Utah Statewide Archaeological Society Newsletter, Volume 2, Number 4, December 1956

" 1

r'

,: ). -!

LI'T1/\11

r.: -:- ,:, -,-;:: : ' , .' .

,-.·li\I'_~

~

....... ,

603 r.:/\ST SCUT;-··j

.'

' , - ' ! , l - . .'· '

" ._

.

~_.'~ -,,-"X.'- ~

!

': :j-Y

' - _ · .......... t i-,

~

TE>1~(LE

SALT LAKE _CILY" UIAl:l ---

"

~

.

UTAH ARCHEOLOGY '1

A Ilewsletter Vol. 2, Ho. 4

December 1956 Contents

Editor is Hotes

page 1

Early Han in the Uest--· Jesse D. Jennings

2

Each to the Other-"-- --- Hilliam A. Ritchie

6

Editor's [Jotes

, This issue, the eighth in the two years since the inception of the Utah Statewide Archeological Society, terminates the period of full subsidy of the organization and its newsletter by the Department of Anthropology at the University of Utah. Starting with the next issue, receipt of Uta~_Arc~co~ and membership in the USAS will be contingent upon payment of $1.00 annual membership dues. The Department of Anthropology will continue to provide most of the labor in the production and distribution of the newG1ettcr. For thos e of you who want to.maintain lllember9~in tho socie ty but who have not as yet pnid your 1957_ member .. ship dues. there is a remittance form attached to this newsletter.

Th~s

Iss~

. The first article consists of , extepsive excerpts from the:"Thursday at the University of Utah on November 29, 1956 by Dr. Jc'ss e' D. Jennings ,Head of the Anthropology Department. Distinguished scholars of the University faculty are selected, to present these weekly lectures for the edification of Dtudent body and fnculty in general.

The lecture was profusely illustrated with ~olored slides of sites and artifacts which, unfortunately, we are unable to reproduce here. lcc~'~~~" presented

;; ,'\ .. .

The other article in this issue is also by a professional archeologist, Dr. Hilliam A. Ritchie, who is the New York State Archeologist, and the President of the New York State Archeological Association. The article is reprinted from the l1arch, 1956, Bul1e~in of the latter o.r~anization. The paper was presented in a longer form at the 1956 Annual M8eting of the Society for American Archaeology where one half d~y was devoted to a Horkshop on Local Archeological Societies.

,

.~~~ -

...

I plan t~1include in the next issue of Utah Archeologz another paper presented at the same VJorkshop ' by a dedicated amateur archeologist) Clarence H. l-'Jebb.

----Utah Archeo1~ i-s wide Archeological the Editor- - James of Utah, Salt Lake

diotribu.ted quarterly to. members of the Utah StateSOCiety.' An correspohdence I3hould be directeq to R~ " Gunnerson, Department of Anthropology, Utiivers ity City, Utah.

\\

. - -- ..,. . ' , ' ,1 ' ,.,

J

~~, '

~

3

It yielded the bones of one adult mammoth and several diagnostic flint specimens --Clovis fluted pOints. Eight specimens were found in association with the bones. This location met all the criteria for acceptance: It was sealed over; was associated with an identified geological event; that is, a previously studied period of alluviation; was associated with extinct fauna; and yielded diagnostic artifacts. The Clovis fluted points from Naco run 3-5 inches in length, are elliptical or leaf shape, and have a flake scar running from the eared base, which gives the fluting which is diagnostic of the form. These points are presumed to have been lost during the kill or the subsequent butchering.

(

The Lehner site--also in Arizona and excavated by Ted Sayles of the State Museum of Arizona--has r~cently been reported in Sports~lllus­ trated. It also was a creek bed kill site where mammoth were slaughtered and butchered. It, too, was silt covered. A trio of unique pieces are miniature Clovis pOints of clear quartz. Standard Clovis were also present and are almost identical with the Naco pieces. The geological estimates of age for Naco run around 8000 B.C. Lehner has just been dated at 6000 B.C.--a date much younger than anticipated. Other Clovis culture sites occur on the edges of, and in, the Great Basin but are in poor control and are omitted here.

*

~'r

*

"l\

*

"lr

~'(

*

"';'\

Later than the Clovis cultures, exemplified above, nre the Folsom remains, too well known and well documented to require extensive description here. Folsom remains nre ahmys stratigraphicnlly younger than the Clovis and always associated with a long-horned extinct bison, not the elephant. The dates for Folsom run around 10,000 years old.

The recently reported Midland, Texas site, which yields Folsom specim~ns, exemplifies the fruitful collaboration of scientists and is one of the very few ,"arly mnn sites v7hich has yielded human remains. Here a very complicated geologicnl, erosional and paleontological corre" l:ltion was undertaken by Texas scientists--Fred Hendorf, E. H. Sellards, Alex Krieger, C. C. Albritton, and Dale Stewart. In this desolate blowout--where nn ancient lake ha.d twice:: been' silted up--a huraan skull and · other bones were found. It is a completely modern skull; adult but quite small. Midlnnd man is, in fact, a WOU1a.n. It is of a type already recognized as early or e~ 'test in America; it is not Mongoloid in its features. But never befoI, "l.S the sarile association--if there is associat ion--been observed. The So. was actually f.ound o~ the surface in the remnant of an old deposit in the blowout (our criteria are not op~r-~ at ing here). Above the locus of the skull, there were FolsOEl fluted pOints--known to be later in time than Clovis fluted. H-,nce, we have a skull eroding out of a layer lower than the Folsom. The combined and exhaustive study of the scientists led the team to conclude that the skull is stratigraphically older than the Folsom material, that it was until quite recently buried in the gray sand and that it was antecedent --only slightly--to the Folsom debris. Radiocarbon, fluorine, a~~~l other nge tests do not aijree. The age ascriptions for vnrious ~'~~t'irnerts - " cover a wide range and the age is very uncertain. In any case : isop. an'g horse and antelope--all extinct species--are found 9bove the s ;~H.- . Tne man Day or raay not be Folsom. lk .:..

No\V' for the Great Bns in:

c

.

.

(Fi' ~~ OreBon~ Luther Cre$SL.lll.n has exptore..:d and re.port-ed. seve-ral

;-' £ .ti'h:e ,rudioC'ilrbon dates here cluster ar0und 7~OElO.,. B. C. In Fort Reck Cave was found a deposit containing woven. textile stmdals dated · at 7500 B. .C. ';i'hey are nade of well-spun strin8 and are of varied

,s itcs

!-(r

to

• r

~

..

.

- -

(

5

other earth. For example, the half life of Carbon 14 is of first interest to nuclear~hemists and physicists on entirely theoretical grounds. They were~' at the time, ignorant of and indifferent to the age of man, or to the absolute dating of geologic events. : i

Nor are the geologists overly concerned with man. They , for their own studies of process and sequence, have, for example, long ago correlated a vanished ice sheet with the stones and dirt it pushed in front of it. vfuen and if an archeologist finds man or man's leavings under or in one or another natural geologic deposits, the geology is not changed. The age ascriptions remain the same. The result is that a r el ative date for man's objects is given by one whose interests lie elsewhere. In exactly the same way, the paleontologists have long known, for purposes of their own, that certain animals became extinct at various times, and when we find the bones of these animals intermingled with man's charcoal, ashes, flint objects and tools of bone, the relative time is already fixed. I hasten to insert, of course, that the archeologist may bring some skills to the task, but in matters of assigning dates, he only injects man into the picture; the time and age figures come largely from elsewhere. Hence, the crucial time element in the problem of man's autiquity in this continent or in the world, derives from the work of n much larger core of non - social scientists whose findings are made in the special context of one or another natural or physical science. Thus I remind you that the material I have presented is sustained by the depth and excellence of data from many of the oldest fields of science; my contribution today has been one of collation and summary and interpretation.

In surrnnary, I have told you of two ancient 1 ifeways in the West.

In one case as early as 15,000 years ngo (and perhaps 35,000) there existed in the Plains a culture entirely parasitic upon the big game.

In the marginal areas the big game hunters and the Desert foragers overlapped, but in the main we can now see two distinct ancient streams of culture. At the same time as the big game culture we know that man has been in the arid west for more than 10,000 years. His culture was simple--geared to full exploitation of the land. He gathered vegetable foods, he milled small seeds, he hunted and trapped all available animals and he existed in a state of precarious balance \'lith the land and climate. The effective aocia1 and political unit was the family, with warfare and aggression essentially unknown. Oddly, the weaker Desert culture survived until 1850 . It earlier also gave rise to the higher Southwestern cultures such as Pueblo and Hohokam. The big game hunters, however, are long vanished, having departed with the large animals.

; ,

. :y

."

I r

~ --:.~I

-----_

7

The means to this larger end are to be found in an approach to archeology which is problem-centered rather than relic-centered. The problems are many and diverse. they are best known to the professional who has given years of hard work, hard thought (and hard cash) in preparation for and ekccution of his job. He and the amateur can pool their efforts with mutual advantages. He can offer aid not alone in formulating problems for research, but in the procedure of recovery and recording, that must be observed for useful interpretations, which constitute the intrinsic value of all such work. A collection of raeasurements is not enough to reach this end in digging a site, as too luany amateurs have assumed. NGr is a collection of artifacts sufficient.

Only painstaking attention to soil details, associations of features and objects, animal and plant remaihs (including charcoa1 for radiocarbon dating), post-mold patterns, human skeletal remains, and numerous other items, will yield the harvest of information to be found variably on every site.

,.--

All sites ate of course not equally significant. On some, eepecially after a preliminary appraisal with professional guidance, the amateur can proceed quite successfully. There are others--certain burial sites and stratified habitation sites--for example, where his competence, due to lack of training, is usually insufficient to prevent tragic loss of data.

If an amateur calls thus upon the services of his professional collea3ue for appraisal, advice and actual assistance, does he thereby lose his site or his discoveries? By no ueaoe., A considerable number of amateur friends of all professional archeologists can testify to this. As said before, the ' professional has better resources to appraise and interpret; he can often use, with proper credit, the information so obtained from the amateur in his published records, and he can encourage and guide his amateur co-worker to observe, record, interpret and publish on his own. Herein, lie the larger rewards for both.

In New York we now need, and badly, this kind of teamwork. Road building, Seaway construction, housing and cOIIlUlercial developments of all sorts are rapidly eroding our ' liraited potential of archeological information. We have uade much headway together, as our present status of knowledge shows, but many problems L1USt still be solved. VJe know far too little about important stases in late Archaic and early Hoadland horizons, the relationship of Iroquoian to earlier cultures in the area, the radiocarbon datins of large segL1ents of the culture sequence, the beginnings and consequences of the introduction of agriculture into New York, and the developuent of settlement patterns and their economic, socia-political and other correlates, to mention but a few of the salient problens.

(

r

The closest cooperative efforts of anateur and professional will be needed for this task and the satisfactions will be comnensurate with the labors involved.

(

, \

>

."

, ,

,

\';::1;

u'

....

,',

,

"

','

., .. ',~,

:

";'} '.-

J~

..

"

,'--: ~ .,,' ,".

,.,.'

',.,

"

~" ~", ",!

~.

'-'1

...

')

.'

"

,

. . ,-" , ,. ,

(

'

...

,

.

'(

•'.

"

"

I.

r

'.

" "

., ,,'

CO

.llu

"

I.

,.

d U

o o

'.

.' ,~

'.

g

"

I,

. .....'" ......

....

~,

,'

,.

,.

..

~

.,

'.

,,'

.,.'

~

.'.

..

. ,$ ..•~.~;'\/'/<

,..

,,

"

, '

". ".

.,

'.

..

"

'

,'.

,,"~

.I"

;.\ : ,i/-:

"

,.

.

"

r.'1. ~), '''~, '" ~

: .1,

.

.' , : .

.:, r . . ""

:.,j ," I ,~,

.'

t,.

.

,;~

•

"",-

,

~

.,

.

.

,'I.- ,." ,..:

"

,

-",

,

"

..' ""

"

. ..::

,

!o., •.

"

'''.

'.

t

o

1

.

• ,,'1'";

"

.'

'

'r

1: ~

," , "

..

"o " ....d

.

,. ( I

.\

(