More diggin' in south Arkansas

Last Thursday I joined Arkansas Archeological Survey archeologist Bob Scott on an excavation not far north of Warren, Arkansas (which is about 20 miles west of Monticello). This site is on timber company land, and has been heavily looted by local pot-hunters. This first picture shows some of their efforts. They dig in the soft soil and then sift the material looking for anything of value--usually arrowheads and intact pottery. Typically, their efforts destroy the nature of the site, damage the context needed to interpret what was found here, damage or destroy artifacts that have no commercial value, and loot those of value. In many sites (this one included), graves are disturbed, and the remains of people are scattered and destroyed with no thought of the consequences. There is little local law enforcement can or will do to looters--they may be prosecuted for trespassing and/or vandalism if the landowner wants to press charges, and if human remains are disturbed, this can be a felony, but these are usually low priority cases, and the culprits are rarely caught in the act. Apparently, many of the people linked to this looting are also involved in parts of the illict drug trade in this part of the world, and use the money they receive from looting to help support their habits.

Anyhow, we got to the site not far from the Saline River early in the morning and set up a 1 meter by 1 meter test unit to follow up on some earlier testing Bob had done. We then proceeded to dig down into the ground about 4 inches at a time, sifting the material as we went through a fine wire mesh screen. In this picture, Bob is sitting in the test pit scraping soil with a trowel. I have been using the wooden sifter to process the soil, and any artifacts or objects of interest are placed in the white bag next to the pile of processed dirt. It can be quite tedious and time-consuming to remove the material properly, analyze the soil profile, sift and sort the dirt, and then process the artifacts upon your return to the lab.

In the course of this day, we dug down about a foot and a half, and collected a number of bags of artifacts. Most of what we found was pretty typical stuff--flakes of flint, chunks of rock, broken pieces of pottery, etc. We found three "points"--two small arrowheads, and one larger spearpoint that had been further worked down into a "scraper" used to process animal hides (shown in this picture). The site appears to have been primarily a late Prehistoric or Woodland campsite or village. Other artifacts collected by the archeologists (and supplemented by our digging) do indicate that people have used the area since before the time of Christ, and perhaps thousands of years before that. Hopefully, we'll be able to save as much from this location as possible, even though the looters have far more resources available to them than we do.

This will be the last post for the next few weeks, as I have a couple business trips to make, and won't be able to post anything new. By the time I get the next post up, Kenny's room will be remodeled, and we'll be looking to start the next project.