vandalized, leaving few clues for archaeologists trying to understand the prehistoric use of these natural features. Hughes Rockshelter is a rare site that, because of the collapse of the overhanging rocks, is thought to contain intact, buried cultural materials. David Hughes, the son of the late archaeologist Jack T. Hughes, and his family recently donated the site, which also contains a prehistoric house feature with hearths. “The particular tracts we have given to the Conservancy were purchases specifically and intentionally made by Jack Hughes for preservation, conservation, and research,” explained David Hughes, an archaeologist at Wichita State University. Jack Hughes, who moved to the area in the 1950s to work for the Panhandle Plains Historical Museum and teach at West Texas State College, had an enormous influence on many archaeologists currently practicing in Texas and surrounding states, including his son David. Jack Hughes was a member of the Conservancy since its creation in 1979. Hughes bought the two lots containing what was formerly known as the Palisade site in the early 1960s. Between 1962 and 1966 Hughes, with the help of his wife, Polyanna, David, and other volunteers, conducted test excavations downslope from the rockshelter, which had collapsed sometime before. Their work revealed the remains of a possibly burned house feature and a midden deposit. The wattle-and-daub structure, interpreted by Hughes as

Influential archaeologist Jack Hughes owned and investigated this important rockshelter.

a possible Apache dwelling, contained as many as three hearths, one of which is basin-shaped and clay-lined. Although no postholes were found, a line of bison ribs that may have served as stakes was discovered along one edge of the structure. Numerous artifacts, including cordmarked sherds indicative of the late prehistoric Antelope Creek culture (A.D.1250 to 1450), a southern variant of the late prehistoric Plains Village culture, were recovered and are now curated at the Panhandle Plains Historical Museum in Canyon. Artifacts indicative of the area’s later Tierra Blanca occupation were also discovered at the site. Tierra Blanca sites occur about A.D. 1500–1700 and have yielded evidence of a semi-nomadic bison hunting economy. “Of particular interest is the question of what relationship the rockshelter deposits might have with the late prehistoric and protohistoric deposits downslope,” said Patricia Mercado-Allinger, state archaeologist with the Texas Historical Commission. The collapsed rockshelter has not yet been fully investigated, and it may contain well-preserved prehistoric artifacts including rare perishable remains. —Tamara Stewart fall • 2003

STONE ARTIFACTS OF TEXAS INDIANS

N E W P O I N T- 2

Examining the Late Pithouse Period a cq u i s i t i o n

A site in southern New Mexico could offer important information about the Mogollon.

AMY ESPINOZA-AR

n the southward facing slope of Gomez Peak, northeast of Silver City, New Mexico, sits the 24 pithouse impressions and one possible above-ground masonry feature of a Mogollon Late Pithouse period village. The Conservancy’s newest preserve in New Mexico, La Gila Encantada (A.D. 500–1000) will help archaeologists study an area that was occupied for five centuries. The Conservancy purchased the site from Bill and Twila Rodden with funds from the POINT Program. In the low-lying areas around Silver City only two Late Pithouse period component sites have been recorded. La Gila Encantada appears to be the largest of this site type in the area with definable pithouse depressions. The majority of the pithouse depressions are well defined, with depths at the center up to 19 inches. The depths of the cultural deposits may be as deep as three feet. Hundreds of lithic and ceramic fragments were scattered across the surface back in the late 1990s when the site was

A view of La Gila Encantada. The depressions of over 24 pithouses indicate that this site may be one of the largest preserved pithouse villages in the Mimbres River Valley.

recorded. The diagnostic sherds indicate a time period that corresponds to the Three Circle Phase (A.D. 7501000), a time period when a greater dependence on agriculture and a more sedentary lifestyle emerged. Assisted by a small crew, Barbara Roth, an archaeologist at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas, will analyze surface artifacts and map the site. The primary goal of the preliminary research is to determine if all

POINT Acquisitions Martin

White Potato Lake

Lorenzen Leonard Rockshelter

Cambria

Indian Village on Pawnee Fork

Squaw Point Mound Pueblo Spring Parchman Place

La Gila Encantada

★

Pruitt Ranch

A. C. Saunders

Sumnerville O’Dell Mounds McClellan Hunting Creek Ingomar Mounds Wilsford

Mott Mound Jaketown

Graveline Mound

The Protect Our Irreplaceable National Treasures (POINT) Program was designed to save significant sites that are in immediate danger of destruction.

american archaeology

Pine Island

Waters Pond

Fort Foster

phases of the Late Pithouse period are represented and how many houses correspond to each period, and if the population increased over time. The secondary goal of the field school will be to analyze the density and diversity of surface artifacts to help determine what kinds of activities took place at the site. The site provides an excellent opportunity to answer questions about the Late Pithouse period outside the Mimbres River Valley, where most Pithouse period sites have been excavated. Research at La Gila Encantada may support Roth’s findings at Lake Roberts Vista Site that shows groups moved seasonally into the Sapillo Valley, roughly 10 miles to the northwest of the Mimbres Valley, around A.D. 550 to 650 to hunt large game, gather piñon nuts, and farm. This seasonal use apparently continued until A.D. 750 to 1000, when groups may have become more dependent on agriculture and settled down into more permanent villages. —Amy Espinoza-Ar 49

C O N S E R V A N C Y

Field Notes Fencing Project Complete at Victorville Sites

WEST—A half-mile fencing project, done in coordination with the California Department of Forestry, was completed at the Conservancy’s four sites in Victorville, in southern California, this spring. The sites are located adjacent to the Mojave River in an area known as the Mojave Narrows, where the river is lifted by bedrock and walled in by natural stone buttresses, forming an underground channel that forces water to the surface even during the driest years. Prehistoric peoples made use of the location, which consistently provided them with fresh water for thousands of years. One of the sites containing a rock hearth with ash and charcoal was radiocarbon-dated to approximately A.D. 540. Another contained an unusual number of artifacts identified as seed-processing tools that include stone manos (grinding stones), metates (grinding bins or slabs), and pestles, as well as bedrock milling stations. The sites were donated to the Conservancy by developer Southdown, Inc., in 1997.

SOUTHWEST—A recent study published by the Albuquerque Archaeological Society presents the results of the first recorded excavation of a prehistoric lead mine in the United States. Following fieldwork undertaken in the early 1970s and research conducted over the years since, the study confirms that the Bethsheba Mine, located in north-central New Mexico near the small village of Cerrillos, is the earliest documented prehistoric lead mine in the U.S. 50

ALBUQUERQUE ARCHAEOLOGICAL SOCIETY

Study Confirms Northern New Mexico Prehistoric Mine is the Earliest Documented Lead Mine in the United States

A cable hovers over a mining trench in the Cerrillos Hills in central New Mexico. The cable is used to support a plumb bob, which measures the depth of the trench.

fall • 2003

“This report is an historic first, not just for New Mexico but for the entire country,” stated Homer Milford of the New Mexico Abandoned Mine Lands Bureau. “This will remain for New Mexico the first milestone in mining and smelting archaeology.” Through the comparison of lead isotope ratios from all known lead deposits of central and northern New Mexico with the isotopes found in the lead glazes of prehistoric Rio Grande pottery, the study, titled “Indian Mining of Lead for Use in Rio Grande Glaze Paint,” demonstrates that the potters of New Mexico’s northern Rio Grande Valley almost exclusively used galena (lead) from the section of the Cerrillos Hills surrounding and including the Bethsheba mine, beginning as early as A.D. 1300. The extracted lead was used by prehistoric peoples for the creation of glaze paint, which was applied to specially manufactured and widely traded glazewares. Evidence shows that, during prehistoric and early historic times, the inhabitants of San Marcos Pueblo, a Conservancy preserve located less than three miles east, controlled the Cerrillos Hills lead mines and contributed to the production and trade of the resultant glazeware pottery. The Cerrillos Hills were the dominant source of lead for prehistoric peoples as far away as Zuni Pueblo in western New Mexico in the late 13th and early 14th centuries, and remained a major source until the end of the glazeware tradition around 1700. Within two years of New Mexico’s colonization in 1598, Spanish miners were working mines in the

Cerrillos Hills, which were also well known as a source of turquoise, and extracting silver from the galena, explained Milford. Mining continued sporadically throughout the Spanish Colonial and Mexican periods. Because few written records of Spanish mining efforts exist, archaeology must provide the bulk of the data for the early historic period. Excavations of early historic lead smelters are being conducted at San Marcos Pueblo and Paa-ko, another northcentral New Mexico pueblo, contributing to our first comprehensive picture of native and Spanish metallurgy in northern New Mexico.

BOOKS Coyote Press P.O. Box 3377 Salinas, CA 93912 Specializing in Archaeology, Rock Art, Prehistory, Ethnography, Linguistics, Native American Studies and anything closely related. We stock thousands of new books and reprints, used and rare books, and the back issues of many journals. Browse or shop online at our newly redesigned e-commerce website: WWW.COYOTEPRESS.COM E-mail: coyote@coyotepress.com Proud sponsors of: www.californiaprehistory.com

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Reviews The Archaeologist Was a Spy: Sylvanus G. Morley and the Office of Naval Intelligence By Charles H. Harris III & Louis R. Sadler (University of New Mexico Press, 2003; 450 pgs., $32 cloth; www.unmpress.com) As the United States entered World War I in 1917, the Office of Naval Intelligence was obsessed with the notion that the Germans had established, or would establish, U-boat bases in Mexico and Central America and use them to attack ships bound to and from the Panama Canal. To find out, they turned to a young Maya archaeologist, Sylvanus G. Morley of the Carnegie Institution. Using his scholarly credentials as cover, Morley quickly recruited a network of archaeologists and other Americans to spy on the Germans and collect intelligence on the region. In an era of multi-billion-dollar spy budgets with vast bureaucracies, it is hard to imagine the United States, even after three years of world war, with almost no professional intelligence capacity. Morley was given a naval commission and 16 days of training before leaving for Guatemala on a banana boat. Nonetheless, he proved to be resourceful and a superb spy. The network he developed kept watch for German naval activity, tracked down every rumor, and kept an eye on the Germans in the region. Archaeology was the perfect cover as Morley traveled from Copán in Honduras to Chichén Itzá in the Yucatán vainly looking for enemy activity. His reports provided Washington with accurate information on the political situation in Central America, but little German activity. His effectiveness stemmed from his gift for dealing with people of all kinds, from peons to presidents. Historians Harris and Sadler draw on rich source materials including Morley’s reports to Naval Intelligence to portray a vivid picture of Morley and his friends as they mixed archaeology and espionage. This volume combines superior scholarship with a gripping story. Morley went on to become the leading Maya archaeologist of his time, and his classic tome, The Ancient Maya, is still in print. The Archaeologist Was a Spy is a real-life thriller set in a fascinating locale and time.

Lost World: Rewriting Prehistory—How New Science is Tracing America’s Ice Age Mariners By Tom Koppel (Atria Books, 2003; 300 pgs., illus., $26 cloth; www.SimonSays.com)

Canadian journalist Tom Koppel tells the story of the archaeologists and other scientists who are using new technologies to search for the first Americans along the North Pacific rim from Japan to Alaska to California. He has spent 10 years reporting from remote offshore islands (see “Did They Come By Sea?” American Archaeology, Spring 2000), under the sea, and deep in caves on this new breed of explorers. They are all looking for solid evidence that the first Americans did not come by land across the Bering Strait as had been presumed for the past several decades, but rather they came by boat some 15,000 or more years ago. The “lost world” is that ancient shoreline that is now hidden under more than 250 feet of water as the glaciers melt and the sea level rises. The coastal explorers have now determined that there were plenty of ice-free refuges along the coast as late as 15,000 years ago, and they are trying various innovative ways of excavating under water to find evidence of humans. Modern submersibles and side-scanning sonar are mapping the sea floor along the ancient coastline in search of likely habitation areas, but the evidence is subtle and harder to find than a needle in a haystack. An underwater excavation off British Columbia has recovered artifacts dating to 6,800 years ago, including a finely made harpoon head of antler. On land, archaeologists are testing coastal sites and offshore islands from Alaska to Chile, where the now famous Monte Verde site was dated to 14,500 years ago. Off Alaska, archaeologists are crawling into caves in search of the oldest human remains. Lost World is a spirited narrative that captures the adventure of doing research in such remote and exotic lands. It’s an ongoing adventure where progress is slow and hard earned. Stay tuned. fall • 2003

Reviews Twelve Millennia: Archaeology of the Upper Mississippi River Valley By James L. Theler and Robert F. Boszhardt (University of Iowa Press, 2003; 272 pgs., illus., $28 paper; www.uiowapress.org)

This is the story of one of America’s richest archaeological locales in the beautiful Mississippi River Valley. It extends from Rock Island, Illinois, to Minneapolis. Authors Theler and Boszhardt of the Mississippi Valley Archaeology Center at the University of Wisconsin–La Crosse have each spent more than 20 years studying the archaeology of this diverse and bountiful region. The first inhabitants of the region co-existed with woolly mammoths and saber-toothed cats. Later came the Woodland people who built thousands of burial mounds, most of which have been destroyed by modern agricultural practices. The Late Woodland people built thousands more mounds in the shapes of animals—bears, birds, wolves, and others—the best preserved of which are at Effigy Mounds National Monument. With the arrival of corn agriculture, the native people became intensive farmers who supplemented their diet with annual buffalo hunts. Finally, Europeans arrived in the 16th century. Theler and Boszhardt write for the general public. Well illustrated with plenty of maps and diagrams, Twelve Millennia is an outstanding regional archaeological survey. The Native Americans of the Texas Edwards Plateau, 1582–1799 By Maria F. Wade (University of Texas Press, 2003; 319 pgs., illus., $40 cloth; www.utexas.edu/utpress/)

The region that now includes Central Texas was once inhabited by numerous Native American tribes that we are only now learning about through archaeological discovery and Spanish and French Colonial records. Maria F. Wade of the University of Texas at Austin has compiled this comprehensive ethnohistory of the native groups that inhabited the region during most of the Spanish Colonial period. Wade identifies 21 distinct tribes and explores the relationships between them and the European colonizers. This volume is an outstanding contribution to our knowledge of the native population of central Texas. —Mark Michel american archaeology

Archaeologies of the Pueblo Revolt: Identity, Meaning, and Renewal in the Pueblo World Edited by Robert W. Preucel (University of New Mexico Press, 2002; 224 pgs., illus., $55 cloth; www.unmpress.com)

The Pueblo Revolt of 1680 in New Mexico was the only successful native uprising against European colonial rule in the present United States, and historians have long regarded it as a pivotal and extraordinary event. Editor Robert Preucel has brought together 14 scholars—archaeologists, anthropologists, and Puebloans—to provide us with new perspectives, based largely on archaeology, of the material culture instead of Spanish records. Only recently have archaeologists begun to explore revolt sites, and new information is becoming available every year. Well written and richly illustrated, Archaeologies of the Pueblo Revolt is an important addition to an important story.

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

The Wondrous World of the Maya GUATEMALA

Our tour takes you into the world of the Maya— from Guatemala City to the rain forest of the Petén, where the vast ruins of Tikal are found. 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.

More of the Maya

ANDY MACICA

When: January 18–28, 2004 Where: Guatemala How Much: $2,495 ($340 single supplement)

Temple I dominates the Great Plaza at Tikal.

the Masks. At Chichén Itzá, a magnificent city founded in the 5th century and occupied until the 13th century, you’ll see the largest ballcourt found in Mesoamerica as well as El Caracol, a two-tiered astronomical observatory dating from the 10th century. Located deep in the rain forest is the city of Palenque, where you’ll spend a day touring many architectural wonders. Inside the Temple of the Inscriptions is the tomb of Pacal the Great, who ruled Palenque from A.D. 615 to 683. Accompanying us on our tour will be Cornell University’s John Henderson, one of the nation’s leading scholars of the Maya.

M AYA O F PA L E N Q U E A N D Y U C AT Á N

From A.D. 300 to 1200, the Maya flourished in the Yucatán Peninsula of Mexico. Their splendid cities, which still tower over the rain forest, testify to the sophistication of the mysterious people who built them. Our tour will visit some of the most spectacular of these cities. You’ll explore the Pyramid of the Magician at Uxmal, one of the largest of the Maya cities. At Kabah, you’ll see the stone mosaic of masks that adorns the Palace of 54

MARK MICHEL

When: February 7–17, 2004 Where: Southern Mexico How Much: $2,495 ($295)

Chichén Itzá was a major city that was occupied until the 13th century.

fall • 2003

TOUR UPDATE

Celebrating Ceramics —STILL OPEN— MASTER POTTERS OF THE SOUTHERN DESERTS When: October 3–13, 2003 Where: Southern Arizona, Southern New Mexico,

JIM WALKER

and Northern Mexico How much: $1,995 ($350 single supplement) Join us for a magical journey through time studying some of the world’s most beautiful pottery crafted by people from the Hohokam, Mimbres, and Casas Grandes regions, and replicated by modern masters. The trip includes Hohokam ruins and pottery from the Phoenix and Tucson areas, Spanish missions and presidios, and a behind the scenes look at the Arizona State Museum. You’ll also see New Mexico’s Gila Cliff Dwellings, extensive col-

This stunning example of Casas Grandes–style pottery came from the village of Mata Ortiz in northern Mexico.

lections of Mimbres pottery, northern Mexico’s Casas Grandes, and the potters of Mata Ortiz. Archaeological experts will join us throughout the trip.

Art Set in Stone —STILL OPEN— CALIFORNIA DESERT ROCK ART

DAVID WHITLEY

When: November 2–9, 2003 Where: Southern Nevada and Southern California How much: $1,695 ($295 single supplement)

The California Desert Rock Art tour showcases some of the country’s most remarkable rock art.

american archaeology

The Conservancy’s week-long tour focuses on the extraordinary rock art found throughout the Mojave Desert. Created hundreds of years ago during sacred ceremonies, initiations, and shaman rituals, the rock art sites you’ll visit present an unforgettable array of images from diverse cultures. Beginning in Las Vegas, Nevada, you’ll visit the Atlatl Rock Petroglyphs. Continuing to Southern California we will explore the Blythe itaglios, found along the banks of the Colorado River, and the petroglyphs at Corn Spring, a sacred site in the Chuckwalla Mountains. In the northern Mojave Desert, you’ll see rock art ranging from 200 to 4,000 years old. David Whitely, one of the foremost experts on prehistoric rock art and the author of A Guide to Rock Art Sites of Southern California and Southern Nevada, will accompany the tour. 55

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 2003 through July 2003. Their generosity, along with the generosity of the Conservancy’s other members, makes our work possible. Life Member Gifts of $1,000 or more

Anasazi Circle Gifts of $2,000 or more

Dr. William S. Dancey, Ohio Sharon Geil, Illinois Weldon Gray, Texas Mr. and Mrs. Joe R. Klutts, Louisiana Mary L. Lewis, Colorado Ward and Karen Polzin, Colorado Suzanne Rice, Colorado Joy Robinson, California Kathryn W. Shahani, Ohio Joseph Snyder, West Virginia Catherine Symchych, Wyoming Samuel and Margaret Treat, California

Anonymous Pete and Christine Adolph, New Mexico Rosemary Armbruster, Missouri Dorothy Beatty, California Una R. Chantrill, Colorado Helen Chatfield, Ohio Carol Condie, New Mexico Donna Cosulich, New York Janet Creighton, Washington Carol Demcak, California J. L. and Martha Foght, Illinois R. M. and Joanne Hart, Colorado Helen Louise Kempton, California David and Sue Knop, California Jack and Pat McCreery, California Lawrence and Kathleen Peterson, Colorado Gavine Pitner, North Carolina Mr. and Mrs. Robert Ronus, California Harlan Scott, Delaware Conrad and Marcella Stahly, New Mexico Roddy Stanton, Montana Hervey and Sarah Stockman, New Mexico

ShopsThatGive is the answer for you!! You can now donate to The Archaeological Conservancy and support our nation’s cultural heritage by visiting www.americanarchaeology.org and following the “shops that give” link. You can select from hundreds of well-known shops (Amazon, Travelocity, Babies R’Us, etc.). Every time you make a purchase the merchants will donate

a percentage of the proceeds to The Archaeological Conservancy.

Check it out. 56

Foundation/Corporate Gifts of $1,000–$4,999 AT&T Foundation, Florida Foundation/Corporate Gifts of $5,000–$29,999 Gates Foundation, Colorado International Game Technology, Nevada TO MAKE A DONATION OR BECOME A MEMBER CONTACT:

The Archaeological Conservancy

5301 Central Avenue NE • Suite 902 Albuquerque, NM 87108 (505) 266-1540 www.americanarchaeology.org

fall • 2003

There’s so much to explore in 2004! Travel with the top scholars in their field...

SUMMER SPECIAL! Treat your family to a

Four Corners Family Exploration

2004 Southwest Programs

led by Crow Canyon Research Archaeologist, Kristen Kuckelman (July 11-18)

Lakota Country on Horseback:

History & Artistry of Hopi Kachinas

Badlands, Buffaloes, and Beadwork (Sept 4-9)

Scholar: Dr. E. Charles (Chuck) Adams (May 10-16)

Scholars: Don Montileaux & Alex White Plume

Hiking in Navajo Country:

Exploring Chaco Canyon (Sept 19-25)

Ancient Sites in Hidden Alcoves (May 23-29 ) Scholar: Harry Walters

Solstice Markers & Puebloan Skies*

Teotihuacano, Toltec, and Aztec (May 5-16) Scholars: Dr. Ian Robertson & Oralia Cabrera

Maya Textiles:

Movement in the Tewa World:

Scholar: Margot Schevill (Oct 28-Nov 7)

From the Present to the Past (Oct 2-9)

Scholars: Dr. Gwinn Vivian & John Fountain

Scholars: Dr. Tessie Naranjo, Dr. Mark Varien & Dr. Kurt Anschuetz

A Workshop with R. Carlos Nakai:

Back Country Archaeology:

Scholar: R. Carlos Nakai

Civilizations of Central Mexico:

Scholars: Dr. Gwinn Vivian & Dr. Jim Judge

*(with new destinations!) June 19-26

Rattles, Beads, and Buckskin (July 18-24 )

2004 Foreign Explorations

Hiking Utah’s Comb Ridge (Oct 9-15)

Scholars: Dr. William D. (Bill) Lipe & Scott Ortman

Woven Jewels of Mexico and Guatemala

Burma: The Golden Land (with optional extensions to Angkor, Cambodia and Laos) Scholar: Dr. Donald Stadtner (January 21- Feb 6) The Mysteries of Egypt Scholar: Dr. Tarek Swelim (Feb 22- March 7)

Learning Adventures for all ages

AAWin04

Excavation and travel programs in the Southwest and the world beyond

Call now to reserve your space! 1-800-422-8975, ext. 146 or visit www.crowcanyon.org to reserve on-line. CCAC’s programs and admission practices are open to applicants of any race, color, nationality, or ethnic origin. CST 2059347-50

CROW CANYON Near Mesa Verde in Cortez, Colorado

Make your mark in time. 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.

Atkeson Pueblo, AZ Conservancy preserve since 1983

Place stock in the Conservancy. Evaluate your investments. Some members choose to make a difference by donating stock. Such gifts offer a charitable deduction for the full value instead of paying capital gains tax.

Give a charitable gift annuity. Depending on your circumstances, you may be able to make a gift of cash and securities today that lets you receive extensive tax benefits as well as an income for as long as you live.

leave a lasting legacy.

A great place to live 800 years ago.

Many people consider protecting our cultural heritage by remembering the Conservancy in their will. While providing us with a dependable source of income, bequests may qualify you for an estate tax deduction.

JERRY JACKA

A great place to preserve today.

Yes, I’m interested in making a planned-giving donation to The Archaeological Conservancy and saving money on my taxes. Please send more information on: ❏ Gifts of stock

❏ Bequests

❏ Charitable gift annuity

Name: Street Address: City: Phone: (

State: )

Zip:

Whatever kind of gift you give, you can be sure we’ll use it to preserve places like Atkeson Pueblo and our other 275 sites across the United States. Mail information requests to: The Archaeological Conservancy Attn: Planned Giving 5301 Central Avenue NE Suite 902 Albuquerque, NM 87108-1517 Or call: (505) 266-1540

American Archaeology Magazine | Fall 2003 | Vol. 7 No. 3

Articles inside

Field Notes

Reviews

new acquisition

new acquisition

new acquisition

new acquisition

new acquisition

THE VIRTUES OF VIRTUAL ARCHAEOLOGY

OLD SITE, NEW INFORMATION

A PIONEER IN MAYA ARCHAEOLOGY

A POTENTIAL THREAT TO ARCHAEOLOGICAL SITES

COVERING THE GAMUT OF PREHISTORY

Events

Letters

Lay of the Land