Posted on 01/25/2007 3:47:01 PM PST by blam
Archaeologists explain significance of the Walker site
Find does not affect Walker Area Community Center project
by Molly MacGregor, Pilot Contributor
The Pilot-Independent
Last Updated: Wednesday, January 24th, 2007 05:28:25 PM
Photos provided by Heritage Sites Director Thor Olmanson
Archaeologists dug down about two meters. The 20-some tools were found between 20 and 30 centimeters below the surface.
If you are puzzling about news of an archaeological find at the City of Walker's Tower Avenue project, then you should meet Matt Mattson. He's a volunteer who helped a team of archaeologists uncover what might be the oldest intact site of human activity on two continents.
He describes the 15,000-year-old landscape that surround the site as if he is just back from a visit. "This place was an oasis. Not like we think of an oasis, but a place that was relatively dry and habitable, and surrounded by walls of ice," he said. Thor Olmanson is director of the Leech Lake Heritage Sites program and is the project's principal investigator. He is understandably more cautious in describing the site, especially since "we are in the early stages of site material and landform analysis," he said. This fall, he and David Mather, National Register Archaeologist for the state's Historic Preservation Office, invited geologists, soil scientists, fellow archaeologists and other scientists to investigate the site. "As the natural response is skepticism, everyone who came was ready to debunk the site," said Olmanson. "And, so far, they have left convinced that this is something different, something that needs to be looked at more closely" he said.
Visiting scientists included soil scientists Grant Goltz, from Soils Consulting, Mike Lieser from the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service (accompanied by Richard Schossow, Walker SWCD), Howard Hobbs, with the Minnesota Geological Survey, Kate Pound, from St. Cloud State University, and Stephen and Susan Mulholland, of the Duluth Archaeology Center.
The Mulhollands collected soil samples from the site to search for microscopic evidence of plant materials (phytoliths), which may help to reconstruct the early site environment.
Until around 11,000 years ago, much of Minnesota was covered with glaciers, and had been for nearly two million years.
There were four major glacial advances across the state. During the last glacial period, what is now north central Minnesota was a "collision point" for several glacial lobes, from the northeast, the north, and the northwest.
As the glaciers began to recede, approximately 15,000 years ago, an ice-free "oasis" developed in this part of the state. There was an access from the southeast to this relatively stable environment which was habitable at least part of the year, although surrounded by glaciers.
It was a dynamic environment, with frequent shifts in the landscape as drainage patterns became established.
The ancient people visiting the site near Walker probably consisted of extended family groups, often up to 15 individuals, Olmanson explained.
They selected certain types of stones, flaked off just enough from the pebbles and cobbles to make sharp tools. They used the tools to prepare plants for food as well as the animals that they had killed or scavenged.
Organic materials they used, such as bone, wood, and fibers, have not survived. The glaciers around them washed out rock and soil debris as the surface melted.
These deposits settled out and formed distinct layers — "a dense soil stratum of sand, coarse gravel and stone cobbles," Olmanson wrote in his October summary report of the excavations. This dense lens lies beneath today's land surface and effectively capped or "encapsulated" the debris that the group of hunters left behind.
After the glaciers melted, the area became dry and warm. Winds deposited fine sand atop of the glacial materials. Over the centuries, the debris left at the site was covered, and left intact, until it was discovered by chance.
The layers of windblown materials and then the deeper layer of stone and gravel literally sealed the site, protecting it "from intrusions of most rodents — subject primarily to those intrusions imposed by tree roots, industrious children, ever-curious archaeologists, and urban development," Olmanson wrote in the report.
Because no organic materials, such as bone, appear to have survived in the acidic soils at the site, conventional carbon dating of the site is not possible.
The preliminary dating of the site is based on the location of the stone tools within the glacial deposits.
Future work should include use of other absolute dating methods are possible, recommended Colleen Wells, field director for the Leech Lake Heritage Sites program. Wells proposes using a dating technique known as Optically Stimulated Luminescence (OSL) which measures the last time that buried sand grains were exposed to sunlight.
The site can be preserved if the proposed extension of Tower Avenue south of the site — an area currently being used as a road, Olmanson said.
"I would assume moving the road is possible," confirmed Ben Brovold, vice-president of the Walker Area Community Center. "The community center would have to reconfigure our parking spaces and retention ponds, but it could be done.
This site will not stop or hurt the community center in any way," he added. "It can be a terrific thing for our project, and something I think we can incorporate into the community center. This could be a huge benefit to Walker."
Options for the site are the topic of an 11 a.m. meeting Friday, at the Walker Fire Hall.
Representatives of the Minnesota State Historic Preservation Office, the Leech Lake Heritage Sites Crew will meet with the City of Walker and Walter Area Community Center.
The site might have gone undiscovered. Because the Walker Area Community Center received a federal grant to build, an archaeological survey was required. The first survey was simply a walk over the 10-acre building site, plus some shovel tests.
The team identified a formation that looked like a "pit house" which sat in an unusual location and was similar to temporary houses built during the fur trade period in the 18th and 19th centuries.
In a second, more intensive investigation, archaeologists determined that the "pit house" was really the remains of a child's fort.
They found several "artifacts" from the early 1960s, including a cap gun. However, in "bottoming out" the site, they found some materials suggestive of stone tools and kept digging. "A deeply buried, intact, sealed component site, situated in this geomorphological context, clearly represents a rare property type in a poorly understood context," Olmanson's report summarized.
The site is important because it is in an unusual location, high above the current level of Leech Lake, because it is intact and sealed, and because there is no "context" for the site — that is, there are no other known sites for comparison that have been identified from this early time period in Minnesota.
The working hypothesis has been that the North and South American continents were populated by people crossing the Bering land bridge (which is now the Bering Strait) no earlier than 12,000 years ago.
This site suggests that people were in North America thousands of years earlier, as the glaciers continued to advance and recede. The Walker site may be similar in age to a village site at Monte Verde, near Chile's southern tip.
It was 1976 when archaeologist Tom Dillehay, then at the University of Kentucky, started working at Monte Verde, on Chile's southern coast and claimed that people lived there 12,500 years ago.
After more than 20 years of work, his claims have been accepted by the scientific community, thus complicating the long-held theory of when humans first crossed the Bering Strait.
Olmanson, Wells and Mattson will discuss results of their work at a forum at WHA High School Auditorium at 7 p.m. Feb. 8. They will share a presentation they are preparing about the site for the Council of Minnesota Archaeology.
Just as archaeologists visualize the past, the discovery of the "Walker oasis" might inspire imaginations about how this archaeological discovery can change Walker in the next 25 years: The Walker Area Community Center has just completed its new Cultural Center, including a public library and museum for the Cass County Historical Society, located just across the road from the archaeological site.
Visitors start their tour at the center, where local art students created dioramas of the Walker Oasis as it looked 15,000 years ago. From the center, the visitor can stroll through the site, along a path that winds through the excavation and then descends into the development of houses and shops located on "Glacier Terrace" below the site.
In the excavating pits, a full crew of archaeologists, geologists and field staff are working. This year, a group from Oxford University is visiting.
Twelve lucky people were selected through annual lottery to help the working archaeologists continue the excavation of the site. This year’s winners submitted their bids two or three years earlier and stay at local resorts for their three-weeks on the dig.
The Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe still manages the program, which added a crew of high school students in 2008.
The International Archaeological Society has just concluded its first North American meeting in Walker, where a series of papers on the Walker Oasis — as the site became known — were the heart of the event.
The 500-plus members spent five days in workshops, conferences and touring the event, scheduled to coincide with the town's annual fall celebration, Walker Mammoth Days — changed from "Ethnic Fest" in 2009.
Highlight of the conference were posters prepared by the Leech Lake Magnet School and University, Minnesota’s first high school and college located in the same facility. High school students have the opportunity to work side by side with visiting scientists from archaeology programs around the world. The school was created when ongoing budget shortfalls threatened the existing public school.
Sensing an opportunity, the school board created a school with a rigorous academic curriculum that uses the local geology and archaeology to educate students in the science, math, language, history and social studies.
The school also developed vocational programs in robotics, manufacturing, graphics and mapping that support the ongoing work at the site.
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Is it that you have never encountered adequate explanations -- or that you are dogmatically opposed to being convinced?
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First of all, archaeologists are not mere "enthusiasts" -- they are professionals who have devoted entire working lifetimes to the study of ancient peoples and how they lived.
Secondly, the evidence provided by (relatavely rare) presence of preserved organic materials is in no way required to determine whether an assemblage of flakes was natural or man-produced -- or if those flakes were used as tools.
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FYI, "flintknapping" --- the art and science of making stone tools -- is far from a "lost art". Quite the contrary; modern students and practitioners of the art have developed knowledge and skills that surpass that of all but the "grand masters" of their prehistoric counterparts. Here is but one page from this year's "flintknapper's calendar":
The entire calendar, which showcases the (spectacular, and beautiful, IMO) works of dozens of modern flintknappers, can be viewed here.
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As an archaeologist, lithic technologist -- and accomplished flintknapper (AKA "experimental lithic technologist") -- I would much rather have the "debitage" (waste flakes) from production of a prehistoric stone tool than I would the tool itself.
I can replicate virtually any prehistoric tool -- so, collecting prehistoric (usually less skilled) attempts at making tools (aka "arrowhead collecting") no longer interests me. OTOH, as one who has spent over forty years studying and applying the physics of fracture in brittle materials, I find that the waste materials ("debitage") from stone toolmaking reveal to me unequivocal evidence of the knapping technique used.
Most flakes produced by human flintknappers have characteristics that are very rarely (if ever) duplicated by fractures that occur in nature. In fact, at some prehistoric work sites, huge mounds of nearly-identical flakes remain at stone-tool production locations. Such multiple duplication never occurs in nature.
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Pardon me if I appear to doubt your willingness to be convinced, but, when you posted your "I have never read a convincing explanation..." you were connected to the Internet -- where such information abounds.
Google searches quickly produced the following:
... an illustration from Lithic Technology: Tools for Life on the website of Maricopa University. The website includes animated movies of the most common stone toolmaking ("knapping") processes.
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The use of stone tools (including simple "flake tools") produces microscopic wear and polishing on the working edges that not only indicates use as a tool, but is characteristically different based on the material that was worked.
The entire book, INTERPRETING THE FUNCTION OF STONE TOOLS by Roger Grace is available online. It presents the results of thousands of hours of experimentation and microscopic analysis on the wear patterns and "micropolish" produced on stone tools by working various materials.
Your "No corroborating evidence has survived, yet someone can take a leap of enthusiasm and described how the ancient groups behaved, based on the presence of chipped rocks and pebbles, created naturally." is, (to be kind) disingenuous. If the "artifacts" in question were produced and/or used as tools by early man, the evidence will be apparent.
If there is any doubt, we archaeologists will be the loudest and most persistent critics. (In fact, these very "artifacts" are the subject of vigorous discussion on archaeologist-only listservers at this very moment...)
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I have expended considerable effort here to provide you the opportunity to educate yourself on these matters. I hope that you enjoy the study -- and that you do so with an open mind.
All the best.
TXnMA
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Texas Archaeological Steward
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European, as opposed to Oriental or Asian?
Let's hope not! (See my #22...)
Sure. East Asians didn't get to North America for many thousands of years later.
Thanks, I'll have to check it out.
Excellent addition, thanks.
No need to agree with me. Just tell it like it is.
You went into more detail that I did, as I did not think most folks here would look up any detailed references. But, as you point out, the literature is huge! Lithic technology is a very detailed study, not one which relies on off-the-cuff opinions. And, there are the replication studies, conducted by archaeologists and non-archaeologists alike. You can learn a lot by making stone tools and studying the debitage. (I had a class in this in grad school--we called it "elementary finger bleeding.")
Many archaeologists devote their careers to this particular field, and their findings should not be dismissed lightly.
Squeaked!
Although the doubting poster hasn't returned, I at least listened and learned.
The oldest Mongoloid skeleton ever found is only 10k years old.(Oppenheimer) Anyone older that that is someone else...Maybe not European.
LOL!!! Any good knapper's toolkit includes Band-Aids and SuperGlue. When doing lecture/demos, I have been know to SuperGlue a cut closed (stings like mad -- but stops the bleeding)... I also learned (very early-on) that sandals are not safe knapping wear!
As you might guess, I spent so much time off-line composing #22 (including taking a break to walk a couple of miles through the woods with my wife) that I didn't see your #16 -- until after I posted #22. I prefer to think that we agreed -- because both of us were right! '-)
Well, I wasn't aware ASAVet's shot was in my direction, so let me clear up something. I don't have a problem with the flaking business; I can follow and understand the science behind it, thanks in part to several on this forum. BTW Tx, excellent post your #22!
I didn't really want to get into this much, mainly because few others seem to have a problem with it and I may be picking at nits. BUT, the explanation I have trouble following is how these artifacts came to be under glacial sediment, particularly atop the highest point in Cass(?) county(~150' above the surrounding area according to this or another aritcle I followed). This "oasis" was apparently several miles from the nearest glacier during this period, and notwithstanding the erosion in and around this "hard spot(?)" by glacial melt, that's a considerable height for runoff - from several miles away. More particularly, sediments tend to settle in low spots; not on high points, which tend to erode.
Broken ice dams? SUDDEN increase in temperatures creating hellacious runoff? Maybe an IMPACT?
A confession: My initial assumption from the earlier THREAD was that these sediments settled out and were laid down "in place" as the glacier(s) melted. Wrong assumption apparently but still in all doesn't necessarily clear up my "confusion".
Thanks for your efforts.
It wasn't a shot at you at all. Sorry if tracking back in the thread lead to you. If it did it was unintentional.
Oh, sure, CM gets the *short* one. BTW, the "22" link s/b:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1773793/posts?page=22#22
Geoarchaeology:
The Earth-Science Approach
to Archaeological Interpretation
by George (Rip) Rapp
and Christopher L. Hill
Thanks.
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LOL!!! I got it right in my #23 to CM.
BUT... in #25, I guess I overwrote part of the URL in my clipboard when I copied, "I'll bet your explanation fell on deaf ears again." to quote it. :-(
Good catch!
MEMO TO SELF: Next time, check link function in PREVIEW before POSTing... :-(
BTW, I hope you folks enjoyed the "Flintknapping 2007 Calendar". Some of the workmanship (and pretty materials) pictured there are really awesome!
The skill and craftsmanship displayed in the "exotics" shown in the"August" photo excel even that displayed in even the most elaborate Mayan "eccentric" knapped artifacts.
What the heck... might as well post the image here...
There is a lot of awesome "punch" work in that photo. Of course, the modern "lithic artists" use metal punches instead of the deer "cannon" bone or antler punches used prehistorically. And, many (if not most) of the objects in that "exotic" group are made of modern "man-made" materials (AKA "glass"). [All of the colorful or transparent objects in the upper left and lower right corners are made of modern glasses -- but they shore are purty!!!]
OTOH, because I hate to see a grown man (namely, TXnMA) cry, (when you break a piece with days of work invested) I probabably wouldn't even attempt replicating some of those super-delicate "eccentric" forms.
As for the "chain links" -- I've carved such out of a single piece of wood -- but there is no way I'd try to do it in flint!!!
The bottom line is that when we "moderns" talk about stone tools, we know what we are talking about!!!
Like this?
In a second, more intensive investigation, archaeologists determined that the "pit house" was really the remains of a child's fort. They found several "artifacts" from the early 1960s, including a cap gun. However, in "bottoming out" the site, they found some materials suggestive of stone tools and kept digging.
Kinda reminds me of Calvin reconstructing a dinosaur's skull from a buried coke bottle :-)
. OK, score one for consistency, one doesn't wish to throw out an entire model on the basis of one purported outlier...
But I would've liked to have been a fly on the wall when the grad student who dug up the cap gun took it in to show to the lead investigator :-)
Cheers!
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