Occasionally while excavating an archaeological site in Minnesota the archaeologists come across an especially unique and interesting feature.  In 2009 while excavating a site in Beltrami County the archaeologists from Two Pines Resource Group uncovered a fragmentary late woodland ceramic vessel that contained a large amount of fish bone.   This was unusual for a couple of reasons.  First, fish bone is so fragile it is often not preserved and second to actually have the recognizable contents of a vessel still present is a rare occurrence.   The only other similar occurrence I’m aware of here in Minnesota happened about twenty-five years earlier at another site on Forest Service land in an adjacent county where Hohman-Caine & Goltz recovered another Blackduck vessel with fish remains sandwiched between broken rim and body sherds of the vessel.
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This week I received a flier announcing the dates for the Lithic Material Workshop at the University of Iowa in Iowa City, Iowa.  It will be held Friday, February 24 and Saturday, February 25, 2012 in the Old Capitol Museum/Natural History Museum on the campus of the University of Iowa.  Check out this flier for additional information.  The workshop focuses on the subject of lithic materials and identification in the upper Midwest.  The event is sponsored by the Iowa Office of the State Archaeologist, the Iowa Archeological Society, and the University of Iowa Natural History Museum.

The Minnesota Office of the State Archaeologist has posted the report completed by the Duluth Archaeology Center (DAC) for the Legacy Amendment funded archaeological survey of Minnesota Archaeological Region 9, the Lake Superior Shore.   Points and Pits: Archaeological Investigations in Minnesota’s Region 9, the Lake Superior Shore, Carlton, Cook, Lake and St. Louis Counties, Minnesota will be a firm foundation for future research in the region.  As with other areas chosen for survey by the Advisory Board, Region 9 was represented by a relatively small number of recorded archaeological sites (a total of 34 prior to this survey).  The hope was to gain a better understanding of the region’s archaeology by increasing the number of recorded sites to provide a better sample for researchers. 

The question has always been, are there few recorded sites in the region due simply to a lack of survey or is the lack of sites due to small numbers of prehistoric inhabitants?  This investigation suggests the latter.  DAC’s survey visited previously recorded sites and looked for new ones using a GIS based survey methodology.    Hampered somewhat by the time frame inherent in the Legacy Amendment projects, which limited survey to late fall and spring, DAC located 6 new sites during field survey and verified an additional 20 based on informant reports and museum collections.  The report documents the activities conducted for the investigation and provides a summary of prehistoric archaeological sites known in Region 9.  Check it out.

I had the pleasure last evening to sit in on a discussion among researchers who have been exploring the Knife Lake Siltstone quarries in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area (BWCA) of Northern Minnesota.  While siltstone has been recognized by archaeologists as a distinct lithic material for a number of years, with a bedrock source of the material on Knife Lake, the extent of the quarrying activities at that location by early peoples has only recently been discovered.  The outcrops of siltstone straddle the international border and it was Canadian archaeologists who first identified siltstone quarry sites.  A forest fire several years ago in the BWCA cleared the dense vegetation on the Minnesota side and exposed extensive quarry and workshop areas.  The remoteness of the area has served to protect the sites, but also hinders the research of this unique cultural resource.  The local is being studied by archaeologists from a couple of State Universities and the U.S. Forest Service.   Continue Reading →

On Saturday, September 24, 2011 the Northern Lakes Archaeological Society (NLAS) is hosting a presentation by Dave Norris, of Western Heritage Services, Inc.  Norris  has been excavating a large archaeological site just outside of Thunder Bay, Ontario.  The lecture is titled Archaeology in Thunder Bay:  How Modern Day Travel Corridors are Finding Ancient Ones.  The event will be held in the Superior Public Library, 1530 Tower Avenue, Superior, Wisconsin at noon.  For those who are geographically challenged, Thunder Bay, Ontario is just 40 miles from the Minnesota border and Superior, Wisconsin is across the bay from Duluth.

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State Park archaeologists have spent nearly a month working on a series ofarchaeological sites discovered while surveying the proposed route for a recreational trail at Glendalough State Park in Otter Tail County.  At one of the newly discovered sites the excavation units revealed a rock feature about 2 meters in diameter.  Initially identified as a few pieces of fire cracked rock in a shovel test excavation, further investigation revealed the complete feature.  The archaeologists will be back working at the site in the weeks following Labor Day.

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