NOVEMBER 12, 2006

From: Scott Beld
Sent: Sunday, November 12, 2006 8:38 PM
To: Oxbow Archaeologists
Subject: Oxbow Update

Hi Oxbow Archaeologists,

Well, we are out of the field for the season. The 2006 season more or less fizzled to an end. As you probably know we haven’t been able to get into the field since the middle of September. This was mainly due to bad weather – it rained every Saturday we had to excavate (except the Saturday we were at Archaeology Day in Lansing). On October 28, Kevin, Nik and I closed the site for the winter (in the rain). We’ll plan on returning to Sias East next April or May.

For the rest of the winter we’ll be doing lab work in the Resource Building on Wednesday evenings and Saturdays. We’ve already gotten a good start with all of the artifacts from this year washed and most of the 1/8” screen bags sorted. On Wednesday Nik found a small copper bead in a Sias East 1/8” screen bag (see the picture)! Note the seam where the bead was rolled from a strip of native copper.

A week ago Dennis and I submitted a couple C-14 samples for dating – one char sample from Vessel 2 and one charcoal sample from the hearth part of Feature 2. The results should be back in the middle of December.

The Oxbow Christmas Party will be on Wednesday, December 20 at Brigitte’s new house. We’ll send more details in December.

We’ll have our usual Oxbow talks in January, February and March. I’ll be the first speaker as usual with the Sias East update in January.

Hope to see you in the lab!

Scott

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Scott G. Beld, Ph.D.
Research Laboratory Specialist - Intermediate
The University of Michigan Museum of Paleontology
1109 Geddes Road
Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109-1079
Phone: 734-764-0489 (UMMP Main Office)
734-763-9253 (My Office)
Fax: 734-936-1380
Email: sbeld@umich.edu
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