Coolest Archaeological Discoveries of 2015

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Mysterious 14,000-year-old leg bone may belong to archaic human species

Scientists say a fossilized femur belongs to an ancient human species thought to be long extinct by the time this person walked the Earth. That leg bone could revolutionize current concepts of human evolution if they're right.

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  Courtesy of Peter Schouten

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  Courtesy of Darren Curnoe, Ji Xueping & Getty Images

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A 14,000-year-old thigh bone may upend human history.
Unearthed in southwest China, this femur resembles those of an ancient species of humans thought to be long extinct by the Late Pleistocene, scientists say. The scientists compare the leg bone to ancient and modern human femurs in a paper published Thursday in the journal PLOS ONE, arguing that this specimen represents a population of ancient humans that lived surprisingly recently.
If they're right, this could dramatically change the way we see human history.

Today, our species, Homo sapiens, are the only humans to walk the Earth. But it hasn't always been that way. 

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At times, ancient human species, like Neanderthals, Denisovans, H. erectus, and H. habilis, overlapped. Some even intermingled with our own species, as Denisovan genes show up in some modern humans living today.

Scientists thought that the last time there was more than one species of human on Earth was tens of thousands of years ago. One of our closest cousins, Neanderthals, for example, are thought to have died out about 40,000 years ago.

"Until now, it was thought that archaic humans on mainland Asia had survived no later than around 100,000 years ago," study author Darren Curnoe tells the Monitor in an email. "So, to find a human bone that resembles very ancient humans that is only around 14,000 years old is a real surprise."

"Now, it is only one bone, so we need to be a bit careful," Dr. Curnoe says. But if it does represent these ancient humans, "there must also have been overlap in time between archaic and modern humans for tens of thousands of years in Southwest China."

David Begun, a paleoanthropologist at the University of Toronto who is not affiliated with the study, tells the Monitor in an interview, "I'm not convinced."

"To me, it's just a Late Pleistocene, Early Holocene population that just looks a little bit different, that really doesn't have anything especially archaic about it," Dr. Begun says. "I certainly don't buy the argument that it is some kind of holdover from an Early Pleistocene, early Homo lineage, pre-Neanderthal or something like that. I'm not convinced by the evidence at all."

So what was Curnoe and his colleagues' evidence in the first place?

The scientists analyzed the femur by measuring and comparing physical features on the bone with both ancient and modern specimens.

Discovered among other fossils in Maludong, also known as Red Deer Cave, the femur "is very small; the shaft is narrow, with the outer layer of the shaft (or cortex) very thin; the walls of the shaft are reinforced (or buttressed) in areas of high strain; the femur neck is long; and the place of muscle attachment for the primary flexor muscle of the hip (the lesser trochanter) is very large and faces strongly backwards," Curnoe says.

By looking at measurements and traits of the bone, he says, "we found a clear association between the femur and the bones of the earliest members of the human genus Homo."

But Begun says the leg bone is too fragmentary to say all that. "It lacks most of what you would want to have in a femur to really say something about it," he says. "You'd want to have the head of the femur, the hip joint itself, and that's not here. It only preserves about a third of the length of the femur." 

The specimen also shows a lot of damage, Begun says. "Because of how fragmentary the specimen is and how damaged it is, I'm not convinced that the measurements really tell us much."

This isn't the first specimen from Maludong the team has described and named as a member of an ancient human species. In 2012, they published a paper on skulls found at the same site, suggesting the same thing – that these fossils represent a surprising population of ancient humans.

To survive so recently, this group of people would have likely been an isolated population. 

The region where the bones were found is unique, Curnoe explains. Tectonic uplift created the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau and the area is also quite tropical.

So, Curnoe says, "The Maludong femur might therefore represent a relic, tropically adapted, archaic population that survived relatively late in this biogeographically complex, highly diverse and largely isolated region."

The Maludong specimen isn't the first that scientists have claimed is more recent evidence of ancient humans. Homo florensiensis, nicknamed "Hobbit" for its short stature, was found to have lived on the Island of Flores in Indonesia as late as 17,000 years ago.

"Honestly, it's not the same kind of situation as we have in Flores," Begun says. "It's just not the same thing because the archaic signal, the primitive signal is just not very clearly developed."

"I could be wrong," Begun admits. "But frankly, I'm not convinced."

"Without the more diagnostic parts of the bone, like the head of the femur and a complete neck and more of the shaft," he says, "it's just very very difficult to say anything about a specimen like that."

But Curnoe is unfazed by such a reaction. "Our work is bound to receive a mixed reaction because for some of our colleagues the idea that archaic humans could have survived until the end of the Ice Age in East Asia will be difficult to accept," he says. "There is simply no convincing some, regardless of what we might have found."

Pointing it out: Siloam Springs museum displays local Indian artifacts

Pointing it out: Siloam Springs museum displays local Indian artifacts

Siloam Springs Museum displays local Indian artifacts

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Artifacts collected locally tell archaeologists the area of the Illinois River valley and today's Northwest Arkansas were used by Caddo Indians, says Don Warden, director of the Siloam Springs Museum. The first European contact with Caddoan people was recorded in south Arkansas, Louisiana and Texas, he says, but the collection of Roy Chesney (1886-1957) supports the Northwest Arkansas connection.
The museum is offering a temporary exhibit, "Prehistory of Arkansas," featuring the collection of Chesney. Chesney grew up on a farm in the Siloam Springs area and worked in insurance and real estate. But his hobby was collecting "points" -- which probably began more than 100 years ago, Warden says.

FAQ
‘Prehistory of Arkansas’
WHEN — 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesday to Saturday
WHERE — Siloam Springs Museum, 112 N. Maxwell St.
COST — Free
INFO — 524-4011
BONUS — George Sabo, director of the Arkansas Archeological Survey, will speak about Arkansas Indians at 2 p.m. Saturday.

"Points" lumps together several common artifacts -- arrowhead points, spear points, darts -- "projectile points," Warden says. Research over the years enabled archaeologists to identify the type of the point, by its shape and base point, as well as when it was made and from what culture it came.
"Crossroads From the Past," a panel exhibit from the Arkansas Humanities Council, gives an overview of Arkansas Indians from prehistory to history. The panels will be on display through Dec. 19, Warden says.
Points from many different tribes have been found by many people throughout the valley of the Illinois River, which runs just a few miles east of Siloam Springs. The Caddo developed farmsteads in the valley. In the 18th century, Osage supposedly hunted the hills, Warden says. Cherokee migrated to the area beginning about 1800.
In addition to the exhibit, the museum presents George Sabo, director of the Arkansas Archeological Survey, speaking about Arkansas Indians at 2 p.m. Saturday. He also will identify points and other stone tools brought by visitors.

Scientist have discovered new clues about the earliest known Americans

Human groups foraged near the bottom of South America between at least 18,500 and 14,500 years ago, researchers say.
Their new discoveries challenge a popular view in archaeology that people entered South America no earlier than 15,000 years ago.
Excavations in southern Chile indicate that ancient human groups sporadically passed through that area over a 4,000-year stretch, say archaeologist Tom Dillehay of Vanderbilt University in Nashville and colleagues.
Discoveries near the previously explored Monte Verde site add to evidence that the earliest New World settlers were not members of the Clovis culture, the investigators report November 18 in PLOS ONE.
Clovis people hunted big game with distinctive spearpoints and camped at sites with large hearths. Clovis sites date to as early as 13,390 years ago in what is now the United States and Mexico .
Long before that, ancient foragers intermittently stopped at Monte Verde, Dillehay suspects. Work at Monte Verde in the 1970s and 1980s yielded stone tools and other remains of a campsite from around 14,500 years ago. New finds include 39 stone artifacts, nine dating to between at least 18,500 and 17,000 years ago. About one-third of these stones consist of rock found outside the Monte Verde vicinity, either near the Pacific coast or further inland. Early South Americans acquired various types of tool-appropriate rock as they trekked across the landscape and may have traded for some types of rock with other human groups, Dillehay proposes.
Dillehay/New Archaeological Evidence for an Early Human Presence at Monte Verde, ChileThe oldest evidence of humans at Monte Verde comes from stone artifacts dating to between at least 18,500 and 17,000 years ago, including this piece of rock with sharpened edges for scraping or cutting.
Most of these intentionally modified rocks were used for scraping and cutting, the researchers say. A few circular stones were possibly flung at prey with slings. Artifacts also included sharp fragments of stone produced as by-products of toolmaking.
Four stone artifacts were found in soil dating to at least 25,000 years ago. But more evidence is needed to confirm that humans visited Monte Verde and other South American sites before 20,000 years ago , the scientists say.
Dillehay’s team also identified 12 soil sections containing ash from small fires, bits of burned wood and nine partial animal bones, five of which were burned or showed signs of heating. The estimated ages for the Monte Verde discoveries come from radiocarbon measures of burned material and soil analyses that estimate when artifacts were buried.
Archaeologists searching for further pre-Clovis sites will need to keep an eye out for simple tools and remnants of small hearths or campfires, Dillehay adds. Remains of Clovis sites, which typically feature separate areas for cooking, toolmaking and other activities, are easier to spot.
The discoveries at Monte Verde “point to a new kind of site that needs much more study” to understand when people first reached the Americas, remarks archaeologist Daniel Sandweiss of the University of Maine in Orono

Preserving Native-American Art

Interest in collecting artifacts led enthusiasts to establish Gateway Indian Art Club

Todd Boehmer and his wife Carolynn at the Gateway Indian Art Club's annual Indian and Western Art Show and Sale held recently in St. Charles. Boehmer has been collecting Native-American art and artifacts since he was 9 years old. Ursula Ruhl.

November 12, 2015

 

Todd Boehmer has been collecting Native-American art and artifacts for most of his 89 years.

 

"When I was in school, kids would bring in arrowheads and we would find them on our property," he said, noting he was about 9 years old.

 

Boehmer attended Kirkwood High School, and served in the Navy during World War II. His childhood interest in Native-American culture stayed with him, however, and grew to include his wife of 53 years, Carolynn. Originally, they attended shows relating to archeology together.

 

"That was always his thing; I went to all the shows until I had two little ones, then he went with the guys," she said.

 

Then Todd Boehmer, along with Ben Thompson and Virgil Laux, conceived the idea of the Gateway Indian Art Club, and it grew from that core group.

 

For over 20 years, the Gateway Indian Art Club has hosted an annual event, The Indian and Western Art Show and Sale. This year's show was on Oct. 31 and Nov. 1 in St. Charles. Vendors come from around the United States to show their collections, sell art objects, and enjoy camaraderie with those who share their interests.

 

"The challenge is to keep a balance of materials, not all jewelry, not all baskets, but keep it interesting," Club President Lyle Anderson said. His interest in Native-American artifacts began when he was a Boy Scout, trying his hand at making his own arrows.

 

At last weekend's show, vendor David Williamson of Kirkwood displayed a wide variety of Native-American wares from his collection.

Northern Plains men's quilled shirt was on display at the show. Ursula Ruhl.

 

The club and the show are a great way for people interested in Native culture to find, and learn, from each other, Williamson said, noting he has met several kindred spirits who share his enthusiasm for intricate Native designs.

 

Some club members collect beadwork, others quillwork, still others baskets, but all admire the quality of work, use of color and pattern, and attention to detail.

 

"What fascinates me," said Carolynn Boehmer, "are the elaborate repeat patterns that the artists have in their heads, nothing on paper, for beadwork and quillwork."

 

Basket vendor Elaine Tucker, of Clayton, concurred. Primarily, her tables displayed pieces from the Pacific Northwest, such as the Nuu-Chah-Nulth (Nootka), Makah and Tlingit. The vessels dated from the late 1800s through about 1920, and were meticulously wrought from grasses.

 

"The weavers used the botanical materials where they lived; the Aleutians used ryegrass, in northern California you might see bear-grass," she continued. "It might take three to six weeks to prepare the materials for a basket, and she would weave it with no written pattern, all in her head."

 

Other displays featured dolls; Zuni and Navajo jewelry; Kentucky rifles; pottery, both modern and ancient; even a King George II peace medal that was de-accessioned from a small museum.

 

Bud Clark, formerly of Glendale, exhibited his collection of pre-1900 Western Americana. A descendant of explorer William Clark, he is part of the Discovery Expedition of St. Charles Living History group, reenacting his famous ancestor's adventures and promoting history education. Even though he has moved away from the St. Louis area, Clark looks forward to attending the Gateway Indian Art Club show.

 

"I always have the desire to visit; I have strong roots here," he said. "So I have an additional reason to be here. I love the show – two for the price of one!"

 

Lemay resident Charlie Silverhorn, a Kiowa, displayed and sold his beadwork. He gave his niece, renowned artist Kathy Dickerson, credit for carrying on family artistic traditions that go back generations.

 

"Most of the artists are gone now, but my niece keeps up the traditional arts. She smokes the hides, does beadwork and silver. My grandfather, Silverhorn, was a famous Kiowa artist," he said. His display included a copy of Smithsonian anthropologist Candace Greene's book, "Silver Horn: Master Illustrator of the Kiowa."

 

Todd Boehmer has tried his hand at traditional deer-hide tanning. The hide must be scraped to remove hair and tissue, then soaked in a mixture of water and animal brains, then stretched and smoked to create traditional deer buckskin.

 

"You have to brain tan them. We tanned them in the backyard when we lived in Crestwood; you have to pull them, stretch them thin, to make them usable," he explained.

 

The most significant object in Boehmer's collection nearly eluded him. He was walking along a creek with his oldest son, when the teenager spotted something and picked it up.

 

"I walked right by it, and my son found it," he said. "It was a paleo point, a Clovis point."

 

Clovis points are ancient; Clovis culture produced relatively large, distinctive points, although whether they were spearheads or knives is still subject to debate, roughly 13,500 years ago.

 

"So many people in St. Louis are interested in Native-American cultures," said Carolynn Boehmer. "It's part of St. Louis history. We used to be the Mound City, but the mounds are all gone now, except for Sugar Loaf mound in South City.

 

"The club has worked so hard to perpetuate the Native-American culture that is here in St. Louis, so much that is interesting, and that's why we enjoy the club."

East Texas town famous for controversial artifact

East Texas town famous for controversial artifact

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Workers uncovered the Malakoff Man while digging in a pit for gravel to make concrete for this concrete and brick home in Malakoff.

MALAKOFF - My friend Jim Bankston is a Malakoff man, having grown up in this Henderson County town east of Dallas. His dad was the Ford dealer, and his boyhood on the nearby banks of the Trinity resembled an East Texas Tom Sawyer's. But the retired senior minister of St. Paul's United Methodist Church in the Museum District is not THE Malakoff Man, as he reminded me over lunch last Sunday.

To get to know the Malakoff Man, I made the three-hour drive up Interstate 45 to Corsicana and then turned right on state Highway 31. In Malakoff, nine miles west of Athens, I also got reacquainted with another favorite son, one who shares with the Malakoff Man a connection to the timeless yearnings and mysterious impulses of artistic expression.
Malakoff, along with Moscow, Odessa and Sebastopol, is one of four Texas towns named after places in the former Imperial Russia. Early settlers preferred either Mitcham or Purdon, but U.S. postal authorities told them those names were already taken. They suggested naming it after a Russian fort that had recently been captured by the British during the Crimean War. That was fine with the East Texans, despite having no ties to Crimea or the 1855 Battle of Malakoff.
Lignite coal was discovered in the area in 1912, and for the next three decades as many as 800 miners worked the veins beneath the red clay soil. Meanwhile, brick-makers took advantage of the clay itself. The mines played out in the mid-1940s, but brick production remains Malakoff's major industry.
In 1904, Thomas A. Bartlett, owner of the Malakoff Pressed Brick Co., discovered a means of producing white brick, a discovery that won him a blue ribbon at the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair. When he decided in the late 1920s to build an elegant home for his family just outside the plant, he realized the structure would have to withstand the shock waves from dynamite used to blast out the clay. He would build the home out of his trademark pale brick and concrete reinforced with steel rebar.
On Nov. 2, 1929, quarry workers in the Trinity River bottoms about five miles west of Malakoff were mining pea gravel for the concrete to be used in the house. Their shovels clanged against something hard and substantial, and when they pushed away the gravel, they found themselves staring at a large stone head. With crudely carved ears, nose, mouth, teeth and eyes, the egg-shaped head seemed to be staring back. (Diggers found a second head in 1935 and a third in 1939.)
As the story goes, the workers left the 98-pound head on the front steps of the Bartlett house-to-be, outfitted with a hat. Was it a hoax someone had carved with modern metal tools, or was it an unbroken Humpty Dumpty sculpted by an ancient artist and cosseted for thousands of years in its pea-gravel container? If authentic, who carved it? And when?
Bartlett contacted a University of Texas archaeologist, who concluded that the head, dubbed the Malakoff Man, was the work of early Paleo-Indians and might be at least 50,000 years old. That was thousands of years before any known humans were in the area. Other experts would date the three heads as 3,000 to 4,000 years old, largely because they resemble the so-called Colossal Heads from the Veracruz area made by craftsmen of the Olmec civilization. And some suggested that at least one of the heads, the one discovered in 1939, may be a "geological peculiarity," carved by erosion or other natural forces, not by a prehistoric sculptor. The site where the heads were uncovered is now at the bottom of Cedar Creek Lake.
Authenticity debated
UT-Tyler anthropology professor Tom Guderjan insists they're frauds and that somebody used a screwdriver to carve the second and third heads. He told the Tyler Morning Telegraph a couple of years ago: "I have people bring rocks to me all the time saying, 'Does this look like a face?' and I say, 'Maybe after a bottle of wine.'"
The Malakoff Man and one of his pals reside today at the University of Texas Archeological Research Laboratory in Austin; the other is at the Navarro College Library in Corsicana. Pat Isaacson, former Malakoff mayor, now director of the Malakoff Chamber of Commerce and also president of the Malakoff Historical Society and Museum, showed me castings from the original heads that she has on display in a small glass case at the museum. She's pretty sure Malakoff Man and friends are authentic.
"I like to think they're real, and archaeologists came so close to proving it," she told me as she readied the cluttered little museum for its holiday display. "They did carbon dating and everything else, but the museum people decided that 10 years was enough time to work on it, so they pulled the archaeologists off. "
A visionary theory
My Malakoff tour guide, Lyn Dunsavage Young, knows about preserving history. She's credited with preserving the historical integrity of Dallas' Swiss Avenue neighborhood before she and her husband moved to a farm near Malakoff in 1981. Relying on an early assessment by E.H. Sellards, head of the Texas Archaeological Memorial Museum at the time Malakoff Man was discovered, she believes the heads were images carved by a people who propped them on wooden stakes beside the Trinity as a signal of their presence. Their village, she believes, overlooked plains inhabited by giant sloths, camels and mastodons; fossilized bones were found in the same excavated area. She's drawn to the notion that long before recorded history mankind was attempting to find meaning to life, to signify existence. The arc of that artistic impulse extends to the present.
"Everybody knew about the heads, growing up," Malakoff native James Surls told me by phone from his home in Carbondale, Colo. "They were absolutely believable as a child, although I can't say how believable they are as an adult. But they were a big deal."
Surls, of course, is the renowned sculptor who makes sublime art, he told Garden & Gun Magazine recently, "from green grass, trees, sticks, rivers and rocks."
Houstonians know him as a UH art professor in the 1970s and as founder of the ground-breaking Lawndale Art Center.
He and his wife, the artist Charmaine Locke, worked out of a 10,000-square-foot studio in the piney woods outside Splendora. They still own the studio, and, as Surls told me a couple of days ago, "are renegotiating our psychological intent in Splendora."
"I can't say that Malakoff Man influenced me," he said by phone, "except on a subliminal level. I had an over, above and beyond interest in anthropological stuff, and when I went off to San Diego State, I was an anthropology major, not an art major."
Authentic or not, Malakoff Man intrigues this son of a Malakoff carpenter. "Seeing a face is probably the oldest conjured image in human history," he said. "It goes back to our oldest ability to see, to be cognisant. I don't think it's a stretch to see faces in a rock."

Tom Dillehay

This serpentine rock, the size of a large plum, bears scars made when a human struck it to produce stone tools in Chile 17,000 to 19,000 years ago.

Oldest stone tools in the Americas claimed in Chile

Archaeologist Tom Dillehay didn’t want to return to Monte Verde. Decades ago, his discoveries at the famous site in southern Chile showed that humans occupied South America by 14,500 years ago, thousands of years earlier than thought, stirring a long and exhausting controversy. Now, Dillehay, of Vanderbilt University in Nashville, has been lured back—and he is preparing for renewed debate. He reports in PLOS ONE today that people at Monte Verde built fires, cooked plants and meat, and used tools 18,500 years ago, which would push back the peopling of the Americas by another 4000 years.
If his team is correct, the discovery will “shake up both the archaeology and genomics of the peopling of the Americas,” says archaeologist Jon 
Erlandson of the University of Oregon in Eugene. Genetic studies suggest that the ancestors of Paleoindians first left Siberia no earlier than 23,000 years ago (Science, 21 August, p. 841), so Dillehay’s new dates suggest they wasted little time in reaching the southern tip of the Americas. And the find raises questions about the North American record, where no one has found widely accepted evidence of occupation before 14,300 years ago. “Where the hell were the people in North America at that hour?” wonders archaeologist David Meltzer of Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas.
When Dillehay began his work at Monte Verde in the 1970s, most researchers thought the Clovis people, who hunted big game in North America starting about 13,000 years ago (using calibrated radiocarbon dates), were the first Americans. When Dillehay reported traces of huts, hearths, human footprints, and artifacts that were thousands of years older, he was forced to defend every detail of his dig to skeptical colleagues. By now, though, most archaeologists accept the older occupation at Monte Verde and a few other sites.
When the Chilean government invited Dillehay to survey the full extent of Monte Verde, he at first refused. “I was tired of it,” he says. But in 2013, fearing another team’s survey might damage the site, he returned, hoping to spend a few weeks collecting new evidence of ancient plants and climate by digging 50 small test trenches across a 20,000-square-meter area. But the dig turned up 39 stone artifacts, including flakes, a “chopper,” and cores, embedded near plants or animal bones that had been burned in small fires at 12 areas. This suggests a “spotty, ephemeral presence,” he says.
His team radiocarbon dated the plants and animal bone to between 14,500 and 18,500 years ago, and perhaps as early as 19,000 years ago. The last ice age was only just starting to wane at that time, leaving a cool temperate rain forest at Monte Verde, about 60 kilometers from the Pacific Ocean. Dillehay speculates that early Paleoindians moved along deglaciated corridors between the coast and the Andes, hunting paleo llamas and elephantlike gomphotheres.
Not everyone is 
convinced. Archaeologist Michael Waters of Texas A&M University in College Station questions whether the stone artifacts were actually humanmade, and says that the team hasn’t eliminated the possibility that the fires were natural.
Dillehay concedes that his team found few unequivocal stone tools, which are the strongest evidence of a human presence. But he notes that about one-third of the tools were made from exotic materials such as limestone and white quartz from outside the area, suggesting that people transported the stone. Meltzer finds this compelling. “The specimens don’t scream out ‘made by human hands,’” he agrees, “but Dillehay’s group has made a careful assessment of their form and raw material … It’s evidence we cannot ignore.”
Much is at stake, which suggests that the onus is on Dillehay once again to prove his case. “I guess that part of my destiny is that this damn site simply will not let go of us,” he says.

NEW FINDS

Archaeology Society plans state prehistory celebration

MURFREESBORO — Ever wondered if being an archaeologist is like it is in the movies? Learn the truth about Indiana Jones and archaeology at Rutherford County Family Archaeology Activity Day.
The open house, sponsored by the Rutherford County Archaeology Society, will be from 10 a.m.-2 p.m. Saturday at the Heritage Center, 225 W. College St., in Murfreesboro.
Activities are free and include hands-on arts and crafts, watching stone tools being made, having artifacts identified by a professional archaeologist, excavating a “mini-site” and Native American games.
The open house is a celebration of Tennessee Archaeology Awareness Month, which was create in recognition of the importance of Tennessee’s archaeological heritage. The state legislature created an official Tennessee Archaeology Awareness Week in 1995 in order to “promote the archaeological heritage of Tennessee,” according to the legislation.
In 2014, the Tennessee Council for Professional Archaeology decided to relaunch this celebration of Tennessee’s unique archaeological heritage but dedicate the entire month of September to the state’s history and prehistory, officials said.
The Rutherford County Archaeology Society was formed in January to showcase the county’s rich history and prehistory, organizer Laura Bartel said.
RCAS provides a place for people interested in the area's resources to learn more.
"I saw a need for a local archaeological society where we bring professionals and the public together to protect and learn about the cultural heritage of Rutherford County," Bartel said.
The group meets on the third Thursday of each month at the Heritage Center and features presentations from MTSU professors and local professional archaeologists about the prehistory of Middle Tennessee.

PETRIFIED TURTLE/TURTLE FOSSIL

Hunt arrowheads, Indian artifacts at Lowe-Volk Park

CRESTLINE – Crawford Park District and members of the Johnny Appleseed chapter 19 of the Archaeology Society of Ohio will present an Arrowhead/Indian Artifact Hunt at 10 a.m. Saturday at the Lowe-Volk Park Nature Center, 2401 Ohio 598.
There will be a walk at nearby farm fields to search for flint and stone remnants of prehistoric cultures who inhabited Crawford County. This is a family event. Dress for the weather and wear boots if the ground is wet. Also, walking sticks and small digging tools can be helpful.
For details, call the Crawford Park District at 419-683-9000 or visit www.crawfordparkdistrict.org.

5,000-year-old artifacts found on Charlotte farm

CHARLOTTE – Brooke Ellsworth's grandfather used to tell stories about the little stone pieces of history unearthed on the family farm.
Her great-grandfather Clyde Ellsworth would come in from a day of working the land on his Spicerville Highway property with the occasional find in hand — an arrowhead, stone pieces that looked like pendants, a hollow, long piece of what looked like a peace pipe.
"He would till them up when he was farming out there," she said.
Over the years, those stone pieces were collected and tucked away.
It took Ellsworth just a few weeks after her grandmother's death in June to go through the keepsakes in her Springport home.
"She was kind of a clean hoarder," she said. "She didn't like to throw things away and she had so much stuff. There was still furniture from the 50s in the attic."
The stone pieces had been scattered throughout the house. Delicately carved arrowheads made of both light and dark chert, all shapes and sizes. A broken, oblong, hollow piece of a smoking pipe. Larger sharp, butterfly-shaped pieces of stone, probably tools, and smooth flat rocks with small holes in the center that might have adorned the necks of people alive thousands of years ago.
Late last year, all 120 of them were rediscovered in a dusty, cluttered attic — a collection that Ellsworth's grandmother Beverly hung on to for decades. Once gathered together they fit in a moderately-sized cardboard box.
It's a rare collection insofar as all of the pieces were pulled from the same 140 acres and kept together over the decades.
It's also solid proof that the Ellsworth family wasn't the first to make their home there. Groups of American Indians have inhabited that open stretch of land between Charlotte and Eaton Rapids intermittently since before the ancient Egyptians built the Pyramids at Giza.
A simple donation
Ellsworth and her father Chris made a decision.
The family would let the stones go, donate them to the Eaton Rapids Historical Society.
Deb Malewski, the historical society's vice president, got her first look at the artifacts in December. Within a day, she had convinced herself that the stones were special.
"If all this came from one farm, this is not your normal find," she said. "This isn't, somebody picks up an arrowhead out in the farmer's field. This means something more than a causal find. This is too much and in too good of shape to just have been a random thing. This is a sign of some kind of settlement."
Enter Stacy Tchorzynski, an archaeologist with the Michigan State Historical Preservation Office and no stranger to significant finds.
"It's a great collection and we're only beginning to learn about it," said Tchorzynski.
The items are in good shape. Spear points, arrowheads, pestles used to grind spices and other items, banner stones used as weights on spears, knives, a smoking pipe and pendants were found on the farm.
"People of all ages and genders would have used a tool kit like this," Tchorzynski said.
More importantly, she added, the collection was kept together, not scattered among relatives.
That has allowed experts to date what's there. Some of the Ellsworth farm artifacts date back 350 years. Some of them date back 5,000 years.
Farm's rich back story
Clyde Ellsworth bought the 140-acre farm in 1937. The land has stayed in the family since.
The flat, vast, snow-covered property was once home to cows, chickens, pigs and sheep and to acres of corn, wheat and hay.
Today, one of Clyde's grandsons lives there in a one-story home. There are a few barns too, off the rural, snow-drifted roadway, along with rows of now-frozen corn stalks.
Most of the artifacts were found before the family used massive, efficient machinery to work the land, back when Clyde was still using horses to plow the fields. They popped up from the freshly tilled earth in the animals' lumbering wake.
"As my grandfather followed the horses, he would pick up the arrowheads," Brooke Ellsworth said.
It's easy to see why prehistoric people made their homes at site that is now the Ellsworth farm. People chose settlements then for the same reason they do today — location — and the farm was high ground between the Grand and Kalamazoo rivers.
"It looks like people were living there for several thousands of years on and off," said Tchorzynski. "People kept coming back and back over the years there."
And even something as inconsequential as trace amounts of burned food found inside a ceramic pot can give scientists important information about how they lived, said William Lovis, an anthropology professor at Michigan State University and a curator at the MSU Museum.
"It can be carbon dated," said Lovis. "Looking at the chemistry of the food can tell us what plants and animals are there. You can tell generally what they were cooking in the pot. That's all from a few milligrams of burned on food."
American Indians living there 350 years ago during the Late Woodland period likely would have made pottery and grown corn, squash and beans, storing it to use later.
"These folks were actually very different from their ancestors," said Lovis. "They did not travel as much."
For the earlier groups, whose use of the site goes back 5,000 years ago to what's known as the Late Archaic period, it probably would have been more a stopping place than a settlement.
They were nomads, living in small groups, moving with the seasons and in search of food. They hadn't begun making pottery yet and relied on hunting and gathering to survive.
But when it comes what life was like for American Indians that lived here long ago, experts don't actually know very much, Lovis said.
Preserving, learning more
The donation is a piece of the area's history, the 138th recorded historical site in the county, one of roughly 22,000 in the state.
The Eaton Rapids Historical Society wants to share and display it. A program focused on the artifacts will be offered this summer. The group will display the pieces at the historical Miller Farm.
"We really have something cool here," said Malewski. "Other counties have thousands of sites but very few are recorded here in Eaton County."
That may be because property owners aren't talking about what they find.
"People have found stuff," said Malewski. "They just haven't reported it to the state because they're afraid the state will take it away."
Which can happen in certain cases but doesn't usually, according to Matthew Fletcher, a Michigan State University law professor and the director of the Indigenous Law & Policy Center.
"In general, private property owners often can retain ownership over privately acquired Indian artifacts and materials," said Fletcher. "However, if the artifacts include eagle feathers or any eagle parts, and the owner is not a member of a federally recognized tribe, then the ownership is illegal under federal law."
Tchorzynski said her office does want to document finds and offer land owners help in preserving and keeping their collections together. Both efforts are key to helping experts learn more about the history of the places where they were found.
"Really the value of these sites can't be measured," she said. "Each site is its own unique story. These are things to treasure."
Ellsworth said her family had "no idea" the stones her great-grandfather found were valuable pieces of the area's history.
"I'm so glad that we decided to donate them," she said, "because we never would have known otherwise."
At a glance
The Spicerville Highway farm has been designated by the Michigan State Historical Preservation Office as the 138th recorded historical site in Eaton County.
There are 22,000 recorded historical sites on land in Michigan. Some were once American Indian settlements. Others were pioneer homesteads or logging sites. Another 1,500 shipwrecks or underwater sites are on record.

Spear points, arrowheads, pestles used to grind spices and other items, banner stones used as weights on spears, knives, a smoking pipe and pendants were found on the farm.
The items have led experts to believe that more than one group of prehistoric Native Americans lived on the land. Some of the 120 artifacts date 350 years, while others date as far as 5,000 years.
The farm was likely considered high ground between two viable water sources, the Grand and Kalamazoo rivers

Site of rare Indian artifacts paved over in California

An ancient American Indian burial ground and village dating back 4,500 years was found in California's Marin County and quietly destroyed to make way for a multimillion-dollar housing development, the San
Archaeologists tell the newspaper that a 300-foot-long site in Larkspur contained Coast Miwok life from before the time of King Tut's tomb, including 600 human burials, tools, musical instruments and harpoon tips along with bones of bears and a ceremonial California condor burial.
Not a single artifact was saved, Chronicle staff writer Peter Fimrite reports.
"This was a site of considerable archaeological value," Dwight Simons, a consulting archaeologist who analyzed 7,200 bones, tells the Chronicle. "My estimate of bones and fragments in the entire site was easily over a million, and probably more than that. It was staggering."
The newspaper says all of the items were reburied in an undisclosed location at the site north of San Francisco and apparently graded over.

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The $55 million development project will include a mix of homes, from senior housing units to single-family dwellings selling for $2.5 million.
As required by law, developers brought in archaeological experts to excavate the site and the work was monitored by the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria, who were designated the most likely descendants of the indigenous people in the area.
Because the work was carried out under a non-disclosure agreement, word of the find was not widely known until some of the archaeologists discussed their work at a Society for California Archaeology symposium in March.

The American Indian leaders ultimately decided how the findings would be handled, and defended their decision to remove and rebury the human remains and burial artifacts.
"Our policy is that those things belong to us, end of story," Greg Sarris, the chairman for the 1,300-member tribe, tells the Chronicle. "Let us worry about our own preservation. If we determine that they are sacred objects, we will rebury them because in our tradition many of those artifacts, be they beads, charm stones or whatever, go with the person who died. ... How would Jewish or Christian people feel if we wanted to dig up skeletal remains in a cemetery and study them? Nobody has that right."
Archaeologist Simons says he believes developers were behind keeping it secret to avoid any comparison to the 1982 movie Poltergeist in which a family was tormented by ghosts and demons because their house was built on top of a burial ground.

NATIVE AMERICAN DAY

Native American Day is a large annual event that will be held at Norristown Farm Park on Sept. 27th.

Native American Day will occur at Norristown Farm Park on Sunday, September 27th from 10:00 am to 3:00 pm.  The rain date is
It is an annual event that is held at the pavilions.  Lee Hallman, president of the Indian Artifact Collectors Association of the Northeast, will display many artifacts.  Bring some of your own for free appraisal.  Other presenters give demonstrations and displays of Lenape culture, including flint knapping, jewelry, clothing, tools, and foods.  Come and talk to these knowledgeable people.  There will be Native American games and crafts for children.  All ages are welcome.  This is a free event with free parking.  Pre-registration is not required.  For more information call the park (610-270-0215).

Syrian archaeologist 'killed in Palmyra' by IS militants

Palmyra is considered one of the most important historical sites in the Middle East

The man who looked after the Roman ruins in the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra is reported to have been killed by Islamic State (IS) militants.

Khaled Asaad was taken hostage by the group after it seized the Unesco World Heritage site earlier this year.
The family of the 82-year-old scholar said he had been beheaded by IS fighters, according to Syria's director of antiquities, Maamoun Abdulkarim.
Mr Asaad had spent more than 50 years working on Palmyra.
He was head of antiquities at the ancient ruins, which is considered one of the most important historic sites in the Middle East.

'Curse on the city'

On Tuesday, Mr Abdulkarim said the scholar's family told him that Mr Asaad had been killed and his body hung from a column in Palmyra's main square.
"Just imagine that such a scholar who gave such memorable services to the place and to history would be beheaded," Mr Abdulkarim said.
"The continued presence of these criminals in this city is a curse and bad omen on [Palmyra] and every column and every archaeological piece in it."

Islamic State fighters remain in control of Palmyra despite a Syrian army offensive

IS fighters, who control large areas of Syria and Iraq, captured the site from Syrian government forces in May.
The group has previously destroyed ancient ruins in Syria and Iraq but it is unclear how much damage they have caused at Palmyra.
UN cultural organisation Unesco says its destruction would be "an enormous loss to humanity".
Syrian troops have sought to drive IS militants out of the area in recent months and there has been fierce fighting in nearby towns - but the group remains in control of Palmyra.

Ancient artifacts uncovered in East Texas

Ancient artifacts uncovered in East Texas highway project

TxDOT reports artifacts uncovered

Photo courtesy TxDOT - Examples of arrowheads found in the Frankston area during excavations in 2011 along SH 155 in Anderson County.

From Staff Reports

TYLER – The Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) announced Tuesday the discovery of archeological sites along the US 175 Expansion project in Anderson and Henderson counties that contains artifacts dating back to the 1400s. The findings suggest that the locations could have been a temporary Native American settlement. The US 175 Expansion has been in the planning stages for years and is a top priority for TxDOT in an effort to improve the safety and mobility of the roadway. It includes three separate projects covering 13.8 miles from Baxter to Frankston and is designed to widen the roadway from two lanes to four-lane divided with a depressed median. TxDOT has hired a consulting firm that specializes in cultural resources which investigated and found at least three sites along US 175 that could have been small farmsteads or settlements of the native people who lived in this area from the 1400s up to 1650. Artifacts such as pieces of ceramic vessels, stone tools, and more have been found at these sites and will be researched and then curated at one of the state's facilities. The data will be compiled into a report once the field activities conclude. Archeologists are working under the guidance of the National Historic Preservation Act which prescribes how to address historic and archeological sites during the planning of transportation projects. “Our teams are working carefully to excavate these areas in order to reduce the impact of the highway project on the heritage of the tribal community and the state of Texas,” said Kathi White, TxDOT Public Information Officer. “Construction can still occur on other segments of the highway while the investigation continues at the protected locations.”

Safely Collecting Indian Artifacts

Ethical issues have been raised about Indian artifacts.
Pots are highly sought Native American artifacts.
These Anasazi bowls were excavated before laws were passed to protect them.
Bruce recommends being careful to do business only with reputable dealers.

Collectors with an eye for beauty and history have long been lured by the power of Native American artifacts. People have brought examples of these to ANTIQUES ROADSHOW, including pre-historic objects once placed in ancient graves as burial offerings, such as Southwest Anasazi pots.

For new and seasoned collectors alike, a simple primer on the legal and ethical issues that surround Native American collecting

While Indian artifacts old and new are among the most sought-after collectibles on the market today, the controversial selling of funereal objects leads ANTIQUES ROADSHOW appraiser Bruce Shackelford, an independent San Antonio appraiser and consultant who deals with Indian art and culture, to call it "a dangerous field to collect in." That's because laws on the books—and ethical issues brought to the fore by Native American groups—have raised important legal and moral issues about collecting Native American objects. Here we've put together a simple primer on the laws governing Native American collecting to help new and seasoned collectors alike navigate legally and ethically in this field.
Illegal Goods
A series of laws passed in 1906, 1966, 1979, and 1992 forbid the taking of Native American artifacts from federal land, including national forests, parks and Bureau of Land Management land, unless granted a permit to do so. Over the years, states have passed their own laws that restrict the taking of Native American objects from state land, echoing the federal laws. There are also laws that deal with pre-Columbian art and taking native works out of other countries.
Ed Wade is senior vice president at the Museum of Northern Arizona, a private institution in Flagstaff that has a repository of over 2 million Native American artifacts. Ed explains that these laws were enacted to restrict "pot hunting," the illegal excavation and sale of Native American objects. Under these laws, those who dig up artifacts from federal or state lands can be fined hundreds of thousands of dollars and can also be prosecuted and sent to jail.
If someone knowingly or even unknowingly purchases these illegally excavated objects, Ed says federal or state officials might seize them without giving any financial compensation.
Expensive Art Breeds Shady Sellers
Bruce says that enforcement of these laws has been stepped up in recent years because the potential to make money from these archaeological treasures has expanded. "Pieces that have once sold for $50 now sell for thousands," Bruce says. "There's a large market for Indian artifacts in the decorator crowd. A lot of people who grew up with little Anasazi bowls on the coffee table now want bigger bowls to fill up large Southwest-style houses."
Ed notes that prices on Indian artifacts above $5,000 are commonplace, with some of the rarest objects selling routinely for half-a-million dollars. Unfortunately, jacked up demand for these beautiful objects has created an incentive for people to excavate them illegally.
Grave Robbing
Pot hunters know that they are likely to find the best objects at Indian graves. "Pieces from the graves tend to be the more spectacular ones," Bruce says. "Native Americans buried their better pieces in graves, so they are often protected from use and tend to survive in a more complete state." At the Austin ANTIQUES ROADSHOW Bruce saw two Anasazi pots that were between 800 and 1,200 years old. One of the pots had what is called a "kill hole," made in a pot when it was buried in order to release the spirit from the pot. The existence of this hole in a pot indicates that it was ritually buried.
If artifacts such as the two Anasazi pots were to be dug up on federal lands today, under existing law, it would certainly be illegal to sell them. But even if bought prior to the 1906 passage of the first federal law restricting removal of Indian property from federal lands—as these were in the late 1800s—it should not be assumed that such artifacts are legally marketable today. In many cases they are not. Legal or illegal, moreover, buying and selling artifacts that were originally taken from burial sites also raises serious ethical issues.
"All cultures have taken part in grave robbing," Ed explains. "The question is, 'Is it ethical?' If we saw people digging in our family plots we'd probably be very upset." Ed adds that by digging up the burial grounds we're "damaging someone's last wish" and also interfering with the Native American expectation that they will "arrive at a better place."
How To Protect Yourself
Whatever one decides is ethical, collectors need to protect themselves from the law. Bruce recommends you check the laws with your local museum, if it has a major Native American collection, or with reputable dealers, scholars and appraisers before you make a purchase. Ed suggests buyers always make sure to get a letter of certification that authenticates where an object came from and when it was found.
"That way, if someone lies, you can sue them," says Ed, who emphasizes that it is worth getting these for less expensive objects as well, because they will inevitably appreciate in value. "If your son inherits a piece and wants to sell it in 20 years," Ed explains. "A museum won't be able to take it if there's no documentation." Ed says that buying these objects blind is the equivalent of "buying a car or a house without a title."
Bruce emphasizes the importance of dealing with reputable dealers. He gives the lover of Native American artifacts clear advice. "If someone can't tell you where an object came from and how it was acquired, don't buy it," he says. Bruce also notes that there are plenty of beautiful—and safe—Native American materials on the market, such as clothing, or pottery made by contemporary Native American craftsmen.

North Carolina Cherokees claim to be descendants of Clovis Culture

The original Native American inhabitants of the French Broad River Valley lived in simple huts woven from saplings.

The Eastern Band of Cherokees recently issued a press release, in which a cultural heritage official of the tribe, Barbara Duncan, described a program, which will help preserve 10,000 year old Cherokee artifacts around North America. An initial project is on the Biltmore Estate near Asheville, NC. Archaeologists label these artifacts as the Clovis Culture. A newspaper in Asheville developed the press release into a community news article about archaeological projects on the Biltmore Estate.
The Asheville-Citizen Times reporter and Duncan described the Cherokee-Clovis artifacts as being associated with the Archaic Period. However, the Clovis Culture belongs to the Paleo-American Period. Clovis artifacts date from about 13,500 to 10,500 years ago, not 8,000 BC as stated by the article.
No archaeological reference could be found that confirmed the Eastern Band’s new claim of Clovis and Archaic Period artifacts being made by the Cherokees. The oldest known Clovis artifacts were found at the Topper Site on the Savannah River in Allendale County, SC, north of Savannah, GA. At the time that French Huguenots explored that region in 1562 through 1565, it was occupied by Uchee and Apalache-Creek Indian villages. Nearby was the famous Apalache-Creek town of Palachikola.
Without specifically mentioning the Clovis Culture, the Eastern Band of Cherokees has long claimed that the Cherokees were the first humans in North America, plus that the Aztecs and Mayas were their descendants. However, most such films and publications get their chronology mixed up and place the Aztecs in an earlier time period than the Mayas, when in fact, the opposite is true.
A humorous mistake was made by the North Carolina archaeologists and Eastern Band tribal officials, who were interviewed for the newspaper article. Both claimed that a Woodland Period (250-500 AD) village on the Biltmore Estate was a Cherokee community, but was for scientific reasons, was labeled as being the Connestee Culture. The meaning of the Cherokee word, Coneste was supposedly forgotten. According to the Dictionary of Muskogee-Creek by University of Oklahoma professors Jack Martin and Margaret Mauldin, Connestee is the Anglicization of the Itsate-Creek word Konos-te, which means, "Spotted Skunk People." Neither the English or Creek word has any meaning in Cherokee, other than being a proper noun.
Duncan is employed by the Museum of the Cherokee Indian. The museum’s logo is a shell gorget, which was found in eastern Missouri across the Mississippi River from Cahokia Mounds. The Eastern Band of Cherokee Cultural Preservation Office uses as its logo, a shell gorget, which was found in Mound C at Etowah Mounds in northwest Georgia, which the Muscogee-Creek Nation of Oklahoma considers to be its Mother Town.
Cherokee Heritage Trails Guide, a book published by the University of North Carolina Press claims that the Cherokees were the people, who developed corn, beans and squash into cultivated crops in addition to being the first humans in the Americas. The book was co-authored by Duncan and Dr. Brett Riggs, an anthropology professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, These claims also cannot be verified by other anthropological or archaeological references.
When French explorers first paddled up the French Broad River in the 1690s, the entire region around present day Asheville and Hendersonville, NC was occupied by Shawnee and Creek Indians. The Swannanoa River gets its name from the Creek words, Suwano Owa, which mean Shawnee River. A very large Shawnee village was located near the present location of entrance gate at the Biltmore Estate. The region around Asheville continued to be occupied by Shawnee villages until 1763, when the Shawnee were expelled because they were allies of the French. No American Indians were allowed to live in the region afterward. However, in the late 20th century, the Asheville Chamber of Commerce began advertising Asheville as the "Ancient Heart of the Cherokee Nation" and residents quickly forgot the region's actual Shawnee heritage.