Where in the World??? Hamline Archaeology Students - Summer 2007
This summer looks exciting for Hamline’s archaeology program. We have at least nine ten students working on seven projects in four countries. I have three students coming with me to Aniakchak for the month of July. Three Four other students will be working on projects elsewhere in the United States. The remaining three students will be in Belize, Greece, and Israel.
I’ve asked everyone to post comments on this diary whenever they get a chance. It’ll be really interesting to get some reports from the field. We should probably have a contest for the most amazing find, the best feature excavation, and the most challenging day.
I’d also like to hear about life in the field - what do you eat? Are there nasty bugs or other little critters that make your life miserable? What do you do for fun when you’re not working on site?
Hopefully everyone will have a chance to post at least once or twice this summer. Email me photographs and I’ll add a picture to your comments. Have fun and find some goodies!
Field locations of Hamline’s archaeology students (summer 2007).
Hello, everyone!
It sounds like there are going to be alot of great adventures this summer.
I am going to Aniakchak with Caleb Belgard and Kelly Wolf in July. This is the final field season for the South Aniakchak Bay Village, and we are all doing collaborative research projects focused on resources and the environment. I can’t wait!
What kind of projects are the rest of you working on? I would love to hear about it!
Sorry for the overzealous enthusiasm, but I’m graduating and going to Alaska…how cool is that?
~shelly Love
I’m going to Manila, UT to work it the Ashley National Forest on a Fremont site. I will be there for 2 weeks. I’m not sure just what to expect but I did download a bunch of information that I have yet to read.
4 of us will be staying in a KOA cabin. We meet at the ranger station in town to car pool to the site 5 miles away. I know all equipment is provided but we bring our own food.
I got myself a Camelbak hydration system because the director said it would be hot and dry. Does anyone have any suggestions for gloves to wear?
I look forward to hearing about everyone adventures over the summer and seeing all of your pictures in the Fall.
Melanie A. Freimuth
I’d suggest some Atlas gloves, faily cheap, reusable/washable, but they can be hot in the summer. Otherwise a good leather pair will work well in the heat. If you’re just driving to the site, you might as well bring a jug of water or a water cooler. Sometimes 3 Nalgene bottles aren’t even enough for me in 75-80 degree weather. And if you’re working in one spot and not lugging the water around, you might as well bring as much as you can.
Hi all!
I am also going on the Aniakchak trip this summer, and I am very excited about it! To elaborate on what Shelly was saying about collaborative research- we are all working on something related to the environment, so my project is to gather wood samples from the vacinity of the site to make a comparative collection for wood identification. The identification part is going to be a long term project for me, probably developing into an honors project.
I can’t wait to hear all about everyone’s adventures! Shelly and I were thinking it would be fun to have an end of the summer get together to share stories.
I am probalby also a bit overzealous, but hey, I am a first-year going to Alaska! That’s pretty cool, right?
Kelly
I just got back from 3 weeks in the field - how’s that for an early start? We surveyed the lower part of the Olga lakes system on the south end of kodiak. I felt like I was back in the East Arctic. Snow squalls and temps hovering around 40. Of course the ground was frozen and we had to rotate test pits waiting for them to thaw.
The last week we spent excavating a 1000 year old multiroom house with roof sods. It was full of kachemak style tools and had a kachemak style cold trap entrance. Also unlike Koniag era houses it had roof sods. But very much like a Koniag house in that it had multiple rooms connected by tunnels with weird ‘reverse cold traps’ in them (stacked sod steps). Truly a transitional house. Quite exciting. The ice lens in the house made it difficult to excavate at times (we often resorted to the shovel to hack thru the ice lens) - and one side room and tunnel did not get excavated at all due to 2 foot thick lens of ice. The house also had storage pits just outside the back too. We excavated pretty much the whole thing.
In camp we used a wood stove and collected our own firewood. I was surprised at how much wood is available in the ‘treeless’ tundra. Big trees too. Black birch or alder is the best firewood. we saved burned timbers from our house so we’ll be able to determine what they used for posts.
We ate a lot of rainbow trout and nettles, fireweed shoots cooked with SPAM.
Patrick
Patrick,
Your excavation sounds cold but amazing. Did you document where you found wood, what kind it was, and how much there was? Are there plans to compare charcoal from the site with the types of wood that you all found and burned in your camp?
Shelly
Shelly,
I did not formally record the wood we harvested, but I was amazed by the size of the alders, and that black birch even existed. Looking at photos of the landscape one would think no wood is available, but those little shrubs in the background actually turn out to be tall trees (maybe 4 meters high). Willow is ubiquitous down there - but we only found alders on the hillside gullies, and birch was fairly rare (but I did see large black birch groves on the nearby upper Ayakulik River while on a hunting trip last fall. No cottonwoods at all. This year i noticed that the exisiting alders and black birch at Olga Lakes are big enough to use for house construction (I have a photo of one of the black birches if you are interested). We did collect burned post and timbers for wood ID purposes from our excavation, and in the past Dave Tennessen has analyzed wood from us from another interior site at Buskin Lake. Jenny Deo at UW analyzed the charcoal from a 3400 year old processing site in a report we just published through the BIA (Brian should have a copy - and her report is an appendix in the back).
We also measure our post holes in the house we excavated to get an idea of the size of the timbers used. Most of the posts used for house construction were in the 12- 13 cm range. It is worth noting that there is no driftwood in Olga Bay - the whole bay is connected to the ocean by a narrow channel and very little driftwood makes it through. I am convinced that prehistoric peoples used local alders and black birch to build their houses.
patrick
Patrick,
Thanks for the reply! That is so interesting, because in my mind, I pictured a treeless tundra. I am also surprised by the lack of driftwood–where the houses communal structures, so people could share hearths? Did they use alternative fuel for thier fires? Is there evidence of wood being recycled in house construction?
~Shelly
We actually did find evidence that wood posts were recycled. We even found an open post hole that had been capped by a slate slab. They had pulled the post for reuse and then covered the hole with a piece of slate. But I do think wood for house construction and wood for fuel are two different things entirely. Wood suitable for house construction was probably pretty scarce while wood for fuel was probably not a problem. Willow is extremely common and would have been hard to over utilize - it would have been adequate fuel for fires, but not good for construction.
The house we excavated looked a little small to be a communal house (we believe communal houses are the hallmark succeeding of the Koniag era), but it did have a huge hearth, and charcoal was everywhere (it did not look like they tried to conserve fuel).
When you get going on your project - send me an email and we’ll get you a copy of our report. I bet there will be a lot of parallels between Aniakchak and the south end of Kodiak.
Patrick
Hello,
I am in the north western part of Israel excivating a Roman temple that was thought to have gone through three phases. The first phase is called building zero and it was thought to be a shrine around 40-30 BCE. The next two phases happened between then and the late first century. These two phases are known as temple 1 and temple 2. Each temple was build around/on top of the previous one and the builders also used various parts to help construct the new temples. Today was important because we found a base for one of the colums from building zero, which was incitue (meaning in its original place). This informations shows that there were colums around building zero. The temple itself is in the middle of nowhere. At the time of its use it was at the junction of two trade routes. however the nearest city is far. This tell us that whoever built this had to have lots of money and a good reason for building such an elaborate complex. The hope is that one day a statue, relic or inscription will be found to prove that it was an Augustdeum temple.
As for other information the bugs are horrible once 10 AM comes. The nats are the worst. We have found cool scorpeans and centiped as well. We have also found lots of potery, fresco, and plaster. The food at the site is fine given where we are eating but it is the samething day after day. Hopefully i can write with more information on who build the temple soon. Hope everyone is having fun with their projects.
Hey Justin,
Your Roman temple sounds pretty fascinating. I’m curious to hear that the temple was built on a crossroads. Do you know if the religious leaders of these temples were themselves involved in trade - or did they pick this location just so they would have more traffic passing by their temple?
I’m also curious about what you’re experiencing of the local scene. Is there a village or town near the site? Do you have any time for sight-seeing and being a regular tourist?
Email me a photo if you can and I’ll add it to the blog.
Watch out for scorpions (something we don’t worry about much in Alaska) and let us know when you find that Augustdeum statue!
Hi everyone, like I said in another post, I am leaving to go to a field school in Belize in a week. The site is located in the Orange Walk district of Belize inside a 250,000 acre guarded nature reserve in a subtropical rainforest. There are over 50 ancient Mayan sites within the reserve. We will be excavating a classic era site, working on uncovering houses, hydrological features, and even a ritual ballcourt.
I will be working with the University of Texas-Austin alongside 4 other universities who use the same research lab as we are. The station looks amazing and I am really excited to have the opportunity to learn more about life before the Mayan collapse and to work in such a beautiful remote location.
Seeing as it is a rainforest I am sure there will be lots of bugs… and …rain. There are also all 5 types of big cats, monkeys, snakes ect. I don’t believe I will have internet access in order to post any pictures until I return home. I will update in a month and a half with pictures and let you know how it went. I hope you all have a wonderful time on your own adventures! Take care,
Alisha
Hey, Lish!
This sounds amazing! What kind of training do you have to go through to work in the jungle? Did you have to get a ton of shots? We had our bear awareness training on Tuesday (Patrick, if you’re out there, I hear you had an incident with a Polar bear and pepper spray?
Also, this sounds like a HUGE excavation…how many people are in the crew? Have you been reading up on Mayan archaeology?
I can’t wait to see your pictures when you get back…we should all meet for dinner somewhere:)
~Shelly
We are excavating in the Uinta Mountains in Utah. We found a slab stone pit and finished uncovering it yesterday. Today we found a biface tool and are finding lots of flakes. We are investigating a couple of charcoal stains in front of a stone cliff that they think was a seasonal stopping place.
This is a transitional zone so they are not sure what they expect to find. It is very hot, dry and dusty. 97 degrees today when we came down. I am learning how to label bags, excavate, screen, distinguish flakes, bone and charcoal. Today I found a couple small ground stones. They are not sure if they are part of the same one or parts of 2 separate ones. Maybe tomorrow they will have had more time to check them out.
Melanie
Hi Melanie,
Is the slab stone pit also found at the cliff side camp? I’m just curious because it sounds like a well-built storage facility. It would be interesting if they stored excess food at their temporary camps - perhaps as an emergency supply for when they traveled in the region.
I’m surprised to hear you’re not finding any pottery. Is this typical for your part of Utah? I bet a few diagnostic sherds would be a great find when working in a “transitional zone”.
Hello everyone!
I’m just about to head up north (as in northern MN) to work on an excavation project through the US Forest Service and Passport in Time. We haven’t received a lot of information about the project but I do know that it is at the Winnie Cottages site. This site is located on the west shore of Lake Winnibigoshish. Many shovel tests have recovered prehistoric ceramics, lithics and faunal remains. Historic artifacts were also uncovered. From what has already been discovered it is likely that this site has great potential for improving our knowledge of Brainerd, Blackduck, and Sandy Lake cultures. I probably won’t beable to post again until after I get back home, but I will keep notes and take pictures to document this great experience. I will also be doing some lab work for the same project in August, but more about that later! bye!
Brian,
Sorry to take so long to reply. We didn’t find any pottery and they didn’t expect to find any. It would have been very cool to find some. However, knowing how far up and how steep the climb is, (and I’m sure they were in lots better shape than I am) it might be surprising to find people hauling something heavy.
Melanie