American Archaeology Magazine | Spring 2004 | Vol. 8 No. 1 by American Archaeology Magazine

DISCOVERING A 12,000-YEAR-OLD HOUSE • THE ENIGMAS OF CASAS GRANDES • A MEGAFAUNAL MYSTERY

american archaeology SPRING 2004

a quarterly publication of The Archaeological Conservancy

Vol. 8 No. 1

Revisiting Northern Slavery 3 2>

25274 91765

archaeological tours

led by noted scholars

superb itineraries, unsurpassed service For the past 29 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. Mattanyah Zohar in Georgia and Armenia

SILK ROAD OF CHINA

BULGARIA & ROMANIA

PERU

As we trace the fabled Silk Road from Xian to Kashgar we will visit the remote Hotan oasis, famed for its jade and silk, Ürümqi, the fascinating Sunday bazaar at Kashgar and the caravan oasis of Turfan. Highlights include Labrang’s Tibetan monastery, Dunhuang’s spectacular mural and sculpture grottoes, Buddhist caves at Binglingsi and the fine museum at Lanzhou, ending in Beijing.

(Ancient Peoples of the Danube Valley) While studying the complicated history of the many peoples who have occupied the lands along the Danube River, we will visit Neolithic villages and tombs, fortified Dacian citadels and marvelously carved and painted Thracian tombs. We will see great monuments and cities built by the Romans, fabulous Byzantine churches and World Heritage monasteries, as well as uniquely Ottoman architecture. But our most amazing discoveries will be in the museums, where the art and artifacts of these diverse peoples are displayed, including the remarkable 6,000-year-old gold of Varna. Our tour is completed with visits to the charming wooden and painted churches in northern Romania. MAY 24 – JUNE 12, 2004 20 DAYS Led by Dr. Mattanyah Zohar, Hebrew University

This in-depth tour studies the vast Inca Empire that once reached from central Chile to the Colombian border. Touring begins with Lima’s museums and includes visits to the Moche tombs of Sipan, Trujillo, the adobe city of Chan Chan and other coastal sites, plus a flight over the Nazca lines. Additional highlights include a four-day visit to Cuzco and the sacred Urubamba Valley and two days at Machu Picchu.

MAY 26 – JUNE 16, 2004 22 DAYS Led by Prof. James Millward, Georgetown University CHINA’S LIVING LANDSCAPES:

Sacred Mountains & The Yangtze River This unique tour encompasses one of China’s most sacred Buddhist mountains, Emeishan, and most beautiful, Huangshan. Highlights include the terra-cotta army of the First Emperor and archaeological splendors in Xian, Beijing’s Forbidden City, Dazu’s fabulous grottoes EASTERN TURKEY carved with thousands of Buddhas, the newly installed Shanghai Museum — plus four days sailing on the Remote and unspoiled Eastern Turkey is one of the Yangtze River and through the famous Three Gorges. most interesting areas of the country. Our tour features MAY 1 – 21, 2004 21 DAYS Antakya (Antioch), Harran, Nemrut Dag, the Armenian and Urartian sites around Lake Van, the Armenian Led by Prof. Robert Thorp, Washington University churches of Ani, the Black Sea coast and the Hittite CYPRUS, CRETE & SANTORINI sites of Altintepe, Karatepe, Alaca Höyük and Hattusa This tour examines the maritime civilizations linking pre- — ending in Ankara. and ancient Greek and Roman cultures with the East. MAY 30 – JUNE 18, 2004 20 DAYS After a seven-day tour of Cyprus and five days Led by Prof. Antonio Sagona, University of Melbourne exploring Minoan Crete, we sail to Santorini to visit SCOTLAND AND ITS ISLANDS Thera and Akrotiri. The tour ends in Athens and a visit to Mycenae and Tiryns. Throughout, there will be time This new tour explores the fascinating prehistoric and to enjoy the lovely beaches and countryside. early Christian sites scattered throughout the Scottish MAY 9 – 27, 2004 19 DAYS countryside. Our touring will span thousands of years as we study Stone and Bronze Age monuments and Led by Dr. Robert S. Bianchi, Archaeologist artifacts, Celtic remains and medieval castles. Tour SICILY & SOUTHERN ITALY highlights include the enigmatic megalithic Stones of Touring includes the Byzantine and Norman monuments of Calanish on the Isle of Lewis, the Machrie Moor Palermo, the Roman Villa in Casale, unique for its 37 rooms ceremonial landscape on the Isle of Arran, fascinating floored with exquisite mosaics, Phoenician Motya and the carved Pictish menhirs, Edinburgh and Glasgow, and the classical sites of Segesta, Selinunte, Agrigento and many Neolithic sites on the Orkney and Shetland Islands.

AUGUST 7 – 22, 2004 16 DAYS Led by Prof. Daniel H. Sandweiss, University of Maine PORTUGAL

This tour explores historically rich Portugal including prehistoric ruins, Roman towns, Gothic churches, medieval monuments, royal palaces and fine museums. We will travel through lovely coastal towns and explore the rugged mountain region of the north, stopping at regional markets and ancient seaports. A highlight of this tour will be a visit to the recently discovered petroglyphs along the Coa River Valley AUGUST 27 – SEPTEMBER 13, 2004 18 DAYS Led by Dr. Mattanyah Zohar, Hebrew University SOUTHERN SPAIN

Spain is a treasury of ancient remains, from prehistoric paintings and the oldest megalithic monuments in Europe to the cities left by the Greeks, Romans and Arabs. As we travel south from Madrid to Toledo, Merida, Cordoba, Seville, Ronda and Granada, we shall explore the most important historical monuments from these civilizations, examine their artifacts in museums and study the development of their art and architecture. OCTOBER 6 – 23, 2004 Led by Dr. Robert S. Bianchi, Archaeologist

18 DAYS

BRITTANY

Amidst the picturesque Breton villages, we explore Brittany’s intriguing megalithic sites, including the "great stones" at Carnac, enormous dolmen and cairns dating back to 5000 BC, the covered tombs around Lannion. We Siracusa — plus, on the mainland, Paestum, Pompeii, JUNE 30 – JULY 18, 2004 19 DAYS visit regional museums, Nantes, parish closes typical to Herculaneum and the incredible "Bronzes of Riace." Led by Dr. Mattanyah Zohar, Hebrew University Brittany and the spectacular Abbey of Mont St.-Michel. MAY 29 – JUNE 14, 2004 17 DAYS THE ANCIENT KINGDOM OF TIBET SEPTEMBER 17 – 30, 2004 Led by Prof. Blaise Nagy, College of the Holy Cross As we traverse Tibet’s spectacular mountain passes Led by Dr. Roy Larick, University of Iowa OCTOBER 9 – 25, 2004 17 DAYS and lush valleys, visits will be made to the famous Led by Prof. Barbara Barletta, University of Florida ADDITIONAL TOURS ANCIENT CITIES OF MARITIME TURKEY

monasteries, temples and tombs around Lhasa, Tsdang, Gyantse and Shigatse. We will be introduced to the many Thailand; Central Asia; Prehistoric Caves of Spain & orders of Tibetan Buddhism, its art and architecture, and France; Morocco; Khmer Kingdoms; Mali...and more observe the solemnity of monks at study and prayer. Throughout we will be drawn to Tibet's colorful markets and enchanted by the warmth of its people.

Never far from the sea, this unusual tour begins in Izmir and continues along the Mediterranean and Aegean coasts, exploring the ancient cities and sites in Karia, Lycia, and Pamphylia. We will visit three of the Seven 18 DAYS Wonders of the Ancient World as well as the ancient JULY 15 – AUGUST 1, 2004 cities on northern Cyprus and the Greek islands of Kos Led by Prof. Gregory Hillis, University of California and Samos ending with two days in Istanbul. MAY 27 – JUNE 16, 2004 21 DAYS Led by Prof. Robert Stieglitz, Rutgers University

14 DAYS

NEW

american archaeology a quarterly publication of The Archaeological Conservancy

Vol. 8 No. 1

spring 2004

COVER FEATURE

T H E VESTIGES OF NORTHERN SLAV E RY BY DAVID MALAKOFF

BARBARA SILBER

Archaeology is reminding us that the Northern states engaged in slavery.

THE GRAND ENIGMAS OF CASAS GRANDES BY TAMARA STEWART

Archaeologists disagree about the creation and purpose of this huge settlement.

THE MYSTERY OF THE MEGAFA U N A BY ALEXANDRA WITZE

Roughly 70 percent of North America’s large mammal species went extinct some 11,500 years ago. Who, or what, is to blame?

T H I S V E RY O L D H O U S E BY CATHERINE DOLD

The discovery of an ancient house in southwestern Colorado is challenging the conventional wisdom about the Folsom culture.

SEARCHING FOR 17TH-CENTURY M A I N E Maine’s historical record during this period is sparse, so archaeologist Tad Baker is working to fill in the blanks.

new acquisition IN SEARCH OF DE SOTO The Humber-McWilliams site could yield information about the Spanish explorer.

new acquisition PROTECTING THE ADENA’ S H A N D I W O R K The Conservancy obtains a major burial mound in Ohio.

point acquisition RESCUING AN ARCHAIC MOUND The Conservancy acquires an ancient and endangered mound in Louisiana.

point acquisition C O N S E RVA N C Y ACQUIRES ITS FIRST N O R T H D A K O TA PRESERV E The Biesterfeldt site is important and puzzling.

american archaeology

DAN PEHA

BY DAVID HOLZMAN

2 Lay of the Land 3 Letters 5 Events 7 In the News Thirty-Thousand-Year-Old Site Found in Siberia • Massive Federal Sweep Catches Looters • Scientists Win Kennewick Man Ruling

50 Field Notes 52 Reviews 54 Expeditions COVER: A number of investigations are yielding evidence about the nature of Northern slavery. Illustration by Charlotte Hill Cobb Photograph by Barbara Silber

Lay of the Land

ome 11,500 years ago about 70 percent of all the large mammal species in North America went extinct. Thirty-five genera of big mammals vanished. Mammoths and mastodons. Horses and camels. The short-faced bear and the giant ground sloth. Predators like the saber-toothed cat and the dire wolf. How could such a catastrophe come about? And in so a short time? Some 40 years ago ecologist Paul Martin pointed his scholarly finger at humans, a species newly arrived from Asia. That’s where one of the most bitter debates in archaeology began. In this issue of American Archaeology, we explore the causes of this mass ex-

tinction, and the debate it has engendered. It is an argument that may never be definitely resolved, for the evidence is meager. Preserving those few sites where humans and extinct mammals co-existed is critical to finding the key to the solution. In central Los Angeles, the La Brea Tar Pits contain the largest known collection of extinct megafauna in a city park, but human presence is slim. On the Olympic Peninsula of Washington, the Conservancy is helping to preserve one of the only known mastodon kill sites. But many more are needed if we are to solve the riddle. This argument has profound implications for the present, where we

DARREN POORE

Preserving the Evidence of Extinction

MARK MICHEL, President

are all faced with the consequences of climate change and an ever-expanding human population. Learning more about the dramatic climate changes of the past and the impact of a new kind of predator may well give us important lessons for our future.

spring • 2004

Letters The Wrong Running Man I wish to correct an error in your article, “A Close Look at Geoglyphs” in the Winter 2003-04 issue. A photograph of the “Running Man” geoglyph is not the purported one at Searles Lake, but rather the one in the Indian Pass area between the Cargo Muchacho and Chocolate mountains near the Colorado River, in Imperial County, California. This running man appears to date after 1923 when the site was first recorded, without the running man, by the eminent Colorado Desert archaeologist Malcomb Rogers. Apparently of Quechan manufacture, it demonstrates that the geoglyph tradition was still being practiced by Native Americans well into the 20th century. Jerry Schaefer, Ph.D. Senior Archaeologist, ASM Affiliates, Inc. Encinitas, California

More Information, Please The Winter 2003-04 news article “Aleutian Island Site Amazes Researchers” needs follow-up. Reading about elaborately constructed stone walls and interior features such as chimneys makes me want to see more. How about close-up photos of wall construction? Of the chimneys? Give us interior dimensions. We have enigmatic stone constructions from antiquity in New England. I’d like to see if any matches exist between stone structures constructed by waterways in Alaska and those constructed by waterways in New England. Lynn Rudmin Chong Sanbornton, New Hampshire american archaeology

They Didn’t Live in Closets Congratulations on the steadily improving quality of your magazine. I look forward to the fascinating photos and articles, especially the longer ones that describe the history of a site as well as what’s being done to analyze and preserve it. I particularly enjoyed the stories in the Winter 2003-4 issue about the desert geoglyphs and “The Preservation of Sherwood Ranch Pueblo.” In the latter article, there appears to be a minor error in the photo caption on page 39 that says most of the rooms are about nine square feet. That would mean a floor space of about three feet long by three feet wide, roughly the size of a closet. Since the walls in the photograph appear to be about nine feet in length and width, I presume the caption writer meant to say the rooms are about nine feet square. Richard S. Relac Gettysburg, Pennsylvania We did indeed mean nine feet square. —Ed.

Sending Letters to

American Archaeology 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.

Editor’s Corner Who knows what lies beneath? Four years ago archaeologist Mark Stiger was scrutinizing the top of a mesa in the mountains of southwestern Colorado near Gunnison. A communications tower was scheduled to be built there, and Stiger thought it was worth a last look before the area was disturbed by construction. As it turns out, he didn’t have to look beneath to discover a rare find: a Folsom point that was crafted some 12,000 years ago. Then he found 20 more Folsom points, which seemed to be clear evidence of an occupation. Stiger and his crew began excavating and they uncovered a ring of rocks that they believe to be the remnants of a Folsom dwelling that may be the oldest house in Colorado and one of the oldest in all of North America. So what were the Folsom, a culture known as mobile hunter-gatherers who wandered the Great Plains, doing there? Perhaps Stiger’s remarkable find will change some of the conventional wisdom regarding this ancient culture. Approximately 2,000 miles away, a number of excavations in the Northeast are yielding evidence of slavery in New Jersey, New York, and Connecticut, states that are generally not associated with the practice of this injustice. Farther north in Maine, Tad Baker is digging up information to supplement the scant historical record of 17th-century life there. Amazing discoveries, bitter memories, answers, and, as is so often the case, more questions are what lie beneath in this issue.

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, Califor nia • Dorinda Oliver, New York Rosamond Stanton, Montana • Dee Ann Story, Texas Stewart L. Udall, New Mexico • Gordon Wilson, New Mexico C o n s e r va n c y S t a f f Mark Michel, President • Tione Joseph, Business Manager Lorna Thickett, Membership Director Shelley Smith, Membership Assistant • Valerie Long, Administrative Assistant Yvonne Woolfolk, Administrative Assistant R eg i o n a l O f f i c e s a n d D i r e c t o r s 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, Wester n Region (916) 399-1193 1 Shoal Court #67 • Sacramento, California 95831

american archaeology

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 Scott Anfinson, Minnesota Historic Preservation Ernie Boszhardt, Mississippi Valley Archaeological Center • Darrell Creel, University of Texas Jonathan Damp, Zuni Cultural Resources • Richard Daugherty, Washington State University Linda Derry, Alabama Historical Commission • Mark Esarey, Cahokia Mounds State Park Kristen Gremillion, Ohio State University • Richard Jenkins, California Dept. of Forestry Trinkle Jones, National Park Service • Linda Mayro, Pima County, Arizona Jeff Mitchem, Arkansas Archaeological Survey • Douglas Perrelli, SUNY-Buffalo Janet Rafferty, Mississippi State University • Judyth Reed, Bureau of Land Management Ann Rogers, Oregon State University • Joe Saunders, University of Louisiana-Monroe Donna Seifert, John Milner Associates • Art Spiess, Maine Historic Preservation Richard Woodbury, University of Massachusetts • Don Wyckoff, University of Oklahoma 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.

spring • 2004

Museum exhibits

MUSEUM OF THE AMERICAN WEST

Meetings

•

Tours

Education

•

Events

Festivals

Conferences

■ NEW EXHIBITS Museum of the Coastal Bend Victoria College, Victoria, Tex.—This new museum is designed after the Spanish presidio that was discovered on the site of Fort St. Louis, and features artifacts and historical materials from the Fort St. Louis–Presidio La Bahia dig in southeast Victoria County. The Texas Historical Commission conducted excavations of the fort and 17th-century French explorer Robert Cavelier, Sieur de la Salle’s supply ship La Belle, which sank in Matagorda Bay in 1686. As part of the “La Salle Odyssey Exhibit,” the museum presents the story of the first French settlement on Texas soil. Other regional museums are involved in this exhibit, focusing on different aspects of the French settlement and La Salle’s voyage. They include the Corpus Christi Museum of Science and History, the Texana Museum in Edna, the Matagorda County Museum in Bay City, the Palacios Area Historical Association Museum, the Calhoun County Museum in Port Lavaca, and the Texas Maritime Museum in Rockport. (361) 582-2511 (New museum and long-term exhibit)

Albuquerque Museum Albuquerque, N.M.—The major new exhibit “From Above: Images of a Storied Land” features stunning aerial photographs of archaeological sites taken by Adriel Heisey of Tucson, Arizona, who has become well known for his spectacular photography taken from a specially designed plane that he also pilots. (505) 243-7255, www.albuquerquemuseum.com (May 9–August 15)

■ CONFERENCES, LECTURES & FESTIVALS Museum of Man’s 12th Latin American Symposium March 6, 8:30 A.M.–5 P.M. Museum of Man, San Diego, Calif. Scholars from around the world will convene to discuss “Shamanism, Mesas, and Cosmologies in the Central Andes.” The all-day symposium will give an overview of shamanism and its implications, dealing with both archaeological and ethnohistorical evidence for pre-Hispanic shamanism in the Andes. (619) 2392001, www.museumofman.org

PEABODY MUSEUM OF ARCHAEOLOGY AND ETHNOLOGY

Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass.—“Distinguished Casts: Curating Lost Monuments at the Peabody Museum” showcases some of the most important and valuable casts from the Peabody Museum’s unique Mesoamerican collection. Dating from the 19th century, the Peabody’s cast collection is among the largest in the world and preserves a wealth of hieroglyphic and iconographic information now lost forever on the original monuments. (617) 496-5402, www.peabody.harvard.edu (Ongoing exhibit) american archaeology

Museum of the American West Los Angeles, Calif.—The new exhibit “Glorious Treasures: 100 Years of Collecting by the Southwest Museum” features a variety of fine California baskets, Pueblo pots, and Navajo textiles from the Southwest Museum’s collection. A rare Nez-Perce quill-wrapped horsehair shirt will be on display, as well as seldom-seen ceramics and clothing from the museum’s Central and South American holdings. (323) 667-2000, www.museumoftheamericanwest.org (Through July 4)

19th Annual Celebration of Arizona Archaeology Awareness Month

ARIZONA STATE PARKS / NATIONAL PARK SERVICE

Events

Throughout March at various locations throughout the state. Coordinated by the Arizona State Parks State Historic Preservation Office, this year’s celebration features more than 100 prehistoric and historic site tours, exhibits, hikes, open houses, lectures, demonstrations, and other activities. The highlight is the Archaeology Expo, which will be held at the Mesa Southwest Museum in Mesa, Arizona, March 20–21. The expo features many events and activities, including living history re-enactors, demonstrators, and entertainers. Contact Ann Howard at (602) 542-7138, ahoward@pr.state.az.us.

Annual O’odham Day Celebration 2004 March 20, 10 A.M.–4 P.M., group campground, Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, Tucson, Ariz. This event includes exhibits, demonstrations of dry-land farming techniques, native plant use, basketry, pottery, storytelling, and discussions about the O’odham language. Contact Dave Hutson at (520) 387-7661, x7301.

Alaska Native Heritage Center Spring Festival March 27, Alaska Native Heritage Center, Anchorage, Alaska. For many Alaskan native peoples, spring was a time to prepare for the coming summer and the return of migratory birds and whales. Learn how the many traditional cultures of Alaska begin their seasonal cycle through traditional crafts and activities, native storytelling, and traditional dances. (800) 315-6608, www.alaskanative.net 69th Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology March 31–April 4, Delta Centre-Ville, Montreal, Québec, Canada. This con-

ference features a wide variety of symposia, forums, workshops, poster presentations, and tours of local archaeological sites. (202) 789-8200, www.saa.org/meetings

Alaska Archaeology Month Throughout the month of April, Alutiiq Museum and Archaeological Repository, Kodiak, Alaska. Events include lectures, demonstrations, and family activities that explore archaeology and Alutiiq history. (907) 486-7004, www.alutiiqmuseum.com The Peopling of the Americas Symposium May 22, Concourse Hotel, Columbus, Ohio. The Archaeological Society of Ohio presents their first annual one-day symposium. Some of the most prominent Paleo-Indian researchers, including Dennis Stanford, Thomas Dillehay, and Douglas Owsley, will present current and ongoing research on this fascinating subject, which will be followed by a dinner banquet and a keynote speaker. The symposium will include poster sessions and displays of paleo materials. Contact Mick Van Steen at (937) 766-5411, www.ohioarch.org spring • 2004

NPS

38th Annual Meeting of the Society for California Archaeology March 17–20, Riverside Convention Center, Riverside, Calif. This year’s theme is “Looking Ahead for a Better View of the Past.” The weekend includes organized symposia, presentations of papers, several workshops, training sessions, and field trips to sites in the area. Contact Michael Lerch at (909) 335-1896, mlerch@sricrm.com, www.scahome.org

Thirty-Thousand-YearOld Site Found in Siberia

in the

The discovery has implications for First American studies.

E. YU. GIRYA

ussian researchers recently discovered evidence of human occupation at a site on the Yana River in Siberia that dates to about 30,000 years ago, which is twice as old as any other known human occupation in the Arctic region. This discovery indicates that ancient peoples adapted to the harsh environment thousands of years earlier than was previously thought and suggests that the first wave of migration to the New World could have occurred before the last glacial maximum, which was 20,000 to 25,000 years ago. The Yana River is one of the largest in northeast Asia. During glacial times this area was an ice-free flood plain that teemed with animals that attracted ancient Siberian hunters. Large quantities of Pleistocene bones were found at the site from such animals as mammoth, horse, reindeer, bison, hare, muskox, wolf, wolverine, polar fox, brown bear, lion, and wooly rhinoceros. The site’s location on an ancient terrace above the river is not far from the Bering land bridge that at that time connected Asia with North America and is long suspected by scientists to have been the route by which people first entered the New World. “This site will clearly have a significant impact on our understanding of the First Americans,” says Paleo-Indian researcher Mike Waters of Texas A&M University. “This discovery reconfirms the Siberian connection to the early peoples that entered the New World and provides additional evidence that people could have migrated to the Americas prior to Clovis.” Numerous corroborating radiocarbon dates were obtained from the terrace on which the site is situated, as well as from bone tools and ancient animal remains found in association with stone flakes. Artifacts recovered from the Yana RHS site include stone flakes and tools, mammoth foreshafts, and a rare wooly rhinoceros foreshaft with beveled ends that some archaeologists claim strongly resembles those used by the Clovis people, the first documented inhabitants in the Americas that date from around 13,000 years ago. “It is difficult to assess the similarities between Yana and Clovis foreshafts,” Volodya Pitulko of the Russian Academy of Sciences and his colleagues state in a recent article in the journal Science. “Thousands of kilometers and roughly 16,000 years separate them…although a direct connection remains tenuous, the Yana RHS site indicates

american archaeology

NEWS

A foreshaft used for quick replacement of broken spear points. This example, made from the horn of a woolly rhinoceros, was discovered in arctic Siberia in 1993.

that humans extended deep into the Arctic during colder Pleistocene times.” —Tamara Stewart 7

in the

NEWS

Construction of Graving Dock May Resume The discovery of human remains halted project.

WSDOT

ork on a key bridge-repair facility may resume soon as officials with the Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) and the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe near agreement on recovery of archaeological artifacts. Work on the facility, called a graving dock, ceased last August when workers discovered a shell midden and evidence of human remains. Subsequent investigation revealed the remains of individuals from the Klallam tribe had been present in backfill used in 1915 during construction of a lumber mill on the site. Tribal officials estimate the remains date back 300 to 400 years. “There was nothing we could characterize as a burial mound, but rather individual bone fragments scattered about the site,” explained Jeff Sawyer, WSDOT environmental manager. The condition of the remains “has made it a very difficult situation for the tribe, and for the community as a whole,” said Sawyer. The $18 million graving dock will be used to construct massive concrete pontoons for the state’s floating bridges. First in line for repair, at an estimated cost of $275.6 million, is the Hood Canal Bridge, a vital link between the Olympic Peninsula and Puget Sound that sees between 18,000 and 22,000 vehicle crossings per day. Despite the desecration of their ancestral village, called Tse-whit-zen, the tribe supports the WSDOT project, noting the economic benefits it offers the entire community, tribal officials said. At the same time, the tribe seeks “protection of anything that is unearthed,” said

An archaeologist analyzes soil samples for artifacts. The person in the lower left of the photograph is a member of the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe who monitored the analysis.

Dennis Sullivan, tribal chairperson. Topics being negotiated include a curation facility for artifacts and reburial of the remains on land adjoining the original interment site. Each idle day at the site costs the agency about $30,000, WSDOT officials estimate. U.S. Congressman Norm Dicks, whose district includes the area, met with tribal and WSDOT officials on January 26 to expedite negotiations. At the meeting the parties agreed to a target date of March 1 to complete a memorandum of agreement detailing data recovery, reinterment, and methods to mitigate impact to the site. —Elizabeth Wolf

MASSIVE FEDERAL SWEEP CATCHES LOOTERS More than 11,000 artifacts were stolen.

he last in a ring of looters was recently charged in one of the largest federal investigations of cultural resource vandalism ever pursued. Kevin Peterson of Overton, Nevada, was sentenced to five months imprisonment and five months of home detention and fined $80,084. Deanne Wilkie of Carson City, Nevada, was sentenced to five years probation and six months of home detention and fined $19,087. David Peeler of Oahu, Hawaii, was sentenced to five years probation and

six months of home detention and fined $56,635. These charges concluded the prosecution of five persons who stole over 11,000 artifacts from 13 archaeological sites in Nevada and California between late 1997 and December 2001. The value of the resources and estimate of restoration and repair totals approximately $518,000. The two other defendants charged in the case were sentenced last year to lengthy terms of imprisonment. Bobbie Wilkie of Oklahoma

City, Oklahoma, was sentenced last December to 37 months in federal prison and fined $102,364, and Frank Embrey of Henderson, Nevada, was sentenced last August to 18 months in prison and fined $86,000. Bobbie Wilkie’s sentence was the longest period of imprisonment for a first-time offender for the theft and destruction of archaeological resources and artifacts. All of the defendants were charged under the Archaeological Resources Protection Act. — Tamara Stewart

spring • 2004

Arizona Archaeological S i t e s T h re a t e n e d State and federal preservation laws may be violated by proposed development.

in the

NEWS

DAVID CUSHMAN

Scottsdale developer seeking approval from the Pinal County Board of Supervisors for a massive subdivision just north of Tucson is making headlines in Pinal and Pima Counties of southern Arizona for his alleged violation of state and federal cultural resources and water quality laws. Numerous Hohokam archaeological sites that lie within the Los Robles Archaeological District, listed on the National Register of Historic Places, have been damaged or face the threat of destruction by George Johnson, the head of Johnson International, Inc. and other companies. Despite the absence of county approval, the developer has bulldozed more than 1,000 acres under the pretense that he is clearing land for agricultural purposes and therefore not subject to the development permitting process. “Johnson’s flagrant blading of archaeological sites is not limited to private land, but also includes sites on state and BLM lands within the Ironwood Forest National Monument,” said Linda Mayro, cultural resources manager with Pima County. “While this is far worse than most cases, development, sprawl, and environmental degradation are becoming common themes here in the booming Southwest as large ranches are converted to real estate development.” The proposed La Osa Ranch Development would cover about 20,000 acres on private, state trust, and federal Bureau of Land Management (BLM) lands and accommodate more than 67,000 homes and businesses. The Ironwood Forest National Monument is directly adjaamerican archaeology

These petroglyphs are part of a large rock art site found within the Ironwood Forest National Monument. The La Osa Ranch development will be located next to this site.

cent to the proposed development. The monument, which was established in 1999, was expanded to include portions of the Los Robles Archaeological District because of the latter’s importance. Among the sites that are threatened by the development are the remains of a Hohokam Classic Period community centered on what is known as the Los Robles platform mound, numerous prehistoric rock art sites, and the historic town of Sasco. Portions of two 11th- to 15thcentury Hohokam villages covering about 80 acres within the archaeological district have already been bulldozed. The Tohono O’odham Nation, which claims ancestral affiliation to the prehistoric Hohokam, has passed a resolution protesting the development. The Arizona State Museum is doing a damage assessment. The in-

vestigation has thus far determined that nine archaeological sites have been damaged as a result of land clearing done by Johnson, according to John Madsen, the museum’s associate curator of archaeology. Madsen expects to complete the study and produce a report by the end of February. The report will be submitted to the Arizona Attorney General’s office and could result in charges being filed against Johnson. Arizona’s Department of Environmental Quality, one of several other state and federal agencies that are also investigating Johnson, served him with a notice stating he violated the state’s environmental laws. Charges in the case are pending, said the department’s communications manager Patrick Gibbons. Calls to Johnson International, Inc. were not returned. —Tamara Stewart 9

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NEWS

Archaic Site Discovered in Southeastern Massachusetts A construction project may be relocated as a result.

LAUREN J. COOK/ RICHARD GRUBB & ASSOCIATES, INC.

esearchers working in Norwell, Massachusetts, recently discovered a well-preserved Archaic Period site during a survey in advance of the construction of a water treatment plant. Three projectile points recovered from the site are characteristic of the Middle and Late Archaic Periods, which place the site’s dates of occupation between 3,000 and 7,500 years old. While sites dating to this time period are known of in the region, most of them have either been disturbed or lack intact features, said Lauren Cook, senior archaeologist with Richard Grubb & Associates, Inc., the firm conducting the research. The site’s features, which include a hearth and a storage pit, indicate that people were cooking and storing food at the location. A stone scraper and other tool fragments and flakes from tool manufacture were also found at the site, which appears to have been used on more than one occasion. “The site has the potential to provide a great deal of information about Archaic life ways, including the technologies of tool manufacture, interaction with the natural environment, and utilization of plants and animals in the diet,” Cook added. In hopes of preserving the site, officials are searching for another location for the water treatment plant.

A variety of stone artifacts have been recovered from the site. These are a few examples: A: Wading River–type projectile point for the Late Archaic Period; B: Stark/Neville Variant–type projectile point from the Middle Archaic Period; C: Neville–type projectile point from the Middle Archaic Period; D: flake scraper fragment; E: bifacial tool fragment.

The recovered artifacts will go on public display at the nearby South

Shore Natural Science Center. —Tamara Stewart spring • 2004

in the

Petroglyph Site Placed on Endangered List

NEWS

This New Mexico site boasts some 20,000 images.

KATHERINE WELLS

esa Prieta, a 1,000-foot-high escarpment located in north-central New Mexico, has been named one of the state’s 10 most endangered areas by the New Mexico Heritage Preservation Alliance. Mesa Prieta features a large number of petroglyphs and other archaeological features that are evidence of human occupation spanning the last 9,000 years. It is believed to have been a center of religious and ceremonial activity of the Tewa people in the late prehistoric period. The most extensive occupation and ceremonial use of the area occurred from about A.D. 1300 to 1600. A large percentage of the estimated 20,000 rock images on the mesa were created at this time. The petroglyphs are of diverse styles, methods of production, and they display a range of subject matter. Portions of Mesa Prieta that are rich in archaeological resources have been mined for gravel and riprap over the past decade. Much of the rock art is vulnerable because it’s close to a public road, and some petroglyphs have disappeared. Grazing has also damaged the archaeological sites.

It’s estimated that Mesa Prieta contains over 20,000 petroglyphs. The site is threatened by development and mining.

Vandalism, development, and off-road vehicles pose additional threats. —Michael Bawaya

Scientists Win Kennewick Man Decision Appeals court rules that ancient remains can be studied.

he Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel recently ruled that the 9,400-year-old set of human remains known as Kennewick Man can be studied by the scientific community. The court rejected an appeal by the U.S. Department of the Interior and four Native American tribes that claim kinship to the remains and want to rebury them. The three-judge panel upheld a District Court decision that the tribes have shown no significant genetic or

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cultural relationship to the remains, according to Alan Schneider, an attorney for the scientists. Therefore, they can’t prevent the remains from being studied. The Interior Department and the tribes—the Umatilla, Yakama, Nez Perce, and Colville—have the option of appealing to the full Circuit Court or the U.S. Supreme Court. Kennewick Man, one of the oldest and most complete skeletons found in North America, was discovered in 1996 in southeast Washing-

ton. Once the age of the remains was determined, the federal government stated that Kennewick Man should be repatriated to a coalition of local tribes that claim affiliation under the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. A group of scientists filed a lawsuit in 1996 to prevent the remains from being repatriated to the tribes for reburial. The remains are being held at the Burke Museum at the University of Washington in Seattle. —Michael Bawaya

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ADRIEL HEISEY

The Grand Enigmas of Casas Grandes

This gigantic prehistoric settlement was a center of activity. Archaeologists differ on how this magnificent community came to be and what those activities were. By Tamara Stewart

AMERIND FOUNDATION

he colossal adobe walls of Casas Grandes stand defiantly out in northern Mexico’s Chihuahuan desert, a magnificent testimony to the fusion of cultures and beliefs that coalesced into an influential center. One of the most controversial prehistoric communities in the greater Southwest, Casas Grandes, or Paquimé, as it is also known, exhibits architectural styles that are reminiscent of prehistoric pueblos north of the border, but the site’s ceremonial structures and iconography speak of strong connections with Mesoamerican cultures to the south. There is also evidence that internal forces may be responsible for its development. Consequently, identifying the predominant influences that fashioned Casas Grandes is a matter of great debate. Casas Grandes is located in the fertile Rio Casas Grandes Valley just south of the border from New Mexico in northern Chihuahua. The settlement took shape in the 13th century during a time of great change in the U.S. Southwest. Thousands of people, including the Mogollon, Hohokam, and Anasazi, were moving away from their ancestral homelands, abandoning old ways and adopting new ones. South of Casas Grandes, the Toltec civilization had collapsed and the Aztec culture had barely begun to coalesce. It was during this tumultuous time that Casas Grandes developed, leaving researchers to ponder how and why. Between 1958 and 1961, Charles Di Peso of the Amerind Foundation in Arizona and Eduardo Contreras Sánchez of the Instituto Nacionál de Antropología y Historia of Mexico (INAH) directed the Joint Casas Grandes Project, excavating about one third of the site. INAH is a Mexican federal agency founded in 1939 to research, preserve, and educate the public about the country’s cultural heritage. The project’s excavations and Di Peso’s seminal eight-volume report revealed the settlement’s immensity and complexity. With at least 2,000 rooms in massive, multi-storied adobe roomblocks, numerous ceremonial structures, a sophisticated water distribution system, Mesoamerican iconography, and abundant trade goods, Casas Grandes is among the largest and most complex prehistoric sites in the greater Southwest. Prior to Di Peso’s work, limited surveys and excavations had been conducted in the region, showing Casas Grandes to be by far the largest of a number of major settlements in northwest Chihuahua. Casas Grandes lies within the southern extent of the Mogollon culture area and its main occupation dates between approximately A.D. 1200 and 1450, which overlaps in time with the Anasazi culture, the Salado and Classic Hohokam cultures, and the riverine cultures of Sonora. american archaeology

During this time it’s thought that the indigenous population grew and there may also have been an influx of people migrating from other areas. New architectural forms that included massively built adobe walls, ballcourts, and effigy mounds arose and exotic trade goods arrived from distant places, including shells from the California coast and copper from West Mexico. A specific iconography that included the plumed serpent image of the important Mesoamerican deity Quetzalcoatl appeared on architecture, ceramic vessels, rock art, and murals. Di Peso attributed the sudden arrival of these traits to Mesoamerican traveling merchants from the Valley of Mexico who organized the local people to establish Casas Grandes. The site became a center for the specialized production of highly desirable elite goods such as copper bells, shell artifacts, and polychrome pottery. According to Di Peso, Casas Grandes was a strategically located, highly centralized Mesoamerican trading center that was created to facilitate the exchange of goods

Archaeologist Charles Di Peso places a stone plug into a prehistoric macaw cage. Macaws were important in the symbolism of Casas Grandes, and their plumes likely were highly valued commodities there and in the Southwest.

AMERIND FOUNDATION

This overhead shot shows a room at Casas Grandes. The thick adobe walls are characteristic of the site’s architecture. The floor of the room held fire

between the cultures of the U.S. Southwest and those of Mesoamerica. Elaborate burials and hoards of exotic goods found at the site attest to the presence of an elite or priestly class. Based on the distribution of Mesoamerican goods across the U.S. Southwest such as macaw feathers and copper artifacts, he contended that the center’s influence extended all the way to Chaco Canyon in northwestern New Mexico. Southwest scholars, most of whom had considered Casas Grandes to be affiliated through trade and possibly migration with the Pueblo cultures to the north, disputed Di Peso’s conclusions regarding the site’s Mesoamerican origins. Chihuahua Polychrome is the most beautiful of the Casas Grandes ceramics, and its bird, animal, and human figures represent a rich symbolism which has yet to be fully studied. This vessel shows a plumed serpent, probably derived from the Mesoamerican deity Quetzalcoatl.

The Transformation of Casas Grandes Late in the 11th century, during what’s called the Viejo (Old) Period (A.D. 700–1200), the peoples of northwest Chihuahua began to build adobe surface structures next to their subterranean pithouses during the pivotal pithouse-to-pueblo transition that also took place across the U.S. Southwest. In the mid-12th century, Casas Grandes consisted of 20 single-story adobewalled house clusters that incorporated T-shaped doorways, raised cooking hearths, and squarecolumned galleries and stairways. Di Peso’s excavations showed that, just a century later, the site was transformed into a sophisticated center with the construction of an entirely new massive adobe walled city. Impressive ceremonial mounds and ballcourts, the specialized production of elite items in artisan work areas, and turkey and macaw nesting pens distinguished it from its spring • 2004

MUSEUM OF INDIAN ARTS & CULTURE/LABORATORY OF ANTHROPOLOGY / CAT. #8313/11 / BLAIR CLARK

hearths and several ceramic jars were plastered into the floor. They probably served as small storage facilities.

Despite the meticulous work Di Peso and his colleagues accomplished at Casas Grandes itself, until recently researchers knew very little about the region and its cultural development. In the 1980s researchers began to conduct surveys and excavate some key sites to gain an understanding of the nature and extent of the settlements surrounding Casas Grandes. At the end of that decade, Michael Whalen of the University of Tulsa and Paul Minnis of the University of Oklahoma conducted large-scale surveys in this region, documenting some 450 sites. They discovered Viejo Period ceramics at many Medio (Middle) Period settlements (A.D. 1200–1450), indicating an earlier indigenous developmental phase in the region that preceded Casas Grandes. The researchers also documented evidence of agriculture on the less fertile upland areas as early as the Viejo Period, suggesting that the prime river valley land was either in use or had already been depleted by the substantial number of people that inhabited the area. Though Whalen and Minnis concede that trade with Mesoamerican cultures certainly played a significant role in the center’s development, they believe Casas Grandes was built by the region’s denizens. “The rise of Casas Grandes is best understood as primarily a local phenomenon of emergent elites jockeying for power and prestige, ultimately leading to the dominance of Casas Grandes over its neighbors,” according to Minnis and Whalen. They con-

DAVID BURCKHALTER

neighbors. At its zenith in the early to mid-14th century, Casas Grandes encompassed nearly 90 acres and is estimated to have housed more than 2,000 people. Using irrigation, residents extensively farmed the area, harvesting corn, agave, and other produce. The settlement was served by a sophisticated running water system that included an underground walk-in well, a reservoir, and an elaborate system of stone slab-covered drains. Di Peso also discovered one T-shaped ballcourt as well as two in the classic Mesoamerican I-shape. One of the T-shaped ballcourts contained subfloor burials showing possible ceremonial dismemberment. Among the center’s other ceremonial structures were feasting ovens, a human skull trophy room, stone-faced platforms, and effigy mounds. One of the ceremonial mounds was shaped like a snake, which may have represented Quetzalcoatl. Based on a very limited number of dates, Di Peso developed an elaborate chronology for the region that placed the rise of Casas Grandes at about A.D. 1060, making it contemporaneous with the Toltec culture of central Mexico. A revised tree-ring chronology published in 1993 re-dated the site to between A.D. 1200 and 1450, placing it after the fall of the Toltec civilization. As it’s thought that the remaining Toltecs went south, Di Peso’s Toltec merchant explanation for Casas Grandes’s origin became implausible. This raised the question of how Casas Grandes came to be.

This 11-foot-high structure was used to store corn that was grown in the nearby fields. It’s found in a shallow cave at Cueva de la Olla, a settlement south of Casas Grandes that predated it. The structure is made of concentric bundles of grass plastered with mud.

american archaeology

believes the site’s elites arose from the local population. “I see no reason to invoke major population movements from either the north or south,” says Kelley. “This is especially true now that the widespread nature of Viejo sites is becoming apparent.” Researchers who doubt the local origins theory for Casas Grandes argue that there is insufficient evidence that the area’s population was large enough to support the center’s dramatic transformation around A.D. 1250, and that there was little cultural continuity between the earlier Viejo Period settlements and Casas Grandes. In the 1990s, INAH researchers invited scholars with the Museum of New Mexico (MNM) and the University of New Mexico (UNM) to conduct investigations in the region. Rafael Cruz Antillón of INAH, Timothy Maxwell of MNM, and Robert Leonard of UNM co-directed a project in which they excavated a variety of sites in the region, including Villa Ahumada and Galeana, the area’s second largest site. Maxwell and Cruz believe that the rise of the center was largely a local development. But Leonard disagrees, noting the transformation of Casas Grandes as proof of the lack of This map shows the areas that are believed to have interacted with and shaped Casas Grandes. cultural continuity between it and the It also shows the approximate areas inhabited by the Hohokam, Mimbres, Mogollon, and Anasazi earlier surrounding settlements. He cultures. Archaeologists disagree as to whether Casas Grandes was more affected by these cultures sees a strong connection between or by Mesoamerican cultures in north-central Mexico. The inset map shows the settlements in the Casas Grandes, West Mexico, and the greater Casas Grandes region. Some archaeologists believe Casas Grandes developed by absorbing pre-A.D. 1150 Mimbres culture of the residents of the region’s other settlements. southwestern New Mexico. A comtend that the Mesoamerican objects were obtained through parative ceramic study by UNM shows a direct historic indirect trading, and that “the site’s rising elite used them link between the Classic Mimbres and Casas Grandes ceto bolster and legitimize their positions at home.” ramic iconography. There is also evidence of a clear conThe two researchers recently conducted large-scale exnection between Mesoamerican and Casas Grandes cecavations at the site of Tinaja, which is located west of ramic traditions, but no evidence of a connection between Casas Grandes and was one of its two largest neighbors. the latter and the local Viejo Period ceramics. They dated the site, which shares many features with Casas Curtis Schaafsma, MNM’s emeritus curator of anGrandes, from the early Medio Period to its decline in the thropology, has worked in the region since the 1960s. Like Di Peso, he believes that local Viejo Period inhabi14th century. The site’s demise coincided with Casas Grandes’s peak, suggesting that Casas Grandes grew by abtants were organized by Mesoamericans to create the sorbing the residents of the surrounding communities. great center. The iconography seen on the pottery and From 1990 to 2000, Jane Kelley of the University of structures at Casas Grandes convinces him of the strong Calgary in Canada co-directed a project in which she connection between the two. Schaafsma also thinks that tested four Viejo Period sites in the southern part of the elite power, derived through ritual and the control of Casas Grandes region. Like Whalen and Minnis, Kelley water and exotic goods, was much more centralized and 16

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DAVID BURCKHALTER

Charles Di Peso estimated that there were about 2,000 rooms at Casas Grandes. Only about 10 percent of these have been excavated, including the ones shown here. Some rooms had a single story, but the taller remains of a multi-storied roomblock can be seen at the extreme left of the picture. The rooms were grouped around large plazas like the one in the center of the picture.

MUSEUM OF INDIAN ARTS & CULTURE/LABORATORY OF ANTHROPOLOGY / CAT. #8365/11 / BLAIR CLARK

extensive than Whalen and Minnis propose. However, he rejects Di Peso’s Merchantile Model and emphasizes that we do not know what area was controlled by Casas Grandes.

A Center of Trade or Ritual? Mexican scholars also tend to emphasize Casas Grandes’s strong Mesoamerican connections and are generally more in agreement with Di Peso’s assertion that the site was foremost an economic center that influenced a very large region. José Luis Punzo, former director of the Museo de las Culturas del Norte, a world-class museum built at the site of Casas Grandes in 1995, emphasizes the site’s vast influence, which he says extended all the way to the Four Corners region of the U.S. Southwest. He sees Casas Grandes as a place where the two great cultural zones of Mesoamerica and the Southwest coexisted. Casas Grandes ceramics include effigy vessels in the forms of birds, animals, and humans. The vessel shown is a Ramos Polychrome bird effigy jar.

american archaeology

Eduardo Gamboa Carrerra, INAH’s director of research and conservation at Casas Grandes, believes there was direct and sustained contact between Casas Grandes, the U.S. Southwest, and Mesoamerica since Late Archaic times when the practice of agriculture was transmitted to the Pueblos from Mesoamerican cultures. Carrerra stresses Casas Grandes’s significance as a ritual city-state whose ideological and political integration was based on the ballgame, as was the case with many Mesoamerican cultures. Other researchers have also suggested that Casas Grandes, with its numerous ceremonial structures and iconography, looks like a ritual center. Despite Di Peso’s argument that it’s primary purpose was trade, great quantities of exotic artifacts such as shells have recently been found at the site, suggesting it was more likely the final destination of these 17

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DAVID BURCKHALTER

A highly controversial theory for the rise of Casas Grandes has been suggested by archaeologist Stephen Lekson of the University of Colorado, who argues that, based on the locations of the sites and similarities in their architecture and layout, Casas Grandes was established by elites from the post–Chaco Canyon center of Aztec in north-central New Mexico. “I think that centralized, hierarchical governments moved from Chaco to Aztec and then reappeared at Casas Grandes,” posits Lekson, who also sees a probable genetic relationship between the Mimbres people and those that later founded Casas Grandes. “Pueblo people who stayed behind at Hopi, Zuni, Acoma, and the Rio Grande voted with their feet by not moving south.” While much speculation surrounds the origin and nature of Casas Grandes, there is no question that the ultimate fall of the center was a violent one. Burned structures, collapsed walls, broken altars, and hundreds of scattered skeletons attest to its sudden, tragic end in the mid-15th century. Di Peso proposed that, when trading networks changed, Casas Grandes fell out of power and was ultimately sacked by its neighbors, the nearest of whom were the warlike Tarascan people of central Mexico. All of the region’s major sites were abandoned at this time. While archaeologists have Access to water was critical in this semi-arid region. The community contained a water distribution and made recent leaps in their underdrainage system, part of which is shown here. About 1,200 feet of subterranean channel were uncovered standing of the Casas Grandes rein the excavated portions of the site. gion, much work remains in order to test the various theories regarding the center’s origin, natrade goods that may have been used in rituals. Chris Van ture, extent of influence, and ultimate collapse. “Many of Pool, a UNM graduate student who just completed her the things that we take for granted in the Southwest such dissertation on Casas Grandes–style iconography of as well-dated artifact sequences, fine ceramic seriations, Chihuahua, western Texas, southern New Mexico, and Arizona, proposes that Casas Grandes was a major cereand paleo-environmental reconstructions, simply don’t monial center that influenced a large area, drawing people exist in Chihuahua,” says Whalen. “The area is so little who wanted to participate in its rituals. She says highly studied that productive, basic research can be done almost valued goods such as macaws, shells, bells, copper, anywhere and in any time period—it’s a wide open stage.” turquoise, and polychrome pottery were brought as gifts to the center’s leaders during ceremonial gatherings and TAMARA STEWART is the assistant editor of American Archaeology and the were stockpiled at the site rather than redistributed. Conservancy’s Southwest project’s coordinator.

THE MYSTERY OF THE MEGAFAUNA

The Folsom people (above) and dire wolves (below) hunt bison.

DENVER MUSEUM OF NATURE & SCIENCE / MARY CHILTON GRAY

WHO, OR WHAT,

caused the extinction of the giant mammals that once inhabited the New World? By Alexandra Witze american archaeology

a few hundred years after the earliest well-accepted evidence that the Clovis people inhabited the continent. But now a pair of prominent archaeologists has declared overkill dead. Donald Grayson of the University of Washington and David Meltzer of Southern Methodist University argue that there is no archaeological evidence to support the notion of overhunting. Though a number of sites with megafaunal remains of this age have been identified in North America, Grayson and Meltzer conclude that only 14 sites show evidence of large animals having been slaughtered by humans. And that’s too few, the archaeologists argue, to convict humanity of driving 35 genera of megafauna to extinction. Supporters of overkill, however, are not easily convinced. In a series of arguments published in the Journal of Archaeological Science, Stuart Fiedel of the Louis Berger Group in Washington, D.C., and Gary Haynes of the University of Nevada, Reno, have counterattacked, calling Grayson and Meltzer’s work a “premature burial” of the overkill hypothesis. The publication of both papers continues this decades-old debate. About the only thing that both sides agree on is that many of North America’s megafauna are extinct. The vanished ani-

PAGE MUSEUM / JOHN C. DAWSON

The American camel, Camelops, ranged from Alaska to Mexico. It went extinct in North America at the end of the Pleistocene.

DENVER MUSEUM OF NATURE & SCIENCE / MARY CHILTON GRAY

t the end of the last ice age, fantastic giants roamed North America. Mammoths and mastodons browsed. Saber-toothed cats and dire wolves prowled. Short-faced bears haunted crevices. Then, in a geologic instant, all these creatures vanished. About 70 percent of North America’s large mammal species went extinct prior to the end of the Pleistocene epoch, about 11,500 years ago. Exactly what happened to them has long been one of North American archaeology’s most contentious debates: Was it a lethal disease? Sudden climate change? Or were humans to blame? In the early 1960s, ecologist Paul Martin of the University of Arizona suggested that the first Americans slaughtered North America’s big mammals to extinction, just as the first settlers of New Zealand and Madagascar drove many native creatures to oblivion. Over the following decades Martin’s theory, dubbed “overkill,” gained support among paleontologists and archaeologists. After all, the timing seemed to make sense; the youngest known sites containing mammoth bones, for instance, date to around 12,700 years ago, just

Some paleontologists believe that the American lion, Felis atrox, is actually the same species as the modern African lion, although larger. If that is the case, then this animal ranged from Africa to Eurasia to North and South America.

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PAGE MUSEUM / JOHN C. DAWSON

mals include ground sloths, giant beavers, peccaries, camels, llamas, and other exotica. Often their bones are found in isolation, but sometimes they appear at archaeological sites alongside stone tools, human bones, and other evidence of human occupation. Archaeologists first discovered extinct mammals and projectile points together in the early 1930s at Clovis, New Mexico. Other sites soon yielded more evidence of animal bones in

(Top) Smilodon was one of two saber-tooth cats in North America during the Pleistocene. (Above) The lion was one of many carnivores that preyed on large mammals such as camels and bison.

conjunction with human artifacts of Clovis age, which dated to some 13,000 years ago. Clovis hunters, it seemed, had preyed on megafauna at least every once in a while. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that Clovis people hunted big mammals exclusively and into extinction, Grayson and Meltzer argue. And after decades of hearing about overkill, the pair decided to look into the archaeological evidence for it. The two scrutinized all the archaeological sites that purported to show an association between human activities and the remains of extinct Pleistocene mammals. The work drew on a database called FAUNMAP, which documents where mammals lived in the continental United States during the past 40,000 years. The archaeologists also added in similar sites that had been missed by FAUNMAP or had been discovered since the database was published in 1994. A first sweep through this expanded database netted american archaeology

76 candidate sites where extinct mammals were reportedly found with Clovis or Paleo-Indian archaeological remains. Grayson and Meltzer initially eliminated 47 of the sites for a variety of reasons, including not having sufficient documentation or because the animal remains were tools made of bone, which could have been fashioned after the animal had died of natural causes. Of the remaining 29 sites, the scientists eliminated 14 more for not having direct evidence of predation or subsistence hunting. Grayson and Meltzer then found themselves with only four species— camel, horse, mammoth, and mastodon—whose remains were convincingly associated with Clovis-age sites. However, camel and horse appeared only at three sites, represented by a total of three bones. This is not strong evidence that people even hunted them, let alone caused their extinction, Grayson and Meltzer contend. So they ended up with the remains of just two species, mammoths and mastodons, that clearly appear to have been slaughtered at 14 sites across North America. Four of those sites lie in Arizona’s San Pedro Valley and thus could have been the result of a single active group of Clovis hunters. In sum, Grayson and Meltzer argue, there’s just not much evidence for the kind of widespread killing that would have driven 35 genera of animals to extinction. “If they were being killed, by golly somebody was doing a good job hiding the evidence, because it’s just not there,” says the blunt-spoken Meltzer. A similar debate is surfacing in Australia. Despite the 40,000 to 50,000 years in which humans were reportedly killing large animals down under, there is only one definitive kill site, Cuddie Springs, on the entire continent, says paleontologist Stephen Wroe of the University of Sydney. Wroe is trying to exonerate humans of the charge of eradicating Australia’s megafauna.

SAME EVIDENCE, DIFFERENT CONCLUSION But one archaeologist’s lack of sites is another’s bonanza. To Haynes, the 14 North American kill sites are strong evidence of overkill. Large-scale hunting usually doesn’t leave much evidence in the archaeological record, according to Haynes. “You can make the case that dead animals in the wild just don’t get preserved,” he says. The likelihood of preservation varies tremendously depending upon various factors. When exposed to the elements, bones can decompose rapidly. Generally speaking, the bones of any large 21

PAGE MUSEUM / MARY BUTLER

This illustration gives a slightly different interpretation of Smilodon. This animal resided in the New World, whereas Homotherium, North America’s other

To many, the question of overkill comes down to the mammal may be preserved 0.01 percent of the time or issue of timing. No one knows exactly when humans first even less, says Haynes. His conclusion is based on 20 years entered the New World; recent archaeological findings, of fieldwork in Africa, North America, and Australia. such as at the Monte Verde site in southern Chile, suggest In all of Africa there are just six kill sites for elethat people may have arrived before the Clovis. And even phants, Haynes states, even though humans have been livless is known about exactly when the different megafauna ing on the continent for millions of years and, presumwent extinct. The few dates that do exist seem to trigger ably, hunting elephants all that time. Tens of thousands of more debate. Recent research animals, at the very least, have been by a team led by Russell Grapoached for ivory in the last ham of the Denver Museum century, and yet no trace remains of that killing. Similarly, there are no kill sites for elk, deer, bear, or other large mammals that survived the Pleistocene in eastern North America, he and Fiedel point out. Yet Native Americans are known to have killed those animals for food. The chance of finding the preserved remains of a slaughtered ground sloth or musk ox would be incredibly slim, they claim. Martin agrees, saying that kill sites should not be expected. “In all of these places where people arrive and faunas suffer More than 60 species of Pleistocene horses have been the kind of loss you would expect with the arnamed but probably only four basic types existed at any rival of our species, the evidence…is not there one time. Evidence suggests that the genus Equus went extinct around 13,000 or is very scarce,” he says. years ago. Horses were reintroduced to North America by the Spaniards. 22

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saber-tooth cat, also inhabited Africa and Eurasia. Smilodon went extinct in North America around 13,000 years ago.

populations and mammoths [at the time of extinction] is unmistakable.”

OTHER EXPLANATIONS Graham, on the other hand, has used the radiocarbon dates to argue for a completely different cause for the extinctions: climate change. Shifting temperatures have long been a favored alternate explanation for the megafaunal extinctions. After all, North America experienced rapid swings in climate as it began to thaw out from the last ice age—right around the time that people first showed up to complicate the picture. Around 17,000 years ago, the climate began to warm abruptly. But just after 13,000 years ago, temperatures dropped in a cold snap known as the Younger Dryas, which kept North America in its chilly clutches for about a millennium. Only then did temperatures begin to rise again, warming into the relatively constant temperatures experienced throughout the current Holocene epoch. These climate fluctuations could have caused enough stress to wipe out the megafauna, according to Graham. The rapidly changing temperatures could have caused the animal populations, and geographic areas they inhabited,

DEAN QUIGLEY

of Nature and Science produced radiocarbon dates from bones of 15 extinct megafauna genera. The dates indicate these animals survived to between 12,700 and 13,200 years ago. To Fiedel and Haynes, that timing suggests that megafauna were done in by Clovis hunters, while Grayson and Meltzer speculate that the other 20 genera could have gone extinct long before Clovis people ever showed up. Grayson and Meltzer claim that most of the archaeologists who specialize in late-Pleistocene North America support their position. They have received several supportive e-mails, as well as a plug from Vance Holliday, a geoarchaeologist at the University of Arizona, in the journal Science. But other experts aren’t lining up behind Grayson and Meltzer. “I think they’re way out on an anthropological limb, and they’re sawing it off behind them,” says Larry Agenbroad, a geologist with Northern Arizona University. He argues that mammoths, which he studies, were beginning to spread across much of the continent and thrive until people showed up. Another geoarchaeologist, Reid Ferring of the University of North Texas, says that “We don’t have spear points sticking in the vertebrae of 1,500 elephants, I admit, but the coincidence of human

Several types of megafauna are seen in this illustration. In addition to the mastodons, two flat headed peccaries are in the foreground, and a large armored Glyptodon is to the right of the peccaries. The Glyptodon was a distant relative of the modern armadillos. To the far right a ground sloth, Megalonyx jeffersonii, is stripping leaves and twigs from a tree.

american archaeology

AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY

The woolly mammoth, Mammuthus primigenius, probably arrived in North America around 100,000 years ago when other mammoth species were already present in this continent. There is no convincing evidence as to when it went extinct.

to shrink, pushing them across a threshold from which they were unable to recover. Another recent study showed that individual horses became smaller prior to the species going extinct. Dale Guthrie of the University of Alaska in Fairbanks studied the size of horses in Alaska and found they had been shrinking for several thousand years before they disappeared around 14,500 years ago, suggesting that some long-term factor such as climate change was at work. “This is the first, and maybe the only, field evidence of a possible effect that climate change had on a megafaunal species,” says Haynes. But the case still isn’t clear-cut. In Alaska, horses disappeared long before the Clovis people appeared. But they survived elsewhere in North America for nearly 2,000 years longer, co-existing with people. Such data bolsters what may be the predominant view of the North American megafaunal extinctions—that neither climate nor overhunting alone caused the extinctions, but some combination of the two did. In this scenario, humans may have dealt a death blow to animal populations weakened by millennia of rapidly shifting climate. 24

A once-popular third theory, that the megafauna were done in by a new disease carried by humans, has been mostly discounted, and its doubters now include the man who proposed it, mammalogist Ross MacPhee of the American Museum of Natural History in New York. In his scenario, humans carried a virus or other contagious disease that, upon arriving in the New World, they would have transferred to animals. “What the disease argument offered was…a way of explaining the correlation and time of appearance of people, but the lack of direct evidence for the interaction of people and megafauna,” says MacPhee. However, intensive searches haven’t turned up animal bones scarred by disease, or any other evidence that such a contagion took place. Archaeologists are joining forces with biologists and other experts to hunt for new lines of evidence that may shed light on the megafaunal extinctions. One leading candidate, according to Meltzer, is the study of ancient DNA. Paleontologist Alan Cooper of the University of Oxford and others have been working to extract DNA of extinct mammals from soils in Beringia, the site of the land bridge that once connected Asia to North America. spring • 2004

The Columbian mammoth (right) was contemporaneous with the American mastodon (far right) during the Pleistocene, but their remains have been found together at only a few sites. They probably lived

So far, the team has been able to recover DNA from ancient bison, horses, and mammoths from Siberia. Meltzer believes more of these studies could shed light on what megafauna were living where at different times in the past. Another promising line of study involves a fungal spore called Sporormiella. Because Sporormiella tends to show up in the dung of mammals, paleontologists sometimes use it as a proxy to infer the existence of vanished megafauna. At Fordham University in New York, paleoecologist Guy Robinson and his colleagues have used Sporormiella to establish the timing of mastadon extinctions at four sites in southeastern New York. Although the work is in its early stages, the team has reported evidence that seems to support overkill. In sediment cores from the sites, spore levels drop off drastically, as if animals were dying, just before charcoal levels—perhaps indicative of the presence of humans—start to rise. Only afterward do the researchers observe stark changes in pollen content, representing climate change that would have come too late to account for the megafaunal die-offs.

than they were in the 1960s. Still, perhaps one day some archaeologist will discover the perfect kill site, or the perfect record of climate change, and the lost giants of North America will finger their killer. ALEXANDRA WITZE is a science reporter at the Dallas Morning News.

AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY

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in different habitats.

As these new kinds of evidence grow, scientists may begin to get a clearer picture of what happened in North America at the end of the Pleistocene. But if history holds true, more data may not necessarily resolve the longstanding debate. Archaeologists and paleontologists have debated overkill since Paul Martin first introduced it, and they are seemingly no closer to resolution

Thirty-five genera of megafauna once inhabited North America. Among them were the ground sloths and the armadillo-like Glyptodon seen in the foreground of this illustration.

american archaeology

This Very Old House The Folsom people were believed to be mobile hunter-gatherers who roamed the Great Plains. But the discovery of an ancient Folsom house in southwestern Colorado challenges that notion. By Catherine Dold

tanding on top of Tenderfoot Mountain, a flattopped mesa in southwestern Colorado, it’s easy to guess why ancient peoples might have frequented this site. The 360-degree view of the river valley below and the distant snow-capped peaks allows for easy spotting of game and people, a definite survival benefit. It’s also a great vantage point for keeping an eye on the weather; thunderheads rolling toward the valley can be spotted from 40 miles away. And due to the oddities of local weather patterns, in winter the exposed mesa top is actually warmer than the valley below. It’s also easy to understand why archaeologists never explored the site very thoroughly in the past. Strong seasonal winds have scoured the surface of the mesa for centuries, leaving behind only a thin crust of dirt and dust on top of the 25 million-year-old volcanic rock. At first glance, there would seem to be few places with soil deep enough to hide ancient tools or other evidence of past lives.

The addition of some very modern tools to the mesa top recently turned that notion on its head, however. Four years ago, yet another communications tower was scheduled to be built on top of the mesa, joining the cluster of cell phone, radio, and police towers that now serve the town of Gunnison below. Mark Stiger, an archaeologist at Western State College, which sits just below the mesa and owns the land, decided to come up for a look before the area was disturbed any further by construction. “All of a sudden I saw a Folsom point on the ground,” Stiger recalls of his walk across the mesa in 2000. “I thought, Oh, my God. Then, within 10 days I’d found 20 more Folsom points on the surface. I figured I was dead and this was what heaven was like.” Stiger christened the mesa the Mountaineer site, after Western’s grizzled mountain man mascot, and with the help of students and volunteers from the Colorado Archaeological Society he began to explore the area. What they found

Archaeologists have discovered the remains of a Folsom house that is thought to be approximately 12,000 years old. This illustration, based on archaeological knowledge of that time, shows what the house

DEAN QUIGLEY

may have looked like.

spring • 2004

there is possibly even more exciting than Stiger imagined on that first stroll across the mesa. After three years of excavations it appears that artifacts found at the Mountaineer site might well change accepted notions of how people lived in North America some 12,000 years ago. It seems that the Folsom people, long thought to have been very mobile hunter-gatherers who lived primarily on the Great Plains, perhaps were not so mobile or Plains-centric after all. Some of them might have been settling down for a time in a small stone house on this 8,600-foot-high mesa deep in the Rocky Mountains. Mark Stiger might have found the oldest house in Colorado, and one of the oldest in all of North America.

THE PROJECTILE POINTS STIGER found are 2- to 3-inch-long knife-like tools made of stone. They probably were used to kill or butcher animals, perhaps after being lashed to wooden poles. They are clearly of the Folsom style, Stiger says, and may be 12,000 to 13,000 years old. In his laboratory at Western Stage College, Stiger hauls several boxes of ancient artifacts down off a shelf and pulls out dozens of points. Holding one large,

american archaeology

This complete Folsom point was recovered from the site. The complete and partial Folsom points at the Mountaineer site.

intact point, he notes the characteristic channel, or flute, that runs down its center and the delicate pattern of flaking that graces the edges. The purpose of the groove is unknown. One theory is it makes a point lighter so it can be thrown farther; others say it’s a blood-letting groove. “We just don’t know,” says Stiger. The flaking pattern along the edges is the result of chipping off scores of small pieces, presumably to sharpen the edges. Both steps in the manufacturing process result in many discarded flakes, which are often found at excavation sites. By comparison, Stiger explains, tools made by earlier people, the Clovis, are not as finely crafted as those of the Folsom. Like this perfect sample, many of the points on the Mountaineer site were found intact. Many more were found broken into two or more pieces. Others were failed attempts known as “preforms” that were apparently discarded. Stiger and his researchers, in fact, have found on this single site representatives of every step in the Folsom point-making process, from the earliest preforms to the final product. To date, Stiger and his colleagues have found no fewer than 50 complete and partial Folsom points on the mesa, an extraordinary number for one small site. According to the archaeological literature, only two well-documented Folsom points had been found in all of southwestern Colorado prior to this discovery. Stiger’s discovery of so many points so far west of the Plains is in itself enough to trigger a significant change in thinking about the Folsom. “Most archaeologists see the Folsom people as living on the Plains and the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains,” he says. “No one thought they were over here on the Western Slope of the Rockies very much.” “The stereotypical view of the Folsom is they were out on the high plains hunting down bison,” agrees David Meltzer, an archaeologist with Southern Methodist University, who, at Stiger’s invitation, is excavating another spot on the Mountaineer site. “We never thought of them as having much of a presence in the mountains. Now we 28

need to expand beyond that Plains-centric view and try to figure out what they were doing in the mountains.”

AFTER STIGER FOUND THE FIRST FEW POINTS BACK in 2000, he did a more systematic survey of the mesa top. Walking across the mesa, he found no fewer than 15 separate spots with distinct signs of Folsom occupation—primarily clusters of artifacts on the ground surface. In the summer of 2001, he and his colleagues began excavating the first of those 15 areas. “It seemed to be a good spot,” he recalls, standing next to that first site where his two assistants are finishing up the last day of the current field season. “There were some flakes and tools on the ground surface.” When Stiger and the others opened up the site, they found much more than a few flakes. They found hundreds of pieces of evidence of human occupation, mostly the remains of tool manufacture. And many of the pieces they found were clearly of the Folsom era, and at least 12,000 years old. But then things got confusing. They started to find lots of burned wood, or charcoal, that according to radiocarbon dating was at the most about 5,300 years old. The charcoal came from the exact same spot as the Folsom points, but 5,300 years ago is the Middle Archaic period, much too recent to have any association with the Folsom people. Stiger thought maybe they had found a Middle Archaic animal roasting pit, possibly one that coincidentally had been established in the same area that the Folsom used. An interesting find, but nothing earth-shaking. Stiger closed the site for the season and the next summer, 2002, he focused on other areas of the site. But the earlier finding continued to gnaw at him. It didn’t look like a roasting pit. They had also found hundreds of artifacts in the center of the area, and artifacts aren’t usually found in a cooking area. Throughout 2002, Stiger continued to ponder this puzzle—until some nearby events jarred his thinking. “We had some big forest fires in Colorado that year, spring • 2004

DAN PEHA

archaeologists have found 50

Mark Stiger illustrates mapping with an optical transit during an archaeology class on the Mountaineer site. The site, which is two miles from the Western State DAN PEHA

College campus, often serves as a classroom. The rocks from the foundation and walls of the Folsom house form the large pile in the center of the photograph.

american archaeology

WESTERN STATE COLLEGE

The southern foundation of the Folsom house is a semicircle of large rocks near the center of this photograph that is difficult to discern. The northern foundation, which is at the bottom of the photograph, is unexcavated.

and I spent some time looking at the burns,” he says. “It occurred to me that maybe we just had an old dead tree in there.” Sure enough, when he returned to the Mountaineer site for the 2003 field season, everything fell into place. The 5,300-year-old charcoal was not evidence of a roasting pit. Rather, it was more likely the remains of a tree that had grown on the site and fallen long after the Folsom occupation. During a later forest fire, the fallen tree had burned in place—as indicated by the fact that the top section was burned and the bottom, which would have burned had it been in a roasting pit, was relatively unscathed—and left chunks of charcoal mixed in with the Folsom artifacts. With the charcoal mystery solved, Stiger and his team resumed excavation of the area. They soon made an extraordinary discovery. “We opened it all the way up and found rocks piled up around the edge of a four-yard-wide basin,” he says. The rocks had clearly been moved there to form a large ring that apparently was once part of a structure. Within the ring of rocks they found a dozen more partial Folsom points, a set of distinctive channel flakes, and some large rib fragments. They also found chunks of daub, a type of wall plaster made of mud. Equally important was what they didn’t find. There was no evidence that the site was used as a roasting pit 5,300 years ago. “We found Folsom points and only Folsom points,” he says. “There were no Middle Archaic materials.” Stiger concluded that this feature most definitely was not an Archaic roasting pit, but was a much older structure. It was quite possibly a rudimentary house that had been built of stone and plaster, and maybe tree poles and brush. 30

It had been occupied by the supposedly nomadic Folsom people. “This is probably the oldest house in Colorado,” says Stiger, pointing to the low-slung remains of the rock walls. At an estimated 12,000 to 13,000 years of age, it is quite possibly one of the oldest houses in North America.

THERE IS CONSIDERABLE EVIDENCE INDICATING that these rocks were once a Folsom house. First, the distinctive style of the artifacts found at the site shows that they are clearly of the Folsom culture. To confirm the age of the site, Stiger is having the bones found in it dated. The results are not in yet, but based on preliminary examinations by a faunal expert, he says, “we strongly suspect it is 12,000-year-old bison.” Second, to link the people who used those 12,000-plusyear-old artifacts to the ring of stones, the apparent house, Stiger focuses on the artifact distribution at the site—exactly where the preforms, flakes, points, partial points, and bones were found in relation to the rocks. He does this through computer analysis of thousands of data points. During the fieldwork, every bit of material found on the site was carefully extracted, mapped, and cataloged. To date, this painstaking work has resulted in an astonishing number of artifacts from this small site. More than 27,000 individual pieces, primarily chips and flakes from stone tool manufacturing, have been recovered. The information on each piece has been entered into a computer database and used to build a series of maps. The maps show both the location and the density of the various materials found inside and outside the ring of rocks—every spring • 2004

“He’s convinced me it’s a structure,” agrees Steven Holen, curator of archaeology at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science. “This is a great find.” Stiger expands on his theory. “I think this house is a winter occupation,” he suggests. “I wouldn’t be surprised if they were here for a few months, a family perhaps. My guess is they killed some bison or elk, and buried them on the north side of the house in a snow bank. When spring comes and things start to thaw, they are more mobile. They can move to camps around here all summer long, and get fresh fruit and vegetables. Then fall comes along and they’re thinking let’s bag ourselves some antelope or bison, enough to last through the winter. This might be one winter house. There might be others somewhere along those ridges, 30 miles away. “These people were living in relatively substantial structures and populating one area for extended periods of time,” says Stiger. “This is contrary to all we thought before about the Folsom people. They are still hunter-gatherers, but they were staying put for longer periods of time than we ever thought before. And certainly there is a more substantial occupation here on the Western slope of the Rockies than we thought.” Stiger notes, too, that his initial survey of the mesa top showed a lot of variation among the 15 areas of human occupation—different raw materials, different types of tools. “It looks like this area was used time and time again,” he says. “Maybe they were different generations, maybe just a year later, maybe a hundred years later. Who knows? But it seems to have been used for different purposes and in different ways. There is a lot of variability in all these Folsom areas that we just don’t know what to make of yet. “Archaeologists tend to think that one Folsom site assemblage This broken point was discovered at the site. Most of the points found at Mountaineer were broken into looks like the others; there might two or more pieces. Most of the points are two to three inches long. have been differences between camp sites and kill sites, but that one camp site probably looks him that they had a trash dump outside the house. “It looks like another. But what we are seeing here is, whoa, there is like they broke the points, and then just chucked them right a lot of differentiation, and this is much more interesting. out the door,” he says. “Nobody likes to sit on sharpened This is one of those wonderful times that point out, boy, rocks, so you toss it out the door.” He points to an area next you don’t know much. It’s really exciting. to the dump that, according to the maps, has very low con“I could spend the next 50 years on this.” centrations of all materials. “This is probably the doorway right here. It’s off to the southeast, which is typical for around here.” His remark refers to other, younger prehistoric houses CATHERINE DOLD’s article “The Neighborhood Bonebed” appeared in the found in this area that also open to the southeast. Summer 2003 issue of American Archaeology. She has also written for Other experts cautiously concur with Stiger’s interDiscover, Smithsonian, and the New York Times. pretation. “The artifacts there clearly are in sync with the structure,” says Meltzer. “There’s no question it’s a strucFor more information about the Mountaineer ture. It would be downright unusual if it’s a house, but I excavation, visit the Web site can’t think of what else it could be.” www.western.edu/anthropology/folsom

DAN PEHA

bone, chip, rock, preform, flake, point, and partial point found on the 36-foot by 33-foot area. The distribution patterns that emerged on the maps speak volumes to Stiger. If that pattern had been random, or if the artifacts had been found in one spot, Stiger explains, it’s likely that natural forces had removed them from their original contexts. But that wasn’t the case. Some areas had large concentrations of bone. Others had lots of flakes. “If you’ve got bone in one place, chips and flakes in another, and projectile points in another, there is some reason for it,” Stiger says. “People were clearly organizing their space that way.” According to the maps and Stiger’s interpretation of them, the Folsom were arranging their space in relation to the ring of rocks. Walking around the rocks, Stiger outlines his theory. “The rocks were moved here to form the wall. They probably had poles butted up against the wall, and used wall plaster all around.” A concentration of bone fragments found inside the house “says to me that they were processing some sort of animal remains right in here, inside the house.” A large concentration of channel flakes within the ring tells him that they also worked on their tools while sitting inside. Another significant pile of debris, which contained many broken points and was found just outside the rock ring, signals to

american archaeology

TAD BAKER

Searching

Excavations are in full swing at the Chadbourne site during the summer of 2003. In the foreground, an area where Structure 2 once stood is prepared to be photographed, while in the background excavations continue around what was once the front door of Structure 1.

A series of frontier conflicts once beset this region, destroying much of its historical record. Archaeologist Tad Baker is investigating the Chadbourne site, as well as several others, intent on learning how life was once lived there. By David Holzman

he village of South Berwick, Maine, is blessed with many stately 18th- and 19th-century homes that speak of prosperity past and present. About a half mile from the village is a large field. This was once an estate of the Chadbourne family. The field, which is now scruffy, previously offered a commanding view of the Salmon Falls River, a view currently obscured by second or third growth trees. The hayfield lies quiet all year except during the two-week period each summer when archaeologist Emerson “Tad” Baker and his crew come in search of its past. During those two weeks, the researchers transform the field’s appearance as they look for evidence of life in the 17th century. Some come from Salem State College, where Baker is chair of the History Department, though most of the volunteers come from the Old Berwick Historical Society, the dig’s sponsor. Last season, three widely separated rectangular areas were excavated. Each one is topped by tarps attached to poles to prevent the rain from

dissolving bits of the now-exposed archaeological record, and each unearths a piece of a separate building within the estate—the main house, called Structure 1, another house directly in front of it, Structure 3, and behind Structure 1, an outbuilding called Structure 2. The Chadbourne Archaeology Project, which began as a two-day demonstration dig for local schoolteachers, has evolved into an ongoing investigation that has recovered over 35,000 artifacts. Since its start in 1994, the project has been a marriage of research and education. Approximately 50 volunteers participate in the dig each summer, including students and teachers. Many of the latter have used the dig as a basis for developing curriculum units in local history. As for its research value, Baker’s goal for the dig was to help him develop a better understanding of the early history of northern New England. The Chadbourne property was destroyed in 1690 when warring Wabanaki Indians and their French allies burned it down in the early stages of King spring • 2004

JAMIE BLOOMQUIST/THIRTEEN/WNET

For 17th-Century Maine

A colonist and a member of the Wampanoag tribe discuss trade issues. Both men are participants in the PBS television series Colonial House that

WENDY PIRSIG

presents a historically accurate version of life in 17th-century Maine.

William’s War, one of a long series of frontier conflicts from the late 17th to the mid-18th century that made Maine a dangerous place. These conflicts also destroyed much of the written record and material culture of the region. Chadbourne is one of the first early homesteads to see extensive excavation in southern Maine, making it the most significant of the four sites Baker has studied that were destroyed during the war. These sites are providing critical information about life in this region in the 17th century. The artifacts from these sites speak of a world of plenty. Evidence of the fur trade, the timber industry, and the cod fishery point to Maine’s central role in the booming economy of early New England. Furs, fish, and lumber were exported from Maine to the Caribbean and Europe. The artifacts found at the Chadbourne site as well as at other sites of this period in Maine indicate that it was probably trading directly with Iberia. Lisbonware, a fine Portuguese ceramic, “is showing up on a number of sites throughout New England, particularly sites that, like the Chadbournes’, are associated with merchants,” says Baker. Some of the pipes and ceramics recovered from the site were manufactured in several potteries in Devon, suggest substantial trade with the Chadbournes’ ancestral locale in the west of England. Boston may have been the leading port, says Baker, but Maine conducted plenty of its own trade. american archaeology

SEARCHING FOR A TRADING POST, FINDING AN ESTATE The initial excavation was a search for the Newichawannock trading post that was built in 1631—the first English settlement on the Salmon Falls River. Local lore, going back at least a century, placed the trading post within the field. However, the site was within the 400 acres that had belonged to Humphrey and Lucy Chadbourne, one of the wealthiest families in 17th-century Maine; it overlooked the site of the sawmill the Chadbournes built in 1653, which was a major contributor to their fortune. So Baker

Tad Baker holds the largest Tudor Rose medallion the site has produced. These objects were badges of loyalty to the English monarchy.

TAD BAKER

Excavators have found a wide range of artifacts in Structure 2, suggesting it may have been a multi-purpose outbuilding.

thought it was more likely to yield evidence of the Chadbournes than the trading post. A depression in the big field presented a clue as to where to start excavating. When a cellar hole is filled in, Baker explains, the fill “compacts, so that it gradually forms a depression. Whenever I look at a field, I look for unnatural irregularities.” In the first hour of the first day of the dig Baker unearthed evidence that supported his suspicion: a tobacco pipe marked “LE” for its maker, Llewellyn Evans. Evans began making clay tobacco pipes in Bristol, England in 1661, years after the trading post was abandoned in the mid-1630s. Amid the thousands of 17th-century items excavated each year, a small artifact unearthed in 1997 confirmed Baker’s suspicions about the site’s occupants. That artifact was a silver spoon monogrammed HL C for Humphrey and Lucy Chadbourne, found amid the rubble of a brick chimney that collapsed when the house burned down in 1690. The spoon is the only monogrammed item Baker has found. A maker’s mark shows that it was crafted by John Hull, mint master for Massachusetts Bay and its premier silversmith of the 17th century. Thus far, no artifacts on the site can be positively dated to the 1630s. But only a small part of the field has been excavated, so it is still possible that the Newichawannock post might be found on the property. During the first season he and his crew dug 10 test units. One uncovered a corner of Structure 2. Subsequent excavations in this area have revealed fragments of redware 34

milk pans, pitchers, and other vessels used for processing milk into cream, butter, and cheese. These artifacts, combined with a shallow cellar that provided a cool storage area, suggest that Structure 2 may have been used as a dairy. Domestic artifacts found in Structure 2, including utensils and ceramic tableware, suggest that servants or employees might have also lived there. Another excavation unit revealed the front wall of Structure 1—the “mansion house” of the Chadbournes. The crew found nails, brick, and window glass—which at that time were expensive building materials generally used for a house—indicating that this was a dwelling. There was also a good match between physical evidence on Structure 1, and the description from Humphrey Chadbourne’s 1667 probate inventory, which specifically mentioned a hall and parlor house, with a “lean-to” addition—what we now refer to as a “saltbox” house. Structure 1 was grand by 17th-century New England standards. “It is a very substantial timber-framed twostory house, with a full second story, whereas a typical 17th-century house started out as but a single room with a chamber above,” says Baker. Its construction date was learned through the discovery of a brick that had been fired with the inscription “64,” along with several window leads inscribed with “1664.” Structure 3 was discovered in 1998. The probate did not list it, but did leave clues to its identity. Though Structure 1 was inherited by Humphrey Jr., the probate specified that Lucy could occupy it for life. Humphrey Jr. spring • 2004

TAD BAKER

The front wall of the Chadbourne house is exposed in this trench.

ring, seemed as out of place on the protestant Chadbournes’s lands as a menorah would have been. It’s presumed this ring was lost by a Wabanaki Indian visiting a trading post owned by the Chadbournes. The ring would likely have been given to the Indian by Jesuit priests who had established missions in Maine to convert the Wabanki to Catholicism and to draw them into an alliance with the French, who were enemies of the English. Nonetheless, trading clearly took place between French and English settlers, at least in the occasional times of peace. French ceramics were being used by the Chadbournes in their kitchen at the time French troops helped to destroy the house. The conflicting allegiances of the Chadbourne family are also revealed by the artifacts. The Province of Maine began as an independent colony in the 1630s, and then was taken over by Massachusetts Bay in the 1650s. Humphrey Chadbourne was a leading local magistrate, politically loyal to Massachusetts. The Puritans of the Bay Colony were opponents of the royal family in the English Civil Wars (1642–1649), and Massachusetts had minted coins in defiance of England’s king, who had the sole power to coin money. An “Oak Tree two-pence,” dated 1662 and minted in Massachusetts, was found at the site. Baker believes it had been placed under the threshold of the Chadbourne house for good luck, which was a common custom. That coin belies the Chadbournes’s loyalty to the King, which was symbolized by the numerous Tudor roses etched into brass buckles, buttons, belts, and badges found on the premises. The Tudor roses are not altogether surprising, however, as Lucy Chadbourne’s uncle, Nicholas Shapleigh, was the leading royalist merchant and politician in Maine. Shapleigh and several other family members were also Quakers, hated enemies of Puritan Massachusetts. Thus

could build a second house for his family. It appears that they built and resided in Structure 3, given that it has yielded domestic artifacts dating from roughly 1670 to 1690, the time from Humphrey Jr.’s marriage to the destruction of the property. The last several years of digging have shown that Structures 1 and 3 were first connected by a palisade or fortified wall of vertical logs that were later replaced by a more genteel fence and stable or outbuilding. “Why was this area enclosed?” Baker wonders. “Was it for defense? Or were they trying to emulate the landed class in England by creating the American equivalent of a manor house?” One clue has emerged from excavations in Structure 1’s front yard. In the 17th century, people discarded trash out their front doors and windows. But few artifacts were found here, indicating that the courtyard may have been a formal space befitting a manor house. This did not surprise Baker. The Chadbournes undoubtedly considered themselves among England’s upper class. Although Humphrey was a carpenter of humble origins, Lucy Chadbourne’s brother was governor of Newfoundland, and Humphrey Jr.’s wife was a descendant of King Edward I. Lucy’s grandfather was so wealthy that he migrated to Maine in his own ship. The Shapleighs, Lucy’s family, were successful merchants who came to America to further build their fortune in hopes of becoming members of England’s ruling class. Some of the artifacts show just how complicated life on a contested frontier These horseshoes and spurs are among the many indications of the wealth of the Chadbourne could be. One of these, a French Jesuit family. Horses were a rare luxury in early Maine. american archaeology

Re-creating 17th-Century Maine

JAMIE BLOOMQUIST/THIRTEEN/WNET

Tad Baker has been keeping busy. In addition to investigating four archaeological sites in Maine he also served as an adviser on the television series Colonial House, which premiers May 17 on PBS. Colonial House is an experimental history series in which a group of modern day Americans and Englishmen live in a re-created 1628 village in Maine. They struggle to create a functioning and profitable colony, like those of America’s first settlers, using only the tools and technology of the era. From earthfast housing to indentured servitude and bimonthly baths, Colonial House provides a rare and accurate glimpse of that period.

Using replica artifacts, participants in Colonial House work hard to perform daily household activities such as washing clothes and preparing meals.

these objects, says Baker, “speak to me more than I ever imagined of colliding cultures and of lively politics.” THE COST OF LIVING THE GOOD LIFE The Chadbournes seem to have flaunted their status, according to Baker. The building of Structure 3 turned the estate into a manor of a style that was common in the 16th and 17th centuries in the west country of England, the part of the country that the Chadbournes and the Shapleighs hailed from. Even the location of the manor at the top of a hill may have connoted status. In those days people built homes in locations that were better protected from the elements, and closer to major transporta36

tion. “The sites we find from the 17th century, especially that first generation of settlement, are usually no more than 50 to 100 feet from navigable water, and 5 to 10 feet above high tide,” Baker states. Besides convenience for commerce, water meant easier escape from attack by Native Americans. The Chadbournes’s conspicuous consumption contradicted the notion that all New Englanders lived like prototypical Puritans, according to Baker. “My generation of archaeologists was trained that you could learn about status and class from assemblages of artifacts,” he says. “I always had my doubts, but when you get to the Chadbourne site, and see the incredible array of fancy imported artifacts, you spring • 2004

WENDY PIRSIG

Maine. “One scholar who investigated neighboring see that these people are trying to separate themselves from sawmills believes each could produce 50,000 to 100,000 neighbors and indentured servants.” There are fancy brass board-feet annually,” he notes. spurs, imported decorative door hinges, fancy buttons The Maine lumber industry also exported sawn made of silver thread, a mirror with an ivory handle, and boards and timber frames, mainly to sugar plantations in fine quality ceramics imported from throughout Europe. the Caribbean, The frames were fitted in Maine, disassemThe plastered parlor walls, numerous glass windows, bled for shipping, and rebuilt at their destinations—a preand the massive brick chimneys of Structure 1 were major cursor of today’s prefabricated housing industry. It is probluxuries on the frontier. “These people were showing off able that the Chadbournes were exporting these materials, their power and authority.” Baker observes. These finds in addition to the fish and fur pelts that made up much of stand in contrast to those at other early sites in Maine. the other exports that went to England and the Continent. Most of those homesteads were much more modest in While Maine’s tourist industry now flaunts its rocky their size and in the nature of their artifacts. coast as an icon of the state’s character and beauty, that No buildings from 17th-century Maine still stand. coast is an artifact of the timber industry’s profligacy. Early Most fell victim to frontier warfare. Therefore the discovery 17th-century accounts indicate that the forests kissed the of the remains of the three main buildings of the Chadocean up and down the coast. As much as possible, the timbourne homestead was all the more significant. It was also ber was transported by water, therefore the first trees felled surprising to find that, despite the Chadbournes’s wealth, were those closest to the shore. When the trees went down, the foundations were shoddy. The structures had so-called the soil quickly eroded. By the late 17th century, the coastal earthfast foundations, a common foundation in English forests were disappearing. peasant homes of the High The hardwoods went first. Middle Ages that was being renIn Massachusetts, where 17thdered obsolete by stone footings. century houses still stand, hardEarthfast foundations were posts woods that today are used only or sills standing or lying naked in furniture were used for posts. on or in the ground. By the 18th century, hardwood “In some ways the house framing was rare. Baker plans to appears to be literally thrown test samples to determine the together,” Baker says. “The types of wood used in the workers were occupied with Chadbournes’ mansion. His logging and farming and lacked findings could shed additional the time and expertise to build light on how fast this change in solid foundations. This is even framing occurred. more interesting because Evidence from Baker’s exHumphrey Chadbourne and cavation of a Maine fishing his father were carpenters and This Jesuit ring was the most notable of last year’s discoveries. station destroyed in 1689 indistone masons. They had the excates that English fishermen were already pushing some pertise but they chose instead to take amazing shortcuts in species of large cod fish into extinction. Like the cod, their construction techniques.” game and furbearers were already in decline, leading to It’s thought that the Chadbourne house was poorly conincreased Native reliance on European traders. The Indistructed because 17th-century life was labor-intensive. They ans complained that English cattle were destroying their probably resorted to earthfast construction because they crops and that the large nets the settlers used to catch fish lacked the manpower to properly build their mansion and were depleting the stocks. So, as more Englishmen also do all the other work on this busy estate. The Chadmoved to Maine to help harvest her bounty, there was bournes had to hand-forge each nail, and hand-hew all the less land and fewer resources for the Wabanaki. Ironically, structural beams. The huge array of carpentry tools including in a way it was the very success of the Chadbournes and hammers, saws, axes, a drawknife, an adze, a file, and nuother Maine residents in fishing, lumbering, farming, merous whetstones indicates “they spent an awful lot of time and trading that led to the destruction of their property, just sharpening the tools,” says Baker. “The five indentured and their very way of life. servants listed in Humphrey’s 1667 inventory were just the tip of the iceberg of the labor that the estate required.” The carpentry tools also indicate a thriving industry. DAVID HOLZMAN is a freelance writer whose work has appeared in “The sheer number of artifacts that we’ve found that are Atlantic Monthly and Smithsonian. associated with the lumbering industry is amazing to me,” For more information about Chadbourne and related says Baker. The Chadbournes’s sawmill was just one of excavations directed by Tad Baker, visit the Web site about a dozen that operated concurrently in southern www.salemstate.edu/~ebaker american archaeology

The Vestiges of Several archaeological investigations are serving as a reminder that slavery was once practiced in the North as well as the South. By David Malakoff

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CHARLOTTE HILL COBB

aze long enough at the spare iron shackles that were recently recovered from the remains of a 200-year-old slave dwelling, and you can almost feel the cold metal gouging raw wrists and taste the bitter anguish of the captives who wore them. The cruel cuffs didn’t come from some Dixie cotton plantation. Archaeologists found the two artifacts in a vacant lot in suburban New Jersey—just one of several sites that are producing some dramatic new insights into the often overlooked history of slavery in the Northern United States. “In the popular imagination, slavery and plantations are associated with the South,” says historical archaeologist Cheryl LaRoche, a doctoral candidate at the University of Maryland in College Park. “But in early America, there was no divide between North and South—slavery was everywhere, and so were plantations. It’s an ugly history that some people haven’t been very eager to drag out of the closet.” Now LaRoche and a growing corps of archaeologists are working hard to fling open the door. Over the last decade, they have begun to study an array of Northern sites, reaching from Maryland to Connecticut, that in the 17th and 18th centuries were home to large numbers of enslaved men and women from Africa and the Caribbean. The excavations are revealing complex and often harsh plantation landscapes, and documenting the rise of a sophisticated, slave-based global trading system that enriched a new nation. The work is also “helping lay to rest the myth that slavery in the North was somehow more benign than it was in the South,” says Robert Fitts, a former archaeologist who has studied slavery in Rhode Island. Some historians, for instance, once emphasized that many Northern slaves tended to work within homes as domestic servants, occupying their own quarters and even exercising some autonomy in their lives. But the new discoveries show that captive field laborers in the Colonial North could be treated every bit as harshly as their Southern counterparts of the later Civil War era. The investigations are also raising new scholarly questions and indirectly fueling political controversy. Researchers are trying to determine how plantations in the colder Northern states differed from their counterparts in the South, for instance, and how they were linked to sister enterprises in the Caribbean. They are also working to piece together intriguing evidence that African slaves sustained some homeland rituals—such as stashing symbolic objects in household corners—long after they were pressed into bondage on a distant continent. Meanwhile, these finds have prompted some venerable families to take a fresh look at how their ancestors made their fortunes. And they have helped inspire some African-American activists who are waging a controversial campaign to force the descendents of slaveholders to pay billions of dollars in “reparations” to the descendants of those who were brought here against their will. Amidst the academic and legal tumult, an increasingly rich and nuanced portrait of

Northern Slavery Northern slave life is emerging. “The archaeological record is helping us put a human face on the lives of these captive laborers,” says archaeologist Wade Catts of John Milner Associates, a Pennsylvania-based consulting firm that was involved in the dig that uncovered the two shackles.

BARBARA SILBER

NORTHERN EXPOSURE The tale of Southern slavery is well known. The first darkskinned captives arrived in the colony of Virginia in 1619, the vanguard of a slave labor force that would ultimately swell to more than four million in 14 Southern states. These laborers, who toiled everywhere from cargo ports to massive cotton plantations, finally won their freedom in 1865, after a bloody four-year civil war. But fewer people are familiar with slavery’s course north of Virginia. The first slave owner had arrived in Massachusetts by 1624, according to historical records, and New York City was one of the continent’s top slavetrading centers throughout much of the 18th century. New England’s merchants made vast fortunes in the “triangle trade” that moved rum, molasses, and slaves between America, Africa, and the Caribbean. But slaves rarely accounted for more than five percent of the population of New England itself, and most slave-holding families probably owned just one or two captives. Still, “it was slavery...that made the commercial economy of 18th-century New England possible and drove it forward,” Harvard University historian Bernard Bailyn concluded in his book, Engines of Enterprise. By about 1800, however, the abolition movement, which gathered momentum during the Revolutionary War, prompted states to ban captive labor or make plans to abolish it. After the Civil War, Northern historians and politicians tended to downplay the North’s slave-holding past in favor of its more heroic role as the birthplace of abolitionism. Soon, captive labor in the North became seen as “a mild and insignificant version of slavery,” concludes Paul Clark, a doctoral student in history at the University of Lancaster in the United Kingdom, who is studying the history of Northern slavery. That benign image began to take a beating after the Civil Rights era of the 1960s, when a new generation of social and economic historians revisited the issue. More recently, archaeologists joined the fray. american archaeology

Last year, to help foster communication among these scholars and establish Northern slavery as a legitimate research topic, LaRoche convinced a half-dozen researchers working on Northern plantations to discuss their work at the annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. “People weren’t aware of everything that was going on,” says LaRoche.

A SOBERING DISCOVERY IN NEW JERSEY Among the remarkable finds described at the meeting were the two shackles, discovered in 1998 in the remains of an apparent slave dwelling on the former Beverwyck Plantation in Morris County, New Jersey. In its prime, between 1750 and 1810, Beverwyck was a grand estate. Six years ago, the several-acre site about 40 miles west of New York City was slated to be paved for a subsequently cancelled parking lot. A survey ordered by the New Jersey Department of Transportation (NJDOT) turned up a surprising number of features. Researchers then took a closer look and discovered “an exceptional site,” says archaeologist Barbara Silber of McCormick Taylor and Associates,

These shackles were discovered in 1998 at the Beverwyck site in New Jersey. Beverwyck was once a 2,000-acre estate that was established in the 1750s. The shackles were found in the remnants of what appears to be a slave house.

These potsherds and clay marbles were found during an excavation at the Isaac Royall House in Massachusetts. They are thought to be gaming pieces associated with slaves.

a New Jersey–based consulting firm that, along with John Milner Associates, worked at Beverwyck. Beverwyck began as a 2,000-acre estate assembled by an English merchant in the 1750s. In 1768, a newspaper ad touted the estate’s “Negro House” and 20 slaves, including a blacksmith, a mason, and a shoemaker. That was a relatively large number of slaves for the region, and the number of slaves appears to have remained stable after Lucas Von Beverhoudt, a Danish planter living in the Caribbean, purchased the plantation in 1772. But records suggest that the slaves dwindled after Beverhoudt died in 1796, and captive labor appears to have ended when the family sold the property in the 1820s. Over the course of three field seasons (1997 to 1999) archaeologists found the remains of more than 20 structures at Beverwyck, including 225-year-old houses, a blacksmith shop, and a distillery. They also recovered more than 30,000 artifacts, ranging from bits of pottery to whole cooking pots. But some of the most notable artifacts were recovered from “Structure 8,” the remains of a heavy-walled, 20-by-25-foot building that the researchers believe may be the Negro House mentioned in the ad or a similar building built later. The structure, discovered beneath a macadam driveway on the western half of the property, “isn’t built like anything else at Beverwyck,” says Catts. While other foundations are made of large fieldstones, Structure 8’s foundation uses 40

NORTHERN SLAVE CENSUS

1790

1800

Connecticut 2,648 Delaware 8,887 Maine 0 Maryland 103,036 Massachusetts 0 New Hampshire 157 New Jersey 11,423 New York 21,193 Pennsylvania 3,707 Rhode Island 958 Vermont 0 TOTAL 152,009 SOUTHERN SLAVE CENSUS 1790 Georgia 29,264 Kentucky 12,430 North Carolina 100,783 South Carolina 107,094 Tennessee Virginia 292,627 TOTAL 542,198

951 6,153 0 105,635 0 8 12,422 20,613 1,706 380 0 147,868 1800 59,699 40,343 133,296 146,151 13,584 346,671 739,744

This data taken from the country’s first two censuses shows that slavery was declining in the North at the end of the 18th century while significantly increasing in the South.

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ALEXKA CHAN

massive quarried stones 18 inches wide and three feet long. And instead of a cellar, large stones appear to have supported a thick, elevated floor. “It’s built like a jail,” says Catts, possibly to prevent valuable captives from escaping. The most dramatic clue to Structure 8’s brutal past are the two shackles, each of a different design, that were found about a foot below the surface near the structure’s northeast corner. “It was a very sobering find that made us acutely aware of the site’s importance,” says NJDOT archaeologist Lauralee Rappleye. Two other artifact concentrations were less sobering but equally interesting. One, also in the northeast corner, contained numerous personal items from the 18th century, including buttons, cutlery, a glass bead necklace and case, a perforated metal disk, and coins. Two buttons from Revolutionary War–era uniforms, and two cowrie-helmet shells from the Caribbean, signaling the slaves’ ties to that region, were discovered as well. In the southwest corner, near the hearth, they found a set of stacked kitchenware. Upsidedown at the bottom of the stack were a small Chinese porcelain bowl and the rim fragment of a tin-glazed serving vessel. Above them, sitting upright, were a creamware platter and an iron cooking pot. Such arrangements of objects are similar to ritual caches found at other historic slave dwellings in the Eastern United States and in modern Africa, says Catts. “It looks like they were symbolic objects,” he says. “You can go into households today in West Africa and find similar caches and shrines.” Often referred to as “Nkisi” (the plu-

MONOCACY NATIONAL BATTLEFIELD

Archaeologists Brandon Bies, Joy Beasley, and Mark Gallagher excavate what they believe to be a slave village at Monocacy National Battlefield near Frederick, Maryland. In the late 18th and early 19th centuries this was a huge plantation named L’Hermitage that held a large number of slaves.

ral is Minkisi), the caches are thought to be associated with spiritual beliefs. And the stack of kitchenware could have been part of a ritual to ward off trouble, he speculates. To confirm that idea, Beverwyck researchers want to conduct some sensitive biochemical tests to analyze soil from the structure for traces of plant and animal remains. They also hope to work with researchers in the Caribbean to learn more about the slaves that may have come to Beverwyck from that region, and to better understand the flow of trade between the regions. The researchers are also reviewing what Catts calls “extremely extensive historical documentation involving the site,” including a court record written on a scroll that is 18 feet long. Such documents have helped put the spotlight on an “important part of New Jersey’s history,” he says. “We knew there were slaves here, but this has helped bring them to life.”

SLAVERY IN CONNECTICUT Further up the coast, in southeastern Connecticut, archaeologists are investigating another plantation. In 1718, a wealthy Massachusetts merchant began assembling what would eventually become the 13,000-acre New Salem plantation in the town that would eventually be known as Salem, Connecticut. In 1729, records show the owner imported at least 60 slaves to clear land for a “provisioning plantation” that exported food, wood, and other raw materials to resource-hungry plantations in the Caribbean, says american archaeology

archaeologist Jerry Sawyer, a doctoral candidate at the City University of New York who is studying the 2.5-acre site. A slave burial ground at New Salem was first identified by a local historian, and over the last five years Sawyer’s teams have learned that the cemetery constitutes a small part of the original plantation. They have identified the remains of sawmills, root cellars, rudimentary stone shelters, and grave markers that may have been made and used by slaves. “We’re finding an extensive landscape of enslavement,” he says. “The scale is pretty stunning.” He notes that there apparently were several other plantations in the region, one of which had an even larger number of slaves. The researchers have also turned up artifact caches that, like those at Beverywyck, may have served ritual purposes. “These collections of objects appear to have been purposefully buried,” he says. They include nails, pottery, a horseshoe found on its side, facing west, and a fist-sized piece of quartz, found point down near a headstone. “All of these things are similar to what have been found in Nkisi bundles elsewhere,” he notes, and may represent slaves “making use of local materials to continue ritual practices they brought with them from Africa, but had to hide from the white folks.” Sawyer has also found intriguing evidence of the decline of slavery at New Salem. On the periphery of the old plantation, near the sawmill, researchers have found the remnants of hillside rock structures similar to those known from the Caribbean. Sawyer believes that freed or 41

These buttons and coins were recovered from the putative slave

Service, who has been surveying the site, which is part of the Monocacy National Battlefield. The family quickly earned a reputation for cruelty. In 1798, a traveler passing by the planA GREAT TYRANNY tation noted in his journal that it featured a row of IN MARYLAND wooden houses used as slave quarters and held “a few Not long after New Salem ended its run, howhundred Negroes whom [the owner] treats with the ever, another notable plantation was getting greatest tyranny. One can see on the home farm started further south. In the early 1790s, a instruments of torture,” including stocks and French planter family from what is now Haiti whips. Records indicate that court cases were began assembling a 748-acre plantation named brought against the owners for mistreatment, L’Hermitage near Frederick, Maryland. By 1800, Beasley notes. the Vincendieres clan owned at least 90 slaves— But archaeologists surveying the site had “an unusually large number for an area that was found little evidence of the plantation’s slave past when mostly settled by Dutch and German farmers,” they began to wrap up their work last year. Then, a metal notes archaeologist Joy Beasley of the National Park detector survey of a 21-acre hay field turned up a large deposit of domestic artifacts covering about two-thirds of an acre. “We were pretty sure we’d run across the slave village, and managed to find some funds for a more focused investigation,” says Beasley. That work, completed last fall, turned up a wealth of objects. The finds included chunks of brick, hand-wrought nails, personal items such as buckles, buttons, coins, pocket knives, a thimble, and scissors fragment. There were also tools, padlocks, harness hardware, kitchenware, and eating utensils. Using clues provided by style, materials, and manufacturing techniques, the researchers were able to date some of the artifacts—including buttons, tableware, and coins—to the late 18th and early 19th centuries, consistent with written records of the slave occupation. “The size and density of the deposit are pretty much what you’d expect from a good-sized settlement,” Beasley says. The researchers also followed a 6- to 12-inchwide strip of stained soil to uncover two linear features—one about 60 feet long, the other 35— that meet at a corner. According to Beasley, the feature could be a fence that surrounded the slave settlement, but inclement weather set in before they could learn more. That puzzle may be solved by future fieldwork. Researchers also hope to understand what all those slaves were doing. “It’s not clear why L’Hermitage had so much captive labor,” Beasley says. The family may have been involved in a doomed effort to recreate a Caribbean plantation—a tough task in a climate that didn’t allow for year-round production of a single cash crop, such as sugar. Or Researchers at Sylvester Manor work in what is now the front yard of the later manor “it’s possible they were renting them out to other house, which was constructed between 1735 and 1737. 42

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MONOCACY NATIONAL BATTLEFIELD

village at Monocacy National Battlefield.

LEITH SMITH

escaped slaves and marginalized white laborers may have lived in the structures, eking out a living as hired help. The plantation appears to have operated until about 1780, Sawyer notes. In 1848 Connecticut became the last Northern state to ban slavery.

PATRICIA MOSER SHILLINGBURG

landscape,” Mrozowski has said, where native and introduced cultures melded with sometimes surprising results. Eventually, researchers hope to have enough evidence to more fully compare and contrast Northern slavery with its Southern cousin. Some of the new finds, for instance, may shed light on the question of whether, due to climate, Northern captives were more involved in skilled “task” labor—such as blacksmithing or carpentry—than the brute “gang” labor that typified some later Southern plantations. Other discoveries, such as coins, tools, and tableware, could deepen the debate over exactly how much autonomy some captive laborers had. Could they hire themselves out at certain times of the year, for instance? Were they free to gather and grow some of their own food? And just as some artifacts discovered so far suggest that slaves retained some homeland ritual traditions, future finds might tell whether they also retained their traditional dress and diets. But sorting out such issues could be difficult if Northern slaves lived in the same homes as their masters. “It can be hard to tell for certain if an artifact belonged to a slave or the master if their quarters weren’t spatially separate,” notes Fitts. Still, some of the descendants of families who once benefited from captive labor have welcomed, and even financially supported, the fresh look at Northern slavery, he says. After The archaeologists exposed this decorative cobble pavement at Sylvester Manor. The pavement he published a highly regarded study of slavery in colonial Rhode Island in 1998, few people is thought to be associated with a 17th- or early 18th-century courtyard or outbuildings. wanted to discuss the subject. Some were embarrassed, while a few even feared the results might aid acfarmers, or using them for industrial slavery,” she says. The tivists who have sued a host of Northern companies for family had sold most of their slaves by 1827, when they reparations (so far unsuccessfully). But when Fitts—who sold the plantation. has since left archaeology to specialize in trading Japanese baseball cards—recently returned to Rhode Island to give a SEEING THE BIG PICTURE speech, people jammed the auditorium. “Slavery in the Beverwyck, New Salem, and L’Hermitage aren’t the only North is still a sensitive topic,” he says. “But people don’t rediscovered plantations helping scholars develop a big focus on protecting their family’s reputations the way they picture of Northern slavery. On New York’s Shelter Island, used to. They want to know the real history.” Stephen Mrozowski of the University of Massachussetts, LaRoche also detects a growing interest in drawing Boston, has embarked on a 10-year project to reconstruct Northern slavery out of the shadows. “People are surprised at the history of Sylvester Manor, a provisioning plantation what went on, and they want to know more,” she says. And established in 1652 that once occupied the island’s entire archaeologists, she adds, “can bring some interesting things to 8,000 acres. In six years of digging near a surviving manthe table. It provides a very concrete way of rediscovering and sion, Mrozowski’s teams have uncovered a wealth of artirecognizing the forgotten people who built this country.” facts, including pottery fragments that suggest that African slaves and the island’s Native Americans may have traded pot-making techniques, and chunks of coral that DAVID MALAKOFF writes for Science magazine. His ar ticle “Covering may have been brought north from the Caribbean as balthe Gamut of Prehistory” appeared in the Fall 2003 issue of American last in ships. Sylvester represents “a patchwork cultural Archaeology. american archaeology

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

In Search of de Soto The Humber-McWilliams site could yield information about the Spanish explorer.

JESSICA CRAWFORD

n May of 1541, Hernando de Soto and his weary army of Spanish conquistadors reached the Mississippi River at the Mississippian Indian province of Quizquiz. They had been marching, fighting, and struggling to survive since first landing on Florida’s west coast in spring of 1539. There was no great empire to be looted in North America’s interior, as they thought there would be, and there was no gold. Instead, the Spaniards encountered numerous smaller, feudal-like chiefdoms. Soto and his men set up camp close to the river and proceeded to construct barges that enabled them to cross the river despite frequent attacks by Indians. Soon after those first European explorers passed through the Southeastern interior, the Mississippian world collapsed, perhaps as a direct result of the contact. Scholars remain unsure of Soto’s

The former home of the Humber family is located on the southern portion of the site. The Conservancy purchased the house with the intention of converting it into a research center to assist archaeologists and students conducting investigations in the surrounding Mississippi Delta.

exact route. It is generally agreed that Soto crossed the Mississippi somewhere below what is now Memphis, Tennessee, and above Greenville, Mississippi, a distance of over 120 miles. If the exact location of the crossing at Quizquiz could be determined, it could help researchers to trace the route. In 1974, L.B. Jones and the Cottonlandia Museum of Mississippi sponsored an archaeological investigation led by Louis Tesar at the Humber-McWilliams site near Clarksdale in the hope of uncovering evidence of the Soto crossing. Humber-McWilliams is an enormous Late Mississippian (c. A.D. 1450–1700) town stretching for two miles along a natural levee of the Mississippi River. The site was first discovered in 1929 during the construction of the artificial flood control levee. Early reports indicated that there were six mounds and a plaza along with a huge habitation area prior to levee construction. Unfortunately, several of the mounds were destroyed by the con-

struction of the new levee. Nonetheless, the site became a popular locale for amateur archaeologists and looters to dig for Indian artifacts and the beautiful pottery for which the site has become famous. Because of the site’s location and the types of artifacts being recovered from it, the Humber-McWilliams site appeared to the Cottonlandia to be a likely candidate to begin a search for Quizquiz. Tesar began the investigation by opening a number of excavation units in undisturbed portions of the site. In short order, the archaeologists encountered multiple house patterns, pit features, and large numbers of human burials. Throughout 1974 and into ’75, Tesar and his crew excavated and mapped dozens of features and recovered over 30,000 artifacts. These artifacts plus others previously recovered from the site, such as two European brass bands refashioned by Mississippian artisans into jewelry, coupled with radiocarbon dates, indicated that the site was occupied during the mid- to late 16th century. spring • 2004

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JOHN CONNAWAY

The Conservancy will also develop an archaeological research center containing a lab, research library, storage, and dorm in the old Humber homestead, thus better securing the site against looters while providing a much needed field facility for archaeologists working in the area. The Humber-McWilliams site is on the National Register of Historic Places and is one of the most significant sites in the region.

The site was discovered in 1929, and ever since looters have searched

JESSICA CRAWFORD

it for effigy pots such as this one of a bear.

However, further research indicated that in 1541 the Humber-McWilliams site was actually on the western side of the Mississippi River. During the intervening centuries, the Mississippi’s channel changed course bisecting the site and leaving most of it on today’s eastern bank. So, while proving that Humber-McWilliams is not located within the old Quizquiz province, Tesar believes that the site is a good fit to be a town of the Aquixo Province, the place This portion of a brass headdress was found at Ingomar. The brass, which where Soto landed on the western shore of the Mississippi. came from Europe, was fashioned into a headdress by Native Americans. Tesar observed, “The village area was selected for excavation with the expectation that finding European artifacts “This site has tremendous research potential,” stated attributable to the Soto expedition would be more likely in veteran Mississippi archaeologist John Connaway, noting that setting.” However, “while the information collected is that “it’s one of the few sites around here that hasn’t been impressive, the area of the site dealt with is relatively so plowed to death.” small as to provide little more than a tantalizing tidbit of Indeed, Tesar noted, “When Mr. Humber was shown the site’s potential,” said Tesar. “With respect to one of the the plow scars disturbing shallow burial and structural feaproject’s primary research questions, the area excavated is tures, in order to limit any further agricultural disturbance, insufficient to say with certainty that there is no evidence he volunteered to forego deep plowing along the natural of contact by the de Soto Expedition.” levee upon which the site is located. He became an active The site will now be permanently preserved to allow participant in the stewardship of the site.”—Alan Gruber for future work that may solve the mystery of Soto’s Mississippi crossing once and for all. During this past winter, the Conservancy closed on the first of 10 acquisitions to secure the site after seven years of negotiation SITE: Humber-McWilliams with the Humber family. This first inCULTURE & TIME PERIOD: Late Mississippian (A.D. 1450–1700) stallment kicks off the beginning of STATUS: Looters threaten the site. what will be the most ambitious ConACQUISITION: The Conservancy needs $105,000 for the first phase of this servancy project in the Southeast to acquisition. Donations of building materials will also be gladly accepted. date. Nearly 500 acres of land will HOW YOU CAN HELP: Please send contributions to The Archaeological need to be purchased and fenced over Conservancy, Attn: Humber-McWilliams Project, 5301 Central Ave. NE., the next four years to secure the site Suite 902, Albuquerque, NM 87108-1517. against a very real looting threat.

Conservancy Plan of Action

american archaeology

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

Protecting the Adena’s Handiwork The Conservancy obtains a major burial mound in Ohio.

PAUL GARDNER

ocated in the small village of Homer in northern Licking County, Dixon Mound is one of the largest Adena burial mounds remaining in the Midwest. It is about 16 feet high and over 100 feet in diameter. Homer has historically been a farming community, but its location within an hour’s drive of Columbus means that it is becoming threatened by urban sprawl. Consequently the Conservancy has established the Dixon Archaeological Preserve to protect the mound and six acres of land surrounding it. This conical burial mound was created by a people known to archaeologists as the Adena Culture. The Adena flourished in the Ohio River valley region from approximately 700 B.C. to A.D. 1. Burial mounds are the most visible remains of the Adena, and they range in size from 20 to 300 feet in diameter. Most enclose log tombs or other burial structures. The burials inside mounds are thought to be those of high-status individuals. Not only was considerable effort expended to carry the basketloads of soil necessary to create the mounds, but the burials are often accompanied by unusually well-crafted objets d’art. Typical Adena burial accompaniments include projectile points and knives of exotic flints or

Situated on the edge of the small Ohio town of Homer, the approximately 2,000 year old Dixon mound is one of the best preserved Adena mounds in Ohio.

copper, beads and pendants of marine shell, finely crafted pottery, and enigmatic incised stone tablets. Due to the value of these artifacts, many Adena mounds have been destroyed by looters. Farming and development have destroyed others, leaving only a handful that remain intact. Unfortunately, because of Ohio’s weak preservation laws, its archaeological sites are threatened by looting as well as by commercial and residential development. Happily, however, the Dixon Mound has never been excavated or damaged due to the concerns of previous landowners and the vil-

lage’s residents. The village has a long history of preserving the mound, and Homer residents support the Conservancy’s efforts to establish the preserve. The Conservancy is purchasing 6.2 acres and a house in order to create the preserve. By preserving this site the Conservancy guarantees that a rare and significant part of Ohio’s prehistory will be protected forever. It will be available for public education, and the information it contains holds the promise of illuminating the lives of the Adena. —Joe Navari

Conservancy Plan of Action SITE: Dixon Mound CULTURE & TIME PERIOD: Adena 700 B.C.–A.D. 1 STATUS: Site is threatened by urban sprawl and looting. ACQUISITION: The Conservancy is purchasing a house and six acres for $118,000. HOW YOU CAN HELP: Please send contributions to The Archaeological Conservancy, Attn: Homer Mound Project, 5301 Central Ave. NE., Suite 902, Albuquerque, NM 87108-1517.

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STONE ARTIFACTS OF TEXAS INDIANS

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Rescuing an Archaic Mound

JESSICA CRAWFORD

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The Conservancy acquires an ancient and endangered mound in Louisiana. he idea that mound building occurred during the Middle Archaic period gained acceptance in the mid-1990s. Previously, a few archaeologists suspected some mounds in Louisiana were thousands of years old, but were hesitant to suggest the seminomadic huntergatherers of the Middle Archaic would have undertaken an enterprise traditionally ascribed only to later, more socially complex cultures. Now, several mounds in Louisiana have been confirmed by radiocarbon dating as pre-ceramic Archaic mounds. The Conservancy acquired the Caney Bayou Mound in January. It’s one of the few remaining mounds in the area. Though there are no radiocarbon dates yet to confirm it, Caney Bayou appears to be one of a growing number of mounds that archaeologists believe were constructed several thousand years ago. Joe Saunders of Louisiana’s Regional Archaeology Program and soil scientist Thruman Allen visited the Caney Bayou Mound in 1993. After examining soil samples and artifacts found on the surface, they determined that Caney Bayou was probably an Archaic mound. The mound is situated beside a bayou that was once an active channel of the Arkansas River. The base of the mound and part of the surrounding site is covered with alluvial soil deposited by the river approximately 2,000 to 4,000 years ago. This indicates that the mound predates the alluvium. Saunders and Allen intend

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to return to obtain samples for radiocarbon dating. The mound is about six feet high and 150 feet in diameter. Since it has been in row crop cultivation for many years, it is impossible to know its original size, but Saunders believes that, though the years of farming have probably removed the

sell the Conservancy a smaller tract containing the site. The importance of the study of Archaic mounds in Louisiana cannot be overstated. It is changing the way archaeologists view the overall evolution of mound building and underscores just how little we know about prehistoric peoples. In a 1994 review

The bare spot in this field of milo is the Caney Bayou Mound. It is one of the few remaining mounds in this area. Archaeologists believe it was built during the Middle Archaic period.

mound’s upper portion, a significant amount of it remains intact. In 2003, an individual who was considering purchasing the 585-acre tract on which the mound is located contacted the Conservancy. The prospective buyer wanted the mound to be preserved. The sale wasn’t completed, and the owner, Jimmie Schneider of Monroe, later agreed to

of confirmed and likely Archaic mound sites, Rebecca Saunders of Louisiana State University’s Museum of Natural Science noted that only three out of 24 had not been severely impacted. The Conservancy’s acquisition of the Caney Bayou Mound ensures that tractors have plowed this one for the last time. —Jessica Crawford 47

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Conservancy Acquires Its First North Dakota Preserve The Biesterfeldt site is important and puzzling.

STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF NORTH DAKOTA

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Archaeologist John Ludwickson stands in the northern half of the 3.5-acre Biesterfeldt site in this 1977 photograph. He’s standing amid circular depressions that were once earth lodges. Agriculture has impacted the southern half of the village.

ral tradition has it that the Biesterfeldt site contains the remains of the Cheyenne Village on the Sheyenne River noted by early travelers to the northeastern Plains and mentioned in the historical traditions of the Cheyenne and other Plains tribes. The site was occupied circa 1720 to 1790 and it was an important settlement during the Cheyenne’s transformation from a settled horticultural tribe of the Eastern Woodlands to a group of equestrian bison-hunters that inhabited the Plains. The Conservancy is preserving Biesterfeldt through an emergency acquisition.

In October of 2003, Michael Michlovic, an archaeologist at Minnesota State University in Moorhead, learned that the owner and long-time protector of the Biesterfeldt site had passed away and that his farm would be sold at auction. Michlovic consulted with Fern Swenson, Deputy State Historic Preservation Officer for North Dakota, and they decided the Conservancy was the best hope of saving the site from potential destruction. Swenson was able to convince the heirs of the farm to subdivide a 40-acre parcel encompassing the site from the remaining acreage and auction it as a separate parcel,

and the Conservancy made the winning bid at the auction. During the summer of 1938 Columbia University and the State Historical Society of North Dakota excavated a small portion of the site. The fieldwork was directed by William Duncan Strong, one of the founding fathers of Plains archaeology. It revealed that the site is a Dshaped village of about 60 earth lodges surrounded by a ditch about 10 feet wide and four feet deep. The inside perimeter of the ditch may have been fortified with a wooden palisade, although the evidence for this feature is ambiguous. spring • 2004

N E W P O I N T- 2

STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF NORTH DAKOTA

a cq u i s i t i o n This aerial photograph shows the Biesterfeldt site and the Sheyenne River. The village was enclosed by a D-shaped fortification ditch, approximately half of which can be seen in this photo, that measures about 560 feet from east to west. The circular depressions are the remains of earth lodges.

One large and particularly substantial structure had an entrance facing the central open area of the village, unlike the other structures whose entrances all faced southeast. This structure likely represents a ceremonial lodge of the type noted in early accounts of the Arikara and Mandan. This structure, like most at the site, was burned. The excavations yielded a number of European trade goods including glass and copper beads, metal tools including arrowheads, knives and a lance tip, and a fragment of a firearm trigger guard fashioned into a pendant. The paucity of gun parts and gunflints suggests that firearms had yet to become common possessions. Horses were present at the site, as indicated by the recovery of their bones from the excavations. Biesterfeldt is the only sizable village site on the Sheyenne River, and the trade goods recovered from it date it to the mid- to late 18th century, the time when ethnographic and documentary evidence place the

Cheyenne there. The site was burned, just as oral tradition states the Cheyenne village was. However, ethnographic and documentary evidence places the Cheyenne on the Mississippi River between Wisconsin and Minnesota in the late 1600s. The material culture of the Biesterfeldt site, however, displays no appreciable connections to the Eastern Woodlands. Rather the house styles, village layout, and pottery of the Biesterfeldt site are most closely related to that seen in the Middle Missouri river area among the ancestors of the Siouan-speaking Arikara and Mandan. The Cheyenne speak a language derived from the Algonquian language family. “How can this be the Cheyenne when clearly the site belongs to the Middle Missouri culture?” asks Michlovic. “But then if it’s not the Cheyenne, who is it? In any case, it’s a dynamite acquisition, one of the best remaining sites on the northeastern Plains.”—Paul Gardner

POINT Acquisitions ★ Biesterfeldt

★ Caney Bayou

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The Protect Our Irreplaceable National Treasures (POINT) Program was designed to save significant sites that are in immediate danger of destruction. 49

C O N S E R V A N C Y

Field Notes

SOUTHEAST—The Conservancy recently added a 20acre tract to its Ingomar Mound preserve in northeast Mississippi. Forty-four acres of the site were acquired in 2001 through the Conservancy’s POINT program. There were originally 14 mounds at the site, but presently only one large mound is clearly visible. Ingomar is predominately a Middle Woodland site (ca. A.D. 1–500), but it also has a significant historic Indian component. The site was partially excavated in 1885 by the Smithsonian. The artifacts from the excavation, including an iron brace from a saddle bow, a scissors blade, and a silver plate with a Spanish Coat of Arms on it, were among those used by the legendary archaeologist Cyrus Thomas to argue that the mounds in the Southeast were built by ancestors of the Native Americans and not a vanished race of moundbuilders. Since then, the site has suffered the effects of destructive agricultural practices. Portions of the site have been plowed, bulldozed, and terraced. Although the topography at Ingomar has changed, the towering Mound 14 still dominates the site, and there’s much for researchers to learn. Archaeologist Janet Rafferty established the site’s Middle Woodland origins. Many people assume a large mound with a flat top must be Mississippian, but Rafferty found no indication of Mississippian occupation and much to suggest that Ingomar is contemporaneous with the earlier Woodland Period Pinson Mounds in Tennessee. Thus a whole new set of research questions must be addressed, such as exactly what phase of the Middle Woodland Period was the site affiliated with, and how was it used? Were people living there, or was the site occupied only at certain times, perhaps for ceremonial purposes? Paula Andras, one of Rafferty’s graduate students, hopes to answer some these questions. In the spring of 2003, she and a crew from Mississippi State University mapped, shovel tested, and took soil samples from areas in between the mounds. The presence of a deep midden with an abundance of utilitarian pottery and tools associated with normal daily activities would suggest that Ingomar was an occupied village. 50

JILL NEWELL-SMITH

New Research at Expanded Ingomar Mound

Janet Rafferty screens dirt in search of artifacts. Archaeologists hope to find artifacts that will indicate that Ingomar was a village, ceremonial complex, or both.

If well-crafted, decorated pottery and unusual tools made from exotic raw materials are present, the researchers could conclude that Ingomar was used for ceremonial purposes. Analysis of the distribution of certain types of artifacts may provide information regarding the internal structure of the site, or indicate areas possibly relating to ceremonial functions. Andras also plans to compare artifacts from Ingomar to artifact assemblages from other Middle Woodland mound sites. Contrasts and similarities with other sites in the area may indicate where Ingomar fits in local and regional settlement systems. spring • 2004

Fieldwork Opportunities In Search of Ft. San Juan June 21 – July 16, Burke County, North Carolina In 1566 Juan Pardo, a captain in the Spanish army, traveled into North Carolina in search of an overland route to Mexico. Though his route is a subject of debate, archaeological investigations at the Berry site in Burke County offer evidence that Pardo’s expedition passed through here. Berry is a Mississippian and protohistoric period site that is believed to be the ancestral Catawba Indian town of Xualla. Pardo built Ft. San Juan there in 1567. The field school will concentrate on a one-acre area where 16th-century Spanish artifacts have been recovered. Previous excavations have revealed the presence of four burned buildings within this area. Participants involved will help investigate the plaza area around which these buildings are placed. Contact David Moore at (828) 771-2013, Fax (828) 299-4841, or dmoore@warren-wilson.edu West Point Foundry Archaeology Project May 17 – June 25, Cold Spring area, New York The West Point Foundry began its operation as a munitions contractor and eventually became an internationally known manufacturer of weaponry, steam engines, iron clad sailing ships, and various cast iron objects. The 2004 field season includes excavation and surveying throughout the site. Research teams will assist visiting experts

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with a ground penetrating radar survey and other remote-sensing equipment. The West Point Foundry site is well suited for the study of technological questions regarding incremental improvements adapted to iron casting and the relationship between industrial and ecological systems. Contact Timothy James Scarlett at (906) 487-2359, Fax (906) 487-2468, scarlett@mtu.edu Elden Pueblo Project April 1 – October 31, Flagstaff, Arizona Elden Pueblo is a 65-room pueblo with trash mounds, smaller pueblos, kiva, a large community room, and numerous pit houses that both predate and are contemporaneous with the main pueblo. It is the type site for the Elden Phase of the Northern Sinagua tradition (A.D. 1150– 1250). While much of the site was excavated in 1926, new excavations are being undertaken to confirm data, collect new information, and stabilize the pueblo as a public archaeology project. Recent excavations have revealed much about the construction sequence of the site, late Sinagua social organization, subsistence, and the role as a major trade center for the area. Possible evidence for a long-term eruptive sequence for Sunset Crater Volcano is being found to examine new geological and archaeological interpretations for the region. Contact Lisa Emdonson at (928) 527-3542, Fax (928) 527-3620, kochwork@earthlink.net

Presidio Santa Rosa Excavation May 6 – August 6, Gulf Islands National Seashore, Florida. This is the third and last season of excavation at the site of the 18th-century Presidio Santa Rosa located on a barrier island bordering Pensacola Bay. This public archaeology project features a large lab on site. The researchers have found the remains of many buildings, domestic features, and abundant artifacts that were lost in the soft white sand during the three hurricanes which struck the settlement in only 30 years. The project is located in the spectacularly beautiful Gulf Islands National Seashore with camping facilities next door. The site was a Spanish colonial garrison that was destroyed by a hurricane in 1752. Contact Norma Harris at (850) 474-2796, Fax (850) 857-6278, nharris@uwf.edu or visit http://uwf.edu/ anthropology/research/presidioSR.cfm

To learn more about field schools and volunteer opportunities in North America, consult the Archaeological Institute of America’s Archaeological Fieldwork Opportunities Bulletin. To order the book call 800/791-9354. You can also view posting on the Web at www.archaeological.org by clicking on the “fieldwork” link.

Reviews Iroquoia: The Development of a Native World By William Engelbrecht (Syracuse University Press, 2003; 231 pgs., illus., $60 cloth; http://sumweb.syr.edu/su_press)

Three Sixteenth-Century Mohawk Iroquois Village Sites By Robert E. Funk and Robert D. Kuhn (New York State Education Department, 2003; 167 pgs., illus; www.nysm.nysed.gov/publications)

Journeys with Florida’s Indians By Kelley G. Weitzel (University Press of Florida, 2002; 256 pgs., illus., $25 cloth; www.upf.com)

Combining fact with fiction, Kelley Weitsel has produced a notable addition to children’s literature (grades four through eight) on Native American history. She covers the Indians of Florida from their beginnings some 13,000 years ago to the Spanish conquest. Factual chapters are filled with maps, illustrations, and early engravings. Fictional chapters are narrated by Tenerife, a fictional Timucua kidnapped by the Spanish. The archaeology is first-rate and the story compelling. Fact and fiction merge into an exciting adventure. Journeys with Florida’s Indians will spark the interest of young people everywhere and it’s a powerful teaching tool for American schools.

Perhaps no group of Eastern Native Americans is better known to the general public than the Iroquois of upstate New York. A confederation of five tribes or nations—Seneca, Cayuga, Onondaga, Oneida, and Mohawk—they flourished for a millennium. Encountered by the first Europeans, they traded with the Dutch and the French in the early 1600s. French Jesuit missionaries sought to Christianize and assimilate them. Finally they lost their lands in New York and were dispersed to Canada, Oklahoma, Wisconsin, and elsewhere. An Iroquois renaissance is taking place today, fueled in large part by the lure of gambling riches and a renewed interest in native culture. In Iroquoia, archaeologist William Engelbrecht of Buffalo State College draws on archaeology, ethnology, historical evidence, and oral traditions to give the reader a detailed overview of this great culture from its ancient roots until today. Engelbrecht traces the economic and cultural development of the five nations as they acquire corn agriculture and change into sedentary peoples. They spoke different but related languages and they developed in different ways. Their villages had to move every few years as the surrounding land was denuded of trees and the soil exhausted. Warfare became more common, and villages became larger and more fortified. Engelbrecht shows that the long house may have been used as a defensive structure as well as a community center. The most intriguing aspect of Iroquois life was the confederation of tribes, or the League of the Haudenosaunee. With the help of oral traditions, Engelbrecht pushes its formation into prehistoric times, late 1500s, and shows that it focused on peaceful relations among the five nations and extensive trade. The Mohawks guarded the east, while the Seneca watched the west. League meetings were usually held at spring • 2004

Reviews Onondaga in the center. The League continued until European pressure forced the Iroquois in different directions. Iroquoia is an outstanding survey of this captivating episode of America’s heritage. Funk and Kuhn’s study of three 16th-century Mohawk villages is a complement to the more general Iroquoia. Excavated by the New York State Museum between 1960 and 1970, under the direction of Funk, the three sites give a detailed view of Mohawk life in the 16th century shortly before Europeans moved into New York in large numbers. With their homeland in the Mohawk River valley, the most eastern nation of the Iroquois developed somewhat differently than their western neighbors. The Mohawks were the first of the league to have intensive dealings with the Europeans and their life changed because of it. The Five Nations League of Iroquois is one of the most remarkable aspects of Native Americans life. These volumes give the reader a much greater appreciation of this story. Miskwabik: Metal of Ritual By Amelia M. Trevelyam (University Press of Kentucky, 2004; 360 pgs., illus., $50 cloth; www.kentuckypress.com)

While prehistoric Native Americans were technically Stone Age people they also used metals. The most often used metal was copper, known as Miskwabik in the Ojibwa language. Copper was discovered on the shore of Lake Superior and by 3,000 B.C. mining was under way. It was soon fashioned into elaborate works of art that spread throughout the eastern woodlands of North America. Used primarily as burial objects, the copper was hammered or cast by an elite group of craftsmen. The art form reached its peak around A.D. 1, in the Hopewell culture that dominated the cultural scene for hundreds of years. Art historian Amelia Trevelyam has fused her knowledge of art and archaeology to give us a comprehensive picture of this native art form. Over some 4,500 years, tons of native copper was mined and turned into ritual objects, and Trevelyam tells this little-known story with clarity and understanding. —Mark Michel american archaeology

Rock Art of the Lower Pecos By Carolyn E. Boyd (Texas A & M University Press, 2003; 152 pgs., illus., $45 cloth; www.tamu.edu/upress) Archaeologist-artist Carolyn Boyd has prepared this dazzling study of some of the Southwest’s most dramatic and little seen rock art. In the harsh environment of southwestern Texas and northern Mexico, known as the Lower Pecos country, Native Americans eked out a living for some 4,000 years by hunting and gathering. They also painted images on the walls of the region’s magnificent canyons, whereas pecking images into the rock was the more common artistic technique in much of the Southwest. The pigments are derived from deer bone marrow and yucca root and show vivid scenes of humans and animals bearing wings, antlers, rabbit ears, and spears and tell us much of these ancient people’s belief systems, ritual practices, cosmology, land usage, technology, and social organization. Modern science is now using carbon-14 and other methods to date the art, thus placing it in an historical perspective. For many years rock art was dismissed as “graffiti” or idle-time activity. But today’s scholars are unraveling the narrative that it tells in a strong spiritual context. Boyd uses the latest methods to interpret the religious practices of the artists as they travel on shamanic journeys to the spiritual world. Boyd argues that they are real time histories of important spiritual events. The rock art was thus an integral part of the lives of these nomadic people that remained important for thousands of years. Rock Art of the Lower Pecos is a well written and superbly illustrated study of some of North America’s most important rock art and should be read by anyone interested in the prehistory of the Americas.

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C O N S E R V A N C Y

Sojourns in the South PEOPLES OF THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY When: April 17 – 24, 2004 Where: Tennessee, Arkansas,

Beginning in Memphis and following the Mississippi River south to Natchez, our week-long journey covers everything from ancient earthen mounds to Civil War battlefields and spans more than 5,000 years of history. The trip offers an exciting opportunity to learn more about the rich and complex moundbuilder cultures that flourished along the Mississippi River valley until the arrival of the Europeans. While taking in the charms of the Old South you’ll visit important sites, including Emerald Mound, the third-

ALAN GRUBER

Louisiana, Mississippi How much: $1,545 per person ($230 single supplement)

Mound A at the Winterville site in Mississippi is the fifth-largest mound in North America.

largest Mississippian mound in the United States. At Poverty Point, you’ll tour one of the country’s oldest and most complex prehistoric sites. You’ll also visit sites from historic times, including the Grand Village of the

Natchez and the Civil War battlefield at Vicksburg. Several of the Conservancy’s preserves, such as Watson Brake Mounds, which may be the oldest mound site in North America, are also featured on the tour.

A Spectacular River Trip

A Peruvian Adventure

YA M PA R I V E R

LAND OF THE INCA

When: May 29 – June 5, 2004 Where: Colorado and Utah How much: $1,595 per person

When: June 25 – July 9, 2004 Where: Peru, including Cuzco, the Urubamba Valley,

($85 single supplement)

and the North Coast How much: $3,995 per person ($650 single supplement)

Join us for a downriver adventure through the spectacular scenery of Dinosaur National Monument, including Whirlpool Canyon, which was first described by the explorer John Wesley Powell. In addition to the beautiful scenery you’ll also visit remote archaeological sites.

Perched on a ridge more than 2,000 feet above the Urubamba River, Machu Pichu is among the most spectacular sites in all of the Americas. This ancient city is just one of the many highlights of the Conservancy’s two-week Peruvian tour. From the coastal city of Lima to the magnificent tombs of the Moche at Sipán, you’ll explore some of Peru’s most fascinating sites. spring • 2004

Best of the Southwest

SEPTEMBER 2004 Experience the cultural and scenic diversity of the American Southwest. Our trip explores Native American cultures, both past and present, in New Mexico, Arizona, and Colorado.

The Conservancy’s Best of the Southwest tour features spectacular archaeology such as these cliff dwellings found at Mesa Verde National Park.

Cahokia and the Middle Mississippian Culture SEPTEMBER 2004 Explore the phenomenal earthworks of Cahokia and the central Mississippi and Illinois River Valleys.

Veracruz MARK MICHEL

JANUARY 2005 Join us in Mexico’s oldest port city, Veracruz, for an exciting look at the Olmec, Totonac, Huastec, Maya, Aztec, and Spanish cultures that have dominated the region for thousands of years. Cahokia was occupied by the Mississippians from approximately A.D. 700 to 1400.

Aztec, Toltecs, and Teotihuacános MARCH 2005 Explore the magnificent temples and pyramids left behind by civilizations long since vanished in modern-day central Mexico.

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Oaxaca OCTOBER 2005 In addition to being in Oaxaca during the Day of the Dead festivities, our tour explores Mixtecan and Zapotecan archaeological sites in the region including Mitla, Monte Albán, and Dainzú. We’ll also travel to several crafts villages where you’ll find weaving, pottery, carved animals, and other local art.

Patrons of Preservation The Archaeological Conservancy would like to thank the following individuals, foundations, and corporations for their generous support during the period of November 2003 through January 2004. Their generosity, along with the generosity of the Conservancy’s other members, makes our work possible. Life Member Gifts of $1,000 or more Anonymous Paula Atkeson, Washington, D.C. Richard Berg, California Valencia A. Davis, Virginia Elizabeth Dice, Mississippi Ellenore W. Doudiet, Maine Hortense F. Feldblum, New York Charles Fleischmann, Ohio Robert S. Hagge Jr., Wisconsin Monique Havens, Florida Paul Herther, New York Nancy L. Holt, New Mexico Steven and Judy Kazan, California Mr. and Mrs. Roland Mace, New Mexico Frances H. Minton, Utah Charlotte Nairn, New York Lois J. Paradise, Florida Tim Perttula, Texas Suzanne Rice, Colorado Carol A. Robertson, California Mr. and Mrs. John D. Rogers, New York Jon T. Walton Jr., Michigan Malcolm Hewitt Wiener, Connecticut Anasazi Circle Gifts of $2,000 or more Anonymous Mr. and Mrs. Ethan D. Alyea, Indiana Nina Bonnie, Kentucky Jerry and Janet EtsHokin, Illinois

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

Arthur and Mary Faul, Arizona Grace E. Hartzel, Ohio Renée Ingold, California Nelson Kempsky, California Jay and Debbie Last, California Mark Menefee and Stephanie Wade, Maryland Hugh Th. Miller, Michigan J.C. Morris, Virginia Dorinda J. Oliver, New York Doris W. Oliver, New York Kathryn C. Wanlass, Utah Phil C. Weigand, Arizona Foundation/Corporate Gifts of $1,000–$4,999 Bill’s Fund of Communities Foundation of Texas Inc., Texas Haskell Fund, Ohio Gunnard and Charlotte Johnson Foundation, Missouri The Charles and Betti Saunders Foundation/ Pat, Kate, and Ian Saunders, Texas The Phase Foundation, Maryland Foundation/Corporate Gifts of $5,000–$9,999 The Titmus Foundation Inc., Idaho Foundation/Corporate Gifts of $10,000–$24,999 The Montgomery Foundation, Georgia Moore Family Foundation, California Foundation/Corporate Gifts of $25,000–$50,000 Society for the Preservation of Maryland Antiquities, Maryland

Attaining Lifetime Security Creating a win-win giving strategy is now easier than ever. From gifts of cash to appreciated securities to real estate, donating to your favorite charity can provide not only for the charity, but also for you and your family’s financial security. By providing The Archaeological Conservancy with a charitable gift annuity, you can retain a fixed lifetime annuity payment for yourself. In exchange for your gift, the Conservancy will provide you with a specified payment for life. Because the payment is fixed at the time of the gift and does not fluctuate with changes in the economy, you will always know exactly how much you will receive annually. Congress has provided a series of tax benefits for those who donate through a charitable gift annuity. For instance, donors receive an immediate and substantial income tax charitable deduction as well as minimal taxes on capital gains on highly appreciated securities. In addition, your annuity may be arranged to provide you with tax-free payments. For more information on how you can earn income for life while supporting The Archaeological Conservancy, please contact Mark Michel at (505) 266-1540. —Kerry Slater

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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

Touch the Past. Feel the Presence.

Adult Research Program Weeks of May 30, June 6, June 13, June 20, August 15 and August 22

Become a member of our research team to experience the excitement and challenge of archaeology firsthand.

Family Excavation

Aug. 8-14

Make your next family vacation an Archaeology Adventure!

Exploring Chaco Canyon Sept. 19-25

Explore the archaeology and history of magnificent Chaco Canyon.

Fall Lab Sept 19-25 and Sept 26-Oct. 2

Participate in the first opportunity to take a detailed look at the summer's collection of artifacts.

Backcountry Archaeology:

Hiking Southeast Utah's Comb Ridge Oct 9-15

Experience the archaeology of the ancestral Puebloan Indian occupation of this unique area.

Limited Space! Make your reservation now. Call 1-800-422-8975 or register online at: www.crowcanyon.org

CROW CANYON Near Mesa Verde in Cortez, Colorado CCAC’s programs and admission practices are open to applicants of any race, color, nationality, or ethnic origin. CST 2059347-50

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.

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. 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.

Lamb Spring colorado

Conservancy Preserve since 1995

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

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Whatever kind of gift you give, you can be sure we’ll use it to preserve places like Lamb Spring 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