Silver Beach Elk

2006-07-28T15:34:00.000-05:00

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.

2006-03-31T13:31:00.000-06:00

This is just a quick update about the radiocarbon dating, since many folks have expressed interest in that. A sample was sent to Beta Analytic, a well-known radiocarbon dating lab located in Florida in March. They hope to send back the results by the end of April - I'll post that info when it becomes available.

One of the special things about this site is how much local folks care about it. The dating has been funded by the generous donations of people who know and love the Barnes area and are curious about its past, working through the non-profit organization BAHA (Barnes Area Historical Association).

Want to learn more about radiocarbon dating and the process behind it? Try a few of these popular websites:

This one is like a mini-course from a university in California. It has little movie clips.
http://id-archserve.ucsb.edu/anth3/courseware/Chronology/08_Radiocarbon_Dating.html

This one is from a radiocarbon lab in New Zealand. It is mostly text, with additional links.
http://www.c14dating.com/

This one is a visually-oriented self-teaching module. You quiz yourself to advance.
http://www.sciencecourseware.org/VirtualDating/files/RC0/RC_0.html

Have fun!

Sharing Ideas

2006-03-07T09:01:00.000-06:00

This will be a new experiment for me, so please bear with me as we explore the potential of a blog to share knowledge and ideas about an exciting archaeological site, the Silver Beach Elk site.

I'm hoping this will be an easy way to let you know what we are learning and give you a chance to share your ideas about the finds.

The Silver Beach Elk site is located in northern Wisconsin. Its state trinomial is 47BA526. It was discovered by swimmers in July of 2005 while they were enjoying the beauty of Wisconsin's north woods and its lovely lakes. One of them, Jacob Voelker, stepped on an "odd piece of wood" on the bottom of the lake. It turned out to be a set of antlers from an elk (Cervus elaphus).

Further exploration led to the recovery of quite a bit of an elk skeleton that had been submerged in the bottom of the lake. In the process, one of these summer adventurers stepped on something sharp, and that turned out to be a fluted point. If you know something about the archaeology of the Americas, then you'll realize how exciting that is. Fluted points are old - roughly 10,000 years old, give or take a couple hundred years.

Finding a fluted point with the elk skeleton means there is a good chance that the elk bones are also 10,000 years old. That would be exciting for a great many reasons. It could tell us something new about the hunting life of the first people that made Wisconsin their home. It could tell us something new about the end of the last ice age and the glaciers that covered this region. It could tell us something new about elk and their past in Wisconsin.

I'm an archaeologist. I have a PhD and I teach at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in the Department of Anthropology. I have a speciality in zooarchaeology, which means I study animal bones, and that is how I was lucky enough to get involved in the Silver Beach Elk site.

Quentin Ruprecht, whose granddaughter Nikki is the one who found the fluted point, realized what an important find the swimmers had made. He used his network of friends to find an archaeologist who could come out and confirm the age of the point and the importance of the bones. Happily for me, I ended up on his list. I stopped by on my way back from a kayaking session on Lake Superior to see what they had found and we've been working together ever since. Quentin is a member of the Barnes Area Historical Association, a local group that is working hard to create a museum near Barnes that could provide a home for the elk remains.

Please feel free to use the "comments" option below to leave your comments and questions for others to see and respond to. And keep checking back for updates on what we are learning. Right now we are getting ready to send a sample of the elk bone in to be radiocarbon dated. It will probably take a little over a month to get the results back. In the meantime I am studying butchering marks on the elk bone. I'll discuss that in the one of the future postings.