Loveland Archaeological Society, Inc.
A Colorado Non-Profit Corporation
LAS February 2012 Headlines:
OU archaeological team works with land owner to find mammoth remains
By Paighten Harkins, The Oklahoma Daily, February 13, 2012
An OU archaeological team is working with a Carnegie, Okla., land owner to locate and identify extinct
mammoth remains.
After the man located mammoth bones in a gravel bar near a river on his property, he contacted several
agencies before eventually getting into contact with the Oklahoma Archaeological Survey and archaeologist
Leland Bement.
The property owner had discovered a partial mammoth jaw and tooth, Bement said.
Bement probed the site to check for more remains, but none were found.
Incomplete findings aren’t uncommon, said Nicholas Czaplewski, curator of vertebrate paleontology at
the Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History.
“You don’t find the entire skeleton or something like that — you usually get a piece,” he said.
Partial findings are especially common in and around river systems because the water is constantly
moving and changing directions, Czaplewski said.
“They meander back and forth … They kind of scatter [the bones],” he said.
The survey responds to about 10 to 12 calls per month to assist the public by identifying bones and other
artifacts, Bement said.
Most of the survey’s calls for assistance come during rainy seasons, when rivers and high streams wash
the remains from their banks, he said.
The survey helps identify a number of different objects, including bison remains, arrowheads, ancient
tools and occasionally mammoths, Bement said.
Though these are the most-noticed items, there were many types of now-extinct animals roaming
Oklahoma’s landscape thousands of years ago, Bement said.
“There were a whole menagerie of things,” Czaplewski said.
Big predators such as saber-toothed cats, giant short-faced bears and dire wolves, a larger version of
the grey wolf, were common to the area, Bement said. Horses, camels and different elephant-like animals
such as the mammoth and the mastodon also were Oklahoma natives at one time.
After the survey identifies the artifacts or remains, it is up to the person who found it to decide what they
do with them, Bement said.
Some decide to keep them, but others donate them to a museum or to the survey so others can learn
from the remains.
The man who found the remains plans to donate them to the Kiowa Tribal Museum in Carnegie, Bement
said.
The Daily contacted the museum, but the landowner could not be contacted about the remains as of
press time.
- Sponsor of the Annual Loveland Stone Age Fair www.stoneagefair.com
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Loveland Archaeological Society, Inc.
A Colorado Non-Profit Corporation
(The following article from 2009 is being printed in anticipation of Jason Chambers’ presentation on his
research at the Lindenmeier Site. Jason is the recipient of the 2010 Dorothy Mountain scholarship.)
Why is the Lindenmeier Archaeological Site important?
by Treloar Bower, Curator of Education
Fort Collins Museum & Discovery Science Center, June 1, 2009
Often times at the Museum I hear the question, “So what’s so important about Lindenmeier?” It’s a valid
question. It’s been almost 70 years since any extensive excavations occurred there. You’d think that other
archaeological investigations at other sites in the last few decades would have filled the gaps in our
knowledge about Paleoindians, to the point of making Lindenmeier’s discoveries obsolete. Point in fact,
Lindenmeier is still the place where many of those knowledge gaps might be filled, someday in the distant
future. But to me, that isn’t why Lindenmeier is special.
First, let’s consider that this was a gathering place for human beings over 10, 000 years ago. Ten.
Thousand. Years. Five times longer than the time since Christ! If you spent a million dollars a day since
Paleoindians occupied Lindenmeier, you would have just enough ($3.65 trillion) to cover the stimulus
package (not accounting for inflation), just to put that into a meaningful analogy for our times. If the age is
not enough to amaze you, consider that to date archaeologists have identified only about 100 places in ALL
OF NORTH AMERICA that are this old and contain the same type of projectile point, known as the Folsom
point, as discovered at Lindenmeier.
But maybe those facts don’t move you … maybe 100 sites sounds like a lot to you. Would it matter to
know that of those 100 sites, most are about the size of half a basketball court?¹ The 100 known Folsom
sites take up about .000000001% of the land in North America. In layman terms, that means Folsom
complex sites are few and far between. And lucky you, if you live in Fort Collins, one lies practically in your
own backyard.
So we’ve established that Folsom Paleoindian sites are special because they are very rare and pretty
small. And yet Lindenmeier is still even more special than those other 99 North American sites for several
reasons. First, it is significantly larger than the “typical” Folsom complex site, spreading about a ½ mile
across the landscape (at least, what’s known of the site). Second, Lindenmeier is considered a winterseason living site for the Paleoindians. The other sites are mostly bison kill and butchering sites. Finally,
very few, if any, of those other Folsom complex sites have preserved the diversity of artifacts that
Lindenmeier yielded, likely because it was a seasonal home, not a one-time bison processing site. Artifacts
preserved at Lindenmeier includes etched bone; bone needles with delicate eyes; shell and bone beads;
scrapers, gravers, awls and drills of stone and bone; red ochre; and the list goes on.
Because of this diversity of artifacts, Lindenmeier humanized the Paleoindians, opening archaeologists
up to much more progressive thinking about these ancient people. At the time of the discoveries, the 1930s,
most artists working for the media let their imaginations run wild with caveman stereotypes: can you say
“Ugh!”? My favorite artist’s rendering of a Paleoindian is that of a half-naked, wild-eyed “Folsom woman”
wearing only a shaggy, bison fur bikini bottom. Come on,
folks! The people of Lindenmeier had fine bone needles,
enormous hides from the giant extinct bison, Bison antiquus,
and lived during the end of the Pleistocene Ice Age. Potential
cultural differences in modesty and acclimation to the weather
aside, I really believe the Paleoindians tailored themselves
some pretty amazing clothes and shoes. I think the effort that
goes into making a bone needle warrants some snazzy outfits.
I know this for a fact because as an undergraduate
archaeology student I tried making a needle by filing a bone
fragment down to a point against a slab of sandstone. I’m still
Cast of a Folsom era bone needle
not done with it.
- Sponsor of the Annual Loveland Stone Age Fair www.stoneagefair.com
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Loveland Archaeological Society, Inc.
A Colorado Non-Profit Corporation
LAS Find of the Month, February 2012:
Members can bring an artifact to be entered into the competition at the monthly meeting, which will be
judged based on the following rules:
1.
2.
3.
4.
Must be a member of LAS in good standing.
The artifact must be a personal find.
It must have been found within the specified time frame, i.e., within the month prior to the meeting.
The artifact doesn’t have to be a Colorado find—all that matters is that it was found in the last month.
The Find of the Month for February 2012 was made by Alvin Plucker.
Type: Pelican Lake
Material: Flattop Chalcedony
Location: Weld County, Colorado
LAS News and Upcoming Events:
March 6, 2012
March meeting. Jason Chambers, 2010 Dorothy Mountain Scholarship recipient, will
give a presentation on his research at the Lindenmeyer site in northern Colorado.
March 23-25, 2012
51st Annual Fort Collins Rockhounds Gem and Mineral Show at the Thomas M.
McKee 4-H, Youth & Community Building, Larimer County Fairgrounds. This year’s
Gem and Mineral Show features “Fossils & Quartz.” Admission for adults is $4 daily
or $7 for a 3-day pass. For students (12-18 years) with ID admission is $1 daily.
Children under 12 are free with an adult. Parking is free.
Hours: March 23rd 4 – 8 pm, March 24th 9 am – 6 pm, March 25th 10 am – 5 pm.
For more information see the website at www.fortcollinsrockhounds.org.
April 3, 2012
April meeting. Guest Speaker: Mr. Stephen Schell. Mr. Schell will give a
presentation on rock art of southern Utah with a special emphasis on Horseshoe
Canyon outside Moab, Utah.
April 7, 2012
2012 Spring Into Archaeology Fair, Poudre Valley REA Building. If you plan to exhibit
please call Andy Coca at (303) 286-7711 for table space. A flyer with directions to
the REA Building is attached. See you there!
May 1, 2012
May meeting. Guest Speaker: Mark Boswell. LAS member Mark Boswell will
give a presentation on Navajo textiles. He will talk about the history of Navajo textiles
and then provide a show and tell on how you can determine if a textile has been
made by the Navajo, the approximate age and the use. Members are encouraged to
bring in your own textiles for evaluation.
- Sponsor of the Annual Loveland Stone Age Fair www.stoneagefair.com
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Loveland Archaeological Society, Inc.
A Colorado Non-Profit Corporation
- Sponsor of the Annual Loveland Stone Age Fair www.stoneagefair.com
4