Wildcat Winter Work

Every hour in the field translates to 3 hours in the lab, or thereabouts. Last summer's season at Wildcat went 5 weeks I believe, and with 12 students working 40 hours a week we put in 2400 hours of work. That translates to approximately 7200 hours of labwork to process last summer. It should go without saying that it would have been physically impossible for Dr. Cook to go over everything himself. That's were lab monkeys...err undergrads...come in handy. They don't just dig holes in the ground like manual laborers (although that is one of the chief duties of the undergrad), they apparently come in handy in the off season as well.

Kyle was responsible for sorting and labeling all of the debitage that we collected last summer (as well, I'm sure, as throwing out all the "flakes" we collected that were in fact absolutely nothing. It's common practice to look at a tough one and decide to let the lab monkeys sort it out later and collect it anyhow. It's better to over-collect). The poor bastard, but he got really good at sorting and identifying flakes and shatter.

For the uninitiated debitage is essentially all the crap that's left over when you take a fist size cobble and flake or chip away the stone until you arrive at the finished product. It sometimes appears as thin flakes of stone, razor sharp with distinct edges, percussion marks from the blow that struck it from the core etc. Flakes are quite aesthetically pleasing and are all stricken off as part of a plan of working the stone down into the tool. Other times it appears as blocky (but sharp) chunks of stone. These are often from the early phases where a large cobble was placed on a rock and then smashed with a second rock. Not precise or pretty, but the resulting explosion of stone would break the rock into several smaller workable pieces. The tiny pieces that just shatter off...we call those shatter. Archaeology can be crazy - technical and obscure like that sometimes.

Anyhow Kyle, either caught up in a fit of genius, desperation, insanity, or a mixture of all three invented the Kyle 2000. A debitage sorting device, soon to revolutionize lab work the world over and make him a rich man (as soon as he installs the print out and voice chip that is). Essentially it's a box with a series of holes in the top arranged by size. When the debitage fits through a specific hole, that's its size. Simple, effective, and quite brilliant. The Kyle 3000 (with the print out and a voice chip that says "computing") is in the works.

Jake, a student who was actually not part of our crew at Wildcat, analyzed the faunal remains, which were for the vast majority from only a single pit that we uncovered. Feature 3, a bell shaped storage pit repurposed as a trash pit, had been chock full of bone, as well as part of a ceramic vessel, and other miscellaneous trash. The bone turned out to be 95% deer or some insane number like that, with at least some of the other bone consisting of shrew/mouse or other critters that most likely worked there way into the smörgåsbord of trash and food before passing from this green earth. He attempted to determine seasonality of the occupation of the site (if the pit contains deer of mainly X age that can be correlate to the season of occupation). Additionally he analyzed the use of the deer (in terms of consumption) to determine the environmental capacity of the land. If they're only using the choice parts of mature deer it stands to reason that resources are plentiful, if they're consuming the toes and nose and taking juveniles it stands to reason that times are rough and they're thinking about eating now and not about how to preserve the deer for the future.

In regards to Wildcat his study appears to have been inconclusive from my discussions from Dr. Cook. I'm making my way through Jakes honors thesis trying to draw my own interpretation of his conclusions, but due to the short length of excavations at Wildcat his paper seems to focus more heavily on the two more extensively excavated sites in the area (Sunwatch and Wegerzyn, which if I'll have time I'll introduce to you all later).

Ben was tasked to examine projectile point distribution, although he ended up working with the Sunwatch collection from the 70's. His database is nearly completed, although he did present a poster over the winter of his preliminary findings regarding proposed zones of specialization as seen by differential distribution.

As for myself, I too was assigned a small task from the Sunwatch excavations. There was a bag of artifacts collected called "Non-Fort Ancient points." Not a particularly descriptive bag...as "non-Fort Ancient" refers to roughly 12,000 years of Ohio prehistory. In it were points spanning the entire span, stretching back from the onset of Fort Ancient, all the way back to a single Clovis point. Yes. A Clovis point was sitting in this bag...it was amazing. I can still recall setting all the points in a row, thumbing through the identification guide: Archaic, Middle, Middle, Early, Late, Middle, Archaic...uhm...uhm...I turned to the paleo page and I could see the Clovis point, but it couldn't be Clovis. I desperately turned later in time to the Archaic period trying to make it anything but Clovis. Because, Clovis? Really? That's kind of like saying "Oh yeah, I was looking in my attic and I found a signed copy of the Gettysburg address. No biggie." Okay, not quite that rare, but still pretty special.

Dr. Cook looked over at me and asked what I thought. So I kind of shyly turned back to the paleo page and looked at it. "Is it...?" He nodded, "Yeah?" "It's a...it's a...it's a..." "Yup. Clovis."

It doesn't come across in text as well as it does when I tell the story in person, but it was on one hand amusing, and on the other hand amazing. Clovis points are considered the first definitive points in North America, roughly 13,000 years old (setting aside the debate as to when humans really first arrived here). In my hand was one of the oldest man made objects from the Americas. It was the closest thing to a religious experience I've ever had, holding in my hand something that old, just sitting in a box labelled "Non-Fort Ancient Points." Damn right it isn't a Fort Ancient point.

Anyhow, long story aside, that project only took me a day or so, and I was working too far away from the lab doing my CRM gigs to make it back again. But the point of that story was that these excavations were done in the 70s and only now were some of the points being identified, uncatalogued, and properly recorded. So we still have years of work in the lab until just the 07 season at Wildcat is completely recorded and documented. Of course the 08 season looks to add considerably to the workload.

So the winter lab work was partially enlightening as it yielded zones of extensive debitage creation (thanks to Kyle) helping narrow and refine our focus on the site. Jake's work, while inconclusive, has shaped what we're looking for this year (namely more skeletal remains, or floral remains to attempt to explore environment and seasonality through alternative avenues, something which Dr. Cook has already set a Grad student upon).

I can only imagine that this winter Kyle will be tasked with more work, maybe he will get to make the Kyle 3000 after all, one of our field students Jen seems to have had the hooks sunk into her, and Dr. Cook will likely ask for her assistance with something. As for Ben, well he's looking to follow the Marcus track and take a year to do CRM work before heading to Grad school, so he might not be available. As for me? Well being in Milwaukee I won't be around the corner, but who knows...I definitely want to continue on the site next summer, I might be able to make my way to Ohio to do some rogue lab work.