1936:
Portales Daily News. Note that there was no “Clovis” cultural group yet…\
Click HERE for the pdf, with bonus Coronado article OR link below:
http://theclovissite.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/pdn1936.pdf
Prehistory Day was successful, due to an excellent turnout, helpful volunteers, and great weather. A special thanks goes out to the members of Mu Alpha Nu and their friends for helping out again this year. Nearly 300 people turned out for the event which lasted all day with people trickling in until we closed at 5:00.
Chuck Hannaford discusses prehistoric tools and lifeways with interested visitors.
Mary Weahkee demonstrates traditional yucca fiber working.
Demonstrations included fiber working, sandal making, flintknapping, and hunting techniques used by ancestral New Mexicans. Discussions ranged from general archaeology to gourd canteens, stone tools, and prehistoric containers.
Tommy Heflin teaches flintknapping to people of all ages and abilities.
The Portales flintknapping group, headed by Tommy Heflin, were a popular station at the event, helping create a new generation of flintknappers.
Everyone is attracted to the spear throwing range. Isaiah Coan from the Office of Archaeological Studies was a great help with the kids.
The “touch-and-feel” tables create many opportunities for learning about the past and what it means to be human.
From the abstract concept of “containers” as an artifact, a local boy learns about prehistoric life.
Stacey Bennett shows her poster display created for the event.
We hope to keep the public outreach events a regular occurrence at Blackwater Draw. Keep your eyes on the blog for future activities.
Kids of all ages can get in touch with the past at these events. Hope to see you here next year.
Things slow down here over the winter. Time to read, write, and catch up on all the things not finished over the year.
Check back soon for more details and the official poster.
The Clovis age hand-dug well located within the South Bank area of the Blackwater site got an unexpected visit from its original excavator this summer. Shirley East, pictured above standing in the well, was a regular face around the Blackwater site between 1962 and 1969. Shirley was a crew member for many of the excavations at the site and actively involved with the Paleo-Indian Institute of Eastern New Mexico University.
Shirley and her husband visited the museum and site in early August while in town for business. Shirley’s last visit to the site was in 1993 when she was summoned to help locate the long-backfilled well as part of a mapping project with ENMU and the Smithsonian Institute. Shirley located the well in no time happily stating, “well its just right there!”.
Shirley shared many stories from those early days and even offered to share her knowledge of those excavations of yesteryear. The Blackwater site was certainly honored to receive the visit, and I am personally thankful for her extended hand of help.
As an added bonus, I learned that Shirley was the artist who painted the Pleistocene animals on display at the Blackwater museum and worked diligently to prepare displays for its Grand Opening in 1969. The Blackwater Draw Museum was first opened to the public primarily to display artifacts discovered at the Blackwater Locality.
The Mitchell Locality is a large portion of the Clovis Site (LA3324) lying along the northwest margin of the prehistoric pond and extending into the slight upland rise to the west. Over the last few years, we have been fortunate to extend our researches in this direction primarily through geologic coring. The best available overview of the Mitchell Locality is Anthony Boldurian’s summary in Plains Anthropologist 1990. The area is primarily known for the extensive Folsom-age materials found there but has a smattering of older and younger artifacts scattered throughout.
Primary localities within the Clovis site.
Vance Holliday and Shane Miller coring the south bank.
There was an intent to core more in this area but the soft sand created problems for both the machine and vehicle access. Devising Plan B for the autumn.
Coring in the paleo arroyo of the Mitchell Locality.
Up on the Mitchell Locality, the sparse cover wheat allowed clear view of the surface with many small flakes visible.
C. Vance Haynes overlooking the mine pit.
We were fortunate that the great wealth of geoarchaeological knowledge of the southern high plains was present in the form of Haynes and Holliday.
Core sample laid out for recording.
The fine sand overburden varies throughout the site and can be over 4 meters deep. In this area, it is only about 40 centimeters outside the arroyo.
Dr Holliday working at the rig.
Examining the sediments.
I’ll keep posting as we learn more.
The climate studies class at Eastern New Mexico University has resumed, instructed by Dr. David Kilby, and funded through a grant from New Mexico NSF EPSCoR. The class spent the Fall 2011 semester collecting sediment samples from various locations in Eastern New Mexico, including various locations at Blackwater Locality #1. The Students are now analyzing the samples in ENMU’s new geoarchaeology lab.
The students are describing the samples using the Munsell hue test, a standardized way of describing the color of the sediments when they are dry, moist, and completely saturated. They are also testing the plasticity, carbon content, and calcium content of the sediments using various tests including the amount of effervescence after the application of acid (pictured above).
For more information click below:
I am very visual and like to see things on a large-scale so I recently re-scaled and stitched together a portion of our work on the South Bank bone bed. If this image is to be used for publication, it will need a lot of work. There is really nowhere to stand and it is currently unfeasible to create a scaffold or walkway over this excavation. Because of this, all the photos were taken “blind”, holding the camera as high as possible with the auto focus turned on. There is, of course, distortion at the edges and the vignette around each individual image. This will need to be removed to color/light merge them into a smooth transition. Although it is much easier than it used to be, it all takes a lot of time. Hopefully there will be some payoff in the end if for no other reason than it really expresses the complexity of bonebed excavation.
The image is very large and I hope it doesn’t cause too much trouble with people’s browsers. Click the photo to see a much larger version.
