Background on Wildcat

It's hard to cram the last 3 weeks of work into anything resembling a short post, after all this is the sort of thing I'm supposed to write hundred plus page theses about.

So what sort of site is Wildcat? I suppose that the best place to begin would be there...at the beginning.

Wildcat is a site located just outside of Dayton, OH, on the eastern-most crest of the Miami Valley (about one mile away from the Greater Miami). It's a ways below that eastern rise, the top is home to a series of shopping malls, to the south is I-75, and surrounding the site are a series of gravel quarries. I'd give more details, but with looting, academic ownership, and all that stuff you'll have to deal with this more landscape oriented description. There's a tiny nameless creek that meanders around an old field, bounded by forest.

In the 13th century A.D. the area would have been a mixture of prairie and forest in a mixed setting. The river valley (carved by glacial action and then filled with water, as opposed to being carved by the river action) is rather extensive and the most significant feature in this part of the state, breaking up the relatively flat terrain. The Fort Ancient peoples lived in what I suppose would best be described as hamlets or towns, ranging in size from hamlets of just a handful of houses (and a few dozen people) to full fledged towns like the Sunwatch site (population 300). They were a largely sedentary people, practiced fairly intense agriculture (including corn) in addition to hunting and fishing.

In 1981 (or thereabouts) a surface collection was done, and site 33MY499 was entered into the annals. Nothing was noted during this collection, other than that the artifacts were concentrated on the eastern side of the field, and the numbers of the artifacts (stone celts, projectile points, that sort of thing).

So she sat for 20+ years, cultivated and plowed until sometime in the last 5 years. Cemex, the gravel company which owns all the land on this rise, never quarried here after discovering the plot was no good for aggregate. A single road, long abandoned, runs just to the east of the site, down a hill from the mall. The road was named "Wildcat Road," and as a result the site is now known as the Wildcat Site under Dr. Cook of the Ohio State University (it just has more of a ring than 33MY499).

Last summer was the first year digging had been done at the site, and the eastern half to two thirds were systematically shovel tested on a wide grid (20 meters). What did we find? That the site is located in the eastern half of the field (atop a rise), which was pretty obvious from 1) the surface collection and 2) logic. After completing this first survey a series of 2mx2m units were opened over areas that were thought to be features based on magnetic data, our shovel tests, and probing. We found 2 pits, an odd concentration of dark soil and artifacts with no feature associated, and a possibly burned floor. The 2007 summer proved 1) the site was occupied and 2) where the occupation was most likely focused. Over the winter students (myself only briefly) worked in the lab to make sense of the season. Kyle especially worked over the debitage, while another student, Jake, studied the faunal remains (deer especially).

I've gone on enough for now...but next entry I'll explain what the winter labwork showed.