Day 3: Historic Trash

Day Three: Historic Trash

6/9/11:

Are you ready for this?

Startling fact: centuries from now, archaeologists are going to be picking through our trash going: ‘Ah! I see the ancients had an affinity for Kikkoman Soy Sauce. Will you look at how thick that glass is? And the way it’s banding; seems like what they would have had in 2011.’

Actually, I have no idea (clairvoyance, alas, being another of my deficiencies). Except to say, that’s exactly what we were doing on June sixth. Neil had brought the crew to a historic railroad just outside of Williams in order to show us the finer points of “painting” an archaeological site.

So it was that my second introduction to an archaeological site was not the remnants of another beautiful hilltop village like Wall of Voodoo; nope, we were looking through refuse from an old railroad’s dump pile. Which, in reality, was pretty fascinating. Picture everything ever that your mother told you not to touch and yes, that’s what we were turning over in our hands with a soft sort of reverence: thick liquor bottles in turquoise and cobalt and dusky brown, chipped puzzle-pieces of porcelain detailed in blue, rust-edged cans curling in fantastic contortions.

Compared to the majority of sites we would investigate in the KNF, the ones surrounding this railroad were fairly modern. Instead of hunting for lone sherds and lithic scatters, we were trying not to step on large glass fragments as we discerned company titles and ‘established in’ from the bottoms of jars and beer bottles.

What we were really there to do though, was paint the site.

Step 1

Locate the site: This sounds simple. False! A lot of my internship was spent conducting surveys of previously uninspected areas of the KNF; using a systematic approach (which I’ll talk about later), my archy crew traversed an ungodly amount of miles in our search for historic artifacts, which are often small or particular kinds of rocks, or small and particular kinds of rocks. If you find a cluster of enough artifacts, a brush shelter, room blocks, or a lithic (i.e., particular kinds of rocks) scatter, you’ve got yourself a prehistoric site. As these sites by the railroad were not prehistoric, and Neil knew their whereabouts, I was allowed the momentary bliss of believing Step 1 would be a walk in the park (versus a climb up the Cureton Ranch “hills”).

Step 2

Determine the site boundaries: With the help of some pink and polka dot flagging, the crew marked makeshift boundaries around the site by tying flags to trees.

Step 3

Mark the site boundaries: The “painting” part of the procedure; the crew spray-painted the flagged trees with an inches thick ring mid-way up the trunk and a “foot” (i.e., spray-paint blob) at the base of the tree which indicated the tree’s orientation to said site. Fun fact: the KNF, like all national forests, has to be very particular about its spray-paint. Archies use special kinds of spray-paint to mark archaeological sites, just as timber crews do to mark trees for removal. In order to prevent tree poaching and other shenanigans, the color of these spray-paints are not replicated for public consumption and all spray-paint bottles must be secured and accounted for at all times.

Step 4

Map the site: Using GIS (the Geographic Information System) on a KNF Juno (a GPS-type unit geared for arch work), one of the crew walked the boundaries as delineated by the painted trees. If said member had in fact keyed in the right combination of directives (ha, my bad guys!), the site would then appear on the Juno with complete topographical information.

                                                                                      Step 5

Record the site: Using the Juno memory card, the site map created on the Juno could be transferred to Neil’s computer and from there to INFRA, the database used by government archaeologists in the United States. Additionally, if the site was interesting enough, a site description (“What type of artifacts? How many? How old?”, etc.) and a drawn site map would be recorded. The site maps became something of my specialty and married the practical skills inherent in drawing accurately and to scale with the fantastical flair of creating a legend and actually letting X mark the spot. As well as recording site maps, I got to draw particularly thrilling artifacts (a projectile point! a prehistoric pendant!) replete with texturing and scrape-marks.

Step 6

Take a celebratory nap: To my chagrin, not mandatory, although always appreciated, the crew usually set aside time to poke around the site and languish beneath the shade of the juniper trees before hustling onward.

And there you have it: site painted, and then some.

Now, the two things you should strive above everything else to remember: we will know you by your trash and never underestimate the importance of Step 6.

Because it was during one of these explorative moments that I saw my first fire-charred tree: obsidian black, the sunlight lay in white stripes against the soft and ashy trunk; under my fingertips, the bark smeared like charcoal and smelled like absolutely nothing at all. 


Photos: 1. Artifact scatter 2. Various sherds and lithics 3. Corrugated sherd