The Annual Review and Compliance Seminar hosted by the Minnesota State Historic Preservation Office will be held Tuesday, May 15, 2012 at the Minnesota History Center, 3M Auditorium from 1 to 5 pm.  To check out the agenda, for additional information about the event, and to register check out this link.

Dr. Michlovic’s lectures are always entertaining and informative.  The cost is $20 per person which includes a buffet dinner and the event is open to everyone, member or not.  For additional information check out this link.

Dr. Constance Arzigian, Senior researcher at the Mississippi Valley Archaeology Center and associate lecturer in Sociology and Archaeology at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, will present an overview of past cultures in the Rochester area, from big-game hunters at the end of the Ice Age to the first farmers at 1000 A.D.  In 2010, as part of the Statewide Survey of Historical and Archaeological Sites, Dr. Arzigian received a grant from the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund to study previous archaeological findings in Olmsted County and conduct a new archaeological survey of the region. This lecture will present her findings and interpret them within the broader context of research on Native cultures of our region.  The event is free and open to the public and will be held at the Rochester Public Library on Sunday, March 25 from 2 to 4 pm.  Check out this link to learn more.

The Minnesota Office of the State Archaeologist (OSA) has posted its’ latest annual report to the OSA web site.  The report is an overview of what has taken place archaeologically around Minnesota in the last fiscal year and includes summaries of the various reviews the OSA has undertaken during that period.  Since the annual reports are to be completed on a fiscal year basis, it covers July 2010 through June 2011.  Click here to view the report.

The schedule for the Lithic Material Workshop in Iowa City February 24th  and 25^th has been posted.  Click here to see it.

The dates and location for the 2012 Lake Superior Basin Workshop have been announced.  It will be held Friday March 16th and Saturday March 17th at Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada.  The workshop is free and open to the public.

I hope at this point we have the email notification glitch corrected.  No one who subscribed to the blog was being notified of new entries.  You might want to scroll down the page to check out the entries you’ve missed.

For those of you who do long range planning, this week the Office of the State sent out a notice saying that they are shifting Minnesota Archaeology Week to the fall season this year in order to encourage more participation and avoid the inclement weather that has been plaguing the springtime events the last couple of years.  Minnesota Archaeology Week will be held September 8^th through the 16^th, 2012.

The Minnesota Office of the State Archaeologist has  posted three additional archaeological research reports to their website.  These projects were funded with monies from the Clean Water, Land, and Legacy Amendment.   These are edited versions of the original reports but are still fairly large files.  Clicking on the titles will take you to the documents.

The 2010 Archaeological Reconnaissance Survey of Olmsted County, Minnesotawas completed by the Mississippi Valley archaeology Center and Strata Morph Geoexploration.  The project entailed an examination of the recorded archaeological sites in Olmsted County as well as archaeological and geomorphological survey to locate additional previously undocumented sites.  The study concludes that the low number of recorded sites in the county is the result of the limited use of the area by the early occupants and not the result of site destruction during modern times or lack of archaeological survey.

Investigating the Earliest Human Occupation of Minnesota:  A Multidisciplinary Approach to Modeling Landform Suitability & Site Distribution Probability for the State’s Early Paleoindian Resources completed by the Archaeology Laboratory, Augustana College.  The purpose was to determine if intact sites dating prior to 10,000 BC can be found in Minnesota.  This was done through an extensive analysis of environmental and archaeological records.  A small field component was also included.    A lake sediment core from Fish Lake in Cottonwood County was analyzed to reconstruct the post-glacial environment of southwestern Minnesota.  The report includes photographs of most of the projectile points they inventoried as part of the study.

An Investigation of Unrecorded Historical Cemeteries in Minnesota compiled by the Two Pines Resource Group, LLC.  This study summarized what is known about unrecorded historic cemeteries in the state of Minnesota.  Two Pines built the first comprehensive electronic database of historic period cemeteries in Minnesota.  The list was garnered from an extensive literature search.  Field investigations in three counties helped to determine the accuracy of the available data.  The search identified 5,876 historic period cemeteries, of these 3,333 were classified as recorded and 2,543 as unrecorded.  The study provides a foundation to help determine the scope of the unrecorded cemeteries issue in the state.