An eventful day

It started at Amaladeros Creek, which was impassable…except by a log bridge! This bridge was at least 12 feet above the water, and the log was not as solid looking as previously logs. In fact, I was the only one who would cross it, and I had to scoot on my butt for a while.On our way out, we had an encounter with an angry landowner and her dogs. To quote my Facebook update “

Just got berated by a 50 year old woman…naked and wrapped in an American flag…Poorly wrapped.”

And that’s all I’m going to say about that for now, because I want to tell this story in person a few times before I write it out!

Following this, we drove over to the area of the Swamp Log Walk site, to survey for a reroute that would avoid the site and the cypress swamp. My team started heading east from the road, doing our shovel tests, when the boss gets on the radio to call us back before we get to the railroad. Turns out, the civil survey crew had a run-in with a landowner there earlier in the day (presumably clothed).

Finally, we go to one more place where a reroute was planned. It’s not on our maps, and it hasn’t been staked by the survey crew, but it’s supposed to be obvious, and someone tried to show our boss on the maps. Well, of course, none of the above was true, except the lack of staking.

We didn’t cover a lot of ground, but it was quite a day, one I will never, EVER, forget.

Another day, another log walk!

Log walk POV

Originally uploaded by texasrobo

Well, the Milam survey was a letdown archaeologically. We had a really nice landform south of the creek, but the property line crosses the side of the rise, so we couldn’t access the really sweet spot.
HOWEVER, the survey was fantastic because there was another log walk! This one was not quite as long or high as last time (and yes, that is what she said), but it was a little more treacherous. The guy I was working with wouldn’t even do it (again, TWSS). I was so excited that, on the way back, I decided to try and shoot a point-of-view video crossing the bridge (click above!). I figured that if I made it, it would be fun, and if I fell, I could always send it in to America’s Funniest Home Videos.

After finishing the Milam survey, I drove back to San Augustine to meet the other crews. They had surveyed four crossings (woo!) and there wasn’t really enough time to start something new. So the field director decided that we should pay a visit to the Mission Dolores visitors center in town. And so we did. (click here for some info about the mission itself)

The museum is pretty small, and there’s no real indication where the mission actually was. There’s a small selection of arrow points, pottery sherds, glass trade beads, and various Spanish artifacts that were recovered from the excavations that located some of the buildings. I was most interested in the beads and Spanish goods, since I keep dreaming of finding some trade goods at Caddo sites.
There was a very nice old lady who served as the guide/docent. I get the feeling she’s kind of lonely, since the guest book showed that we were only the third set of visitors this week, and she pretty much followed us the whole time telling us about what we were looking at even though we could read it…but it was sweet, and she was very interested in archaeology and the history of the missions.
If you’re in the area of San Augustine (and I’m sorry if you are…), it’s worth dropping in and looking around. You’d certainly be making a sweet old lady’s day!

Back in Nac

After a couple of delays, we’re back for another round of survey in the Nacogdoches area. It’s going to be somewhere between 4-8 days, depending on access and (maybe) weather. It’s been pouring the last couple of days and a lot of the rivers and creeks were swollen on the drive up. The rain is supposed to stop tonight, but the runoff will take a couple of days to work its way downstream. And the swampy floodplains will be even worse.

Oddly, I won’t actually be working on this project tomorrow. I’m heading to Milam, which is almost in Louisiana, and meeting up with someone from our Houston office to help survey a half-mile area. Judging by the entry on the Handbook of Texas Online, there could be some really interesting archaeology there.

We switched hotels, and it was a significant upgrade. The rooms are almost like small suites, with a separate seating and desk area. They also have a refrigerator and microwave, which means that I can eat more healthy. I also found that Kroger carries a decent selection of Amys frozen dinners. This is very good because I decided I wanted to see if I could eat vegetarian this week, and I wasn’t looking forward to a bunch of cheesy pasta dishes and Subway veggie delite subs. Might talk more about this all later. Blame it in part on Michael Pollan (note I linked to Bookpeople, Austin’s big independent bookstore and the softball team I’ll be playing for) and all the Pilgrims Pride chicken farms in the area.

More log walk

jlowe log walk

Originally uploaded by texasrobo

I fell behind on blogging. Life’s been alternately great and rough. Likes like 2010 may beat 2009 in being manic, which I might have thought impossible.
But I digress, we’re here to talk about archaeology. If you wanted to read me whining, you can always refer to my Facebook…
ANYWAY…
When last I wrote, it was about the joy of swamp log walk, complete with a photo. That Saturday, we revisited one of the sites (which we named the Swamp Log Walk Site, of course) to complete the delineation. As an added bonus, it had rained some the night before. The swamp log was still there, but the water level was definitely a little higher. Still, it was solid footing and we were all very excited.
An added attraction: we had to cross train tracks to get here, and my boss had left some pennies on the rails Thursday. So we found them, and my guys put some more change on there in case a train passed while we were recording the site.
We dug 14 more shovel tests (including 3 by yours truly, as the GPS was fuxored), with seven containing cultural materials. The tests were spaced out and focused on the outer edges of our APE, since we pretty much assumed the site boundaries extended along the landform well beyond our survey area. By putting tests at the edge (and hitting positives), we save some time. Unlike the survey from hell, we can’t chase sites outside of the project boundaries for this project (which is really like a survey from a slightly higher level of hell). We even managed to find a projectile point, for which I rewarded the field tech with a 6-pack of fancy beer. Artifact photos will be up on Flickr soon.
There had been some very light sprinkles while we were out recording the site, and apparently some heavier rain to the north. When we got back to the swamp log, the water had risen some more, and only 3-4 inches were above the water line! Nevertheless, the swamp log once again provided sturdy passage.
When we got back to the train tracks, a train had passed and we couldn’t find all of the flattened coins. We spent some time trying to find them, and I played the “try and throw the railroad spike and get it to stick in the ground” game and other forms goofing off. Right when we were getting ready to leave, we heard a train coming! So some more coins came out, and we stood back while the train passed (there may have been a couple of rocks and sticks thrown, too). We ended up finding every last coin, including the ones from earlier. Unfortunately, almost all of them had been flattened to the point of being featureless!
That Sunday, swamp log walk entered new territory. Actually, it would have been nice if there were more swamp logs, as we had to cross about a quarter-mile of swampy floodplain, with some areas almost knee deep. No cypress knees to help either. And, the water moccasins were out!
Finally, we get to the last creek, and it’s a good 20 feet wide, with 8-foot banks and water at least 4 feet deep. But, someone had knocked down a tree and put it across the creek. So, I suppose technically not a swamp log. But click the link above (or here) and you can watch your intrepid adventurer/narrator make the return trip! Yep, a video!
That was the last field day. Since then, it’s been all paperwork and writing. But we’re supposed to go out next week again.

Swamp log walk Thursday

Swamp log walk

Originally uploaded by texasrobo

Haven’t written about this East Texas survey yet. This is mostly because I try to keep this blog pretty positive, so rather than post about how much I fucking hate surveying these days, especially in East Texas, or whining about how much I miss Austin and my friends, I’ve been quiet.
But Thursday was unusual in that it was an excellent day of survey in East Texas. I think everyone was just in a silly mood, maybe a little punch drunk, and we just fed off each other. It was also an absolutely gorgeous day, sunny and clear and around 60 degrees. It was the perfect weather for walking through a swamp. Any colder and it would have been dank and foggy. Any warmer and the bugs, snakes, and gators would have been stirring, and the air would have been stinky and steamy.
We crossed the wetlands by hopping across islands of cypress knees and clumps of grass and leaves. The actual bayou channels had logs across them, including the one in the photo crossing the 20-foot wide main channel. I even grabbed onto a big vine at one point to help steady myself. I said at the time it was like Pitfall without the gators and quicksand (and the moneybags and gold bars…).
Past the main channel, we hit a sweet landform that just screamed “site”. Sure enough, both shovel tests we excavated were positive for chert and petrified wood flakes. We have yet to delineate the full site.
We moved on and crossed another swampy area, with an even more prominent landform overlooking it. We thought this would have an excellent site, but the initial shovel tests were negative. Eventually, we had a couple of positive shovel tests making for a small site, but nothing like what we expected. One of the techs named the hill “Disappointment Ridge”, and we decided that archaeologists should be in charge of naming all creeks and hills.
One of the shovel tests on Disappointment Ridge had a lot of weirdly shaped sandstone chunks. As I mentioned, we had a serious case of the sillies, so of course we started finding “ritual figures” in the sandstone gravels, starting with a phallus. Soon, I found one that vaguely resembled the Neolithic “Venus” figurines. We threw them on someone’s bag to “collect.” We then found a tubular piece with a hole through it (which caused a round of “That’s what she said”). When i asked someone if they kept it, they said “Yeah, it’s over by Venus and the penis.” Much laughter ensued, and you are welcome to use that as a band name with proper credit.
I dunno, maybe it was just funny at the time…but it was a very rare good day out here.

Welcome to Caddo Mounds State Historic Site, closed Mondays

Welcome to Caddo Mounds State Historic Site, closed Mondays

Originally uploaded by texasrobo

(note: there’s a lot of links today!)

Drove up to Nacogdoches today for a pipeline survey. Not the Survey from Hell, although I’m having hard time getting excited for any East Texas survey right now. The field director suggested that we stop by the Caddo Mounds State Historic Site, aka Caddoan Mounds State Historic Site, aka the George C. Davis site as it was on the way. This large Caddo site (click the link to learn TONS about the Caddo) may be the most well-known prehistoric archaeological site in Texas, in no small measure to the fact that State Highway 21 bisects the site and runs right by the most prominent of three mounds. SH 21, in this part of Texas, follows the route of the Camino Real de los Tejas, aka the Kings Highway or Old San Antonio Road, a Spanish colonial trail which I’ve discussed a bit here before.
The first stop is along the side of the road, where a historical marker tells some of the basics of the site. Beyond this is the High Temple Mound (known academically as Mound A), which was excavated in the late 1930s/early 1940s, and again in the late 1960s/early 1970s.  (note that the site has been worked on regularly up until the present, and I personally know 6 people who have dug there). According to a map at the park, the mound as currently viewed is only half of the original size, due to the multiple excavations. There are sandstone steps leading to the top, allowing for a nice view but giving a false impression of a reconstruction of the “Temple.” The mounds are all earthen construction, and would have had wood and thatch superstructures, probably with wattle and daub walls.
The next stop is the official site area, across SH 21. It turns out that it’s closed on Mondays, but we parked along the side of the road and went under the gate. If anyone from Texas Parks and Wildlife reads this, let me know and I’ll send $4 to the site. The museum and bookstore was locked, but the rest of the site is out in the open.
The park area consists of two mounds: the Burial Mound (aka Mound C) and the Low Temple Mound (aka Mound B). There’s a trail that leads counter-clockwise, starting behind the museum and heading first to the burial mound. This mound has a sign telling you not to climb the mound, as it’s a burial site for the prehistoric Caddo, whose descendents are now based in Oklahoma. This is the northernmost mound at the park.
Continuing along the trail, the next mound is the Low Temple Mound. This is more of a long, thin platform style mound, and lies between the two larger mounds. This one you can climb, although its probably only around 6 feet high. From the top, you notice the sort-of alignment of the mounds and the vast open stretches in between that were the actual residential areas. Some geophysical surveys done of this area have shown posthole patterns that are the remnants of these houses.
Across the trail from the site, at the edge of the ridge, is a large borrow pit from which at least some of the earth for the mound construction was mined. From an archaeological perspective, this is pretty cool. It also reminded me of my thesis research in Belize.
Continuing along the trail, you come to a circular patch of vegetation in the ground that is the remains of a reconstructed Caddo house. This structure was built in the early 1980s to demonstrate how the houses would have looked. It was damaged several times by severe weather. In the 1990s, a decision was made to conduct an experiment that might help with future understanding of the archaeological record. A living area was created inside the structure using reproduction artifacts, and then the house was burnt and left to the elements.
Finally, at the southwest corner of the trail, there’s a map that shows how the site might have looked when it was occupied, including an intact High Temple Mound. Following that, the trail parallels the road and you can get one more long look at the large open area in the center of the site.
Being archaeologists, we spent some time looking at the ground, in particular at the gopher burrow spoils. We found at least a half-dozen chert flakes and three pottery sherds across the site area.
All in all, I don’t know that I would recommend making a special trip from Austin to Caddo Mounds. Even with the museum open, I can’t imagine it taking more than 3 hours total to see and do everything. One could combine it with a trip to Mission Tejas State Park, which is around 5 miles west off of SH 21. And, if you end up in East Texas for some reason, it’s definitely worth stopping by to learn about some of the native Texans.

Finally, click here for some photos from 2003 investigations at the site, done by one of my best friends, Colleen.

Fort Hood Day 13, part 2

13.9 Feature 9 getting interesting

Originally uploaded by texasrobo

picking up…
I may have mentioned before that there’s a common belief in archaeology that you will always find something big on the last day of a project. To a certain extent, I think this is a superstition that reflects the frustration of the time and budget constraints that CRM projects generally have, compared to fancy academic digs. At the same time, every tech I know can tell you a story about at least one site where this happened.
As discussed in part 1, a good part of the day was spent documenting and excavating Features 4, 5 and 8. All of these were basin-shaped hearths with a lot of charcoal, which is interesting and great information, but not really anything unique or special in the overall scheme of Central Texas archaeology.
As I also mentioned yesterday, our other goal was to hog-out some units to explore a burned rock feature in the trench wall and floor, which we started around 10 am, recovering a really nice projectile point.
Around 12:45 or so, Feature 9 was mostly exposed (see photo above). It consisted of two large burned rocks fractured in place, and two metates stacked on top of each other. A piece of one of the metates was found in the trench floor earlier, so that wasn’t a total surprise. But this arrangement was unusual. I did a little more cleaning around the metates, and uncovered some bone adjacent to the upper metate, and extending beneath. A little more cleaning showed it to be a portion of an articulated spinal column.
This set off some serious alarms. The spine was too small to be a human adult, but could have been a baby or small child, or just an animal. The angle of the spine suggested the possibility of a flexed burial. Furthermore, there have been a number of flexed prehistoric burials capped with metates recorded at sites across Texas. In other words, with about 4 hours left in the project, we had found a possible burial, which would have invoked NAGPRA and opened a whole new can of worms.
We mapped the rocks in quickly and took photos, as we needed to start removing the metates to locate additional bones that would identify the remains as human or animal. We lifted the upper metate, and sure enough there was a crushed skull beneath, with bones extending below the lower metate. Much like the vertebrae, the fragmentary cranial bones could have been human or animal. It also more or less confirmed that this was was an intentional arrangement, further suggesting a burial.
At this point, we had called the base archaeologists to let them know we might have found a burial, and they were on their way to check it out. Our big boss, who is also our faunal analyst, needed to leave for Austin and was a little concerned.
Just before 2 pm, we removed the lower metate (which was almost 10 cm thick and must weigh around 40 pounds!). A little more bone was beneath. One person pointed out that it resembled a snout. We cleaned the dirt adjacent to the skull, trying to find a tooth or something that would finally identify the remains. Finally, the big boss found a tooth: a canine that was definitely not human. What looked like a snout was, in fact, a snout. We could relax, although we still had a puzzle on our hands.
A little more cleaning and we could see the skull profile. It’s still not clear what kind of animal it is: possibilities include a raccoon, possum, or small dog (which I suppose would include a fox?). It’s also not clear what this arrangement is all about. Is it an intentional interment of a pet, presuming the animal is a dog? Is it some fortuitous happenstance where an animal died next to some abandoned metates a couple thousand years ago, with time and bioturbation shifting the bones beneath the metates? No artifacts were recovered in the vicinity of this feature. Very few bones were located beneath the large metate extending from the spinal column, suggesting the skeleton is disarticulated. Conversely, the metate may have created an adverse preservation environment, maybe even smashing the bones to small bits that disintegrated more easily.
We collected the skull and spinal column by undercutting the bones and placing them in sand, so that we could maintain the original position. We excavated all around the feature and recovered a lot of small bits of bone, including some ribs and toe bones. With some time, I’m sure the animal will be identified and at least narrow the possible explanations. For now, it’s just a puzzle and an interesting “crazy shit on the last day” story.
A couple of people will be going out next week to take a few more soil samples and watch the units get backfilled. Eventually, I hope to be involved in the cleaning and analysis of the artifacts (what few there are), and I may end up helping with the report writing. I’m glad I was able to spend 13 days at this interesting site. As always, I wish we could have spent a couple of months more here, getting more information to make sense of the site and the lifeways of the Archaic people of Texas.

On a final note from this M.A. 2008 Texas Ex:
\m/ HOOK EM HORNS!! \m/

Fort Hood Day 13, part 1

13.5 Projectile point in situ

Originally uploaded by texasrobo

A lot happened today, and it was an extremely long day. After working 10 hours, we drove back to Austin, making for a 12 hour day. I did a lot of heavy digging, and didn’t sleep well this week, so I’m exhausted.
Sorry, but I promise tomorrow will be better. And you can click on the photo to go to my Flickr photostream for a sneak preview.
The morning started a little warmer, although there was still some frost at the site. Fortunately, the black plastic covers kept the ground from freezing this time.
Everything needed to be wrapped up today, so two people worked in Area D-1 on Feature 4, one person worked in Area A-1 on Feature 5, and four of us worked on getting the new units in Area C down to the target zone. The big boss spent some time documenting and collecting samples from Feature 8, the really sweet basin-shaped hearth we sort of blew through during our “expedited excavations”. By around 10 am, we were ready to start doing some real digging.
It didn’t take long for things to get exciting. Christian was digging the unit north of mine (once again, I got the unit on top of the feature). I looked over and saw something weird sitting in an area he had just skimmed with his shovel. I pointed it out to him, and it turned out to be a projectile point (see the photo). So we shared the credit. The point is a bit of a conundrum, as it looks to be an Ensor point, which sort of monkeywrenches our whole projectile point stratigraphy from the money units. I suppose we’ll deal with that more in the lab/office. Besides, unlike many digs, we’ve recovered a lot of good, stratified charcoal samples for radiocarbon dating, so we’re not reliant on the diagnostic artifacts for our dates.
Both Feature 4 and Feature 5 appear to be shallow basin-shaped hearths, and both yielded several good charcoal samples and little else. Some bison bone was found in the vicinity of Feature 5; this was the only bison bone found at the site. The largest freshwater mussel shell any of us had ever seen was recovered from Feature 4.
The action, as usual, was at the money units (albeit the new northern ones) in Area C, but you’ll have to read Part 2 tomorrow for the rest of the story!

Fort Hood Day 12

12.2 Weighing burned rock

Originally uploaded by texasrobo

Today started out cold. Mid-20s, wind chill in the teens. We didn’t cover our units, and so the ground was frozen about an inch deep. We didn’t really get any digging done until after 10 am, when the sun had finally started to thaw some of the units. Fortunately, there was some drawing and other unexciting elements of archaeology to attend to.
I drew the plan map of Feature 7 and the surrounding units, then did a cross-section of the feature. It turned out to be another flat, unknown cluster of burned rock, so I was spared the torture of drawing the cross-section. It helps that time is short and I’m a workhorse, so he didn’t want me spending a lot of time drawing when I could me moving dirt.
The photo above shows another of the “mundane aspects of archaeology,” in this case weighing burned rock. Click on the photo for a brief explanation, but basically all you need is a fishing scale (but not a fishscale), a bucket, and some burned rock!
Two of the other features were also exposed and investigated today, in area D-1 and area A-1. These are the features that were messed up by the Gradall. I guess it wasn’t quite as bad as feared.
The dig is winding down rapidly. At this point, we’re all about the features identified in the trenches. There’s one deep feature in Area C left to dig. We started taking some units down “human backhoe” style, and blew through a really nice burned rock hearth with abundant charcoal. That’s pretty much how it goes though: you tend to find stuff when time is short and you’re really trying not to find anything.
Tomorrow is also the last day, as the weather forecast for the rest of the week is foreboding. We have 10 hours to dig 6 levels, record a couple of features, and load all of the equipment in the vehicles. Then we’ll drive back to Austin, for a really long day (12 hours total).
At least I won’t be exhausted Thursday night for the national championship game.

Fort Hood Day 11

11.5 Measuring elevation

Originally uploaded by texasrobo

A new year, and one more week at site 41CV389 in Fort Hood. We still haven’t named the site. I suggested “That One” so people would refer to it as “That One site.” Yeah, I’m not always that funny…
The photo shows one of my co-workers demonstrating how to measure the elevation of a unit. Various data (in the plural sense of “datum”) are set up around the units, and each is assigned an elevation based off of an arbitrary height (generally called 100.00) determined using a transit, theodolite, or total station. Or, barring this, you can just set a nail in a tree, call that 100.00, tie a string to it, and set your data by comparing the string levels.
A datum and elevation are very important, because most (if not all) sites are not on perfectly uniform, level surfaces. The ground surface of one unit may be 99.88 (or 12 cm below the 100.00 datum level), while another 5 meters away may be 98.88 (or a meter deeper). Both starting levels will be Level 1, and both may be 0-8 cm below ground surface, but by using a datum it will be clearly noted that these levels are actually a meter different in height. Basically, it creates an arbitrarily determined point to which the relative height of the site deposits can be compared.More importantly, it also helps you know when you’ve excavated to the 10 cm depth of each level. You measure the elevation of a unit using string tied to the datum rod. This string has a line level on it, so that you know when the string line is perfectly level (which can be deceiving just eyeballing it). When the string line is level, you use a tape measure to measure the distance from the string line to the floor of the unit (or whatever you’re measuring). So, if your string line is set at 99.80 and your tape measure shows 71.5 cm between the line and the floor, it means that you are at 99.085 (and most likely, as often happens to me, you’ve dug too deep again).
Not sure if that’s a very good explanation, but it’s the best I’ve got.
Anyway, there’s six of us digging this week, working 10 hour days. With the load-in, drive up from Austin, uncovering of the site, end of day packing of equipment, and return trip to the hotel, this gave us around 7 hours of actual excavation. Most of this was focused on Area C, home of the money units. Once again, I was spoiled and assigned to dig the unit most likely to have something cool. And it did, another small burned rock cluster feature with a large mussel shell at the edge! Other folks dug the other (former) money unit, and the new 1.25 x 2 meter unit north of the money units. None of these had anything of particular interest, although the low recovery from the new units shows how discrete the occupation areas in the money units are.
A couple of people also worked on Area D-1 (or Area D south). This continued to be a low recovery area. The goal here is a feature exposed at the base of Trench D. They should have all six units down at that level by tomorrow.
I’m so glad that things worked out for me to be here for the last week of the dig. While I’m completely sick of surveying in East Texas, I’ll be able to resign myself to that fate much more readily knowing that I’m not missing out on a much more interesting and fun project that I’ve invested a lot of work in.