Silver Beach Elk

This is a rather belated effort to get this blog caught up with what has been going on with the Silver Beach Elk since early March 2006. I'll start with an outline of some of the major bits of news, and follow up with a few details for each.

The on-going analysis of the elk bone at the UW-Milwaukee Zooarchaeology Lab revealed some interesting butchering and wounding marks that tell us more about the elk's last day.


In March, a group of students at UW-Milwaukee, members of the Experimental Archaeology Working Group, volunteered to butcher a deer carcase using stone tools. The goal was to create a record of what stone tool butcher marks look like.

In April, the results of the radiocarbon date on the elk rib came back and were not at all what I was expecting.

In May, Robert Hults, an official measurer for Boone and Crockett, visited the lab at UW-Milwaukee with his wife Bev to give us an official ranking for the antlers of the Silver Beach Elk.



In June, with the help of some amazing volunteers, we did some archaeological fieldwork at the Silver Beach Elk site. This included underwater survey and mapping, plus systematic sampling of the site's soils and stratigraphy.


In July, with a small team of archaeologists from UW-Milwaukee, we did some underwater excavation at the Silver Beach Elk site. This included the use of a water vacuum and an airlift, water screening through 1/16" mesh, and the recovery of additional materials from the site.