June 28, 2003

From: Scott Beld
Sent: Tuesday, July 01, 2003
To: Oxbow Archaeologists
Subject: Update - June 28, 2003 and this weekend

Hi Oxbow Archaeologists,

Last Saturday (June 28), Dave, John O. and I washed the 1/8” screen bags we excavated last weekend. I had to leave CNC to go to the mastodon dig in Mecosta County at 10 and I think Dave and John washed some of the artifacts we excavated.

The mastodon was fairly interesting though we didn’t find anything ourselves except a few scraps of bone and tusk on the surface of the spoil. I’ve attached a few photos of the dig.

Photo Gallery
Mastodon #1 shows the material the landowners found on the spoil. The large tusk is in the front – it is from an old female mastodon probably in her late 40’s possibly as old as 50 (The size of the tusk falls well within the range for female mastodons and note how the diameter of the tusk gets smaller towards the end – this is characteristic of mastodons, mammoths, and elephants that are past there prime and into old age). There is another tusk fragment immediately behind it on the right – this one could be from a different mastodon though that isn’t sure at this point. On the back left are 2nd and 3rd upper molars. There was also a cranium (skull) fragment with this material.

Mastodon #2 shows the 3rd molar – note the dark annual bands (winter/spring boundary) on the roots, you can count about 19 or 20 in this photo!

Mastodon #3 shows the property owners and Dan Fisher (my boss) on the left and Sarah (one of the graduate students at the museum) on the right.

Mastodon #4 shows the site looking north. The bones came out of the pond in the foreground (it was excavated last autumn). All of the bones were found on spread out spoil to the left of this photo and where I took this picture. They were found a few weeks ago. On Saturday, we probed around the margins of the pond and surface collected and probed the spoil.

Mastodon #5 shows Dan and Sarah at a spot where I got a strike with the probe rod. We were pretty it sure was bone. We excavated down to see what it was and it turned out to be an unusually hard piece of wood. You’ll notice the rain gear and rain drops on the pond. Just after lunch rain showers and thunderstorms started and we dug and probed in the rain all afternoon.

Mastodon #6 shows Dan and Sarah probing on the spoil.

We’ll probably be making one more trip to the site. Dan wants to get some soil samples and needs to pick up the bones – the property owners have agreed have the material come to the UMMP where the material will be studied (increment work, etc.). We probably won’t do a whole lot more at the site than that right now. On Saturday we were able to determine that there is not additional material on the surface of the spoil, that it would require a lot more effort to recover material from the spoil than we have time for now (provided anything else is there), and that it would be a long shot to hit in situ material in the undug areas. However, let me know if your really interested and you could probably go out with us when we get the soil samples (I’m not sure when that will be) - we can always use people sticking probes in the ground – you might even find big mastodon bones, stranger things have happened!!!

Back to Oxbow – tomorrow (Wednesday) we’ll do lab work in the evening. I imagine we’ll wash level bags we found last weekend or sort 20MD534 1/8” screen bags.

Friday (July 4) – John O. and I are thinking of digging at Ponton on the fourth. Is anybody else interested?

Saturday (July 5) – we’ll plan on a regular excavation session at the Ponton site.

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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