Author: Reid Farmer
Say Hello to my Little Friend
This is the second snake and the only rattlesnake we have seen in the field here. Though the daytime highs are in the 80s, it’s still only in the mid to low 40s at night and I think these fellows are still pretty torpid. This one never moved (other than a couple of tongue flicks) …
Some Ceramic Oddities
Most of the ceramics we have found here so far are fairly straight forward, like the Colorado Buffware rim sherd that is pictured above. Most everything we have seen has either been one of these buffwares (though some have a red slip) that were made east of here along the Colorado River or Tizon Brownware …
Beer Can Archaeology
As I said in the previous post, artifacts and features that are older than 50 years get treated as historic resources in our survey. That means we get to paw through a lot of 20th Century trash heaps. I am a confirmed prehistorian and I have to admit that this isn’t exactly my cup of …
Silence of the Lambs
Sometimes we see things out here that haven’t quite turned into archaeology yet. The white smear you see in the picture above is one of those. Hard to tell what it is at a distance. When you get a little closer you can see that it is a scatter of animal bone. My colleague Liz …
Who Am I?
I have picked up two skulls of this type while out here on survey and am not sure what species this is. Faunal identification isn’t my strong suit and I have no references with me. It’s not canid, but not sure where to go – ringtail? badger? More expert opinions than mine requested.
General Land Office
Those of you who live in the eastern part of the country don’t get much opportunity to see these survey markers. The General Land Office, one of the precursor agencies to the current Bureau of Land Management, had the responsibility for conducting the cadastral survey of the western three-quarters of the country and laying out …
Big Core
A large part of our project area contains old stream terraces that are covered with gravel and cobbles of good chippable stone. The prehistoric people who lived here used these as source areas for their lithic tools. Above you can see some crew members recording a small site consisting of a core and a few …
Field Survey
Our field survey methods are rather simple. We line up in skirmish lines at a regular interval – for this survey the transect interval is 15 meters. Then we walk systematically over the area to be surveyed and look for artifacts and features on the ground surface, in this case all 7400 acres of it. …
Pot Drop
Sometime between AD 1000 and probably 1700 a Native American traveling through our project area somehow dropped and broke this ceramic jar. The climate being what it is in this desert, artifact distributions like this can remain undisturbed for hundreds of years. We refer to situations where the broken sherds stay together on the ground …