HomeMy WebLinkAbout2015 09-30 Experts uncover interesting artifacts at Fish Creek preserve MAPLEWOOD REVIEW2/18/2016 Experts uncover interesting artifacts at Fish Creek preserve I Lillie Suburban Newspapers - LillieNews.com
Experts uncover interesting
artifacts at Fish Creek
preserve
Submitted by adminl on Wed, 09/30/2015 - 12:OOam
By: Holly Wenzel
The Fish Creek bluff in Maplewood must have hosted
something like a family -and -friends reunion as people
gathered centuries ago at their favorite summer spot: along
the water and offering enough room for a number of families,
unlike their winter homes.
We know they hunted, fished, cooked, sharpened and
restored tools and explored the surrounding area together.
We can guess that they enjoyed catching up with one another,
admiring how the kids had grown and missing those they'd
lost since last year.
But the rest, dating from as long as 1,500 years ago, as
Maplewood historian Bob Jensen puts it, is "a mystery in our
own backyard."
Taking care of the past
Archaeologist Jeremy Nieow — one of four archaeologists in
the state certified to conduct exploratory digs — is called in
when private companies or public entities plan to develop a
site that may include Native American artifacts.
The Fish Creek bluff site had already yielded some evidence
when a private developer paid for exploratory digs.
The 142 -acre Fish Creek open space has meadows and
forests, and is situated just east of the Mississippi River and
north of Interstate 494 on the southernmost Maplewood
border.
"Our goal for this dig was to establish the boundaries of the
site, as the county and Maplewood look at putting in trails, and
to find the types of artifacts that are there," Nienow explains.
Archeologist Jeremy Nienow teaches the group how to
evaluate the soil. (submitted photo)
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Participants sift soil, looking for tiny potshards. (submitted photo)
Thanks to a grant from the Minnesota Legacy funds, the city and county were able to use Nienow's expertise and include
community members in a two-day exploration of the site July 24 and 25.
A dozen people paid $15 apiece, dressed in clothes they were willing to get dirty and packed their own water and lunches, to
help dig — and possibly find and hold something hand -created a millenium ago.
As Jensen, president of the Maplewood Historical Society, describes it, Nienow gave everyone detailed instructions on how to
dig in the shovel tests, how far down to go and how to carefully transfer the soil and what it might contain to the volunteers
operating screen "sifters."
"Jeremy warned us very carefully, 'If you guys find any human remains, we have to stop immediately and call the sheriff,"'
Jensen recalls.
The suitably impressed and now rather tentative volunteers then put shovel blades to soil. "it wasn't 10 minutes before
someone yelled 'I found human remains!' and held up the plastic arm from a doll," Jensen says. "it was 'from humans,' but it
wasn't 'human."'
Overall, the group found about 30 different pieces of artifacts, Jensen says, with about 20 pottery chips and 10 stone chips.
The materials that last
A few weeks later, the volunteers gathered again, at the Maplewood Nature Center, where they used toothbrushes and water
to clean off the finds. "We each got a chance to hold them and see how they were made," Jensen notes.
The pieces of pots — most smaller than a nickel — were among the most telling. They center the finds in the "middle
woodlands" period of Native American culture in the eastern U.S., between an early period of hunting and gathering and a
later one of agriculture.
Jensen says from what he's learned, the pieces at Fish Creek might date from 200 BC to 400 AD.
The evidence: in the middle woodlands period, clay containers were made with purposefully roughened exteriors, which
dissipated the heat expansion from firing and helped keep the vessels from cracking. They'd be used to carry water, to cook
or bake in or for storage.
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Archaeologists theorize that clay pots might have been roughened before they were fired by wrapping twine rope around a
small paddle and whacking the outside of the wet clay. That would account for the Fish Creek potshards' grooved and semi -
regular, semi -random pattern.
Further, Nienow, says, the stone chips people were finding as they sifted were the small kind found after a spear head or
scraping tool is resharpened, not the big flakes made when it's first created.
"That would lead us to believe that this is a summer camp — a place where several groups or family groups came together to
hunt, to fish and to do things in a larger group than they would live in the rest of the year," Nienow says. "They were restoring
tools they already had, not making new ones."
The sharp heads being made in the period, Nienow notes, were not for archery arrows. Instead, during mostthe middle
woodland centuries, people had transitioned from handheld spears to thrown atlatls, with smaller heads on long, flexible
poles. Because the poles flex like javelins, they can be thrown with force and accuracy.
The rest of the group's lifestyle? Whatthey wore or how they made shelters? "We just don't know, because anything organic
— hides, cloth, other organic items — have long since disintegrated," Nienow says.
Larger patterns of trade, with Michigan copper ending up outwest or Dakota jasper being found in the east, indicate that
during the middle woodland period people traded over hundreds and thousands of miles.
Though no copper orjasper were found atthe site this time around, Jensen says in 2005, when the CoPar group wanted to
develop the site, the digs it paid for revealed a piece ofjasper as well as pottery and stone flakes. At least that's what's
recorded on a list made at the time.
With the economy aboutto tank, CoPar went bankrupt— and Maplewood swung into action to try to save the iconic bluff site
as open space. Though itwas able to preserve the site, during the chaos atthe company the artifacts were lost.
"By law, the artifacts were CoPar's for a period of time after they were found. Unfortunately, after the developer went out of
business, they disappeared," Jensen explains. "We think they were just discarded."
What's next?
Currently, the artifacts are being stored by the City of Maplewood. Nienow will present them and outline what they indicate at
a special event Nov. 17 at the Maplewood Library.
Jensen holds out some hope thatthere's enough cooked material blackened onto the potshards that carbon-14 dating could
be used to try to narrow down the years Fish Creek was occupied. Nienow notes that such work can cost hundreds of dollars
per item — and several items should be tested in order to discount any "outliers" that might look similar but are not from the
same time period.
From there, by law, they must be kept in a certified depository — usually the Minnesota Historical Society. However, Jensen
says, the Ramsey County Historical Society is in the process of being certified, and the Maplewood group hopes these
artifacts can be kept closer to home.
Maplewood Parks & Recreation Commission Chair Ron Cockriel, who participated in the dig, says, "This just consolidated for
us what a special site Fish Creek is. Finding these things and holding them in your hand is the precious part."
Holly Wenzel can be reached atreview(71i11ienews.com or at 651-748-7817.
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