Don returns from his archeology adventure

After a two week hiatus, I have returned to Monticello to rejoin the working world. Over the last couple of weeks (with the exception of Father's Day weekend, when I returned home) I have been staying in a hotel in Malvern, Arkansas, assisting as a volunteer on an archeological dig (for a website with more details on this dig, go to: http://www.hsu.edu/content.aspx?id=7270).

This effort began on Saturday, June 9. After a several hour orientation at a local community college, they immediately took us to a site in the city of Malvern itself (a location currently under construction for a city recreation facility). We then began digging an 8 meter (roughly 26 feet) long "trench" comprised of four 2 meter by 2 meter (6.5 feet by 6.5 feet) "test unit" that we dug down about 10 centimeters (4 inches) at a time. The dirt we removed was sifted through 1/4" wire mesh screens, and any artifacts larger than 1/4" were separated and placed into bags to be washed and recorded later in a lab setting. The picture above is of the whole trench not long after we started, while the image below is of the test unit I spent the first week of this dig in...

We found lots of artifacts, mostly various chipped rocks produced as "waste" during the tool making process. These rocks were largely a type of stone called "novaculite," which is commonly found in the Ouachita Mountains of central Arkansas and eastern Oklahoma. This stone is a type of flint or chert, and makes wonderful points and other stone edge tools. Novaculite can range from white to black to gray or red, with some stones having multiple colors in many intricate patterns. This picture is of a novaculite outcrop in Lake Catherine State Park near Malvern, and probably had been used as a source of some of the stone artifacts we were finding...

The focus of this work session was to examine a number of sites that were novaculite "workshops" where prehistoric peoples would take the rough stones they dug out of the mountains and chip them into smaller, more "finished" products called "bifaces", which were named because they have two chipped sides. These bifaces were then transported across much of the region, either to use directly for more refined manufacturing of their own tools, or to be traded to peoples living in other locations that lacked such a high-quality stone. This type of easily identified stone can be found as far away as Mississippi or Louisiana. These workshops were active for a long time--the archeologists estimate that activity peaked perhaps4,000 to 6,000 years ago, but were used for a long time after that as well.

After my first week, during which I completed a course on basic excavation, I was then assigned to help at a different location about 10 miles outside of town called "Jones Mill". This was the main focus of this summer's dig, and the picture above shows the trench we were working in and the screens in the back that were used to sift for artifacts. This site came to the attention of the Arkansas Archeological Survey when Entergy (a regional power company) started building a power substation. As a part of this effort, they needed to do an archeological survey, and then found a bunch of artifacts. They built the substation on a part of the property relatively free of artifacts, and the archeologists eventually worked out a deal with Entergy to do some excavation of this site, which is currently used as a hay meadow. This site has actually been known by locals for generations as a great place to go and pick up arrowheads or broken pieces of pottery. One of these locals actually swung by while we were digging and brought by part of his collection from those fields, which included points, tools, and other artifacts spanning millenia.

I also spent much of the second week in a class on site survey--basically, how to locate and describe archeological sites. We were working in Lake Catherine State Park, and spent most of our time expanding upon an already known site that is also one of these novaculite workshops. We also found evidence of a much more modern occupation--broken parts of a earthenware container like that big jug mom and dad have, broken glass, some nails, and a part of an iron plow turned up along one of the trails, suggesting someone had tried to scratch a living as a farmer in these rocky soils, probably early in the 20th century before the land became part of the state park.

All in all, I had a great time. I learned a lot, made a number of new friends, and further cemented my interests in archeology. Hope and the kids did get a chance to visit a couple times, and got to see some new museums and go swimming a couple times. I'm sure I'll be volunteering for similar events in the future, and I'll keep posting them.