Archaeology Field Experience Program

2006-10-29T18:01:00.000-08:00

Archaeology Field Experience Program

Project Results Oct. 23 - Oct. 29

The weather by now is fall-like in Ohio and excavations are slowed somewhat by wet, muddy conditions. When our silty and loamy soils get this wet the soil does not go through the screen as quickly. The conditions however did not stop our friends from Troy Intermediate and from our Natural History Museum. We excavated despite the rain and mud this week and recovered artifacts from all of our new northern units. More flint flakes and ceramic sherds were recovered from excavation contexts. One sherd from N550 E506 displayed a fine cordmarking on it's exterior surface. This cordmarking is an indication of the tools and techniques that the natives used to create the vessel. This piece will be studied closely back at the museum along with our other finds in order to determine everything we can about the inhabitants of the Morton site.

Before I go, I want to thank all of our classes who came out to the site to aid in our investigations at Morton. We could not have done this without you. Also we enjoyed meeting all of you and working with you side by side in the units and at the screens. We sincerely hope that you enjoyed your time at the Morton site, learned a great deal about the natives daily lives
and understand why and how we investigate the materials from the archaeological record in order to reconstruct the past. Keep asking questions, keep investigating science and we hope to see you all at the museum soon. Thank You.

2006-10-29T17:38:00.000-08:00

Archaeology Field Experience Program

Project results Oct. 16 - Oct. 20

This week we worked with students from Elyria, Troy Intermediate, and three combines classes from Pennsylvania The weather this week turned rainy and very muddy but our spirits were not dampened. We recovered flint flakes, ceramic sherds and even a complete notched point from excavation. The notched point was recovered from N539 E514. It was our wettest day of the program, and we barely made it back to the site but those students from Pennsylvania braved it and recovered the notched point...way to go!!! This point is further evidence of the occupation of the site by native peoples. The site has been previously described as a hunting and fishing camp, and this find helps to bolster that understanding of the site. Thanks to all of you for braving the elements and continuing our successful field season.

2006-10-29T17:27:00.000-08:00

Archaeology Field Experience Program

Project results Oct.9 - Oct.12

Week three started with great weather for our friends from Troy Intermediate and Mayfield Middle Schools. During excavation we recovered flint flakes, ceramic sherds and a net sinker from unit N510 E515. This particular type of artifact was used in fishing. Natives created grooves in opposing sides of a flat'ish' stone roughly fist to hand size such that it could be tied to a net in order to weigh the net down to the bottom to trap fish. Also this week units were opened further to the north of previous excavation units in order to potentially identify the northern extent of the site. Each of these new northern units however yielded artifacts and indicates that the site is larger that we previously knew.

unfortunately this was the last of our good weather. This however did not dampen out enthusiasm. Thanks again to all our student archaeologists for all the help.

2006-10-08T18:47:00.000-07:00

Archaeology Field Experience Program
Our second week at the Morton Site and though the weather did not cooperate, we excavated and learned a great deal. Students from GESU Catholic and Open Door Christian excavated with us and they were outstanding. We recovered flint flakes, ceramic sherds and a possible grinding stone or pestle (N509 E505) from units N493 E500, N500 E500, N509 E505 and N514 E. Unit NOAA E was excavated to the subsoil interface and exhibits a light brown stain in its southwest corner. Further investigation will determine if we have a cultural feature which would give us a wealth of information about the site's inhabitants. Our view of the stain and the interface in other units is due to the diligent work of our excavators. Thanks to all the students who braved cold wind, rain and a lot of mud; another successful week because of all of you.

2006-10-02T18:57:00.000-07:00

Archaeology Field Experience Program
Monday, October 2, 2006

Project Results Sept. 25-29

First day for the project here in the fall of '06 and we got off to a great start. The weather gave us a great start with warmth and sunshine early this week. Even though the rain came later in the week it did not dampen our spirits. Everyone was very enthusiastic as we arrived at the site, and all of our students were well prepared for a great week of excavation and learning. Students came well prepared with questions and curiosity; we really appreciate that. Thanks to all of the students for making this first week a success. We could not (and would not want to) do it without you.

We opened up three new units: N515 E529, N515 E525, N514 E519 and they immediately paid off. Students from St. Jude, Beach City, Louisville, Holy Family, Holy Rosary and St. Rocco excavated these units and recovered flint flakes, pieces of pottery, and projectile points. Two projectile points from the Late Archaic to Early Woodland time period were recovered. These pieces (one whole and one broken) indicate that natives were hunting near their habitation area. Also, they may have brought a kill back to the camp and the embedded points may have come back to the site with the animal. The flint flakes, found in abundance, indicate that natives were creating and/or resharpening points or tools such as drills in the area of our three units. These units by the way are the northernmost units excavated at the site to date, and they tell us that natives were active at our unit's locations. Also they tell us more about the boundaries of the site; we have not yet hit the Northern boundary. I will post pictures as soon as I can. Thanks again to the exceptional students and teachers for a successful first week.

2006-10-02T18:17:00.000-07:00

2005-11-28T11:44:00.000-08:00

Project Results (Continued)

The diagnostic artifacts collected from the Morton site indicate that the site was occupied during at least two separate time periods. The projectile point dates to the Early Woodland period ca. 800-300 BC while the pottery that we are able to identify dates to the Late Prehistoric period ca. AD 800-1200. The many flint flakes recovered can not be used to date the site, but tell us that stone tool manufacturing and/or re-sharpening took place here. Likewise, the several net weights collected indicate that the site was probably used as a fishing camp where nets were made or mended. It is unusual that all of the net weights were found on the ground surface. This suggests that they may date to the later occupation. No features of prehistoric human origin were discovered. As seen on the site map, the flint flakes and pottery sherds do not really cluster into any specific "activity areas." Instead, they are fairly evenly distributed across the area of the site that was tested.

The Early Woodland people probably used the site on a seasonal basis as a camp for fishing or collecting and processing nuts. The occupation was probably very short term and possibly repeated seasonally for many years. The lack of other Early Woodland period artifacts (especially pottery)or features supports this assumption.

The Late Prehistoric occupation of the site may have been somewhat different. It is possible that fishing and nut gathering/processing on a seasonal basis were still the main activities conducted here, however the occupations may have been of a longer duration. The amount of pottery recovered from this site, and especially the smoking pipe fragments, is not usually found on short term camp sites. However, if people stayed here for longer periods of time throughout the year, there should have been some evidence of features such as fire hearths, storage pits, or post holes representing the places where their shelters stood. It is possible that our test units missed any features that might be present, but that seems unlikely given the number of units excavated and the amount of ground covered.

The Morton site is similar in many ways to another site excavated by the Field Experience program, the Mentor Lagoons 4 site. Both sites occupy a similar landform overlooking Mentor Marsh, Morton to the east and Mentor Lagoons 4 to the west. Both sites have Early Woodland and Late Woodland occupations, although Mentor Lagoons 4 also has Archaic and Whittlesey components. Several net weights were also found at the Mentor Lagoons 4 site. It is possible that the same people utilized both sites. Click here for more on the Mentor Lagoons 4 site.

Whatever the nature of the occupation, it is obvious that the site continues to the west. The Cleveland Museum of Natural History Archaeology Department hopes to continue its investigation of the Morton site, possibly in the spring of 2006. These investigations will try to determine the western boundary of the site and hopefully uncover some features that would shed more light on what the prehistoric native Americans were doing here.

When the digging in the field is completed, the work in the lab begins. All of the artifacts collected will be washed, cataloged and inventoried. The field notes, photographs, and maps will be reviewed and a report will be written. Arrangements will be made to return to the site in the spring.

I would like to thank my staff and volunteers who oversaw the daily work on the site. You make this program possible. I would also like to thank the hundreds of students and their teachers from northeastern Ohio (and western Pennsylvania) who participated in this project. You did real archaeology and you did it really well! THANK YOU!

2005-11-28T08:19:00.000-08:00

Project Results

October 31 was the final day for students to participate in the Field Experience project for this year. Two days of "clean-up" were required to complete all of the units that had been opened and to prepare the site for the winter. The following is a short summary of the results of this season’s work.

A total of 22 test units were excavated to completion. The map shows the number of artifacts present in each unit. Flint flakes and pottery sherds were the most commonly found artifacts. Pottery sherds were found in all but 4 units. The high counts of pottery sherds are a little misleading because a piece of pottery can break into many very tiny pieces. It does show that pottery is scattered fairly evenly across the site.

All of the interesting or diagnostic artifacts, except two, have been shown in earlier posts to this site. While cleaning the artifacts in the lab, the tip of a drill was found from unit N505E539 and three fragments of a pottery smoking pipe were found in unit N510E525. Although the drill fragment does not tell us anything about the time period it was used at the site, the smoking pipe fragments definitely date to the Late Prehistoric period and possibly even into the Whittlesey Period. The pipe was probably an elbow variety and had a squared stem.

A total of four possible features were encountered. All appeared as dark or reddened soil stains at the top of the subsoil level. Each was cross-sectioned and revealed to be either a rodent burrow or a naturally occurring coloration in the soil. The photograph above shows the result of cross-sectioning Feature 05-02. You can see that at the interface of the topsoil and subsoil, there is an area where the darker soil continued into the subsoil forming a slight bowl-shape. This looked circular in plan at the top of the subsoil level. We cross-sectioned the stain at the unit wall because the stain continued into the next unit and a cross-section here would give us the most information about the possible feature. As we excavated into the subsoil, you can see that the bottom of the bowl-shape became darker and that a slightly lighter (but still darker than the subsoil) stain continued straight down into the subsoil. What is hard to see is that the stain then turned and ran to the west across the unit floor (that is why the portion of the unit floor is cut away farther from the wall.) Humans can not dig a hole that makes a turn like that without disturbing the soil above. Therefore, it was determined that the possible feature was created by a rodent such as a ground hog or a chipmunk. The darker material at the base of the bowl-shape also turned out to be decaying vegetation that was probably used by the rodent to line its den.

2005-11-28T07:17:00.000-08:00

October 24 - 31

Even though the weather for the final week of the project was rainy, that did not stop Troy Intermediate School, Open Door Christian School, Beach City Elementary, and Lee Burneson students from participating. Tarps were spread overhead to keep everyone dry (see photo above). Many units were finished and the site only needed a little clean up to ready it for the winter.

2005-10-24T11:29:00.000-07:00

October 17 - 21

Students in the Quest Program from the Hermitage, Sharon, and Farrell school districts in Western Pennsylvania, Troy Intermediate School, and State Road Elementary participated in the program this week. The weather started to turn colder, but spirits remained high. Many units were completed and lots of artifacts were collected. Again, most of the material continues to be flint flakes and pottery fragments. New units were set up on the N510 line which will be excavated beginning next week.

The photograph above shows a selection of artifacts excavated from the Morton site within the past few weeks. To the left on the top row is an artifact called a "nutting stone" or a pitted stone. It is made of a dense sandstone and has a small, circular indentation pecked into one face. The indentation may be for cracking nuts or, most likely, for holding small flint pebbles which were split with a larger rock to prepare them for making stone tools such as projectile points or knives. The rock is reddened from having been in a fire. It was found in unit N505E521.

The artifact to the right in the top row is called a net sinker. It was found on the ground surface at N502E513.5. It is made from a circular piece of shale that is quite flat. Two notches have been chipped into the edges at opposite points. Net sinkers were used to weigh nets so that they would sink to the bottom of a lake or river to facilitate fishing. Three other net sinkers were also found on the ground surface indicating that this site was used as a place to make or mend nets used for fishing.

The artifact to the left in the bottom row is the Adena point found in unit N505E530. It is made of a gray flint and is broken at the tip. Adena points date to the Early Woodland period with dates ranging between 800 to 300 B.C. They were most likely dart points or knives. This one appears to have been resharpened several times.

The remaining two artifacts in the bottom row are pot sherds. The sherd in the middle is a rim sherd from unit N505E521. The rim is plain and the sherd is decorated with cord markings which have been smoothed over. It is similar to other sherds found on the site and dates to the Late Woodland period at approximately AD. 800 - 1200. The other pot sherd is a body sherd very similar to the rims described earlier. In fact, they probably belong to the same vessel. The incised decoration on this sherd, possibly created with fingernails, looks a little like the track of the white-tailed deer. It is impossible to say for certain that is what the prehistoric artisan was trying to replicate, but it is fun to think about.

2005-10-19T11:39:00.000-07:00

October 11 - 14

The weather this week was a little damp, but that did not stop students from Mayfield Middle School, Louisville (see photo above), the Franklin GATE program, and a group of home school students from the Eastside Co-op from participating in the Field Experience program. Several test units were completed (I will update the map soon) and many artifacts were discovered. Most of the artifacts continue to be flint flakes and pottery sherds, although a very nice projectile point was also recovered from unit N505E530. The type of point is called an Adena point and it dates to the Early Woodland period with dates ranging between 800 to 300 B.C. I will post a photo soon. Artifacts continue to be found in every test unit as we head to the west so we have not yet determined the western boundary of the site. The eastern boundary is determined by the slope of the land form and the site may continue to the north and south along the edge of the landform. Further testing will help us determine the site boundaries.

2005-10-10T11:35:00.000-07:00

What happens after students excavate a test unit?

The students excavate a test unit by removing the topsoil until the sterile subsoil is reached. The subsoil zone usually contains clay and is the layer at which artifacts are no longer found. It is usually lighter in color than the topsoil. Artifacts do not sink into the soil. Instead, soil builds up over the artifacts and buries them. Decaying leaves and soil carried in by wind and water are main causes of soil buildup. Sometimes prehistoric people dug into the subsoil to create features such as fire hearths, storage pits, and trash pits. When students reach the subsoil zone, Cleveland Museum of Natural History archaeologists scrape the floor and walls of the unit clean to look for evidence of features. They then photograph and map the floor and at least one wall, even if there are no features present.

This photograph shows the west wall profile of unit N500E539. You can see the darker topsoil zone above the lighter subsoil zone. The irregular line between the two zones is caused by roots or digging by rodents such as ground hogs or chipmunks. You can also see that the topsoil zone is very thin (between 10 cm and 15 cm thick). This seems to be because this portion of the land form was never plowed. Most all of northeast Ohio was plowed at one time or another. Finding areas that have not been plowed is rare. Plow zones usually average in thickness between 20 cm and 25 cm. Plowing soil causes the artifacts contained within them to be mixed up from their original location. The Mentor Lagoons 4 site, also located near the Mentor Marsh, click here to read about this site.

2005-10-10T11:33:00.000-07:00

October 3 - 6:

Students from St. Jude, SS. Cyril & Methodius, Holy Family, and St. Rocco spent another nice week of unusually warm weather excavating at the Morton site. The students worked very hard and accomplished a lot. Test units N500E531, N500E535, N500E545, N505E534, and N505E539 were completed (see the map for the updated artifact counts). Flint flakes and pottery remain the only types of artifacts found. The two units on the E505 line each had over 50 flint flakes. Although we have not found any large concentrations of charcoal nor areas of fire-reddened earth, several of the flint flakes appear to have been damaged by fire. They may have been dropped into a campfire or damaged if a forest fire burned the woods. Most of the flint flakes are small (less than 5 cm in length) and appear to be made of local, glacially deposited flints. It appears that a lot of stone tool resharpening and finishing went on here. The pottery all appears to be from the Late Woodland period (ca. AD 800 - 1200), although some might be from the Whittlesey tradition which immediately follows this cultural period.

A new line of test units was opened on the N505 line. Notice that the East coordinates of some of the test units do not end in a 0 or a 5. Normally, if we were excavating in an open field we would try to keep the test units 5 meters or 10 meters apart. Since the Morton site is in the woods, we have to place the units so that they are not blocked by trees. This makes us place them closer or farther than we would ideally like. Future test units will most likely be placed to the west of the existing units to see if we can determine the area of the site.

2005-10-10T07:26:00.000-07:00

Pottery rim sherds found:

Two interesting rim sherds were found in test unit N500E539 (see photo above). The sherds are grit-tempered with transverse tool (maybe fingernail) impressions on the lip and widely spaced oblique(?) tool impressions on the neck. The surface of the neck appears to exhibit a brushed surface treatment. They most closely resemble rims from the Bass Lake site near Chardon in Geauga County and a few from the Kerniskey site in Eastlake, Lake County. They probably date between about AD 800 and 1200. The body sherd to the right in the photo, most likely from the same pot, has punctate impressions on it. This type of pottery dates to the end of the Late Woodland period, just before the start of identified Whittlesey Tradition pottery types.

2005-10-04T18:08:00.000-07:00

September 27 - 30:

The first week of the dig went very well. The weather was great. Students from Gesu and Fuchs Mizrachi schools participated. The following test units were completed: N500E549, N500E539, and N500E525 (see map). The eastern most unit (N500E549) only produced one flint flake. This unit is closest to the tip of the landform. It is possible that material from this area eroded off the edge of the landform or that people just did not occupy this area. The other two units produced flint flakes and pottery. Two very interesting rim sherds were found in unit N500E539. I will post a photo and a description of these pieces soon.

2005-09-21T08:04:00.000-07:00

Setting Up Test Units:

The squares we will be digging in are called units or test units. They will measure 1 meter north-south by 1 meter east-west (although they can measure any size). Each unit will be identified by the coordinates of its southwest corner. To set up a unit you must use triangulation and the Pythagorean theorem. Since we know that one side of the unit will be on a north-south or east-west line and the side will measure 1 meter long, we can mark the ends of that line. We also know that a square is made up of 2 right triangles with the same hypotenuse (the long side of the triangle.) The Pythagorean theorem tells us that the hypotenuse is equal to the square root of the sum of the squares of the other two sides. Since we want the sides of our unit to be 1 meter long, we come up with the following equation:

Now we can measure from one of the marked points 1 meter for the length of the side and from the other marked point measure 1.41 meters for the hypotenuse and mark the place where these measurements cross. This gives us the third point in our square. Do the same from the other marked point and we have the fourth point in our square. We then use string to connect all of the corners and we have our unit.

I know it sounds difficult, and I don’t know if my description of the process was easy to follow, but it is actually not that hard to do once you get the hang of it. Archaeologists use math every day!

2005-09-21T06:47:00.000-07:00

Preparing for the dig:

Before archaeologists can dig, a grid has to be set up over the site area so that we can accurately measure our units and the artifacts we find. The kind of grid we set up is called a Cartesian coordinate system. A point is chosen from which all measurements will be made. This is called a datum or origin.

A surveyors tool called a transit is then used to establish straight lines that run north-south and east-west intersecting at the datum. The north-south line will be our y axis while the east-west line will be our x axis. Since we are working in three dimensions, our z axis will be our depth below the ground surface. Wooden stakes are pounded into the ground along the north axes, usually at 10 meter intervals. The datum stake is assigned the coordinate N500E500 and all measurements are made from this point. A high number is chosen so that there will be no negative measurements. To determine the location of any point on the site, its distance from the datum in relation to the north and east axes is measured. If an artifact is found 27 meters to the north and 53 meters to the east of the datum, its coordinates are; N527E553. If an artifact is found 15 meters south and 33 meters west of the datum, its coordinates are N485E467. It seems complicated, but with practice, mapping on a grid system is pretty easy. Remember: add the numbers to 500 if you go north or east and subtract from 500 if you go south or west.

2005-09-20T06:11:00.000-07:00

Environmental Setting: The Morton site is located within the Erie Lake Plain physiographic region of northeast Ohio. This means that Lake Erie played a major role in the formation of the land. The shoreline of Lake Erie changed many times throughout the glacial history of this area. By about 10,000 years ago, however, the last of the glacial ice had receded and Lake Erie began to resemble its present form. At that time, the area that is now the Mentor Marsh was a meander in the course of the Grand River. The Grand River continued to flow through this channel until about 2,000 tears ago. At that time, the river eroded its northern bank and breached the narrow margin of land to empty into Lake Erie at its present location in Fairport Harbor. Since no water flowed through the old channel, the water became stagnant, creating what would become Mentor Marsh.

One of the key aspects for the use of this area by prehistoric people is the availability of several environmental zones and the natural resources they hold. The upland areas would have been covered in a forest of mostly oak and hickory. Before 2,000 years ago, the river would have provided a variety of fish and waterfowl and various plants that grow along the shores of flowing water. After 2,000 years ago, the marshland would have been home to an even greater variety of plants and animals that would have been of use as food and for raw materials for tools to the prehistoric people of the area. Some animals prehistoric people would have hunted include elk, white tailed deer, black bear, eastern cottontail rabbit, beaver, turkey, Canada goose, many varieties of ducks, numerous varieties of reptiles and amphibians, and a diverse number of fish.

Prehistoric hunters and gatherers of the Archaic period would have used these resources in their seasonal migrations through the area. Fishing would have been important in the spring. Collecting berries would have occurred in the summer. The fall would have been a good time to collect nuts such as acorns and hickory and to hunt larger game animals. The winter would have been the most difficult time to live here and it is doubtful that people stayed here throughout the area’s cold, long winters. They probably moved to the south where it was a little bit warmer and not as harsh as it can be along the lakeshore. People of the Late Woodland Whittlesey Tradition would have left their permanent villages to come to this area to hunt, fish and collect nuts but then return to their villages during the winter months. One of the main goals of this project is to determine when people lived here and what they were doing.

To find out more about the prehistory of northeast Ohio, check out "Before the Western Reserve", Parts 1 through 5 at this page.

2005-09-19T08:09:00.000-07:00

Welcome to the Field Experience Blog. This Blog will detail the archaeological investigation of a prehistoric Native American site by the Cleveland Museum of Natural History’s Department of Archaeology Field Experience program. Students and teachers participating in the program can check back here to see weekly updates that document the dig as it progresses. Other information concerning archaeology and primitive technology will also be added to facilitate the blog’s use with the Field Experience program. Other visitors interested in archaeology are welcome to check-in as well.

The site we will be excavating this fall, the Morton site, is located overlooking the north edge of the Mentor Marsh. The exact site location will not be revealed for security reasons. The site was identified in June of 2005 when archaeologists from the Cleveland Museum of Natural History were invited to look over the property. Several artifacts were collected from the ground surface indicating that prehistoric Native Americans once lived on this spot.
The prehistoric artifacts collected consist of several chert/flint flakes, a by-product of stone tool manufacturing, one chert tool fragment, and two pottery fragments. Additionally, an 1892 Barber dime was also recovered. The dime demonstrates that the site area continued to be used by people, probably as a picnic area, well into the 19th Century. All of the chert artifacts are made of glacial chert, that is chert that was brought down from Canada during the last glaciation. The flakes are medium-sized and indicate that people made or resharpened stone tools such as knives, spear points, or arrow points at this site. The chert tool fragment probably came from such a tool but it is too small to identify. The pottery pieces are small and are tempered with finely crushed stone grit. One piece has cord-marking on its exterior. The chert artifacts are not diagnostic. That means they can not be used to tell what time period people used this site. The pottery sherds, however, are of a type that was made and used between about A.D.1000 and 1600. Archaeologists call this time period the Late Prehistoric period and identify the people as the Whittlesey Tradition. Whittlesey people were maize (corn) farmers who lived in permanent villages along the main river valleys of northeast Ohio. They used seasonal campsites like this one during the spring and fall months

2005-09-09T08:30:00.000-07:00

Welcome to the Archaeology Field Experience Blog. Stay tuned for up-to-date posts from our summer dig.