June 18 and 21, 2003

From: Scott Beld
Sent: Monday, June 23, 2003
To: Oxbow Archaeologists
Subject: Oxbow - June 18 & 21, 2003

Hi Oxbow Archaeologists,

We had a great weekend!! I’ll be sending the update this week in two parts because there is so much to show.

Last Wednesday (June 18), I went out to 20MD534 and finished excavating Feature 5. As you will recall the feature was going deeper than I had expected when we were excavating the SE ¼. On excavating the SW ¼ it became clear that this was the result of a postmold from the historic Chippewa occupation having been excavated into the SE ¼. I found a deer phalanx in the postmold and it is likely that the burned deer phalanx fragment we found a week ago Sunday came from the postmold. At any rate the charcoal we recovered from this quarter can’t be used for C-14 dating. The NE ¼ of the feature was the most interesting. It contained several pot sherds including two rimsherds – photo Fea 5 - NE.jpg shows the pottery in situ. One vessel is represented by the sherds from the feature. It has a pinched rim with fingernail impressions on the interior and exterior of the lip (see Fea 5 pot ext.jpg, Fea 5 pot int.jpg, and Fea 5 pot lip.jpg). I was able to obtain enough charcoal from the feature for a C-14 date. In addition, the rimsherds and a bodysherd probably have enough char for an accelorator date. In the evening, John O., Maryann, and I sorted Ponton 1/8” screen samples.

On Saturday (June 21), Terry Martin (Illinois State Museum) did a faunal id workshop with us. Photo workshop1.jpg shows (clockwise, left to right) John Osborne, Mary Wackerlee, Greg Young, Lia Young, Maryann McKelvy, Francis Phetteplace, and Terry Martin (standing) (John Heintz arrived later). Terry first described faunal analysis and what faunal analysts do to the workshop participants. Then we broke up into groups and identified faunal remains from the 20MD534 midden (see workshop photos). Most of the bones we were identifying were from deer though one sample had 6 bones from the paw of a bear (see photo bear paw.jpg; 4 metapodials, 1 1st phalanx, and 1 2nd phalanx – you should all know what those are now that you’ve taken the workshop, right!?!).

Saturday evening, Terry gave an excellent presentation on lake sturgeon and described some work he participated in with wildlife biologists studying lake sturgeon in the Muskegon river.

On Sunday (June 22) we excavated at the Ponton site (see excavation1.jpg). I’ll describe this in an email tomorrow as there are quite a few pictures and I may be reaching the point where I’ll bog down some computers. Till then…

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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