Malheur Headwaters Passport In Time Project

Second Season - August 19-23, 2002

 

View of the Strawberry Mountain Wilderness from the headwaters of the Malheur River

In 2001 we focused on the Grasshopper Flat site where we recovered an interesting range of tools including several hopper mortar bases and atlatl dart point fragments, a drill, and several scrapers. The number and variety of tools and material types suggest a wide variety of activities took place here over a long span of time. The site was used most often between 7,500 and 4,500 years ago based on the age of the projectile points recovered. Analysis of the obsidian shows that most of the material originated at several local sources but the presence of exotic obsidian shows that the people from Grasshopper Flat participated in wide-ranging trade or travel networks. Non-local obsidian included material from as far south as Beatys Butte, near the Nevada border, and as far west as Obsidian Cliffs, on the west side of the Cascade Mountains. Testing of the obsidian found in test pit 4 indicates that the site is fairly intact below about 30cm in depth.

In 2002 we will return to Grasshopper Flat to see if we can identify specific activity areas in the large scatter of obsidian flakes on the ridge and to continue testing in the buried component near the spring. We will set up a special lab area to use a water floatation system to look for plant and fish remains in soil samples. We will also conduct survey in areas near Grasshopper Flat to see if we can identify any other sites of a similar age and range of artifacts.

Monday August 19, 2002

Due to the extreme fire danger we have moved the base camp from an informal campsite in a dry meadow to a formal Forest Service campground within reasonable driving distance of Grasshopper Flat. This does provide us with improved safety as well as tables, toilets and a supply of water. The timing is not great since we are overlapping with antelope season and the beginning of bow hunting season. We are sharing campsites to make room for additional campers.

A total of 29 volunteers have arrived and we spent the morning making introductions, doing paperwork, going over safety issues, reviewing the local cultural history, and visiting the Grasshopper Flat site. At the site we conducted a training survey of part of the lithic scatter and identified several previously unidentified tools including several Northern Side Notched dart points and an obsidian drill. After visiting last years test units, including one that contained an undulating mass of grasshoppers and crickets, we returned to camp for lunch.

 

Morning rendezvous

After lunch we broke into four work teams. Winnie Browning took eight volunteers to open two new 1x1 meter test units in the soil near the spring.Alex Atkins took five volunteers and set up a series of 1x1 meter surface analysis units that span the north-south axis of the site at 20-meter intervals. Don Rotell and Robert David lead a group of 12 surveyors on a 1-mile march through sage/grass fields and boggy thickets. Roy Schroeder worked with five volunteers to set up the floatation lab and prepare to receive samples from the field.

The work day was short due to the time it takes to get set up but we did get the two test pits established and almost through the first level. We completed three surface analysis units, got the floatation lab set up and processed the first samples, and located and GPS 22 artifacts during the first survey. The volunteers were quick and eager learners and are now prepared to charge into day two!

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Tuesday August 20, 2002

We woke up today to the sound of sandhill cranes. The wildlife has been very cooperative and we have seen antelope, mule deer and elk. The grasshoppers have been numerous and have attracted large numbers of kestrels and mountain bluebirds that chase the hoppers in large flocks. The evening was very chilly but the sun has warmed things up by the time we met at 8:30.

The volunteers have really kicked in today and we are having a challenging time keeping up with all the data they are generating. At Grasshopper Flats Winnie teams that are excavating the 1x1 test units have reached level three. They are recovering moderate numbers of obsidian flakes and one nice drill tip. This is the third drill recovered from the site. Alex teams have completed 13 1x1 meter surface analysis units and are about half-way through the site. They were recovering over 500 flakes from the surface of each unit at the heart of the site. The counts have begun to drop and we will see if this trend continues.

 

At work in test unit 7

Roy team now has two floatation systems up and running. They have processed 24 liters of soils from the surface and test units and from beneath a hopper mortar that was found upside down. This mortar was recovered so that testing can be done on the pounded surface to see if we can identify what plant or animal foods were processed on it. The team has separated the material from the soil samples into light fractions (those which float) and heavy fractions (those which sink and are caught in the 16^th inch wire mesh). The heavy fractions are being sorted to remove artifacts and bone from the gravel as they dry. The light fractions are too fragile to sort in the breezes of an outdoor lab and will need to wait for our winter PIT project.

 

Looking for charcoal and fish bones at the soil floatation lab

Don and Dave team of surveyors have completed another 1 and a half mile survey. They have identified several tools including diagnostic projectile points. Most of the projectile points appear to be late period Rosegate series arrow points although earlier Northern Side Notched and stemmed atlatl dart points were also located. Most of the tools are biface fragments that appear to have been broken during their manufacture.

Afternoon thundershowers moved through and gave us a bit of a show but did not cause any problems. After work we went to a couple obsidian quarries to get some raw material for Alex to use for his flintknapping demonstration. We saw a large herd of antelope on the way out and a small herd of deer on the way back in. I only got lost twice on the way to the quarry but we found obsidian at most of the rongplaces I stopped at.

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Wednesday August 21, 2002

Another cool but beautiful morning where we woke to the sandhill cranes. We are already realizing that there is more work to be done than we will have time to complete. We reorganized the teams a bit so that people who wanted to try different activities would get a chance. Don brought up a GIS map with the last two days survey data overlaying an aerial photograph of the area. This clearly shows a pattern of preferential use of the landscape. We broke into our teams and headed out to the field.

Winnie excavation crew converted to the somewhat heavy-handed technique of using pulaski to dig through the compacted gravel matrix of the excavation units. The low number of artifacts and lack of obvious stratigraphy led us to use these heavier tools to decrease the time needed to complete the pits. Pit number seven produced two biface fragments and around 90 flakes per level for today work. Pit number six has produced around 30 flakes per level. We have not identified any evidence of the intact soil layer we recognized in test pit four.

Alex surface analysis team completed a total of seventeen additional surface test units for a total of thirty. The number of flakes recovered per unit continued to drop as the team moved south of the spring area. Interestingly Alex team located a concentration of arrow points at the southern end of the site. These date to the last 1,000 or so years and are much more recent than the 4,500-7,500 year old Northern Side Notched atlatl dart points recovered at the heart of the site. This indicates that we can identify different periods and possibly types of use on different parts of the site. Alex teams have moved on to excavating two 2x2 meter shovel scrapes to gather more complete examples of artifacts from two key parts of the site.

Roy soil floatation teams are working steadily to keep up with the number of soil samples being produced by the testing teams. They have processed over forty liters of soil at this point. They have the challenging task of keeping track of all the soil records while the samples are being processed and dried.

 

The long march

Don and Dave survey team has completed about two additional miles of survey. They located several additional broken stone tool fragments including some that can be identified as projectile points. The majority of the projectile points have been identified as middle archaic atlatl dart points. The true arrow points collected yesterday appear to be a distinct latter component, much like the collection of arrow points identified by Alex crew at Grasshopper Flat. The crew also identified five hopper mortar bases that suggest that the site at Grasshopper Flat may be part of a complex or district of related sites.

This evening after diner Alex demonstrated flintknapping and a few brave volunteers gave it a try themselves. Volunteer Grant Sulham, who is quite a flintknapper himself, gave the younger members of the PIT crew projectile point replicas he had made.

 

Explaining the art of breaking rocks

Now watch closely

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Thursday August 23, 2002

OK, now we (the FS archaeologists) are really starting to panic. The crews are getting very good at their tasks and they keep finding things (that supposed to be a good thing, right?). It turns out that the sites up here are more complex than we had anticipated. We are finding more unusual tools than we expected and we are finding interesting patterns in the locations of the tools. We thought the use of the area concentrated around 4-7,000 years ago but now we are finding areas used within the last 1,000 years. We have found more hopper mortars but no pestles that should have been used with the mortars. We still don know what the mortars were used for but we have found some upside down that we can send in for chemical analysis to see if we can find out. Our goal now is to start phasing out the work so that everything will be wrapped up by Friday afternoon.

 

Hopper mortar with pounding surface sealed by mud, with luck chemical and microanalysis of the surface might tell us what these were used for

The excavation teams continued to struggle through the compacted volcanic ash and gravel at the lower reaches of their test units. The amount of material being recovered has dropped off significantly but we are continuing to see if there is an intact soil under the gravel. We did get a nice surprise from test unit 6 when the crew recovered a brown chert stemmed point. This is an old style of point, dated to around 7,500 to over 11,000 years ago. We closed out both pits by the end of the day after determining that the gravel/ash layer was at least 30cm deep and probably represents the original glacial till deposits. That suggests that the stemmed point might be resting on very early Holocene or late Pleistocene deposits that predate the eruption of Mount Mazama around 7,500 years ago.

 

Crew at test pit 6 with Judy holding up the stemmed point they recovered. Up close view of the point recovered

The surface testing crew is continuing to work at the 2x2 meter shovel scrape units. Winnie excavation crews have joined them as they wrap up work on the test pits. These have continued to be productive although the central unit has been producing much more than the southern unit. Both units have produced some tools as well as flakes. The biggest surprise for me has been the depth of the soil. We have not yet hit the dense gravel edrockthat I expected at 20cm or so.

 

2x2 meter shovel scrape #1

The soil floatation crew has performed a near miracle and completed the floatation on most all of the samples. They are labeled and drying all around our outdoor lab. The crew has been exceedingly creative in improving methods to clip, hang and label dozens of samples and keep them protected from the afternoon rains. They have been able to examine a few of the samples that have dried. Most of the heavy fractions contain numerous pieces of debitage that we will analysis during the Winter PIT project. Only one sample produced any bone. This was from underneath the upside down hopper mortar. They appear to be fragments of rodent long bones but we do not know if they are natural or may be the remnants of a meal.

The survey team has completed about two additional miles of survey. They are still recording numerous fragments of broken artifacts.Some additional hopper mortars were located. The sites are showing up at unusual locations that might hold the key to their function. Don and Dave have located all the artifacts with the satellite based Geographic Positioning System (GPS). These make computer files of the location of the artifacts that can then be entered into our computers at work. These can then be plotted on maps, as well as aerial photographs, and we can see how the locations of the sites relate to landforms.

Today we were visited by members of the Burns Paiute Tribe and the leadership team from the Malheur National Forest. They toured the site and visited with the volunteers at the workstations.

 

The group watches closely to make sure that any fish bones aren't missed

This evening we all headed in to town for the big awards banquet at our local gourmet pizza establishment. Rock art posters and Malheur Forest pins were presented to the volunteers and we enjoyed some hot food and laughs.

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Friday August 23, 2002

Today can be summed up in three words: RAIN, RAIN, and RAIN. We got off to a late start as Dave and I got the passports all signed and handed out. Then we made good progress on finishing the 2x2 meter shovel scrape units and managed to finish out the survey before the rains hit hard. We had lunch in the rain and it never really let up. We decided the better part of valor was an organized retreat and we started packing up the essential gear and trying to get the floatation samples put away before they got too wet. We got the floatation lab closed down and the gear moved out of the camp area in time for the arriving hunters to replace us in the campsites. We didn get all the excavation pits closed out or all the artifacts GPSed but we did manage to close out enough so that we can finish off pretty easily in the next few weeks.

Postscript, September 10, 2002

Alex and I spent the weekend after the project going through our notes and artifact bags. Everyone did a great job and we have a good written record of what took place on the site. We did some initial analysis of the flakes and artifacts but will need to wait until the more complete analysis this winter to learn many details.

 

Some of the artifacts recovered during the week

Artifacts from left to right, working edges towards top: chert scrapper, obsidian drill, basalt knife, obsidian arrow point <750 years old, obsidian arrow point, 1300 years old, obsidian dart point 4,500-7,500 years old, chert dart point >7,500 years old.

Alex isn just a good flintknapper; he is also a pretty darn good surveyor. Here is what he found on the way out from the project on Friday night:

 

Obsidian biface in a cut bank above a layer of charcoal

The Prairie City Ranger District is completing work on a fence to protect the Grasshopper Flat site. We used the information from the thirty surface analysis units and the test excavation units to determine the best location for the fence. The work the volunteers completed has directly contributed to the protection of this important site.

This chart illustrates the number of flakes recovered (debitage count) from each of the surface test units. We used this information to make sure the fence encloses the part of the site with the most material. We chose to enclose the parts of the site where we recovered over 100 flakes within the 1x1 meter test unit. So we put the fence between units 5 and 15.

A big round of applause and thanks to all the volunteers who have given so generously of their time at this year project.

Judy Beagle, Diane Bloomer, Ruth BreMiller, Amanda Bush, Lianna Correa, Pam Demo, Bill Gawlowski, D. Sue Haas, Mary Hendricksen, Kira Hendricksen, Richard Hendricksen, Gil Kane, Richard Lahti, Carol Nygaard, George Poetschat, Ally Santoyo, Emily Santoyo, Jan Santoyo, Martin Santoyo, Connie Seward, Rebecka Seward, Quentin Seward, Shaye Seward, Thane Seward, Karl Smith, Jan Smith, Grant Sulham, Larry Summers, Doug Zade.

Thanks also to the Malheur National Forest Heritage Team for pulling together and making this work, Winnie Browning, Riley Browning, Robert David, Jennifer Harris, Don Rotell, and Roy Schroeder.

Thanks go as well as to lithic analyst Alex Atkins for work above and beyond the call of duty, Burns BLM employee Diane Browning, Forest Supervisor Roger Williams for unwavering support of the program during very challenging times, to former Forest Supervisor Bonnie Wood for her support, and to Regional Archaeologist Jim Keyser and Regional PIT coordinator Phyllis Steeves.

Thank you to Prairie City Ranger District staff and employees, Ranger Dick Hanes, Ryan Falk, Shannon Winegar, and Terry Ritner as well as the many other Malheur National Forest employees who have helped us along the way including, but not limited to, Ivy Dickerson, Carole Holly, Lucie Immoos, Tracie Lieuallen, Dee McConnell, Anne Schneider, and Tee Voigt.

2002 Malheur Headwaters Pit Project

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