MAY 28 & 30, 2005

From: Scott Beld
Sent: Tuesday, May 31, 2005
To: Oxbow Archaeologists
Subject: Riverbank Testing - May 28 and 30, 2005

Hi Oxbow Archaeologists,

John O., Nik, and I made it out to the site on Saturday and Monday and continued our test units along the riverbank (see Riverbank 5-28-05.jpg and Riverbank 5-30-05.jpg). The weather was on and off showers on Saturday but the rain didn’t reach us most of the time under the trees. Monday was a beautiful day at the site. We took the units down to 1.5 m. We didn’t find much in the way of cultural material but the stratigraphy was fairly interesting. Tomorrow I’m going to draw the profiles and start to backfill. I’ll summarize what we’ve found and add this week’s material (see 85W-North2, N Profile, 0-150 cm.jpg):

At the top of the sequence is a thick A-horizon that contained occasional bone fragments, fire cracked rock, and flakes (#1 in 85W-North2, N Profile, 0-150 cm.jpg).

At about 60 cm is a buried A-horizon. This layer contained numerous fire cracked rocks (#2 in 85W-North2, N Profile, 0-150 cm.jpg).

Last Wednesday, we began to encounter another dark brown layer at 80 cm (#3 in 85W-North2, N Profile, 0-150 cm.jpg). When we excavated it further on Saturday, it turned out to be about 10 cm thick. We recovered about 6 fire cracked rocks at the top (80 cm). This appears to be a second buried A-horizon.

Near the bottom of the units I encountered another dark layer (4b and 4c in 85W-North2, N Profile, 0-150 cm.jpg). As we were excavating the unit I thought there was a slightly darker tint to the color of the unit floor but couldn’t distinguish it with the Munsell chart. This was more visible in the photograph of the profile (4a in 85W-North2, N Profile, 0-150 cm.jpg). Both 4a and 4b were sterile. I did recover one tiny Bayport chert retouch flake from 4c at 140 cm (see flake 140 cm.jpg). This could be another buried A-horizon though this is very uncertain because some “high energy” water was certainly involved its deposition. Along the east edge of the units there was an area with gravel about 75 by 50 cm that extended into the east wall. The gravel wasn’t a continuous layer and I had the sense that it may have been deposited in a depression. Between 4b and 4c there were also pockets of pale brown sand. Also layer 4c slopes down about 10 cm towards the river over the 2 m that were excavated. Clearly, fast currents and floods were involved in the depositon of this layer and the slope may indicate that it was at or just over the bank.

As usual deeper and more extensive excavations would be useful to clarify what’s going on. Unfortunately, backdirt piles and time is preventing us from extending it this year. Nevertheless, we have succeeded in identifying buried deposits that contain cultural material which is quiet important! Next year, we can try to identify other areas along the riverbank that have denser occupations/living surfaces and clarify the stratigraphy.

We’ll be at the Riverbank site tomorrow. I’ll be drawing the profiles and backfilling in the afternoon. In the evening when most of you arrive we may try to put a test unit in the field to the north of the riverbank where we found flake concentrations a few weeks ago. I’d like to open a few units in this area with the workshop, if its productive, so they see some prehistoric material in addition to the historic material at Ponton. We’ll hold off going to the Ponton site until Saturday because they are planning on mowing it Thursday or Friday. We’ll lay out new units and begin excavating then.

Hope to see you at the site.

Scott

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Scott G. Beld, Ph.D.
Research Associate II
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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