Figure 4 from the Speller et al. article in PNAS.

Among the world’s major regions, ancient North America is not known for having many domesticated animals. One exception, Camilla F. Speller and her colleagues note in a free article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America titled “Ancient Mitochondrial DNA Analysis Reveals Complexity of Indigenous North American Turkey Domestication,” is the wild turkey, or Meleagris gallopavo (with several subspecies defined based on plumage & geographic range, and confined—at least prehistorically—to several regions in North America and south to what is now southern Mexico)*. They write in their conclusion:

Domestication is a complex process, with human–animal interactions that vary considerably in terms of their intensity and their degree of human intervention…. The ancient DNA and archaeological evidence collected in this study reveals a wide range of past human–animal interactions within the Southwest United States, ranging from the hunting and/or capture of local wild turkeys, to the intensive husbandry and breeding of an imported domestic turkey lineage. Moreover, the DNA data indicate this Southwest domestic turkey lineage (H1) was maintained and propagated for well over a millennium, despite significant shifts in the geographic distribution and settlement patterns of Southwestern farming populations. This long history of turkey use undoubtedly reflects the economic and symbolic importance of domestic turkey for the Ancestral Puebloans, and other precontact Southwestern cultures.

This in-depth study presents conclusive evidence for the domestication of an indigenous North American animal. Moreover, as one of the few indigenous domesticates, the turkey represents an important case study through which to examine New World animal domestication in general. Previous DNA studies have exposed multiple domestications of Old World animals such as cattle, pig, sheep…, and this study supports a similar multicenter model for the New World. The DNA data point to at least two occurrences of turkey domestication in precontact America, one involving the South Mexican wild turkey, likely in south-central Mexico, and a second involving Rio Grande/Eastern wild turkey populations, with a subsequent introduction of domesticated stocks into the Southwest proper. In addition to significantly redirecting future research into North American domestication centers, this extensive study demonstrates the complexity and sophistication of ancient husbandry and breeding practices for one of the New World’s few domesticated animals.

Turkey bones have been identified from archaeological remains across the Southeast, including sites in Georgia. Isn’t it interesting to ponder how the Eastern wild turkey spread so far in prehistoric times, once domesticated? Evidence of penning is rare, but archaeologists keep their eye out for it. How would we identify if people were keeping turkeys penned near their residences?

This paragraph from the Speller et al. article is informative:

Our best evidence that “wild” birds were being kept at habitation sites comes from the H2 coprolites found at Turkey Pen Ruins in Utah, indicating that H2 birds were present and presumably confined at the site. These coprolites occurred in a thick dry midden dating almost entirely to the Basketmaker II period (ca. 200 BC–AD 450) with one H2 specimen appearing in the earliest dated stratum…. Thus, the capture and provisioning of local wild birds may have been synchronous with the introduction of the domestic birds into the region. A better understanding of the nature, timing, and extent of early wild turkey exploitation will require genetic analysis of securely dated bones and/or coprolites from additional Early Agricultural sites. Additionally, investigating whether wild H2 birds were being confined and provisioned in conjunction with domestic birds must be addressed through detailed analyses of archaeological contexts, isotopic data from bones, and palynological and macrofloral evidence from coprolites.

The terms H1 and H2 refer to haplogroups, or creatures sharing a common ancestor, identified through their genetic code (genotypes). These two haplogroups are identified by these researchers as indicating two different lineages (varieties) of domesticated turkeys.

Across much of the Southwest, turkey does not seem to have been in heavy rotation in the diet until the AD 1100s, although it appears in the archaeological record much earlier.

Do you know how archaeologists can tell if people were eating turkeys? And if those turkeys were wild or domesticated? And, perhaps more important, why does it matter which they were?

* A second turkey species, Meleagris ocellata, is native to the Yucatan Peninsula in southeastern modern Mexico.

Global Genetic History of Homo sapiens is the title of a new special issue of Current Biology (volume 20, issue 4, dated 23 February 2010), with eight papers available free online.

The first article is a guest editorial by Colin Renfrew, a British archaeologist who has worked for decades in the Middle East. His books often focus on the emergence of civilization, the emergence of Indo-European languages, and a relatively new subdiscipline in archaeology called archaeogenetics. Renfrew has defined archaeogenetics as research at the confluence of archaeology, linguistics, and genetics. Archaeogenetics, therefore, uses molecular genetics to expand archaeological data about early human populations. This is particularly useful in reconstructions—or models—of early human migrations and the populating of the globe.

Renfrew’s editorial, “Archaeogenetic—Towards a ‘New Synthesis’?” sets up the other articles in this special issue. The next six papers address human migration in specific geographic areas: Africa, Europe, South Asia, East Asia, Oceania, and the Americas. Each provides considerable detail and summarizes genetic, linguistic, and archaeological data for the region.

Renfrew closes his introductory editorial with these observations:

Perhaps the most important general point that can be drawn from the reviews assembled in this special issue might be that we have not yet learnt how to interpret the data very effectively. A number of contributors have commented upon the need for simulation studies, based upon explicit models which might allow the testing of specific scenarios…, and this is likely to be one of the most important future research directions. Above all, the pace of research is now so fast that new insights are soon likely to become available. These are early days in the field of archaeogenetic research, and I predict that over the next twenty years or so a more coherent synthesis of the data from genetics, archaeology and linguistics is likely to emerge than we can yet envisage. [page R165]

Figure 1* from O’Rourke and Raff’s article.

As an example of the geographically defined articles, consider the one on the Americas, “The Human Genetic History of the Americas: The Final Frontier” by Dennis H. O’Rourke and Jennifer A. Raff. O’Rourke and Raff marshal mitochondrial DNA data (which is passed down through the maternal line) that shows five major genetic groups among New World peoples. They conclude that these data, along with other genetic data, suggest New World peoples coalesced “just prior to or immediately after the LGM”—the Late Glacial Maximum. The LGM refers to the last time ice sheets extended far south/north from the Earth’s poles, when mid-latitude locales were cooler and drier than today. As the ice formed, it lowered sea levels, when the ice captured sea water. Thus, more land was exposed on the margins of continents, and the Bering Sea land bridge could have provided a “highway” for Asian peoples traveling eastward, either on land or in small boats following the coast. Given the very early dates for human occupations from southern South America, O’Rourke and Raff note:

…the archaeological data in the Americas continue to raise questions regarding the timing and mode of colonization. The resolution afforded by the newer molecular data assists in evaluating alternative migration scenarios. [page R202]

Yet, even with all the data they bring together, O’Rourke and Raff conclude, as do many researchers regarding a wide variety of topics, that “more work is needed.” They write:

“Complete agreement between mtDNA, Y-chromosomal DNA and autosomal genetic systems has not yet been realized with respect to colonization models….” [page R206]

This is consistent with observations in the final article, “The Genetics of Human Adaptation: Hard Sweeps, Soft Sweeps, and Polygenic Adaptation” by Jonathan K. Pritchard, Joseph K. Pickrell, and Graham Coop. They agree with the last quote above:

Ultimately, a comprehensive model of the nature of selection would tell us how much adaptation occurs by any of a variety of different models and mechanisms. … To make real progress on these problems will require much greater integration of selection studies with biological information. [page R213]

These articles that summarize the current understanding of human archaeogenetics are insightful and informative, although some of the data they discuss is rather technical. Perhaps after you take a look at one or two of them, you will have some comments you’d like to note here—please login and do so!

The link to the special issue is here; you can download any of the eight papers individually.

* The original figure title reads: “Hypothesized routes for original migration into the Americas. The Beringian and Pacific coastal routes (blue and yellow, respectively) may have been roughly contemporaneous following the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), although contemporaneity is not certain. The more hypothetical northern migration path (red) implies a pre-LGM population movement. These migration paths need not be considered mutually exclusive.”

Archaeologists frequently make the point that artifacts can convey certain kinds of important information, but artifacts found in context can convey so much more information.

What does this distinction mean and why is it important?

What, after all, is context?

In the glossary on this website, context is defined as:

the location or placement of an artifact, feature, or site, including its relationship to other artifacts, features, and the surrounding environment. Context includes the soil around archaeological materials. Sometimes, the context of artifacts is more informative than the artifacts!

Consider a particular kind of stone tool, which we can date to say about 4000 BC based on the material it’s made from and the shape and style of its form. Say we find it with some pottery and other artifacts that we can date to much later, say about AD 500. And that layer is undisturbed, perhaps a midden layer that formed from trash disposed around houses in a village, with no other materials that are so old as the hypothetical stone tool in that midden.

Now, if archaeologists just have the stone tool, perhaps collected from the surface of a plowed field, they think: there’s a 6000-year-old occupation in this spot. (Occupation here refers to a period of use of a particular place on the landscape.)

If however, archaeologists find the stone tool when carefully excavating the midden, recording how undisturbed that layer is, what do they think?

The Shroud of Turin, from the official website.

Artifacts are often taken out of context. Consider the objects in an art museum, say in Atlanta, like a pottery vase from ancient Egypt or a sculpture from a Medieval French church. They are both artifacts and art objects. And they are objects no longer in context, since they’re displayed in a building far from where they were found (or abandoned).

Consider the Shroud of Turin, which is scheduled to be on display in Turin in spring 2010. Writes Victor L. Simpson of the Associated Press, and published in the Washington Post:

At least 1 million reservations from around the world have already poured in to secure three to five minutes to admire the cloth that has fascinated pilgrims and scientists alike, organizers of the April 10-May 23 showing told a news conference in Rome on Wednesday.

The Shroud is an artifact, art object, and “revered by many Christians as Jesus Christ’s burial cloth but described by some as a medieval forgery,” as Simpson notes. He says the earliest secure record of the shroud date to 1354.

The Shroud is being displayed in Turin (Torino). Is it in context? Login and discuss….

Archaeological sites contain irreplaceable information. Sites are nonrenewable and finite. They can only be excavated once. There is no second chance to recover the important information concealed in the soil. Our precious hidden heritage is vulnerable to erosion and deliberate destruction. Consider the following—Augusta Archaeological Society President John Arena writes with unfortunate news:

A few years ago the Archaeological Conservancy purchased Stallings Island, filled in looters pits, put goats and donkeys placed on the island to control the vegetation, and put a fence around the mound. The Archaeological Conservancy then approached the Augusta Archaeological Society and asked us if we would be site stewards for Stallings Island. Since then, we have periodically inspected the island to check on the animals and also check for looting. AAS member Bobby Brassell and I recently visited the island and found new evidence of looting. We found a couple of small holes inside the fence and a couple of larger holes outside the fence. This was the first evidence of looting we have found in approximately two years.

Looter pit documented by John Arena and Bobby Brassell in winter 2009/2010 on Stallings Island.

This looting, which is the deliberate destruction of archaeological deposits, is illegal. It is illegal because the private landowner has not given written permission for this ground-disturbing activity.

Private-public partnerships in archaeological stewardship are more common in the US Southwest, where there are vast expanses of public lands, many archaeological sites, and few staff members to oversee the land.

Without doubt, our hidden heritage is difficult to protect. Places that are isolated are particularly at risk to disturbance and destruction. The AAS’s stewardship of Stallings Island is an important undertaking.

Can you think of other practical methods archaeological site stewards can use to discourage looters and be more effective caretakers of our hidden past?

Click here to take a look at Resources at Risk: Defending Georgia’s Hidden Heritage, a special issue of Early Georgia published in May 2001, for more on archaeological stewardship and site destruction.

Georgia’s official copy of the Declaration of Independence was made with iron gall ink on parchment. It was made in response to a Congressional order made on January 18th, 1777.

So what does this mean: “iron gall ink on parchment?”

Parchment is a pretty common term. Of course, there is parchment paper, which you may have seen and used, but real parchment is made from animal skin (hide). Unlike leather, the skin is not tanned, but instead is treated with lime. Fine quality parchment is called vellum. The Wikipedia has a detailed entry on parchment.

How about iron gall ink? It’s not common these days! Of course, ink is becoming less common the more we use keyboards and make PDFs that remain forever digital!

Iron gall ink is also called iron gall nut ink or oak gall ink. The name for this ink comes from the two main components, iron and galls.

Inks, of course, are fluids containing pigments and/or dyes.

Iron is easy—it’s a metal, common to nails and other everyday items.

So, what are galls? Galls are round swellings on plants that are abnormal growths that the plant makes in response to damage, often made by insects. Oak marble galls are caused by gall wasps, which in this case lay their eggs in tender buds of particular species of oaks. The oak reacts by growing a lot of tissue to encapsulate this invasion. These galls are usually very round, hence the term “marble.”

Iron gall ink was the standard writing and drawing liquid used for hundreds of years across Europe, and beyond. Iron gall ink was used by Leonardo Da Vinci, and for the Dead Sea Scrolls; Van Gogh used it, and so did Bach. Indeed, it was the standard for public documents in the Colonies at the time of the Revolution.

Iron gall ink was preferred because of its longevity. The ink would bond with the parchment, rather than merely sit on the surface, like some other pigmented liquids. Also, the ink reacts to oxygen and becomes darker over the next few days after it is used.

To make iron gall ink, you start with two different liquids. The chemistry of iron gall ink is rather complicated, and best left to experts (for example, here). Briefly, one liquid is an iron solution, which can even be made by putting carpentry nails in vinegar. The other is an oak extraction, commonly made from oak marble galls, which have the high levels of tannin that are critical to the chemistry of the ink. When mixed, iron ions reacted with the tannic acid to make the ink (mostly). Other chemicals are added to make the liquid less acidic and more stable. Gum arabic has been commonly added to iron gall ink preparations to make the pigments stay in solution. It comes from the sap of acacia trees, native to northern Africa.

Are you surprised that it took two different trees to make the ink used for the documents of Colonial America? What else do you find interesting about “iron gall ink on parchment?”

Online materials

Downloadable PDF of the Federal archives copy of the Declaration of Independence….

Information on the Georgia copy of the Declaration of Independence in the State Archives….

To make iron gall ink….

Picture from Frontispiece of Riparian Lands of the Mississippi River: Past—Present—Prospective, by Frank H. Thompkins (1901, published in New Orleans, available as a free download from Google Books). Picture post-dates de Tocqueville’s trip.

At last, at last, my dear Mama, the signal is given and here we are cruising down the Mississippi, as rapidly as possible under the combined influence of steam and a strong current. We were beginning to despair of ever escaping the wilderness. If you take the trouble to examine your map, you will see that we had reached a pretty pass. In front of us, the Mississippi half frozen and no boats launching; overhead, a Russian sky, pure and frozen. We could have retraced our steps, you say. But that option was fast disappearing. During our sojourn in Memphis, the Tennessee had frozen, and carriages could no longer cross. So there we were, in the middle of a triangle formed by the Mississippi, the Tennessee, and impenetrable backwoods to the south. We might as well have been marooned on a rock in mid-ocean, inhabiting a world made expressly for us, without papers, without news of the rest of mankind, and facing the prospect of a long winter. That is how we spent a week. I must say, however, that except for our anxiety, those days were not disagreeable. We were staying with good people, who did their utmost to ingratiate themselves. Only twenty paces from our house was the edge of the world’s most beautiful forest, a sublime place, picturesque even under snow. We had rifles and plenty of powder and lead. A few miles from the village lived an Indian nation, the Chikasaws; once on their land, we always found a few natives happy to join us in the hunt. Hunting and warring are the sole occupations of the Indian, his pleasures as well. For large game we would have had to go too far afield. Instead, we killed a great many pretty birds of a species unknown in France. We found this highly diverting, though it didn’t do us much credit in the eyes of our allies. I killed red, blue, yellow birds, including parrots with plumage more brilliant than any I had ever seen. That’s how time passed, lightly at any given moment, but with the future weighing upon us.

So wrote the French historian known as Alexis de Tocqueville, in a letter dated 25 December 1831, while he was staying along the Mississippi River waiting for winter to let up so he could continue his trip. He had landed in New York City in May 1831, and had been traveling ever since researching American prisons, along with his supervisor, Gustave de Beaumont. Both worked for as prosecutors for the French government. (This letter has been excerpted in The Hudson Review, volume LXII, no. 3, translated by Frederick Brown, and available here on the web.) De Tocqueville is best known for the two volumes of De la démocratie en Amérique (usually translated as Democracy in America) that were published in 1835 and in 1840.

Toward the end of this excerpt, de Tocqueville describes Native Americans of the Chickasaw tribe (one of the so-called Five Civilized Tribes, which also included the Choctaw, Cherokee, Creek, and Seminole groups; all were officially removed from southeastern North America beginning in 1832, just after de Tocqueville’s visit, but that’s a story for another time/place), and their enjoyment of going hunting. What does he mean? Do all Chickasaws like to hunt? Perhaps de Tocqueville really means that MALE Chickasaws liked to hunt?

There’s another good clue for an archaeologist in this letter that would be difficult to document archaeologically. De Tocqueville writes that large game had been extirpated from around the community where he was trapped by the winter weather. Why was this? Do you think it was due to overhunting? Instead of hunting large game, when he went out nearby, de Tocqueville killed birds. He also describes those birds as very colorful, probably suggesting particular species to any ornithologists knowledgable about this area.

Historical archaeologists have the distinct advantage over their peers who work primarily with prehistoric peoples in that they have historical records that may illuminate the archaeological record. Sometimes, however, the historical archival materials are at odds with archaeological remains.

For example, written records may indicate that a family abstained from alcohol, yet among the foundations of their house, archaeologists may find a trove of bourbon bottles. What is the best way to interpret them? Does their location beneath the house necessarily mean that the family inhabiting the house above consumed their contents? Or, does their location, hidden in the basement, instead suggest secret consumption of alcohol? What additional archaeological data would help refine interpretation of the buried booze bottles?

The Weekly Ponder begins its second year of publication this week! The very first Weekly Ponder was posted on 26 January 2009.

We initiated the Weekly Ponder to guarantee a frequent posting of new material on the Society for Georgia Archaeology’s website. We felt that providing new stories was a key to making thesga.org a robust website that would further the Society’s mission and goals, as well as—we very much hoped—help attract members to the Society.

We wanted the Weekly Ponder to be not just words, but to have a picture, too. We thought that would add to its appeal. Indeed, we originally thought the topics addressed in Weekly Ponder stories would have a geographic focus on Georgia. However, we didn’t always have materials, especially photographs, to do that.

At present, the Weekly Ponder addresses issues regarding archaeology from around the globe, and seeks to offer an idea or information worth pondering each week.

All members of the SGA are invited to submit stories for posting to the Weekly Ponder. Please send your contributions to Editor Sammy Smith by clicking here.

Archaeologist Jerald Ledbetter records stratigraphic information to provide context for the looted artifacts and bone.

Burke County State Court Judge Jerry Daniel in January 2010 handed down heavy fines on four east Georgia men who pled guilty to multiple counts related to looting a Late Archaic, Stallings culture shell midden site on the Ogeechee River in southern Burke County, Georgia. The four men were apprehended on private land by Georgia Department of Natural Resources Ranger First Class Jeff Billips and Ranger First Class Grant Matherly in late September of 2009. Two were found on the site with digging tools and fled when approached by the rangers. They were caught and charged with criminal trespass and interfering with the duties of an officer. They initially pled not guilty.

The other two men were arrested the next day when they were observed in the act of digging on the site. They had a number of artifacts in their possession, including a bone tool, several spear points and a shell gorget. One of the latter two men was digging through a human burial when caught. They were charged with criminal trespass, digging on an archeological site without permission and littering, and pled guilty to all counts.

In statements made during the sentencing, Judge Daniel said he knew that important archeological sites in Burke County were being badly harmed by site looters and that he wanted to put a stop to this long-standing activity. He also emphasized that the looters were trespassing on private property, and stealing private property, since archaeological sites (with the exception of burials and associated artifacts) under law belong to the landowner. In an attempt to put an end to destructive site looting the judge levied heavy fines and penalties, which included a $1000 fine for each count, a minimum $7384.00 fine to repair the archeological and physical damage to the site, 12 weekends in jail, community service, three years of probation (which requires a surcharge payment of $52/month) and a ban on attending any type of artifact show. After hearing about this heavy sentence, the first two men then pled guilty to avoid potential harsher sentencing in a trial. The three men who live outside of Burke County (one is from Swainsboro and two are from Metter) were banned from Burke County for three years.

All four men have been digging on sites for many years and one acknowledged that he has dug on many sites on the Ogeechee River acknowledged selling artifacts.

Testifying at the sentencing were State Archaeologist Dr. David Crass and Georgia Council on American Indian Concerns (GCAIC) archaeologist Tom Gresham. Crass requested GCAIC involvement in the case, and Gresham was called to the site in early October to document the site and the extent of the looting. He saw numerous piles of Stallings/Thoms Creek pottery, animal bone and chert artifacts left by the looters, as well as spoil piles containing abundant fresh water shell. After the DNR officers gathered the evidence they needed, Gresham and three colleagues mapped the extent of the looting, calculating that about 290 square meters had been disturbed. They also gathered about 47 pounds of bone, 56 pounds of stone artifacts and 82 pounds of pottery. This material is now being analyzed by Jerald Ledbetter and Lisa O’Steen so that some scientific value can be salvaged from the site. The site dates to the Stallings and Thoms Creek cultures of the Late Archaic period, which spans a critical time in Georgia prehistory, from about 3500 to 4000 years ago. This was a time when Indians in the Southeast were becoming more sedentary and began heavily exploiting freshwater shell fish.

Dr. Crass told Judge Daniel that Burke County contains some of the most important Archaic Period sites in Georgia, and that DNR believes an educated and caring private landowner is often the best protection for such sites. He also pointed out that there is an important distinction to be made between wholesale digging and casual surface collecting, and that DNR (and Georgia code) recognizes this distinction.

The Georgia Council on American Indian Concerns actively supported the efforts of DNR’s Law Enforcement Division to prosecute the case and rectify the damage to the site and to the human burials. Although the Council was disappointed that felony charges of burial disturbance were not brought, it was explained that misdemeanor convictions and appropriate penalties in State Court were a better bet than the uncertain outcome of a felony charge in Superior Court.

Tom Gresham notes that these sentences were largely a result of several actions taken by the archeological community in the past two decades. The principal charge was excavating on a site without written permission of the landowner and without notifying DNR. This law was proposed by archeologists in 1993 to allow prosecution without requiring the landowner to press charges. Additionally, the DNR rangers had been trained and sensitized to the problem of site looting and were very effective in gathering evidence and presenting a strong case. Dr. Crass lauded the two rangers and their colleagues, Sergeant Max Boswell and Captain Thomas Barnard, saying that they handled the case with high professionalism.

Third, it is likely that a long running campaign by archaeologists to inform the public about the harm that site looting does to all Georgians created the atmosphere for harsher sentencing.

Society for Georgia Archaeology President Dennis Blanton observes that

the outcome of this case sends all of the right signals: Georgia’s irreplaceable archaeological sites are under siege and require vigilant protection, there is a broad spectrum of our citizens out there that cares deeply about them, and such sites have a critical story to tell about our human forbears. We can only hope that looters will take note and that others will be alert to illegal digging elsewhere in the state.

Tom Gresham remarked that he had never seen such a wide array of punctated and stab-and-drag motifs on the pottery. One sherd alone has five types of punctation. As noted a decade ago by Ken Sassaman, Stallings-like pottery on the Ogeechee River is mostly sand tempered, with very little fiber. Thus, it is more accurately typed as Thoms Creek pottery. Of the approximately 700 sherds collected from the spoil piles, every one is Thoms Creek/Stallings pottery. The animal bone contains a great deal of deer and turtle bone, and only small amounts of bird and other mammal bone. No fish bone has yet been identified. As mentioned, human bone, probably from two individuals, has also been identified.

Illegal digging on shell middens along the Ogeechee River is a long-standing problem, presumably fed by the antiquities market that highly values bone pins often found in shell middens. Ken Sassaman, Kristin Wilson and Frankie Snow wrote an article in the Spring 1995 issue of Early Georgia citing this problem and documenting two looted sites on the Ogeechee River not far from the recently looted site. It is anticipated that the analysis of the pottery, stone and bone from the present site will be described in an article in Early Georgia.

 

Quick: what is the only installation built by the United States military during the settling of the interior of the continent to protect Indians from Indians (rather than settlers from Native Americans, or for some other purpose)?

Out in the middle of North America, in what is now the state of Nebraska, near the North Loup River, near the modern community of Elyria, is a Plains infantry outpost called Fort Hartsuff. The outpost was active from 1874–1881. Since some of the major buildings were constructed with concrete-like walls, they have survived to this day. Fort Hartsuff is now a Nebraska State Historical Park.

In short, the Pawnee were an agricultural peoples in the 1850s, growing crops and supplementing their foodstuffs with meat from seasonal bison hunts. Because they were semi-sedentary, they were afflicted more European diseases like cholera and small pox than their nomadic neighbors, the Lakota Sioux. During this period, the Lakota population increased, they gained hunting territory, and harassed the Pawnee.

As Gary Wells notes:

By 1857, the Pawnee were so destitute that they signed the Treaty of Table Creek, giving up rights to all of their land in Nebraska in exchange for a small reservation of thirty miles along the Loup River, fifteen miles wide (present day Nance County), small annual payments and protection from the Lakota, by the U.S. Army.  The U.S. Government did a poor job fulfilling their part of the treaty, as the Civil War diverted money and soldiers away from the west.  Retaliation for the Pawnee against the Lakota finally came in 1864, when the Department of the Platte (district army headquarters) requested Pawnee volunteers to join the Army in their fight against the Sioux and Cheyenne, under the command of Frank North, as the Pawnee Scouts.  Frank had worked at the Pawnee Agency for many years and spoke fluid Pawnee.  He and his brother Luther North led the Pawnee Scouts on numerous engagements, including protecting the workers building the Transcontinental Railroad in Nebraska, and removing the Cheyenne from the Republican Valley in the Campaign of 1869, with General Carr commanding and Buffalo Bill Cody as scout.  During this campaign, Major Frank North was credited with the killing of the Cheyenne Chief Tall Bull, at the Battle of Summit Springs, and honored by the Nebraska Legislature in 1870 for his part in the Campaign.  The Pawnee called him the “Great White Father”.

Few settlers had pushed into the Loup River Valley before 1870, probably due to the proximity of the Pawnee Reservation on the lower Loup.  Even though the Pawnee were relatively harmless, it would have taken real courage for early settlers to travel through their villages, to reach the rich farmland beyond.  That same year, the Paul brothers (J.N. and N.J.) and the North brothers (Frank and Luther) departed from Columbus with a small group of men, and went up the Loup to the forks on a hunting trip.  That trip resulted in dreams of a cattle ranch and the determination to establish a new county called “Howard”.

Once Howard County was formed, it drew new settlers into the Loup Valley, but the Lakota were still using the trail down the Loup River Valleys, to raid the Pawnee on their reservation.  The Norths and the Pauls knew that these new settlers would need to be protected, so a request was sent to General C. C. Auger (Christopher Columbus Auger), commander of the Department of the Platte, in Omaha, to send troops.  The government had been lax on protecting the Pawnee, but with the white settlers in danger, two companies of soldiers were dispatched.

It took a while for Fort Hartsuff to be established. Wells continues:

By early September of 1874, the new permanent fort construction was underway.  It was across the river near the famous trail on present-day Bean Creek.  By December of 1874 some of the new fort’s buildings were complete.  All government supplies, soldiers and tentage had been removed to the new site and Camp Ruggles was soon forgotten to all but a few.

This new permanent fort was not to be made out of wood, but a lime, gravel and cement mixture, resembling today’s concrete.  Rather than transport large amounts of lime from eastern Nebraska, the quartermaster advertised locally for a contractor to supply the lime.  Joseph “Doc” Beebe, a close friend and neighbor of the North family in Columbus, bid and won the contract.  Doc built three lime kilns in the hills east of the North Loup River in northern Howard County (east of present day Cotesfield) and burned chalk-rock, taken form the nearby side-hills, in the kilns, using wood from the surrounding canyons, to produce his quick-lime product. (All three kilns are still visible today.)

On completion of Fort Hartsuff, Doc Beebe started construction of a two-story hotel, using the same construction techniques used at the fort.  The new hotel became known as the “Concrete Hotel” or the “Half-Way House”, as it was on the main supply road, half-way between Fort Hartsuff and the rail line in Grand Island. The eighty-mile trip was too long to travel in one day, so those traveling back and forth would stop at the Half-way House to eat and spend the night.

Archaeologists often use indirect data to infer past cultural practices. This is because only certain data are preserved in archaeological contexts. Yet, we have questions that extend beyond that preserved data. Other types of data allow archaeologists to identify important information not directly available from the (somewhat limited) archaeological record.

For example, researchers at the University of Sheffield in England, have been interested in crop husbandry practices. This means they’re interested in what species were chosen to husband, or use, for food or other purposes. The information about the chosen species is often incomplete, so the researchers decided to look beyond direct data (e.g., seeds found stored in vessels in houses they excavated) to information they could get from associated weed species. Because the weed species were associated with the preferred species, they constitute indirect data.

These researchers found, not surprisingly, that the weed species at the archaeological sites they studied were most linked to ecological variation, especially productivity and disturbance. They note:

The range of attributes related to productivity indicate that both soil fertility and water availability play a part in this variation and that there is an interaction between productivity levels and the level of disturbance. Seasonality is a secondary factor relating primarily to water availability in arid environments and sowing time in more temperate regions.

Researchers say that as a result of this analysis they were able to infer that irrigation was used at an archaeological site where they had no direct evidence of it. At another site, they were able to identify sowing time and intensive cultivation, using the patterns of weed species, etc.

The paper is called “Crops and weeds: the role of weed functional ecology in the identification of crop husbandry methods,” and is by G. Jones, M. Charles, A. Bogaard, and J. Hodgson, all at the University of Sheffield, Department of Archaeology and Prehistory.

The paper was published on pages 70–77 in the Journal of Archaeological Science (2009). At present, the paper can be downloaded for free. Get to it by clicking here; it’s paper number 9.

In mid-December 2009, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar announced that the National Park Service is awarding $46.5 million in historic preservation grants to 59 states and U.S. territories.

Let’s face it: $46.5 million is a big pot compared to our household budgets!

Divided among the fifty states, the District of Columbia, the U.S. Territories, the Federated States of Micronesia, the Republic of the Marshall Islands, and the Republic of Palau, however, that comes out to an average of $788,136 if split evenly among the 59 entities receiving the money.

Georgia’s piece of this historic preservation pie? $902,818. That’s 1.97 percent of the total, and somewhat more than the average award.

Arrow points to Georgia value, when ranked among all states (not all entities receiving funds).

The press release from the Secretary’s office says that the division is “based on a formula that considers the size, population, and number of historic properties of each area.”

According to the press release:

The National Park Service will administer the grants through a fund established under the National Historic Preservation Act. The grants can be used through September of 2011 for historic property inventories, resource protection planning, nominations for the National Register of Historic Places, monitoring Federal historic preservation requirements, technical assistance for those seeking to preserve and protect historic resources, assisting local government preservation programs, and acquisition or development of historic properties.

The press release lists what each state and other entities will receive. The list is titled “Fiscal Year 2010 Historic Preservation Fund Apportionment to States under P.L. 111-88.”

The total received by the states will be $42,826,949, or 92.1 percent of the total. That’s an average of $856,539 for each of the fifty states. Georgia’s portion, $902,818, is slightly above the state average, then. Twenty-one states received more than the average, and none received less than $500,000.

Nine states will receive more than a million dollars; they are California ($1,476,028), New York ($1,344,989), Texas ($1,319,232), Pennsylvania ($1,167,552), Illinois ($1,131,366), Michigan ($1,101,370), Ohio ($1,093,803), Florida ($1,021,027), and Alaska ($1,002,486). Note that all are large in land area (and, except for Alaska, have large populations), and thus may be considered to have more resources than small states. These nine states will receive 22.92 percent of the total grants, and 24.89 percent of the total given to the states. When the grants to these nine states are subtracted from the total, the other fifty entities (that is 41 states and nine non-states) divide $35,842,147, for an average of just under $716,843.

Five states will receive less than $650,000. All are small in land area. They are New Hampshire ($616,382), Rhode Island ($575,378), Hawaii ($571,458), Vermont ($570,562), and Delaware ($525,518).

Generally, the lowest amount went to the nine non-states. They received a total of $3,673,051 and an average of $408,117. Puerto Rico ($640,462) and the District of Columbia ($522,668) were the only non-state entities receiving more than $500,000.

The SGA members know that the Department of the Interior is responsible for many, many historical and archaeological resources. As Secretary Salazar is quoted in the press release:

Preserving and celebrating our nation’s rich history is a vital part of the Department of the Interior’s mission. These grants from the Historic Preservation Fund will assist state, tribal and local governments in telling their stories while providing both cultural and economic benefits to their communities and to the nation as a whole.

Comments? Log in and leave yours….

Published in spring 2009, Richard Wrangham’s book Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human (Basic Books) argues that the ability to use fire for cooking foodstuffs allowed the changes that have made humans a distinct species.

Says Wrangham, “cooking is the signature feature of the human diet, and indeed, of human life—but we have no idea why. It’s the development that underpins many other changes that have made humans so distinct from other species.”

Cooking changed digestion and, Wrangham argues, freed up physiological energy that made the larger brains we see in the fossil record possible. Cooking made many foods easier to chew, and increased the potential for food preservation. Also, using fire meant more warmth and protection during dark hours.

In the introduction, Wrangham writes,

Nowadays we need fire wherever we are. Survival manuals tell us that if we are lost in the wild, one of our first actions should be to make a fire. In addition to warmth and light fire gives us hot food, safe water, dry clothes, protection from dangerous animals, a signal to friends and even a sense of inner comfort. In modern society fire might be hidden from our view, tidied away in the basement boiler, trapped in the engine block of a car, or confined in the power-station that drives the electrical grid, but we are still completely dependent on it. A similar tie is found in every culture.

Wrangham says he’s the first to advance this argument, that the shift to cooking food made such a difference in human evolution. If this hypothesis is so plausible, why hasn’t it been put forth before? Also, what do you think of this argument?

Links

Harvard University press release by Steve Brandt.

Book review by Simon Ings on Telegraph.co.uk.

Book review on Powells books website, including link to author interview.

Book review by Dwight Garner on the New York Times website.

Basic Books webpage on this book.

Excerpt from the book’s introduction on the New York Times website.

Greenspace projects involve lands set aside to remain undeveloped. In cities, publicly owned greenspace is often in parks. The central purpose of greenspace is to assure that some terrain remain protected from building.

However, greenspace, or lands set aside for planning and conservation, also has significant collateral bonuses. For example, they provide opportunities for recreation, and ecological and environmental benefits. Also, preserving greenspace can often mean the preservation of archaeological sites.

How does that happen?

Here is an example of a new park in Atlanta, called Morningside Nature Preserve. The 32-acre Preserve was dedicated on a foggy morning—Monday, December 14th, 2009. Yes, it’s a preserve, and it is also greenspace.

The Preserve’s property was landlocked, or in the middle of a developed area—both residential and business—and lacking legal access, even for a footpath. Thus, a big part of making this preserve more useful was to obtain legal access, develop a parking area, and build a path from the parking area to the core of the Preserve.

At the dedication, interested individuals and a few dogs assembled. Speakers spoke. Many individuals and organizations received heartfelt thanks and a moment of applause.

Several characteristics of this ritual are common to this sort of dedication. First, it took the cooperation of many stakeholder organizations to make this Preserve happen. The impetus for formation of this preserve came from a few individuals, who kept pushing for this to happen for over nine years.

There was also considerable institutional cooperation. Important organizations involved in the establishment and development of the Morningside Nature Preserve included, of course, the city of Atlanta and several neighborhood organizations, the city’s parks department (which is now responsible for maintaining the Preserve), and, especially Georgia Power Company. Georgia Power set aside land for the parking lot and contributed to development of an access corridor to the central part of the Preserve.

Without all of this cooperation, the Morningside Nature Preserve could not have been dedicated.

Check out the photo gallery for a dozen pictures of this event and the Preserve.

So, how do greenspace projects, like the Morningside Nature Preserve, benefit archaeological preservation? Don’t forget to add your comment….

 

Detail from map by Jonathan Corum, published in the New York Times here.

The phrase “Old Europe” refers to Neolithic Europe, or the portions of the European continent inhabited by people who made pottery and lived in small villages, ate domesticated and wild plant foods, between about 7000 BC and around 1500 BC (when the Bronze Age began in parts of Europe).

Data on these ancient peoples is sketchy, in part because their populations were relatively low, and in part because this whole region has had many settlements and sometimes intensive land use, which damaged and sometimes obliterated the ancient, Neolithic remains.

The word Neolithic translates as New Stone Age, and was originally used to denote peoples who used ground stone tools instead of only those stone tools made through percussion techniques. In the context of early Europe, Neolithic refers to the first agriculturalists who occupied the area. Many archaeologists believe their ancestors emmigrated into the area from the Near East (aka the Levant), bringing both their knowledge of farming and their Indo-European languages with them.

In a recent article dated 30 November 2009 in the New York Times discussing a recent exhibit at New York University called “The Lost World of Old Europe: the Danube Valley, 5000-3500 B.C.,” John Noble Wilford notes:

New research, archaeologists and historians say, has broadened understanding of this long overlooked culture, which seemed to have approached the threshold of “civilization” status. Writing had yet to be invented, and so no one knows what the people called themselves. To some scholars, the people and the region are simply Old Europe.

Actually, most archaeologists use the phrase Neolithic Europe, rather than “Old Europe.” The Lithuanian archaeologist Marija Gimbutas (1921–1994) coined the term “Old Europe.” Gimbutas theorized that the people native to Old Europe, the non-agriculturalists, had a goddess-centric belief system and were peaceful peoples. Those arriving from the Levant had a patriarchal and hierarchical society, and, she said, the men were warriors. Her interpretation is based in part on what she saw as the absence of fortified settlements prior to the arrival of the invading groups.

Whatever term you use and whatever interpretation you follow, some artifacts from Neolithic Europe required careful craftsmanship to manufacture. Wilford continues:

At its peak, around 4500 B.C., said David W. Anthony, the exhibition’s guest curator, “Old Europe was among the most sophisticated and technologically advanced places in the world” and was developing “many of the political, technological and ideological signs of civilization.”

Wilford also notes:

The story now emerging is of pioneer farmers after about 6200 B.C. moving north into Old Europe from Greece and Macedonia, bringing wheat and barley seeds and domesticated cattle and sheep. They established colonies along the Black Sea and in the river plains and hills, and these evolved into related but somewhat distinct cultures, archaeologists have learned. The settlements maintained close contact through networks of trade in copper and gold and also shared patterns of ceramics.

For more information, here’s a link to the exhibit catalog.

Food for thought

Does the terminology you use, for example Old Europe instead of Neolithic Europe, telegraph certain meanings to your audience? Is this good or bad?

Suggested reading

These are all recent single-author volumes, which tend to be more comprehensive than edited volumes. They tend to have an academic style and vocabulary.

Anthony, David W.
2007 The Horse, the Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World. Princeton University Press, Princeton.

Beckwith, Christopher I.
2009 Empires of the Silk Road: A History of Central Eurasia from the Bronze Age to the Present. Princeton University Press, Princeton.

Bernstein, William J.
2008 A Splendid Exchange: How Trade Shaped the World. Atlantic Monthly Press, New York.

Earle, Timothy K.
2002 Bronze Age Economics: The Beginnings of Political Economies. Westview Press, Boulder, Colorado.

Harding, A.F.
2000 European Societies in the Bronze Age. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Kristiansen, Kristian
1998 Europe before History. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Maisels, Charles Keith
1999 Early Civilizations of the Old World: The Formative Histories of Egypt, the Levant, Mesopotamia, India, and China. Routledge, New York.

Between 2004 and 2006, Southern Research conducted two separate data recovery investigations at the Leake site, located in the Etowah River floodplain just southwest of Cartersville in Bartow County. Conducted for the Georgia Department of Transportation, Bartow County Water Department, and Georgia Power, both of these data recovery projects were limited to the newly expanded right-of-way in advance of the widening of Highways 61/113. Through mechanical stripping and test unit excavation, the data recovery excavations uncovered approximately 4,650 square meters of the site.

The Leake site is comprised of state sites 9BR2, 663, 664, 665, 666, 667, and 668 and covers at least 115 acres; three sites (9BR17, 24, and 194) on Ladds Mountain across the river appear to have been important components of the Leake cultural landscape as well. The primary occupation dates to the Middle Woodland period circa 300 B.C. – 650 A.D, while a significant Late Mississippian village component, investigated by David Hally, Jim Rudolph, and Jim Langford during the 1988-1990 University of Georgia field schools, is present in the area of Mound A. Investigations at Leake have documented significant archaeological deposits, including the remains of three mounds, extensive midden deposits, structural remains, craft production and ceremonial feasting deposits, and a probable circular ditch/moat enclosure. With each end appearing to connect to the river, the ditch enclosure situates Mounds A and B on an island and separates the Cartersville and Swift Creek components. Non-local and ideologically-valuable artifacts indicative of Hopewellian interregional interaction, such as Ohio Flint Ridge blades, human and animal figurines, cut mica, copper, galena, and quartz crystals are present at the site, particularly within the Swift Creek area of the site. The cultural and geographical positioning were important factors for the development of Leake into a major Hopewellian ceremonial center that linked the Southeast and the Midwest during the Middle Woodland period. In short, the data indicate that the Leake site served as a gateway city between these two regions, a place where peoples from both areas congregated for rituals and ceremonies.

The Leake site complex is an archaeological resource of state (and national) significance. With this in mind, it was at the Fort Daniel Faire in Gwinnett County that the idea for attempting to place the site on the Georgia Trust for Historic Preservation’s 2010 Places in Peril listing was born (Fort Daniel was on the 2009 Places in Peril list). The Places in Peril list includes historic resources in Georgia that are in danger of being destroyed, whether from neglect, development, or otherwise. In conversation with Larissa Thomas at the Faire, The Profile editor, revealed that the Trust was looking for an archaeological site for inclusion on the Places in Peril list, which predominantly lists above-ground historic resources. Larissa introduced me to Jordan Poole, Georgia Trust Field Services Manager and director of the Places in Peril, who encouraged me to submit the Leake site for consideration. Dean Wood and I completed and submitted the application, and a few months later we learned that the site was chosen.

While the site boundary has never been systematically defined, the known area of the Leake site extends across several different ownership parcels. Significant portions of the site are owned by the City of Cartersville and Bartow County, both of whom have done an outstanding job of protecting their parcels. However, the preservation of several privately-owned parcels is in doubt, as the Leake site area is being rapidly developed. Although the known extent of the site does not extend to the north much beyond the railroad tracks, the area north of the railroad is an industrial park. Given the nature of the Leake site, it is not unlikely that related deposits are present north of the tracks, and there is some evidence of a fourth mound north of the railroad adjacent the river.

Less than 30 years ago, there were no modern buildings within the known boundaries of the site (see 1981 aerial photograph). By the time of the first UGA field school in 1988, one had been erected east of Mound A, while two were constructed in the area of Mound C, one of which sits atop the northern half of Mound C. By the late 1990’s when Southeastern Archaeological Services tested the site, two modern buildings had been erected in the area of Mounds A and B.

During the course of the data recovery excavations, the City was looking into purchasing a two-acre parcel on which a portion of Mound A is located. However, the landowner of the adjacent parcel, who operates a business on the site, purchased the two-acre parcel, an immediate threat to Mound A due to his plans to expand the parking lot. Already having graveled over the northern portion of Mound A on the existing parcel, the future of the southern portion of Mound A was in serious doubt. Thus, a group of concerned persons worked to get the City to swap an adjoining non-mound parcel they own with the business owner. While the southern portion of Mound A was protected in this manner, a large area immediately southwest of this mound (including a portion of the ditch) is now under the expanded parking lot.

Further, piecemeal attrition of the site has continued. The northeastern corner of the site, an approximately 6 acre area contained by the ditch feature and bounded by the highway and River Court has recently been developed despite the documented presence of a midden in this area.

During the coming year, we plan to use the exposure and support from the Places in Peril listing to raise awareness of the site in hopes that the remaining portions can be protected. We plan to conduct educational meetings in the community and with county and city officials to raise support for protection of the site. We plan to have an event at the site for the 2010 Archaeology Month. We will be doing interviews, we are forming a “Friends of the Leake Site” group (we have an informal one on Facebook), we will be regularly updating the website about Leake, and we will be giving talks and lectures. Perhaps most importantly, our goal is to raise money to purchase the privately-owned parcels for preservation. So spread the word, get involved, help us out, so that we can protect the remaining portions of the Leake site from being lost. Please do not hesitate to contact Scot Keith (home email, work email) or Dean Wood (work email) for more information.

Fact: Georgia has many archaeological sites along the coast at sea level or only a few feet above sea level.

Fact: Scientists have measured a global rise in sea level over the last few years.

Fact: Scientists say the sea level will continue to rise.

The question: how much will it rise?

Why do we ask this question on the Society for Georgia Archaeology’s website? Because members of the society are concerned about the impact a sea level rise will have on coastal archaeological sites. One type of coastal site is prehistoric shell mounds, that is, mounds of shells discarded by ancient diners. Other coastal archaeological sites are historic buildings like lighthouses and fishing piers and docks.

So, along with other scientists, archaeologists look to research on changes in the sea level and the impact it will have on the shoreline. This means we look to models, or scientific predictions, of how the sea level will rise, both how much and how.

Modeling such a complex situation is very difficult. A model in this sense is a carefully described if-then assessment of the factors involved, and how they interact. For example, if rainfall increases, or if temperatures increase, or if desertification increases, THEN the effect is…whatever. A robust model will incorporate many, many factors, and describe how these factors are interrelated, or how changes in one will cause changes in others.

In a recent editorial article called “Rising seas and retreating coastlines” in the professional journal Climatic Change, and available free online, Roshanka Ranasinghe and Marcel J.F. Stive discuss what we need to generate a good model for predicting climate change:

A robust solution to the problem [that is, modeling climate change] lies in comprehensive bottom–up (small-scale, process-based) and top–down (large-scale, behavior-based) numerical models. Once comprehensively validated by field data, such numerical models can be strategically applied to determine quantitative forcing-response relationships of complex, non-linear coastal processes. These relationships can then be aggregated and/or parameterized and embedded into a robust and easy-to-use numerical model which accounts for at least the primary physical processes governing coastal recession. (page 467)

There are a lot of Big Words there!

So, what do these sentences mean?

The first sentence means that a good model will take into account both local, small-scale factors (e.g., the angle of an individual island relative to offshore currents) and large-scale factors (e.g., widescale changes in landuse patterns so that vegetation cover increases).

The second sentence is a recommendation that the model be cross-checked with actual field data. In other words, it’s not enough to make a model, but a good model should be checked against data we already have to make sure they fit the model. This also makes the model more robust.

The last sentence recommends taking the factors and the existing data and incorporating them into a numerical or mathematical model that includes the factors usually discussed—like temperature, rainfall, and landuse changes—and also includes coastline processes including the impact of waves along the shore, and how sediment is transported along the shoreline.

This last is probably something you’ve not heard about with regard to the climate change debate. Still, the recommendation to include how sediments move, and how this affects landforms does seem important. After all, as the water level rises, this is the place it contacts land, and this is the place where the higher levels will change the land.

What other factors do you think are important in modeling climate change?

This website has another, older story on climate change and Georgia archaeology; find it here.

Illustration by Barry Roal Carlsen, provided by University of Wisconsin—Madison.

Did people kill off Pleistocene megafauna in North America, or were those species done in by climate shifts? Or…?

This question is still not answered unambiguously.

However, research by Jacquelyn Gill of the University of Wisconsin—Madison shows that neither scenarios is probable based on fossil pollen, charcoal and dung fungus spores that date to just after the ice retreated. Neither the mass extinction model, based on heavy hunting, nor simple climate and thus habitat change matches the data she and colleagues Stephen T. Jackson (University of Wyoming), Katherine B. Lininger (University of Wisconsin—Madison), and Guy S. Robinson (Fordham University) have marshalled.

According to Terry Devitt’s story (19 November 2009) on the University of Wisconsin—Madison website:

The decline of North America’s signature ice age mammals was a gradual process, the Wisconsin researchers explain, taking about 1,000 years. The decline in the huge numbers of ice age animals is preserved in the fossil record when the fungal spores disappear from the record altogether: “About 13.8 thousand years ago, the number of spores drops dramatically. They’re barely in the record anymore,” Gill explains.

Devitt continues:

While both the extinction of North America’s ice age megafauna and the sweeping change to the landscape are well-documented phenomena, there was, until now, no detailed chronology of the events that remade the continent’s biological communities beginning about 14.8 thousand years ago. Establishing that the disappearance of mammoths, giant beavers, ground sloths and other large animals preceded the massive change in plant communities, promises scientists critical new insight into the dynamics of extinction and its pervasive influence on a given landscape.

Archaeologists are often confronted with this situation: how do we get data on human behavior or the human situation, when we don’t have it directly from the archaeological record of human occupations? This research by Gill and her colleagues shows one solution developed to help understand the ecological situation in interior North America early in human occupation of the continent.

Stand by for more data….

Photo by Herbert Knosowski/Associated Press.

Writes John Tierney in the 16 November 2009 New York Times:

Scientists and curators have generally supported the laws passed in recent decades giving countries ownership of ancient “cultural property” discovered within their borders. But these laws rest on a couple of highly debatable assumptions: that artifacts should remain in whatever country they were found, and that the best way to protect archaeological sites is to restrict the international trade in antiquities.

Tierney’s article is titled “A Case in Antiquities for ‘Finders Keepers’,” and discusses the ownership of artifacts traded on the international art market. Some of these items are very well known, for example, the bust of Nefertiti from what is now Egypt, presently kept in a Berlin Museum.

Obviously each nation involved may have laws that conflict, making the ownership of antiquities a complicated matter, with no obvious, undeniable solutions.

If you own a piece of land in the United States of America, do you own the antiquities on that land? Is the same true if that land is in England?

On November 4th 2009, the Georgia Trust for Historic Preservation announced its 2010 list of Georgia’s top ten Places in Peril, which includes the Leake Archaeological Site, a rich Middle Woodland and Late Mississippian-period prehistoric settlement on the outskirts of Cartersville. According to the Trust’s press release:

Located in the Etowah Valley Historic District in Bartow County, the Leake site is a prehistoric archaeological site dating as far back as 300 BC. The site contains the remnants of at least three earthen mounds and a vast moat; midden deposits with artifacts from everyday and ceremonial activities; former structures; and human burials.

The site began as a small domestic village that developed into one of the most important sites in the Southeast, both as a ceremonial and political hub. The Leake site extends along many different property parcels, some of which have already been industrially or commercially developed. The area surrounding the site is growing rapidly, so the unoccupied tracts of land in the archaeological site are in imminent danger of being destroyed.

The news release goes on:

Places in Peril is designed to raise awareness about Georgia’s significant historic, archaeological and cultural resources, including buildings, structures, districts, archaeological sites and cultural landscapes that are threatened by demolition, neglect, lack of maintenance, inappropriate development or insensitive public policy.

Through Places in Peril, the Trust will encourage owners and individuals, organizations and communities to employ proven preservation tools, financial resources and partnerships in order to reclaim, restore and revitalize historic properties that are in peril.

Read more about what excavations have revealed about this rich archaeological site at the informative website Bartowdig.com. You also may be interested in joining the Friends of the Leake Site group on Facebook.

Scot Keith, an archaeologist who lead recent excavations at the Leake Site, notes, “with help from the Georgia Trust for Historic Preservation and numerous volunteers, we will be conducting many activities in the next year (and beyond) to foster public awareness of the site and its important place in history. This will include public education days at the site, community meetings, interviews, articles, partnerships and grants, research and fieldwork, and regular website updates.”

Food for thought

Why is the Georgia Trust for Historic Preservation’s Places in Peril list necessary? What can you do to help other Places in Peril and the Leake Site?

Artist’s rendering of the Roman town of Venta Icenorum during boom times, by Sue White, provided by the University of Nottingham to Science Daily.

In July 2009, Science Daily, an online news website, published an article about the Roman town of Venta Icenorum at Caistor St. Edmund in Norfolk, England, describing the results of recent research conducted by archaeologists with the University of Nottingham

A recent high-resolution geophysical survey, which does not require excavation or other ground disturbance, revealed, according to the University of Nottingham:

the town’s water supply system (detecting the iron collars connecting wooden water pipes), and the series of public buildings including the baths, temples and forum, known from earlier excavations.

Nevertheless, among all these architectural features, the survey showed areas that had not been built up, and remained open. Thus, the dense urban area that previous researchers believed characterized this settlement was not discovered by the survey.

Unlike many Roman settlements in the British Isles, this one was abandoned in Medieval times, which means there is less superimposed construction and disturbance that alter the earlier occupation.

Google Earth satellite view of remains of the Roman town of Venta Icenorum.

Many archaeologists believe that, although geophysical surveys and other “black box” studies can reveal important information about subsurface remains without disturbing them, on balance they are no substitute for the detailed data than can be recovered by excavation.

What do you think?

More details on the archaeological project can be found here.

The University of Georgia Libraries have a special section called the Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library. Among the materials available there is a rare map collection. Some of the maps have been scanned and are available in digital form online.

This is the eastern portion of a 1796 map (labeled Negative 4911; the author is Tanner). The original depicts roads or trails and rivers from the Georgia Coast westward to the Mississippi River. Indians still held the interior, but the map shows the encroachment of Euroamericans from both the Atlantic and, to some degree, the Gulf Coasts.

This item is in the Rare Map Collection online, in the group of maps called “Frontier to New South.” Click here for that listing.

What other interesting materials can you find in the online collections held by the Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library?

Georgia’s Secretary of State’s website includes useful reference materials including the Georgia Archives. Current featured content on that website includes the Virtual Vault, which, the website says:

is your portal to some of Georgia’s most important historical documents, from 1733 to the present. The Virtual Vault provides virtual access to historic Georgia manuscripts, photographs, maps, and government records housed in the state archives.

The “Touring Georgia” section of the Virtual Vault includes four photographs from around Clayton, including one of this lovely and bucolic farm.

While you are likely to expect digital versions of important government records, like tax digests and death certificates, take a look and see what else you find—and let us know what surprises you or what you’re glad you’ve found—online!

Transportation networks, and the potential for social connectivity across landmasses and via waterways and along coastlines is worth pondering as part of reconstructing an understanding of our human past that emphasizes continuity—social, political, technological, etc.—rather than a series of major events. Barry Cunliffe’s Europe between the Oceans: 9000 BC to AD 1000 (Yale University Press, 2008) is not inexpensive—due in part to its wonderful visuals—but it is worth tracking down as an example of this approach. Cunliffe makes the point repeatedly as he traces Europe’s past that this was not a large area, nor was it trackless. He views Europe’s landmass as a peninsula, which could be crossed, despite a few mountainous zones, by following river systems, or by circumnavigating the landmass. Cunliffe writes:

In Europe, distances are not great and knowledge could spread rapidly. The networks of communication pulsated with the flow of information—stories of exotic lands and people, technological know-how, systems of values and beliefs. At the notes where the exchanges took place…, the excitement of the new would have been palpable. Even the most remote communities would not have been totally immune from the flow of information. So it was that the disparate peoples of Europe, from the most innovative to the most conservative, became enmeshed in networks of contact that inexorably drove change. (page 29)

As reviewer Benjamin Schwarz noted in The Atlantic:

Geography forms the essential basis of Cunliffe’s history. The waters encircling Europe, the transpeninsular rivers that penetrated it, and its topography, currents, tides, and seasonal wind patterns all determined millennia-old sailing routes, and thus the goods and beliefs transported along them. From Cunliffe’s perspective, even the Roman Empire was just an interlude, and perhaps its main achievement was to institutionalize through its ports, roads, and market centers Europe-wide networks of exchange that had been operating since the Middle Stone Age.

By stressing historical continuity and adroitly employing a wide-ranging archaeological record to highlight mobility and interconnectedness, Cunliffe draws a startling picture. Europe, he demonstrates, was geographically and culturally merely “the western excrescence of the continent of Asia.” His archaeological and topographic analysis shows how for thousands of years the steppe lands linked central Asia to the Great Hungarian Plain, thus providing “easy access” from China to the Atlantic Ocean. Here was a corridor for trade and migration, starting with nomadic groups deep in prehistory and continuing through the preclassical, classical, medieval, and early modern eras with great hordes of Cimmerians, Scythians, Sarmatians, Alans, Huns, Magyars, Bulgars, Moguls, and Tatars. Knowledge of, for example, the chariot seems to have moved from the Russian forest steppe (the earliest known examples date to 2800 B.C.) to the Carpathian basin in Hungary and, by the 16th century B.C., to Mycenaean Greece and Sweden. Sarmatian horsemen, originally from central Asia, served in northern England as mercenaries in the Roman army.

The core of the European peninsula, without northern Scandinavia.

The Caribbean area, including southern North America and Central America.

These two satellite views are screen-grabs from Google Earth (downloadable for free), and are at the same scale; north is “up” on both. Note how the maritime edges of Europe provide a different transportation scenario compared to continental North America. Clearly, the Arctic, the Great Lakes region, and the circum-Caribbean area are the only parts of North America with the topographic potential for similar maritime transportation networks.

Yet, summaries of the prehistory of the Southeast rarely mention much about circum-Caribbean transportation and exchange networks. Is this because data for them are scanty? Is it due to the fractured modern political boundaries of the region? Is it because such exchange networks just didn’t exist? Or…?

Click here to read The Atlantic review by Benjamin Schwarz, published in December 2008.

Click here to read about Sir Barry Cunliffe on Wikipedia.

On the highest hill in Astoria, Oregon, near the mouth of the Columbia River, stands a 125-foot tall column, patterned after Trajan’s Column in Rome. The exterior of both have a series of carved scenes winding around and up the column. The Astoria Column was built in 1926, and has an interior stairway of over 160 steps, and observation deck near the top.

The Astoria Column has fourteen different scenes carved by Italian immigrant artist Attilo Pusterla. They are in temporal order, and begin at the base of the column and wind upward. However, by the time of the dedication of the monument in July 1926, only a portion of the sgraffito bas-relief carved scenes were complete. The now-complete scenes, if unwound, would extend for over 500 feet.

The carvings quickly began to deteriorate in this location, exposed to storms from the Pacific and the freeze-thaw of winter. It was only in the mid-1990s, with the assistance of conservators from J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, that the column’s art was better stabilized.

Even a cursory examination of cross-cultural data indicates that around the globe, in many societies, peoples with many belief systems have built structures important to them on high places. In addition, the structures are often unusually tall when compared to residential buildings. Indeed, important buildings are often tall, large, or both.

Why do you think this is so?

Website of Friends of the Astoria Column.

Wikipedia entry on Trajan’s Column.

An important event in the history of the telephone happened on Jekyll Island. If you wander around the historic area south of the Jekyll Island Clubhouse, now the Jekyll Island Club Hotel, you will find a plexiglass box encompassing an old telephone. A plaque erected by the Dixie Chapter of the Telephone Pioneers of America below the phone dated January 1965 reads:

The first transcontinental telephone call was transmitted by a telephone instrument of this type on January 23, 1915. Mr. Theodore N. Vail, President of American Telephone and Telegraph Company, talked from Jekyll Island to Dr. Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the telephone in New Your; Thomas A. Watson, Assistant to Dr. Bell, in San Francisco; and to President Woodrow Wilson in Washington, D.C.

Thus, four men at four locations participated in that first transcontinental call. The AT&T website notes that:

At one point during the call, someone asked Professor Bell if he would repeat the first words he ever said over the telephone. He obliged, picking up the phone and repeating “Mr. Watson, come here, I want you.” To which Watson, in San Francisco, replied, “It would take me a week now.”

The modern company AT&T used to be American Telephone and Telegraph Company. In 1908, Theodore N. Vail, President of the company, prioritized completion of a transcontinental telephone line. Their goal was to have the transcontinental line open in time for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition, scheduled for 1915 in San Francisco.

The final pole for the transcontinental phone line was erected and the line strung in June 1914, but officials waited for the Exposition before they made the first call, to heighten the fanfare.

Why was Mr. Vail on Jekyll Island for this historic event? How does this compare to our modern satellite and cell phone services? Why are new phone systems in the Third World most commonly cell networks?

Panama-Pacific International Exposition on the web.

Downloadable digital copy of Exposition Fact-Book: Panama-Pacific International Exposition at San Francisco, 1915.

Jekyll Island Club Hotel website.

In Cultures of Habitat: On Nature, Culture, and Story (Counterpoint, 1997), ethnobotanist and essayist Gary Paul Nabhan argues that modern peoples tend not to have opportunities for discovery in the natural world, and that this distance from our environment means we don’t grasp the complexity of the world and of ecology. He writes on pages 97–98:

I have a wish for humanity: that all of our children would become field naturalists as they grow up. Imagine living in a society where every youth has the chance to explore the earth on foot and in hand, getting to know its creatures on a first-name basis.

…

The reason that I want everyone to become field naturalists has nothing to do with financial or professional rewards—or, for that matter, with the hope of advancing science. To the contrary, ecology seems to be the field in which I am most likely to fail to prove any scientific hypothesis I attempt to test. And that’s why I like it; I am constantly reminded how wrong I can be about how the world works.

That’s half the problem: most of us need to be humbled more often, to be reminded that nature is not only more complex than we think, it’s more complex than we can think.

The other half of the problem is that most children today grow up robbed of the chance of discovering anything at all on their own. They are told early on that scientists in little white coats discover all the world’s “facts” in neat, antiseptic laboratories. These facts are then handed to an ecologically illiterate public on an equally antiseptic platter filled with pasteurized, homogenized truisms to nibble on as stale appetizers empty of much of their former nutrition. Trouble is, all those tasty tidbits taste far more bland than any wild fruit plucked right off the tree.

And so I wish to champion the fine art of discovering, a process far different from the heroic act of discovery. Through the process of discovering, we seldom achieve any hard-and-fast truth about the world, its cornucopia of creatures, or its cultural interactions with them. Instead, we are inevitably assured of how little we know about that on which each of our lives depends.

Nabhan defines cultures of habitat as human communities that have long interacted with a particular landscape—and its non-human occupants—that is local to those communities. Usually we think of cultures as societies with particular customs and shared beliefs that are passed along from generation to generation. It stands to reason that cultures would have a grounding in their local habitats. Indeed, understanding this kind of human-environment linkage is fundamental to modern archaeological research and theory-building.

Do you think so many people find archaeology interesting because of the potential for discovery that Nabhan outlines? Is there a link between archaeological research and understanding and a knowledge of natural history as Nabhan describes? Or do you mostly disagree with Nabhan?

Elsewhere in this volume, Nabhan argues that people are not natural stewards of the environment. Do you agree?

One thing we have to consider when reconstructing ruins of any sort, including historic and ancient buildings, is the period or date to make the reconstruction match.

For example, we know that the main house at Monticello, Thomas Jefferson’s plantation just outside Charlottesville, Virginia, was modified and rebuilt over more than forty years. In addition, after Jefferson’s death, there were other modifications and restorations.

Any restorer has to make choices. In the case of Monticello, do you restore the building to the way it was on the day that Jefferson died—to the extent you can determine it? Or do you pick another date? Which, and why?

The same is true for archaeological ruins, for which we have far less information than we do for Monticello’s architecture and renovations.

Consider the example of the largest temple-pyramid at Chichen Itzá, a Classic-period lowland Maya civic-ceremonial and residential settlement on the northern Yucatán Peninsula in southern Mexico. This structure has long been referred to as El Castillo.

Here’s an historic photo of El Castillo (rather poorly scanned), published in T.A. Willard’s The City of the Sacred Well (Century, 1926). Willard doesn’t date this photo, but it was probably taken sometime in the first quarter of the twentieth century.

Compare it to this photo from 2003, taken early in the morning when the ground fog made the pyramid more mysterious. The photographs are probably of different sides of this relatively symmetrical pyramid.

Both have the same number of levels, when you examine the profile of the edges and corners of the sides. The staircase is on a separate plane “above” the levels. However, the reconstruction staircase has borders running from the top to the bottom that are not clearly present.

Why? Is it because the photos show different faces of the pyramid? Is it because the historic photograph is of a relatively poor quality and we cannot discern the exact form of the staircase? Is it because restorationists opted to add this detail to make climbing the pyramid safer for tourists? Or…?

Click here to go to Monticello’s website.

Click here to go to the Chichen Itzá entry in the Wikipedia.

Click here to go to the El Castillo entry in the Wikipedia.

Photograph by David Manning, and from onlineAthens.com website.

Lee Shearer’s August 18th, 2009, story published by onlineAthens.com, notes that a construction project on the University of Georgia campus in Athens has revealed archaeological artifacts. The article begins:

A renovation project on one of the University of Georgia’s oldest buildings has turned into an archaeological treasure hunt, and after weeks of digging, the treasure pile just keeps growing.

The construction project is at New College, a building on north campus.

The excavators also have found a brick floor no one knew existed buried 7 feet below New College’s present ground level, and the remains of what may be a garden wall outside of the building facing Herty Field.

Another building may have stood on the site even before the original New College was built in 1819, said Janine Duncan, campus planning coordinator for UGA’s Physical Plant.

Shearer notes:

But even though the workers with Garbutt Construction Co. of Dublin aren’t digging the artifacts out as slowly and painstakingly as archaeologists would, they’re being as careful as they can while still meeting their construction schedule, [Campus Architect Danny] Sniff said.

Comments?

Canada geese are native to North America and eastern Siberia and northeastern China. They are migratory birds, and their scientific name is Branta canadensis. We see migrating geese frequently today in the spring and autumn. They fly overhead in V-shaped formations, and you can often hear their honking if you’re outdoors.

Zooarchaeologists examine the bones, fish scales, and other remains of creatures recovered from archaeological contexts to determine which species were important to by-gone peoples.

Zooarchaeological studies so far seem to indicate that migratory waterfowl and migratory birds in general were not a major part of the Native American diet in Georgia and Southeastern North America.

Is this because they were difficult to catch or trap, or because their populations were much lower than today? Or perhaps their bones don’t preserve well, so our collections don’t show them. Or…?

The Appalachian Trail is a famous footpath that extends over 2100 miles from Georgia north all the way into Maine, the northeastern-most state in the United States of America.

Although prehistoric peoples walked across the landscape, they probably wouldn’t have followed much of the route of the Appalachian Trail. Why? The earliest Euro-American traders and explorers also would have traveled along different routes, too. Why?

The Appalachian Trail is designed to stay on higher ground, in mountains and along high ridges. Mostly, it traverses lands owned by Federal or State governments, including the US Forest Service. These lands often were not settled and bought up because they were too rugged for agriculture, and the early Euroamerican settlers needed to live near their fields, and thus their food source.

What about the Native Americans, though? Depending on whether they grew much of their food, or instead sought it out across the landscape, their travel routes, whether along footpaths or via canoes, would have been between settlements and other preferred areas. Although they might sometimes have ventured into the mountains and to the mountain-tops, probably they spent the most time at lower elevations. Why would they have found it uncomfortable to live on top of Blood Mountain?

Many famous modern roads in Georgia follow historic footpaths. Indeed, historic footpaths often followed Native American footpaths. What did the Native Americans follow? Did they cut paths through the wilderness? Some scientists think at least some prehistoric footpaths followed animal trails, perhaps including paths made by mammoths.

Back to the shelter in the picture above. It is on Blood Mountain, which is the highest point in Georgia on the Appalachian Trail. Hikers take refuge their in inclement weather, and sleep there overnight. This is a beautiful place to camp, with great views, but there is no water close by. I was standing on a rock outcrop above the shelter when I took the picture, that’s why the perspective is so strange.

Elberton is a community east-northeast of Atlanta, not far from the state line. Elberton is atop the northern end of a subterranean deposit of granite that extends southwest past Lexington. Scientists refer to this as the Lexington-Oglesby Blue Granite Belt; it is at least twenty-five miles long and as wide as fifteen miles.

For over a century, Elberton granite has been commercially quarried and used to clad buildings, for burial monuments, and for statues.

If you are lucky enough to travel to Elberton, try to visit the Granite Museum. Last time I was there they had a bin of spalls, or waste chips from a quarry, and you could take one as a souvenir. This is the one I picked!

You can see that Elberton’s granite is mostly gray, and is often described as blue-gray. This granite is composed of three different mineral grains, all visible to the naked eye, and in this sample. The white grains are feldspar, and they are the most abundant. The light gray, shiny grains are quartz. The black, flake-like bits are biotite, or black mica. All together, they present a very pleasing appearance.

Italian stone cutters emigrated to Elberton in the early 1900s, making its inhabitants rather different demographically than those of other rural communities in Georgia.

Fact: in the quarries, they use very high-powered and focused jets of water to cut pieces of stone away from the geological deposit.

Deptford Cord Marked sherd photo from the University of Georgia’s website “Georgia Indian Pottery Site.”

Archaeologists deal with taxonomies, and sometimes help develop them.

A taxonomy is a system for classification, and in science is usually rank-based. A ranked hierarchy begins with the most general characteristics—for example, plant versus animal, and keeps becoming more specific.

Perhaps the best known taxonomic system in science is the Linnaean system for classifying living organisms. In fact, the Encyclopedia of Life is an online presentation of known organisms, along with their taxonomic classification. The EOL was recently discussed on this website.

Another classification system for living organisms is cladistics. Cladistics focuses on evolutionary relationships, and thus generates descent trees, rather like a family tree.

An August 10th 2009 article in the New York Times by Carol Kaesuk Yoon called “Reviving the Lost Art of Naming the World” argues that taxonomic classification is rather esoteric these days.

Ms. Yoon notes that anthropologists have studied classification systems used by peoples from around the world. She writes:

Cecil Brown, an anthropologist at Northern Illinois University who has studied folk taxonomies in 188 languages, has found that people recognize the same basic categories repeatedly, including fish, birds, snakes, mammals, “wugs” (meaning worms and insects, or what we might call creepy-crawlies), trees, vines, herbs and bushes.

Dr. Brown’s finding would be considerably less interesting if these categories were clear-cut depictions of reality that must inevitably be recognized. But tree and bush are hardly that, since there is no way to define a tree versus a bush. The two categories grade insensibly into one another. Wugs, likewise, are neither an evolutionarily nor ecologically nor otherwise cohesive group. Still, people repeatedly recognize and name these oddities.

Archaeologists classify pottery and other material culture remains. Simple taxonomies are useful that give a name to, for example, pottery with a particular decoration and other physical characteristics. That way we know what is meant when someone says, for example, Deptford Check Stamped or Deptford Cord Marked.

Artifact classification is perhaps more subjective than the common categories Dr. Brown has identified in many cultures, because not infrequently archaeologists get into heated discussions about the “right” way to classify some artifact types.

For discussion: is this kind of classification system in the Linnaean style or does it more closely resemble a cladistic classification system?

The Southeast Region Archives, supported by your tax dollars, house diverse historical records collected by the government. They note on their website:

Records in the National Archives tell the story of southern families and communities, technological advances that changed lives, and social and economic forces that shaped the makeup of our society.

Most people go to the Archives to look up records and do research. I went there recently and looked at photographs and records of houses and farms purchased and destroyed to create an impounded lake in Tennessee. This project was done by the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), which was chartered by Congress in 1933. The lakes were created primarily to reduce flooding and to enable power generation at the dams. They also became important recreational destinations, and improved opportunities for economic development.

Below is a photograph of a farm that was destroyed so the land could be flooded, I think to make Douglas Reservoir, near Dandridge, Tennessee.

The Douglas Dam was completed in 1943, and lies on the French Broad River, which is part of the Tennessee River drainage, which has nine TVA dams with hydroelectric plants. Hydropower constitutes only about 10% of the power TVA generates; other power sources are from fossil-fuel plants (60%) and nuclear plants (30%). Green power contributions are negligible. Hydroelectric facilities are integrated into the dams that impound the water, and use the power of the water flowing because of gravity from higher in the reservoir to the lower elevation below the dam to generate electricity. The water flows through a turbine as it falls, making the turbine move. This movement is converted into electricity. The TVA provides a drawing of this here.

The TVA cautions fisherfolk to eat smaller, younger fish and avoid the fatty flesh and skin to reduce exposure to toxins like PCBs, chlordane, DDT, dioxins, and mercury, which are mostly in the mud at the bottom of the reservoirs, rather than in the water.

Many families were uprooted when these dams and reservoirs were built. The government can legally take people’s land through laws pertaining to eminent domain, even if the owners do not consent. The government can do this if the land is converted to public use.

Eminent domain laws are a legal means for our country to balance the needs of all (public needs) against the rights of the few. In the USA, eminent domain was adopted from British laws extant at the time the Constitution was drafted in the late 1700s. However, our government cannot take lands (property) without just compensation, and only if it benefits the public good.

A family who loses their farm and lands so that a dam and reservoir can beconstructed suffers a great loss; however, a whole region that endures less flooding and has more and more inexpensive electricity enjoys considerable benefits. Nevertheless, balancing the good of all against the rights of few is tricky and difficult. Should the family receive the same money for their farm as they would if they sold it to another farmer or a neighbor? Should they receive more or less?

All images in this story are screen grabs from Google Earth, a free program that displays satellite data.

Perspective matters.

This is easy to recognize with visual images, but it’s also true with research questions.

Back to images, though.

Take these, for example. Have you ever looked at a map or satellite image of North America where north is not “up”? Our cultural convention is to put north at the top of images, especially for continental-scale images, and this is what you see over and over.

However, as with may things, if you change perspective, you may have insights.

Here’re screen grabs from Google Earth with west “up” (above), and east “up” (below). By studying these images, what do you realize about the continent and its context that you hadn’t noticed before?

Does looking at North America at a different angle entirely (that is, not with a cardinal direction “up”) allow your eye to recognize any patterns you haven’t noticed before? The angle below sets the general trajectory of the east coast of the continent on a horizontal alignment.

Indeed, in this image, with the modern political boundaries removed, is nearly unrecognizable when you’re used to north being “up.” Indeed, it almost looks like a hypothetical landform!

What have you learned from studying the images here?

These are modern high-bush blueberries. The fruit are still green; the photo was taken in Atlanta in early May.

You may be hearing more about BlackBerries (the smartphones) these days, but blueberries are worth a Ponder. Blueberries are in the news because they have lots of anthocyanins and other wonderful chemicals that are extremely beneficial nutrients in the human diet.

Blueberries (Vaccinium spp.) are native to North America. Blueberries were used by Native Americans to make pemmican. Pemmican is a dried meat-fat mixture that was a nutritious storable foodstuff. Sometimes the meat was pounded together with fruits, like blueberries, choke cherries, or currants, which made a mixture vaguely like a modern fruit leather.

Wild blueberry bushes in Georgia probably commonly grew in the forest subcanopy and understory. Blueberries have been identified by ethnobotanists in floral remains from archaeological sites across eastern North America.

Blueberries are an important modern commercial crop in Georgia, especially in the southeastern part of the state. In 2005, Georgia’s blueberry crop became more valuable than our peach crop. Our blueberry crop brought in $75 million in 2008. Read about the development of commercial blueberry horticulture in Georgia in the New Georgia Encyclopedia.

One problem Native Americans had to solve was how to store food. They had to deal with predatory insects, rodents, and other creatures that might get into their stores. They also had to process foods so that they would keep for a time. Dried food, like pemmican, was one way to do this.

How else might have prehistoric Native Americans stored food? Remember, they had no refrigerators or freezers.

The title of this Ponder playfully refers to a well-known book named “Blueberries for Sal” by Robert McCloskey. It’s about a girl named Sal who goes out with her Mom to pick blueberries and has a grand adventure.

Have you ever wondered what the paddles Native Americans made to stamp decorations on the outside of pottery looked like? W.H. Holmes included a plate illustrating three paddles made by Cherokees probably in the late nineteenth century in his report “Aboriginal Pottery of the Eastern United States,” which was printed in the Twentieth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1898–1899 (published in 1903). This report has many many plates, including images of whole pots and broken sherds. On page 132–133, Holmes describes stamped pottery from southeastern North America:

As has been mentioned, the remarkable style of decoration, more than any other feature, characterizes this pottery. Elaborately figured stamps were rarely used elsewhere, except in Central and South America. The exact form of the stamping tool or die is, of course, not easily determined, as the imprint upon the rounded surface of the vases represents usually only the middle portion of the figured surface of the implement. It is highly probable, however, that the stamp had a handle and therefore assumed the shape of a paddle, as do the stamps used by the Cherokees at the present time. Occasionally partial impressions of a small portion of the square or round margin of the stamp are seen. It was the usual practice to apply the stamp at random over the entire exterior surface of the vessel, and thus it happened that the impressions encroached upon one another, rendering an analysis of the design, where it is complex, extremely difficult. In many localities the design was simple, consisting of two series of shallow lines or grooves crossing the paddle surface at right angles, leaving squarish interspaces in relief, so that the imprint on the clay gave the reverse—that is, low ridges with shallow rectangular depressions in the interspaces. The lines vary from 3 to 10 to the inch, and, when covering the surface of a vessel, give a hatched or checkered effect closely resembling that made by imprinting a coarse fabric or a cord-wrapped tool. These iigures have occasionally been regarded as impressions resulting from modeling the vessel in a basket or net, but close examination shows that the imprintings are in small, disconnected areas, not coinciding or joining at the edges where the impressions overlap, and that the arrangement of parts is really not that of woven strands.

The character of the work is fully elucidated by the Cherokee wooden paddles which are shown [above]. One side of the broad part of the implement is covered with deeply engraved lines, carved no doubt with steel knives, but the work is not so neat and the grouping is not so artistic as in the ancient work.

If you are curious about paddle-stamping, or interested in reading Holmes’s text, you’re in luck. The Internet Archive provides a downloadable PDF of the whole volume here. The section on Southern Appalachia, including Georgia, begins on page 130 (page 604 of the PDF). There is separate access to just the text, stripped from the volume and the plates, which also may be useful, especially if you have a slow Internet connection.

Perhaps you’re interesting in making your own paddle and stamping some pottery? Give it a try! (Make sure you have permission to do this if you’re not an adult.)

You may not know about free software that lets you “fly” across the Earth’s surface, viewing satellite pictures of the surface below. The software for doing this is provided free by Google, and is called Google Earth.

As they say on their website:

Google Earth lets you fly anywhere on Earth to view satellite imagery, maps, terrain, 3D buildings, from galaxies in outer space to the canyons of the ocean. You can explore rich geographical content, save your toured places, and share with others.

Remember, you need a fairly fast broadband connection and video processor on your computer to do this.

One fun thing to do with Google Earth is to overlay old maps on the modern landscape. The example here is a historic map that I found in the Library of Congress online map collection. This map was created in 1864 by Robert Knox Sneden (who lived 1832–1918), and shows the Atlanta area as of 1 September 1864, complete with batteries, earthworks, and the locations of both Union and Confederate forces, as well as city streets. Remember that the city of Atlanta fell to Sherman’s army only a week later, on 8 September. The Virginia Historical Society holds the original map, which measures 45 x 34 centimeters.

In this article, I’m just examining a portion of the entire 1864 Sneden map, the part that spans downtown Atlanta. The top image shows the small cropped area of the old map on the right, with the same area from Google Earth (north is “up” in both cases). I’ve put arrows to the same features on both maps. They are a particular street and the location of the Civil-War-period train station. You can see the city plan is very similar, except for the interstate corridor east of downtown, and some alteration of the north-south rail line on the west side of downtown.

Below is a picture that shows how when you overlay the map image on Google Earth (or “drape” it), the software gives you bright green “handles” to stretch and manipulate the inserted image atop Google Earth’s satellite view.

Why don’t the maps match exactly? Do you know what the global positioning system is? How has map-making changed since 1864?

Here’s a link for the Sneden map.

Scientists studying ice cores from Antarctica and Greenland conclude that the Earth’s climate changed rapidly about 14,700 years ago. They studied the oxygen isotopes in air bubbles trapped in the ice. About 14,700 years ago, they found changes in the air that came from increases in vegetation levels. These increases happened over about 200 years, which is quite rapidly.

Credit: Zina Deretsky, National Science Foundation

The press release notes:

The ratio of ¹⁸O to ¹⁶O found in an ice core has shown the history of abrupt climate change on Earth. For example, dry spells around 14,700 years ago resulted in the planet being quite arid north of the equator. Monsoons that followed, caused the proliferation of vegetation north of the equator 14,500 years ago.

Combine this with information from the National Science Foundation’s 2009 report “Solving the Puzzle: Researching the Impacts of Climate Change Around the World.” On page 62, the report says:

Earth’s landmasses support critical ecosystems, host Earth’s freshwater environments, and sustain almost all human agricultural activities. Land separates freshwater from the sea, stores nutrients essential for terrestrial and aquatic life, and holds a fossil record of Earth’s climatic past. As the planet warms, the conditions favorable to many plant and animal species are expected to shift toward the poles. Individual species will differ in their ability to make the same shifts. The resulting altered species distributions will likely cause significant disruptions to established ecosystems, as habitats adjust to new species populations.
Land use is inextricably linked to the carbon cycle. Changing land-use patterns, such as clearing forest to create agricultural plots, change the dynamics of the carbon cycle. Livestock such as cattle contribute a net surplus of carbon to the atmosphere in the form of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas.

Past climate change patterns are not predictors of the rate of change we may be experiencing today.

Undisturbed archaeological remains buried in the soil contain all sorts of chemical clues invisible to the human eye. The oxygen isotopes in the air bubbles in the ice are a similar invisible clue. Visible archaeological remains can also reveal clues as to the climate in the past. What invisible chemical information about the climate of the past do you think may be contained in archaeological sediments, artifacts, and features?

Read the full press release on the Science article by clicking here.

Click here to go to the National Science Foundation’s website, where you can download their 2009 report “Solving the Puzzle: Researching the Impacts of Climate Change Around the World.”

In mid-June 2009 the government of the USA, through the United States Global Change Research Program (USGCRP), released an authoritative assessment of national and regional impacts of global climate change called “Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States.” This initiative was mandated by Congress in 1990 to generate “a comprehensive and integrated United States research program which will assist the Nation and the world to understand, assess, predict, and respond to human-induced and natural processes of global change.”

In the Southeast region, including Georgia, we are warned to expect:

Effects of increased heat include more heat-related illness; declines in forest growth and agricultural crop production due to the combined effects of heat stress and declining soil moisture; declines in cattle production; increased buckling of pavement and railways; and reduced oxygen levels in streams and lakes, leading to fish kills and declines in aquatic species diversity.

In addition, we are told:

Sea-level rise is projected to accelerate, increasing coastal inundation and shoreline retreat. The intensity of hurricanes is likely to increase, with higher wind speeds, rainfall intensity, and storm surge height and strength.

So, think. What will the effect be on our archaeological heritage?

Rising sea levels over the last 20K years have already inundated archaeological remains on what is now underwater on the continental shelf. If the seas rise further, more lands will be inundated, and Georgia’s shell rings and coastal island sites will be threatened. Increased rainfall will increase the potential for erosion and seasonal flooding, and both can damage our hidden archaeological resources, like buried prehistoric villages and abandoned historic farm sites.

The Southeast Fact Sheet also notes:

Ecosystems provide numerous important services that have high economic and cultural value in the Southeast. Climate change may result in abrupt changes to these ecosystems, such as hurricane-induced sudden loss of landforms that serve as storm surge barriers and homes for coastal communities.

The Executive Summary for the entire assessment notes:

These climate-related changes are expected to continue while new ones develop. Likely future changes for the United States and surrounding coastal waters include more intense hurricanes with related increases in wind, rain, and storm surges (but not necessarily an increase in the number of these storms that make landfall), as well as drier conditions in the Southwest and Caribbean. These changes will affect human health, water supply, agriculture, coastal areas, and many other aspects of society and the natural environment.

What positive and negative effects will these changes in the global climate make to archaeological resources?

Click here to visit the USGCRP website to read about this program and download this report and other information.

Click here to go to the National Science Foundation’s website, where you can download their 2009 report “Solving the Puzzle: Researching the Impacts of Climate Change Around the World.”

This recipe adapted from 1993 Southwestern Indian Recipe Book: Apache, Papago, Pima, Pueblo, and Navajo by Zora Getmansky Hesse (The Filter Press, Palmer Lake, Colorado), and is from a modern Pueblo recipe.

Children should not attempt this without the help of an adult.

Once baking powder was available, Native peoples living in Georgia may have made similar corn cakes, although probably without the chilis, and the bacon.

Set oven to preheat at 350°F.

I bake this cornbread in an iron skillet. You can also use a greased 8×8 inch baking pan.

Take about three slices of bacon and chop them coarsely. Render slowly in an iron skillet, stirring frequently. When most of the fat is cooked out, remove the crispy meaty bits from the pan, leaving the fat. If you want to skip the bacon, just melt butter in the skillet in the oven. Tip and rotate the pan so the fat coats the pan on the bottom and the sides as high as the batter will flow.

Slide skillet into the oven to get hot.

Meanwhile, mix together in a large mixing bowl:

• 1 1/2 cups blue cornmeal
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 3 tablespoons sugar

In a separate smaller bowl, mix:

• 3/4 cup milk
• 1 egg
• 2-3 tablespoons bacon fat (or butter) from the skillet
• 1/2-1 small can of green chilis, chopped

Stir the liquid ingredients into the dry ingredients and mix well in just a few strokes. Pour the batter into the hot skillet (or greased baking pan). Return skillet to oven.

Bake for about 25-30 minutes, or until a wooden toothpick comes out clean. Let cool for a few minutes, then serve. Makes lovely pie-shaped pieces!

Optional: cook some chopped onion until soft with the bacon (or separately) and to the wet ingredients.

Optional: substitute yellow cornmeal. It won’t have the nutty flavor of the blue cornmeal, but still will be tasty.

Optional: lightly coat 1/2 cup raisins with wheat flour, and gently stir into batter.

Consider the chilis optional but extremely tasty, and preferred in Puebloan recipes!

Question: what kind of corn makes blue cornmeal?

In October 2008 I visited a circular Indian mound on the south bank of the Kanawha River, in South Charleston, West Virginia. The mound is right downtown and is the focus of the central municipal park. It is commonly called the Criel Mound.

According to signs near the mound, the Smithsonian Institution excavated the mound in 1883-84, and found thirteen human skeletons. This site was surrounded by a village on a terrace above the river’s floodplain. Houses were scattered for miles up and down the river. Nearby in the Kanawha Valley were other settlement clusters that also had mounds.

Based on artifacts the Smithsonian excavators found, the bodies in the mound were people dating to the Early Woodland period. Archaeologists call peoples who made and used these artifacts Adena culture. Sites with Adena complex artifacts are found across central and southern Ohio, as well as West Virginia, and east into Pennsylvania and New York, and west into Indiana.

The city is doing a pretty good job of preserving the mound by keeping trees from growing on the slopes or moundtop and keeping it from eroding, although two stairways have been carved into the mound’s flanks and trash cans are kept on top of the mound. However, the prehistoric context of the mound as part of a complex of civic-ceremonial buildings and open (plaza) areas is now mostly destroyed. The mound is encroached upon by a highway along the north side, a car dealership to the west, and the modern city to the south.

If you’ve been around archaeology in Georgia for a few decades, you may recognize the “upstairs” archaeology lab at the University of Georgia, on the second floor of Baldwin Hall, in Athens, ca. 1988.

This area is now a modern computer lab and the (slightly) dusty artifacts and boxes and storage cabinets are now installed in the curation facility attached to the Georgia Archaeological Site File in the Riverbend Research Lab building in the southern part of the UGA Campus.

This huge planter built of natural stone cemented together is one of several pieces of nineteenth-century decorative architecture you can see in Atlanta’s Piedmont Park.

These eye-catching planters, along with paved walkways and fancy stairways, are all the obvious architecture that remain of the stone construction for two massive fairs, the 1887 Piedmont Exposition, and the 1895 International and Cotton States Exposition. A huge oval track built for horse races has been converted to a walking or jogging track—no horses, or even dogs, allowed!

The huge display halls from the Exposition are long gone, but these modest architectural features still survive. Note that a modern building that’s part of the Atlanta Botanical Garden complex, looms not far behind this planter.

Superposition is a big word that refers to locating one thing atop another thing. Archaeological researchers discover superpositioned objects all the time. Sometimes it’s difficult to determine just when the superpositioning occurred—whether the two objects were abandoned more or less simultaneously, or whether they were left during events hundreds of years apart. In the case of these two features of the built environment, the planter and the garden building, they indeed were built over a century apart in time.

Humans are humans; we tend to like some of the same places on the landscape no matter who we are and when we are alive. This means that some of the same places were occupied over and over. The view from Lookout Mountain must have been as compelling to prehistoric Native Americans as it is to us today.

What makes a location more—or less—attractive to human visitors or inhabitants?

When a scientist analyzes data, sometimes the values are more similar—except for one or a few values or characteristics or whatever. These different values are called outliers, meaning they lie outside the pattern of most of the values (or of the sample of values). Thus, outliers are rare within that data set. In the set of imaginary data points in the plot above, the outlier plots way in the upper right. The question of how to deal with outliers haunts many scientists, and is a point of analysis for some statisticians.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb, a mathematical researcher, has published a book he titled The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable (2007, Random House). A “black swan,” to Taleb, refers to a rare event that is difficult to predict yet has an outsize impact, beyond normal expectations. Thus, there’s an element of randomness and an element of uncertainty in the outlier.

The name Taleb chose for the book, “Black Swan,” refers to the assumption by Europeans that all swans are white, since all wild swans Europeans were familiar with for centuries were indeed white. The term “black swan” thus was a metaphor for an impossibility. No one (in their world) had seen a black swan, so for them black swans did not exist. Then, in 1697, a Dutch explorer in Australia found black swans, and the Europeans had a bit of a shock. Thus, they altered the term to mean something assumed to be impossible that actually happened.

To Taleb, a Black Swan event is a surprise and has a major impact. Although he applies this concept to financial investment patterns, archaeologists can learn from consideration of Black Swan events and outliers.

First, you have to think about the data set that produced the Black Swan outlier. Perhaps the data may be just a small sample, so that the apparent outlier is really part of a normal distribution of data—it’s just that some data points are missing. You also need to make sure that the way the data were measured is sufficiently accurate and precise that the outlier does not result from some form of mismeasure.

If the data set seems complete, or to be a complete representation of the data set, so that the outlier is “real,” then how to explain it?

Archaeologists sometimes encounter statistical outliers in, for example, a set of radiocarbon dates. Sometimes, the “bad” date may result from inaccuracies in the sample, thus skewing its date. Sometimes, the “bad” date means something that is actually real, but doesn’t match with previous interpretations—for example, that some particular artifact type was actually used earlier or later than previous data and dates suggest.

Sometimes, because the “real world” doesn’t always make sense at a given time, it is hard to determine, based on field and laboratory methodology, why a particular outlier date is “bad.” If we assume it is not “bad,” and that it measures a real data point that is beyond expectations based on other reliable data, then we have far different concerns when we try to explain what that outlier means.

I am not a statistician, and this is by no means a complete disquisition on this subject. Instead, my intention is to raise the issue of interpreting outliers, and perhaps add a new twist to it for some. The Edge Foundation website has a long article by Taleb that you might be interested in reading, which elaborates on the Black Swan outliers, and, ultimately, on human behavior. Click here to read that article, posted in September 2008.

Editor’s Note

Back in late March 2009, GAAS and SGA member Dick Brunelle issued a challenge to thesga.org readers. He had read a January Weekly Ponder on a Copeland-Inglis brick found in an Atlanta brick street, and responded by asking who made the brick he had photographed at Hills and Dales, the Callaway family home in LaGrange, which had “LACLEDE KING” stamped on it. As a tease, he noted: The brick is more closely related to the Lewis and Clark Expedition than it is to covered bridges in Georgia. Member Jim D’Angelo was the only one to log in and comment on these brick controversies, among other things noting that he has a biography of John Randolph Copeland (1863-1935), partner in Copeland-Inglis Brick company. Now, Mr. Brunelle reveals the whoe story behind that enigmatic brick….

The answer…

Laclede Fire Brick Company as it appeared in 1854. On the hill behind the plant, can be seen the old Sublette mansion and nearby buildings of the sulphur springs resort. Clay was mined between the plant and the mansion.

The Birthplace of the Laclede King Brick

Bridge builder Horace King practiced his craft up and down the Chattahoochee River before and after his emancipation from slavery. The Townsend Truss structures he specialized in building required solid piers of durable material. Knowing he headed a family enterprise, brick making did not seem beyond possibility for this one time resident of LaGrange, Georgia.

At least, this is what I thought when I spotted the Laclede King brick at the beautiful estate of Hills and Dales in LaGrange. However, a search of Horace King family members did not come up with anyone named Laclede. Casting my net over the Internet, I fished up one Pierre Laclede Liquest.

We find that this enterprising man, a native of France, came to New Orleans in 1755. Soon, he dropped the Pierre from his name and his associates dropped the Liquest. This sort of name dropping was common among the early French in Louisiana. Laclede married an unattached woman in New Orleans, who was also enterprising and had accumulated money trading furs and other goods. She had previously been married to Auguste Rene Chouteau, and her son Auguste was now Laclede’s stepson. To further complicate an already confusing family relationship, stepson Auguste Chouteau had a half brother named Pierre. Some surmise he was a son of Laclede, but he was called Pierre Chouteau.

Laclede supposedly obtained trading rights from the last French governor for all the territory along the Missouri River. He and his stepson Auguste Chouteau established a trading post that Laclede named St Louis in April 1764 in honor of King Louis IX. Between the time he first set foot there, at the end of 1763, and the time of his death in 1788, Laclede had built up his name enough to bequeath it to things both material and political. As we now suspect, this includes bricks.

But, how can the name on our brick be close to Lewis and Clark? This clue was mainly intended to get the ponderer in the correct geographical area. However, both Chouteaus could not get any closer to William Clark than they did in September of 1797. Clark had been across the river trying to gather information to help out his older brother George Rogers Clark, who was in deep doo-doo for spending too much government money embarrassing the British while venturing into their territory.

Feeling the urge to party, William went to St Louis to scope out the town. There, he had a ball (literally) at Pierre Chouteau’s place with “all the fine girls and buckish Gentleman.” Now that they were drinking buddies, Clark would not forget his new friends when he came back across the river years later with Meriwether Lewis. The Spanish governor would not allow the Corps of Discovery to come ashore, but did accept a courtesy visit from Clark, who used the occasion to affirm his friendship in an aside with Auguste Chouteau. Meriwether Lewis used what influence he had to get Pierre Chouteau appointed Agent of Indian Affairs for Upper Louisiana in 1804.

The Chouteau brothers had considerable economic and political clout to go with their immense knowledge of the country and inhabitants of the Missouri and points west. It would take all of this to compete with the companies and political entities trying to control trade with the Indian nations. In turn, the Chouteau brothers made alliances with groups and individuals they deemed most capable to meet the challenges. One of these was William L. Sublette, previously a competitor. He became “their man on the ground” to deal with the most dangerous situations. Bill Sublette used shrewd strategy and good business ability, along with superior frontier skills, to stay alive and come out ahead.

After he gave up mountain man life, it would be Bill who would become owner of the ground that would one day yield the clay for our Laclede brick. Surprisingly, Bill aspired to create his own little utopia close to the city of St Louis, rather than live in Big Sky country. He chose a pleasing valley with a sulphur spring and “a river runs through it.” The “clear crystal stream” was called “River Des Peres”. This piece of property just happened to once belong to the husband of Auguste and Pierre’s sister Victoire Chouteau, Charles Gratiot, who had received it in a Spanish land grant of about 8000 acres.

In 1835, Bill had several log cabins and a large stone manor built on his 779 acre arcadia sanctuary. Sublette immediately put into play a gentleman farmer economy; exploiting natural resources of the property. Along with agricultural, livestock, and lumbering operations, mining of coal and clay was started. As it turned out, the clay was found to be the best in the country for making firebrick.

Gratiot’s son Paul had a fire brick kiln as early as 1837. We do not know, however, if Bill Sublette himself did anything but mine the clay. Soon, Bill’s arcadia had a menagerie of Wild West animals and a sulphur springs health resort for 60 boarders. Sadly, the healing waters did not restore health to Bill during an illness; so, he sought help in the East, but died in a Pittsburg, Pennsylvania hotel during his travels, on July 23, 1845.

William L. Sublette’s earthly remains were brought from Pittsburg and interred on his estate.

Soon, another utopia seeker was on the move in the person of Etienne Cabet. A French experimenter in communal living, he coined the word communisme; which became communism. Called the Icarian Movement, he lead his followers to found a colony in America; first in the Texas Red River Valley, then to the recently vacated haven of Brigham Young in Nauvoo, Illinois. Alas, Arcadia was not found there. The fragmented Icarians that still followed Cabet moved on to St Louis; but Cabet died at the end of 1856.

The remaining Icarians struggled on and in two years bought Sublette’s place, which was then on the block. Ironically, unhealthy conditions at the health resort were one reason that the colony to disbanded. Even more ironic, Bill Sublette’s mortal remains could not stay because of the demand for clay around the cemetery that contained them. Forced out at the point of a shovel, Bill’s remains were moved to Bellefontaine Cemetery in St Louis city in 1868.

Resting on 80 acres of land close by, Laclede Fire Brick Manufacturing Company was inhaling clay from the old Sublette Estate and exhaling an array of brick products. Thus, neither William Sublette nor Etienne Cabet found a final resting place in that place first called Sulphur Springs, then Cheltenham, and finally Dogtown.

However, one brick made from the clay of that place rests in the garden walk of a little arcadia created by the Callaway family in LaGrange, Georgia, where it proclaims to all that take notice: Laclede Brick is King!

Usually when you hear the phrase “old money,” the speaker is referring to people and families with established, long-held, inherited wealth.

Some old money, however, is just that, money from long ago.

I spotted this nineteenth-century five-dollar bill in a display of old money in the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C.

The long-extinct Ocmulgee Bank issued this $5 note in what looks to me like 1859.

The picture in the middle, above the word Ocmulgee, shows a wagon-load of cotton being delivered to a dock. In the background is a steamboat. I assume the artist was thinking of the Ocmulgee River, which flows through Macon. Area farms shipped cotton downriver, so this vignette reflects what truly happened in Macon.

In mid-1857, the US suffered a downturn in the economy that is often described as a panic. The South, however, suffered less than other regions of the country, because the cotton crop provided sufficient revenue to stabilize the regional economy, although there was considerable commercial distress. Nevertheless, four of nineteen Georgia banks failed during the panic.

Now, of course, banks in the USA do not issue their own currency. A federal banking act that took effect in July 1866 made it too costly for banks to continue to use non-federal currency in the USA, making bills like this historical documents.

Read more about the Panic of 1857 in Wikipedia here, or about currency in general here.

Curate is a fancy word that refers to selecting, organizing, and properly storing items, for example in a museum collection, or for an exhibition.

We can’t curate everything. It’s just too expensive and the objects will take up too much space. We also must consider excessive redundancy.

So, what do we save and what do we discard? How do we make that decision?

Do we save this early piece of computer equipment? After all, it was break-through technology in its day. And this specimen still functions (trust me!). On the other hand, tens of thousands of these machines were made, and some of them must still be stored in people’s garages and basements, and perhaps even in a few museums.

BTW, archaeologists also use the word curate with respect to, especially, lithics (stone tools). A curated bifacial tool, for example, has been re-sharpened, and used for quite a while.

Now here’s the trick question: what does this machine do?

Here’s a clue: do you know what a floppy disk is?

Ooops. I accidentally broke my husband’s favorite coffee mug.

Fortunately, the piece that broke off was large and I was able to save it. Using techniques I learned in the archaeological laboratory for mending broken historic and prehistoric ceramics and pottery, I glued together the coffee mug.

I carefully put glue on both the cup and the broken piece, let it sit for a few minutes to get tacky, then put the two together. The trick for while it’s drying is to position it so that gravity is helping you, with the glued area “on top.”

Many archaeology labs have boxes of sand to make it easier to position drying ceramics so that gravity will help.

What are invasive species? Species are a kind of creature. Invasive species is a phrase that usually refers to a creature that is not native to the area, but becomes resident there; this is the same as discussing non-indigenous species. Sometimes, however, ecologists use the term invasive species to refer to species that heavily colonize an area, but actually were there in lower numbers before; in this case, the word invasive is referring to the high populations of that species. You have to read carefully to know which definition is meant.

There’s another related term: introduced species. Synonyms for “introduced” are non-indigenous, alien, and exotic. An introduced species lives outside its normal distributional range, and arrived because of human intervention.

The pictures show a species of duck called Muscovy duck. Its scientific name is Cairina moschata. The Muscovy* duck species is native to Mexico and Central and South America. Biologists say that the farthest north wild Muscovy ducks range is along the southeast Texas border. Any Muscovy ducks here in Georgia are considered feral populations. Feral populations are escaped domesticated or captive creatures. Muscovy ducks are a non-migratory species. This specimen resides (year-round) in Atlanta’s Piedmont Park.

So, some questions. Are the trees, shrubs, and plants around your county courthouse (or school) native species? Are they introduced species? Are they invasive species? And, are human beings an invasive species? Are human beings in North America invasive?

* The word Muscovy means “from Moscow,” but these birds are not from Moscow; they’re not even from the Old World. The explanation for this term is disputed, but is discussed at length in this Wikipedia entry.

Earthworms leave the soil (at least some species do) when there’s a lot of rain, because the soil can get so moist they begin to drown.

Archaeologists mostly deal with abandoned objects and places where people once lived or did other activities. After abandonment, these objects and locales are subject to various disturbances—from natural processes, from wild creatures, and from later human visitors—and even from dogs!

One post-abandonment disturbance we think about is the effect of earthworms. They burrow through the soil, producing micro-tunnels that can introduce organic matter and allow air and water to move through the soil more easily, and change the soil chemistry. Although these processes happen at a small scale relative to many archaeological features like foundations and fire pits, they still disturb the abandoned remains. Earthworm activity is an example of bioturbation, or natural processes by living things, including both plants and animals.

Researchers report that even soils that are not very hospitable to earthworms may host tens of thousands of them per acre. If an archaeological site has been abandoned for five centuries, how great an effect do you think earthworms have had on the site? What if the site has been abandoned five times that long?

Scientists have to figure out how to solve all kinds of problems that seem like they shouldn’t be problems until you think about them.

So, how do you describe a color so I know the exact shade you’re talking about?

Sure, we know navy blue, which most of us know as a distinct shade of dark blue. And we have fire-engine red, which most of us would also recognize.

But.

What if you’re an archaeologist carefully digging in the soil, and you pick up your notebook and you want to describe the exact shade of yellowy-browny-beige soil that you have just exposed. How do you do that so, even twenty years later, a reader will know just what color that soil was?

Well, use a Munsell Soil Color Chart!

These charts are published in special (expensive!) books with little carefully made color chips on each page. You take a small soil sample and hold it behind the page and move it around until you see it through a hole that’s next to a color that’s identical to it. Thus, Munsell Soil Color Charts provide a standard way of identifying colors.

An archaeologist who has excavated across the Georgia piedmont will recognize that 10YR5/4 refers to a soil of a particular, pleasant medium-brown hue. That color is on the chip in the fourth row from the top, and fourth chip from the left in this picture.

10YR refers to a certain saturation or brightness of yellow-red (the YR part). The five refers to a medium darkness, and the four refers to how yellowy the brown is.

Got it?

For technical information about how the colors have been determined, check this web page on the US Department of Agriculture website.

Ponder, for a moment, this brick.

When I saw it in the garden walk at Hills and Dales, the Callaway family home that was built on an old plantation property in LaGrange. I guessed it to be made by a family member of a famous craftsman who once lived in LaGrange.

Hint: Expect the unexpected.

Another hint: The brick is more closely related to the Lewis and Clark Expedition, than it is to covered bridges in Georgia.

Editor’s note: SGA and GAAS member Dick Brunelle sent this to me after reading about this brick I saw in an Atlanta street. Comments are enabled so you can submit your hypothesis/guess.

Fascade of Callaway family home, Hills and Dales.

Give up? Read the answer here; it’s a fascinating story….

Careful excavation and detailed note-taking are hallmarks of well-managed archaeological projects. This is because archaeology is a destructive science—any square centimeter of an archaelogical deposit can only be excavated once. There is no second chance.

Therefore, when archaeologists excavate, not only do they look for solid objects (for example, artifacts), they optimize the opportunity for noticing faint color and texture changes in the soil that signal something significant. Drip lines are an example of a kind of subtle evidence that a sharp eye can spot in the soil.

A drip line is made by falling water, usually rainwater. It looks like a series of little holes made by the action of drips repeated in one place. The little holes etch in the soil an echo of an edge up above, like the upper brow of a rock shelter or the margin of a roof that doesn’t have a rain gutter.

The photos record another kind of drip line, made by the slats of a hanging bench in an Atlanta park.

After the object that allows the drip line to form is gone, soil fills in the little holes the water made. The new soil may be a different color and texture. Therefore, when this part of the site is carefully excavated, the drip line can look like a line of dots. The archaeologist knows there was some kind of “edge” above the drip line.

Go find a drip line. Think about what valuable information it indicates about the object above it that made the drip line. Did a roof edge make the drip line? If this were an archaeological site, and you found this drip line, what would it tell you? What if you had information about other nearby features, like building foundations?

By the early 1800s, Choctaw-speakers lived across Mississippi and in what are now modern neighboring states. Choctaw is closely related to the languages that peoples living in what is now Georgia spoke at that time. They are all part of the Muskogean language family that was common across southeastern North America in late prehistory.

A historic volume called A Dictionary of the Choctaw Language was published in 1915. It is the Smithsonian Institution’s Bureau of American Ethnology’s Bulletin 46. The author was Cyrus Byington, and the volume editors were John R. Swanton and Henry S. Halbert. You can download it here, where it is offered free by the Internet Archive.

Reverend Byington (b. 1793, d. 1868) had passed away by the time this volume was published. He had lived and worked among the Choctaw as a missionary for over fifty years.

This particular part of the dictionary deals with Choctaw phrases that begin with “ahe” and refer to potatoes. Note how many phrases refer to cultivating potatoes. The Choctaws made small mounds of dirt around their potato plants to keep the sunlight from bothering the potatoes, which grow underground. Byington refers to these little mounds as hills in this dictionary.

Do you think the word written here as “ahe” means potatoes in Choctaw?

The word “ahe inchuka” is defined as a potato house. What do you think that is?

If you have a choice, and are driving across Georgia, try to avoid the main highways and interstates, and then look for interesting features across the landscape, including old buildings and the remains of abandoned road grades.

Recently, while driving around between Madison and Atlanta on a beautiful, sunny late fall day, we spotted this somewhat tattered wooden building on a hill next to Bostwick Road in northern Newton County, north of Covington.

A sign by the road says the Gum Creek Courthouse was built about 1888.

Even though buildings in North America aren’t very old compared to some you can find in Europe and Asia, this building is over a century old, which is longer than most of us can expect to live.

Before there was blacktop, some streets were paved with stone or brick. East of Piedmont Park, in Atlanta, is a street that still is paved with bricks. It’s named Cooledge Avenue, and is marked on the map below.

Most of the bricks are plain, but a few are not. This paving brick has letters molded into its surface. They say COPELAND-INGLIS arched across the top of the brick, and B HAM ALA in a straight line across the bottom, when the brick is held sideways. Apparently, Copeland-Inglis shipped bricks across the Southeast. They were used in Chattanooga’s freight depot in the late 1800s. They also were used in Tampa, in the driveway of a 1891 building that was once a hotel, and is now a museum on the University of Tampa campus.

I find this quite interesting. Bricks are heavy, making them relatively expensive to ship. However, the best clays for bricks are not available everywhere. Still, it’s very curious that Birmingham, Alabama, bricks were shipped across the Southeast in the late 1800s.

This does leave one question: why were streets paved?

Keep your eyes peeled for…metal plaques attached to immovable objects like buildings (not that buildings can’t be knocked down, but…).

This plaque is on the outside of a Fire Station in Atlanta, number 19, to be exact. The station is on the northeast corner of North Highland Avenue and Los Angeles Avenue, as shown on the map below.

Note the the Fire Committee includes W.B. Hartsfield, the last name on the list. Notes Louis Williams, in The New Georgia Encyclopedia:

William B. Hartsfield was a man of humble origins who became one of the greatest mayors of Atlanta. He served as mayor for six terms (1937-41, 1942-61), longer than any other person in the city’s history. Hartsfield held office during a critical period when the color line separating the races began to change and the city grew from more than 100,000 inhabitants to a metropolitan population of one million. He is credited with developing Atlanta into the aviation powerhouse that it is today and with building its image as “the City Too Busy to Hate.”

Hartsfield was elected to the Atlanta City Council in 1922, just two years before this plaque was commissioned. In 1937, he became Atlanta’s Mayor. Hartsfield was extremely active in promoting aviation in Atlanta, and across Georgia. Atlanta’s modern international airport, Hartsfield-Jackson, south of Atlanta, is named for William B. Hartsfield, and for a later mayor, Maynard Jackson.

David Macaulay is an author and illustrator who has written many interesting books. One of my favorites is Motel of the Mysteries, published in 1979 by Houghton Mifflin (Boston). The book is now out of print, so I always look for a copy at yard sales and flea markets—and every once in a while I’m lucky enough to find one!

The publisher’s blurb about Motel says:

It is the year 4022; all of the ancient country of Usa has been buried under many feet of detritus from a catastrophe that occurred back in 1985. Imagine, then, the excitement that Howard Carson, an amateur archeologist at best, experienced when in crossing the perimeter of an abandoned excavation site he felt the ground give way beneath him and found himself at the bottom of a shaft, which, judging from the DO NOT DISTURB sign hanging from an archaic doorknob, was clearly the entrance to a still-sealed burial chamber. Carson’s incredible discoveries, including the remains of two bodies, one of then on a ceremonial bed facing an altar that appeared to be a means of communicating with the Gods and the other lying in a porcelain sarcophagus in the Inner Chamber, permitted him to piece together the whole fabric of that extraordinary civilization.

Thus, Macaulay imagines being an adventurer in the future, when civilization had been destroyed by being overrun with junk mail—remember, the book was written before there was internet spam! So, in the book, Howard is trying to understand the ruined walls and other architecture he finds. Can you guess what the “porcelain sarcophagus” is?

Howard is an intrepid explorer, and he is certain, based on the architecture and artifacts he finds, that he has found funerary architecture. In his eyes, he is seeing special ceremonial buildings complete with burial goods distributed in separate chambers, similar to the archaeological remains we see today that survive from ancient Egypt.

As you might guess from the title of the book, what Howard had found were the decrepit remains of a modest, twentieth-century, highway-side motel somewhere in this country. His interpretations of the remains are erroneous in extremely funny ways.

This book leads the reader to think about the processes of scientific thinking, and how scientists assemble a wide variety of data to attempt to understand complex systems and situations. Sometimes, theories are developed based on what turn out to be scanty data. Thus, the theories turn out to be wrong, sometimes in humorous ways, when more data are collected.

You may also be interested in other volumes by Macauley, such as Cathedral (1973), Pyramid (1975), Underground (1976), and Castle (1977). All have been reprinted in paperback. Macauley is probably most famous for his award-winning international bestseller The Way Things Work (1988), which he later expanded, updated, and renamed The New Way Things Work (1998).