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.
GGG Ping.
"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.....scheduled to coincide with the town's annual fall celebration, Walker Mammoth Days — changed from "Ethnic Fest" in 2009."
Just wondering. Did we go past 2008 and 2009 already. My Calandar says this January of '07.
One note, the 2,000,000 year long period of glaciation is interspersed with numerous "interglacials" where ALL the ice around that site would have melted away. These interglacials may be as short as about 10,000 years, or as long as 35,000 years ~ depending on a number of astrophysical orientations.
I have an arrowhead from the same period ~ it was brought up with material from a well on the Eastside of Indianapolis that penetrated to the "surface" prior to the last glaciation in that area.
Wisconsin may not be the only area to provide habitat suitible for life in that era.
MN ping.
15,000 year old geocaching?
BTTT
Organic materials they used, such as bone, wood, and fibers, have not survived.
This statement always brings my interest in a story to a grinding halt.
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.
I have never read a convincing explanation as to how these enthusiasts separate the naturally chipped stone never used as tools from the ones that might have been used as tools, absent other evidence.
Remember that it is the Ojibwe who have the highest (25%) percent of the X-haplogroup in all the Americas.
They also have A+ blood too ~
I get a kick that they now have to reroute the road. Of course, if no Federal Funds are spent on the road (county?/city?) then they won't need an archaeologist so they won't run into any artifacts.
Some archaeologists spend the bulk of their careers studying stone tools.
One of my professors used to scour dry creek and river bottoms and other places where rocks grind together looking for natural "tools" to use as teaching aids. He had a room full of them.
On the other hand you have clear living or activity sites, and from them you can get bushels of real tools.
Spend a few decades comparing the two, including such things as using hi-tech tools like electron microscopes to check for edge wear, etc., and you can come up with a lot of information on stone tools. That lets the experts look at a new collection such as this and render a pretty informed opinion.
related:
Tools Found In Walker, May Be 14,000 Years Old
WCCO-TV | Friday, January 12, 2007 | Associated Press
Posted on 01/12/2007 11:34:52 AM EST by SunkenCiv
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Well, FWIW, their "explanation" seems to yield more questions than answers in my mind(such as it is). But I'll leave it be; it just ain't worth the effort...
If it hadn't been for that killing GLOBAL WARMING, we would never had discovered this place!
What we have are caribou and seal hunters who chowed down all the way from Spain to America, and then dined from somewhere near Sable Island all the way to Wisconsin.
Yes...after all that meat, they were ready for some cheese.
Cool. Reminds me of an old site in western PA that has been undergoing archaeological excavation for several decades, Meadowcroft Shelter at Avella PA (Washington County).
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