Weeks 1 and 2
Although the field school officially began on June 4th, there is a lot of preliminary set-up that must be done before the students arrive. Also, since this year we began work in a new area, Grass Valley, the logistics were even more complex. Tom and I left New York on May 28th for Salt Lake City, where we picked up two of our rented vehicles and began to transfer our equipment from storage in Ely, Nevada, to our new location in Grass Valley. One of the nice things about our new location is that we have use of a bunk house at the Gund Ranch, which is owned by the University of Nevada, Reno. The University granted permission for our use of the bunk house free of charge. Thus we have access to electricity, a real plus in a field camp.
The bunk house is being used for food storage and cooking; the actual field camp is located about three miles away, along Pine Creek. Tom and I did some preliminary camp set-up and then on June 4th drove back to Salt Lake City to pick up the students. Nine students drove across country while the remainder flew out. Over the next few days we continued to work on camp, building showers and putting up tents, but also took several hikes to familiarize students with the flora, fauna, and geology of the area. Next, every student was given a field notebook and a compass, followed by a little "compass training." Finally, we were ready for serious work.
There are several areas that we wanted to explore. The first is located in the north end of the valley, where the remains of an extinct camel were reported to have washed out. The second area is located along Callahan Creek in the southern end of the valley, where a number of "early" artifact concentrations have been reported. The final area is a very large "site," about three square miles in area, called the Knudsen Site, located on an old spilt of the lake that existed in the valley during the Pleistocene (Lake Gilbert). This lake hasn’t been studied and thus we don’t know exactly when it dried completely, but in general, the Pleistocene lakes in the Great Basin began to recede about 14,000 years ago, and were gone by about 8,000 years ago. As these lakes shrank, extensive marshes were created, providing extremely productive resource areas for human use. Thus, we find archaeological sites along these marshes that date to between 12,000 and 8,000 years ago. The Knudsen site is one such area. Once the lakes and marshes dried completely, people went elsewhere.
During the first week of work we began surveying the Knudsen site in order to determine the boundaries and plan a sampling strategy. Some very interesting surface artifact concentrations were located, including features that may be hearths as well as concentrations of flakes and bifaces that may represent stone workshop areas. A series of test units were placed across the spit and excavated. Thus far, nothing has been found below about 10 centimeters, but we continue to hope for buried deposits. Meanwhile, other students learned how to use the EDM, the laser transit, to make a map of the contours of the site.
More next week!
Charlotte Beck, professor of archaeology