what was called the woodlands culture and i guess speaker will talk about the culture and also what has been found at fish creek how many of you people know where fish creek is most of you ok garrett we'll talk a little bit about it but if you want more information later at the end of the show we'll have zero people join again or will be at the back of the room to talk a little bit about the fish creek area for introducer speaker like to turn off your cell phone and cell phones were not present back in the woodlands culture so become the awakening for that to go off i also should mention that tonight's talk is co sponsored by the ramsey county library system and would like to thank the maplewood library for the use of this excellent room tonight this talk is also funded in part with money from an assault as art and cultural heritage fun this is also known as the legacy amendment fund that we voted on and i think it's two thousand and eight and tonight stock will be videotaped by our local community television station  for broadcast later on our guest speakers garrett he started college at the university of wisconsin in madison in chemical engineering switched in a sophomore year to archaeology and just recently received his navigate regulations other a lot of laws in place in minnesota and federal laws that protect culture resources so my job is to look at those regulations look at the book the project and make sure that the project can proceed most  get get to the world and culture in the archaeology fish creek we're going to take a bit of a roundabout way because we can't talk about people in the landscape in minnesota without knowing a little bit about what came before them and culture and then what came afterwards and then as i mentioned earlier really get into discussion of what is very straits the land bridge the the open landscape that spans siberian alaska and most people can see think of it as a bridge but in fact it is over a thousand metres wide thousand miles wide so it was a pretty pretty want up with this big scene this big big highway for people to travel down from grigio into the heart of north america and from there they spread oh one side note if we can go back up here this is this is very related to the specific alaska actually found new polling data suggesting that snack island which is up here the very southern end was actually stable try landscape and pushing that date back about fourteen thousand years making that more credible down here the paul records which i'm not going to get into the weeds there but that's the best show in the dryer steel landscapes so now we know where people came from north america and we have we have four main traditions that pre contact in north america human settlement next year katie period you see there are no words but eight eighty five hundred years ago to about twenty five hundred years ago we start to see smaller projectile points with with stems or  deer bear those sorts of things it's basically the exact seeing it logical regimes that we see on your own here today the other the other important thing with your k a period is we start to see evidence of more substantial  but these are the ones and shape of panther or thunderbird or serpent that they see generally self the twin cities over there is one example from priorly where they they had some sixty foot birds that was actually actually in the sorts of debate and literature over whether or not is is an organic growth it's a culture that rose out of the woodland tradition or if it's some sort of some sort of hybrid between mississippi and that came up from from from further south up the mississippi valley or oregon some sort of mix of all these things and it's really it's probably one of the number one questions in archaeology in fact the  sites in north america so it's definitely complex chief but some argue that it may have been early nation state level society but it um it was a is palisade it was and it had influence all the way up the mississippi observed native americans in the landscape and they had travel through lesions they had kinship affiliations inflation of the landscape and the trick was then excuse me to trace back to contemporary known groups as far back into the past as possible up and so you have these kind of two things that are kind of coming together one from the present one from the distant past and they don't always they don't always link up but the idea is that the jew way into kota groups that are here today are descended from some combination of those leader planes village groups and that the previous belief was that it was a it was it was an admixture of kind of what once the collapse of kochi happened about twelve twelve fifty and the mississippian society ceased to be a good and a distinct distinct entity you started seeing more of a more again it development that turned into into contemporary societies americans here's that table again it just summarizes the  things the things that went over there another important i guess important thing to think about it think about is that at the end of your career we're pretty much reaching a very stable landscape a very stable climate regime and we're  t when we get down to the the one exception would be the the big woods done some of these minnesota which were very modern occurrence of course the other very important distinction between what the what came before is after pottery came first but after pottery we started to see culture for the first time and there is another big a big question about was pottery the result the use of pottery mergence of pottery was as a result of  foodstuffs while plant plant foods for so we start to see a culture come after pottery and culture intensifying and becoming more fulltimer more important during later planes village period delineate different cultures and what that means we don't have to dig too deep in tell you realize of that computer very complicated concept even even looking at contemporary groups of people so we do in archaeology on the one hand it's more simple because we're looking at we're looking at material culture divorced from any real people it's really look at patterns in the channel until record and able to make determinations independent of any any any more political things  record obviously you can't come up with that without without really getting lucky with a lot of data so as to just note on that never to get into the fish creek sites and get into a little bit more about woodland culture there need to do based on the level of disturbance or the type of project so in this particular project they were planning on undisturbed pretty much the entire entire live form and so we requested by ship over meeting their guidelines to do we a full phase one survey which involves phase one a which is an intensive literature review the minnesota history center in st paul howes the ship offices where they have to detail very thorough records of pretty much everything known the history and archaeology in the state for particular region the sa completely accurate there are there's a lot of knowledge held by by private individuals private museums local circle societies but for the most part most most things wind up about a particular project area and at that point if we find anything they need to avoid or the construction plans work with the engineers and they can they can make their plans to avoid anything that's known but the next part of the phase one is a natural pedestrian survey so going out over the that sites in north america are recorded with a treadmill system so each state has a numerical designation minnesota has twenty one and then comes the county already for ramsey county and then it's a sequence of numbers so this was the fifty third site discovered in  unfortunately hope the next step in the process is serum or he ologist is taking these these objects he recovered field bring them into the lab and wash you sort you beg you label and then you work with the landowners to figure out a final destination goes right down into the water of the creek so any little little shorts today and i blew through some of the stuff because i was hoping to have a chance to talk with some the objects we have over there i have to say as someone who grew up s but it's not it's certainly not required and it had several occasions where land or want to hang on to the objects yes did during the during the time of occupation it would probably have been pretty similar to what we what we saw today that what we see out there today i mean we're just we're still generally in the in more of the prairie zone and further to the north basically the the the rule is it's a product of this culture culture history archaeology so over time you've collected enough and you then if i have the types and you want the few you want you see patterns that seem to really hold up and in certain types of geological formations that you can do it through other methods and then you wind up with a couple radiocarbon dates from a couple sites across the state that have identical artifact assemblages or similar effects assemblages and so it's minute for this site is going to be a three thousand year range but you know it's it's kind of with without for the investigation that's kind of the best that we're able to do if we can if we were able to come up with some and a lot of the questions in the site forms included it will include all sorts of questions about really particular diagnostics so they can try to pin down the date but ninety percent the time the date that you're providing is going to be the of the pottery vessel so you have a you have a you have a base shirt which would be from the base a body should which could be from the body and neck sure if it's if it's taper in the middle would be next year and then books and then a and then a lip sure it would be something from the intensive so fully sedentary villages were looking at maybe temporary semipermanent villages or seasonal villages for certain resources but there are also a lot of temporary camps people have been moving around the landscape a lot and a few years and so could have been a much larger site when there was another ten twenty thirty feet of bank there in another another thing to consider is if you can mention briefly that the the upper upper twenty three centimeters is the plow zone which means  from further north where it seems like even even archaic peoples were were intensifying more or less and using well explain wild rice so it's a slightly different thing than than than the complex of course squash beans course which which would have could have come from anywhere could it could have been from the wash a number of places now could also be where were the jesper came from but the church down here  mississippi tradition this would have been something else this would mean something maybe more more related to the plains villages component during the same time period that would have come from from further east but from the womb period there is some evidence of sign on looking at all the different raw material types in minnesota and looking at where these things came from and kind of trying to reestablish in these trade networks but i have to say that i'm not convinced that this particular piece was was from the black hills i'm just based on the geology and what i was able to turn over but it does it does hint at some really interesting things are starting to happen during the certainly during the late one period and definitely during the plains villages period in mississippi i  of these huge huge trade trading periods festivals that would happen so i believe that you have a rear exotic raw material you have them material that could be high status or could be used in different ways by different people so i think that you're not having you're not you're not seen individuals from one area travel them selves all the way to the source i think that you're seeing these things traded traded down by one group t pipes in minnesota and you look at it if you if you were just to to put on the map the point every place that a piece that catlin it was found we know the only place it could come from is that one site where you see it everywhere you see it all the way down before they see it in mexico you see over canada it's really interesting in every place you population center you may see a spike or a cluster of of where this where this material showing up and then in areas of special population you're going to see  more spread out but generally the gravity model shows that the closer you are for the source the more likely your finest the more number of examples of this of the snow being found are so by playing net and use in looking at the naleo as you can start to guess we have a chance to look at those after for the question for sure yeah really interesting because of where it is because of its its location in the fact that you have intact so surface deposits so they mention in doing down the shuttle test the first three centimeters were stuff intact and i think it has a potential to really tell us a lot now i wouldn't expect a site like this to find you know hundreds of hundreds of arrowheads or or thousands of potsherds but i think on base are there are there are several sites in the in the vicinity along the creeks and in the upper areas and a lot of those would be in price land so if we were able to obtain land the seventies i see no i don't believe i don't believe that any any sites were discovered in the course of that construction project whether go under with the crew you know under the bigger ones and then of course you would like to glamorize to begin with that they're going for but the fact is that if you look at it if you look at sites of really good flow preservation you're able to actually look through their their their trash heaps and really get a good idea of what they're eating you find that seventy percent of their calories were taken from things like mussels and birds and squirrels and things like that so i to the east these two parcels were the only areas that were considered to be the e p eat and that's the area of potential effect that's a common that is a tough very difficult question to answer on the one hand there's no way that you could convince me that the people that spent time at this fish creek site never went to the mounds park area and didn't know about those mounds but to be able to say definitively they had a hand in in digging those might be a bit more difficult i mean you have you have some very early looking mounds you have some effigy things and then you have a lot of reconstructed mounds and  think that you may have three different mumbling episodes represented there you just like the carvers cave that was was below and those gloss head rock or from three completely different he logical traditions before it was filled and it collapsed which is really interesting so you'd have to say about like i said there's no way you can convince me that the people that spent time this camp didn't know about or visit that in this in the span of their lives oh with this group created  you know it's tough to say the i mean we have about a three thousand two thousand year span for for the fish creek site  surely it's really really hard hard stuff we can do now i mean they're all of the the record of displacements before before the arrival of european settlers this part of the country is is pretty wild i mean it seems like groups are pushing groups all over the place so yeah that's right it's a it's a good point i just i don't have a good answer or a good anything else to add where all this plus signs work there might be really interesting informative to put down a few formal excavation units so maybe two units that would be one meter by two meters and then he did those down in controlled intervals and then to see if you can actually come down on any intact feature subsurface features you know get once you get to that follows on are you coming down on one artifacts that are in place i think that would be a really interesting informative next step when a company like  the drive in the project first place the better bet would be find taking more academic tact with it and i think more productive too is you know i think we do our best on on the constraints of budgets and a project limitations to obtain as much information and do our best to protect the resources while still you know allowing projects reasonable projects to proceed you know if you have if you have much of grad students that are looking at every every it's we are recommendations for the site or if it's potentially eligible and so i mentioned before the phase one investigation that we did for the next phases would be phase two and then phase three phase two is where you mak determination for eligibility so the next step if we were to do the one meter by two meter controlled excavations based on those findings a determination and recommendation could be met to list put this on the national register of his places or to say you know what there's not enough intact it doesn't meet the criteria and there are several such stablished material for for determining that and then just to finish to finish kind of how this works the phase three excavation eligible and if you guys still insist on a proceeding in digging here we're going to need to execute the entire thing and it's very rare that a client would would choose that option because it can be very time consuming expensive i suppose i suppose it's possible but i would i would say that based on established models that would be more it would be more of a leap to to say that than than that we have some sort of a some a permanent campsite here