JUNE 8 & 12, 2005

From: Scott Beld
Sent: Sunday, June 12, 2005
To: Oxbow Archaeologists
Subject: Riverbank - June 8 and 12, 2005

Hi Oxbow Archaeologists,

We made it out to the Riverbank site Wednesday evening and today. We also started our 2005 workshop this weekend!

Wednesday evening, John, Nik, Marianne, and I continued excavating test unit 60 West. We found a few Upper Mercer flakes and bone fragments in the upper A-horizon. The first buried A-horizon is a little deeper here, about 60-70 cm. We recovered some fire cracked rock and bone fragments.

Yesterday, we began our workshop. Nik (from Saginaw who most of you already know), Ashley Taylor (a history/sociology student at Spring Arbor University from the Midland area), and a lady from the Jackson area are taking the workshop. In addition Greg, Lia, and John came this weekend. Saturday morning I gave a brief introduction to archaeology and Michigan prehistory and described our research projects at CNC. In the afternoon, we went out to the Ponton site, but unfortunately the heavy thunderstorms this week have saturated the site and it was to wet to dig (see Photo 1). We finished the day by going down to our Riverbank test units and we decided to dig there today.

I expect it will be at least a week, maybe two, before Ponton dries out enough to dig, so I’ve decided to dig another test trench on the riverbank at 60 West. Today we opened two units south of unit 60 West, units 60W-South and 60W-South2. We excavated 60W-South to 40 cm and 60W-South2 to 10 cm (see Photo 2 and Photo 3). We found a few staples and pieces of wire at the top (0-5 cm). We got to the bottom of the top A-horizon and found several bone fragments (including Lake Sturgeon) and several Upper Mercer flakes (maybe 10 or so, particularly from 20-40 cm). Photo 4 shows most of the artifacts we found at 30-40 cm. The top two rows are bone fragments from “large mammals”. The bottom row left is a sturgeon dermal plate followed by a couple Upper Mercer chert flakes, a Flint Ridge chert flake, and a small pottery sherd. This is the first pottery sherd we’ve noted so far – it’s in pretty poor shape. The A-zone at the top of our soil profile certainly goes back to the early Late Woodland (600-900 A.D.) and maybe the late Middle Woodland (?? ca. 400 A.D.).

I’d like to dig on the riverbank this Wednesday if it’s good weather -- depending on how much rain we get. I'll send an email Tuesday evening letting you know if we’ll be at the site or the Resource Building.

Next weekend is the second weekend of our workshop. Terry Martin will be here and on Saturday he will introduce us to faunal identification. Saturday evening (7 P.M.), he’ll give a public presentation on the New Philadelphia site (a historic site contemporary with Ponton!) in the Visitor Center auditorium. And on Sunday we’ll go into the field with Terry.

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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