Tuesday, October 27, 2015
Saturday, September 26, 2015
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.
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.
Sunday, September 20, 2015
Thursday, August 20, 2015
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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
Native American Day is a large annual event that will be held at Norristown Farm Park on Sept. 27th.
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).
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