Newly unearthed 6,000-year-old archeological site

The Kalispel Tribe has uncovered evidence of ancient earth ovens on the bank of the Pend Oreille River believed to be 6,000 years old. Archaeologists are excavating the earth ovens, a cluster of rocks that were used for cooking in fire pits.

Shannon Tushingham, an archaeology professor from Washington State University who has worked with the tribe for many years, is leading the excavation.

“This is some of the oldest technology used by humans to cook food anywhere in the world,” Tushingham said. “And here, we have some of the oldest ovens in North America.”

The Kalispel Tribe recently purchased the land northwest of Newport to build additional housing for tribal members near the reservation. The fire-cracked rocks were discovered about 4 feet under the surface as part of a standard site exploration, testing soil quality and searching for possible artifacts such as these.

“It makes me feel proud,” said Curt Holmes, vice chairman of the tribal council. “We’ve been here for a long time.”

Holmes said the housing is urgently needed.

The tribe is outgrowing its tiny reservation. Membership has more than doubled since Holmes became a council member in 1994, he said. Today there are 490 members, and 70 are on a waiting list for housing.

The research team is working quickly to make way for the seven houses that will soon be built on the site.

The project could reveal new insights into the foods the Kalispel people have been preparing and eating for millennia.

“As a tribe, we’ve never shared this kind of historical excavation experience with the public,” said Kalispel elder Shirley Blackbear. “But I think it is important for non-Natives to learn and understand more about our tribe. Our history and traditions are very rich and important to us. Cooking techniques have been passed down from generation to generation.”

Similar ovens have been found throughout the area along the Pend Oreille, Tushingham said.

Initial carbon dating results show the site was repeatedly used from 6,000 to as recently as 700 years ago.

“There is something special about this place that people kept coming back to,” Tushingham said. “That is something we are trying to figure out.”

A possible explanation is that sandy soils made it easy to dig pits for the ovens.

“That is a fairly continuous history of food processing on the same land that speaks to both ecological and cultural stability,” said Kevin Lyons, Kalispel tribal archaeologist.

The archaeologists don’t know yet exactly what people were eating here, but these types of ovens were often used to harvest camas, a tradition the tribe continues today.

Lyons described the oven technique as digging a soup bowl shape out of the earth, then lining it with fuel and capping it with rocks.

They might wrap camas or other food in a nonburnable layer, like skunk cabbage, and set it on the rocks. Then they would light the fuel and cover the oven with soil, leaving vent holes, to bake.

After about three days, the camas would change to a sweet caramel flavor that would go well with dried meat and berries.

The researchers will take samples back to the lab to look for proteins and microscopic food residues. Tushingham is using the dig to teach more than a dozen students from across the U.S. and Canada.

“We haven’t been able to have field schools for a long time because of COVID,” she said. “So people are really hungry to learn these techniques.”

It’s a great opportunity for students to learn how to work with tribal communities, Tushingham added.

“Archaeology is our history,” said Daulton Cochran, an undergraduate from the University of Arkansas and a member of the Cherokee Nation. “It’s something that doesn’t get looked at a lot, so I like being one of the people to uncover the past.”

A ‘Stonehenge-Like’ Structure Exists In Lake Michigan and is 9,000 Years Old

While scanning underneath the waters of Lake Michigan for shipwrecks, archeologists found something a lot more interesting than they bargained for.

While scanning underneath the waters of Lake Michigan for shipwrecks, archeologists found something a lot more interesting than they bargained for: they discovered a boulder with a prehistoric carving of a mastodon,  as well as a series of stones arranged in a Stonehenge-like manner.

Gazing into the water

Using remote sensing techniques is common in modern archaeology – scientists routinely survey lakes and ground for hidden structures.

At a depth of about 40 feet into Lake Michigan’s Grand Traverse Bay, using sonar techniques to look for shipwrecks, archeologists discovered sunken boats and cars and even a Civil War-era pier, but among all these, they found this prehistoric surprise, which a trained eye can guess by looking at the sonar scans photos in this article.

“When you see it in the water, you’re tempted to say this is absolutely real,” said Mark Holley, a professor of underwater archaeology at Northwestern Michigan University College who made the discovery, during a news conference with photos of the boulder on display in 2007. “But that’s what we need the experts to come in and verify.

The boulder with the markings is 3.5 to 4 feet high and about 5 feet long. Photos show a surface with numerous fissures.

Some may be natural while others appear of human origin, but those forming what could be the petroglyph stood out, Holley said.

Viewed together, they suggest the outlines of a mastodon-like back, hump, head, trunk, tusk, triangular-shaped ear, and parts of legs, he said.

“We couldn’t believe what we were looking at,” said Greg MacMaster, president of the underwater preserve council.

Specialists shown pictures of the boulder holding the mastodon markings have asked for more evidence before confirming the markings are an ancient petroglyph, said Holley.

“They want to actually see it,” he said. Unfortunately, he added, “Experts in petroglyphs generally don’t dive, so we’re running into a little bit of a stumbling block there.”

If found to be true, the wannabe petroglyph could be as much as 10,000 years old – coincident with the post-Ice Age presence of both humans and mastodons in the upper midwest.

The formation, if authenticated, wouldn’t be completely out of place. 

Stone circles and other petroglyph sites are located in the area.

The discovery was made back a few years ago, and surprisingly enough the find hasn’t been popularized at all, with little to no information available online, but I’ll be sure to update this post as soon as I can get ahold of more info. So, who’s from Michigan?

Hundreds of Well Preserved Prehistoric Animals have been found in an Ancient Volcanic Ashbed in Nebraska

The watering holes attracted prehistoric animals among Nebraska’s tall grasslands. From horses to camels and rhinoceroses, with wild dogs looming nearby, animals roamed the savanna-like region.

Then, one day, it all changed. Hundreds of miles away, a volcano in southeast Idaho erupted. Within days, up to two feet of ash covered parts of present-day Nebraska.

Some of the animals died immediately, consumed with ash and other debris. Most of the animals lived for several more days, their lungs ingesting ash as they searched the ground for food. Within a few weeks, northeast Nebraska was barren of animals, except for a few survivors.

More than 12 million years later, a fossil was found in Antelope County, near the small town of Royal.

The skull of a baby rhino was discovered by a Nebraska paleontologist and his wife while exploring the area. The fossil was exposed to erosion. Soon after, exploration started in the area.

As more discoveries were made, the site grew into a tourist attraction. Today, people visit Ashfall Fossil Beds State Historical Park to check out hundreds of fossils from 12 species of animals, including five types of horses, three species of camels, as well as a saber-toothed deer. The infamous saber-toothed cat remains a dream discovery.

Visitors view fossils inside the Hubbard Rhino Barn, a 17,500-square-foot facility that protects the fossils while allowing visitors to roam on a boardwalk. Kiosks provide information on fossils located in specific areas.

As you tour the barn, if a summer intern or paleontologist is nearby, they are open to discussing their work, as well as answering questions. During our visit, we learned that an intern had discovered a fossilized dog paw print.

Outside the barn, visitors can read facts about the area, including that mammoths migrated to North America about 1.5 million years ago.

A yellow flag in an area a short distance from the main walk to the barn indicates the discovery site of the rhino skull. Red flags showcase spots where additional fossils were discovered.

Visitor activities and views at Ashfall Fossil Beds

In addition to the Hubbard Barn, Ashfall Fossil Beds features a discovery area where children can cipher through the sand searching for their own fossil discoveries. A small barn is used for special exhibits, as well as classes.

The visitors center houses some animal remains, as well as paleontologists working on recent finds. About 60 million years before the area was home to the savanna, Nebraska was part of a tropical sea.

Fossils found in the area include a plesiosaur, a mammal from the Jurassic Period. The fossils displayed were found on the Santee reservation, about an hour away.

Sculptures representing animals from the region are located around the state historical park. Ashfall Fossil Beds State Historical Park kicks off its summer hours on Memorial Day weekend when it’s open daily through Labor Day. Otherwise, check the website here for hours.

A state park permit ($6 per vehicle for an in-state day permit or free with an annual pass) is required for visiting the park, in addition to the $7 entrance fee.

A new study shows Early Native Americans in Alaska were freshwater fishermen 13,000 years ago

A team led by the University of Alaska Fairbanks researchers has discovered the earliest known evidence that Native Americans living in present-day central Alaska may have begun freshwater fishing around 13,000 years ago during the last ice age.

Ancestors of Alaska Natives, many of whose livelihoods still depend on freshwater fish such as salmon, may have started subsistence fishing as a response to fewer food resources during long-term climate change, Ben Potter and colleagues say.

The research offers a glimpse at how early humans used a changing landscape and could offer insight for modern people facing similar changes.

“We are looking at humans as ecologists do, as biologists do,” said Ben Potter, a UAF anthropology professor and co-lead author of the paper. “Even very early on, they are able to adapt to changing conditions.”

The study, published recently in the journal Science Advances, shows that people living between 13,000 and 11,500 years ago in what is now Interior Alaska relied on freshwater fish like burbot, whitefish and pike for food. The study builds on earlier UAF findings that documented salmon fishing by the same population of ancient humans.

Native Americans have relied on freshwater fish for thousands of years, but the origins of fishing in North America have been uncertain. Beringia, a region comprising present-day Alaska and Russia, was largely ice-free during the last ice age and is considered a key gateway to the Americas.

“That discovery was really surprising because it was far from the ocean, in an area near the edge of salmon habitat,” said Potter. “That started us thinking: This could be a whole other angle on human ecology beyond large mammal hunting.”

To investigate, Potter et al. used a combination of DNA and isotope analyses to identify 1,110 fish specimens recovered from six human settlement sites – including in the Tanana, Kuskokwim, Susitna, and Copper River basins – in what was once eastern Beringia (central Alaska). They identified four main fish taxa – salmon, burbot, whitefish, and northern pike – whose earliest appearances dated to around 13,000 and 11,800 years ago.

These findings, along with well-documented fishing records from local Native Alaskans, suggest that early Native Americans may have started fishing as a response to environmental change during the Pleistocene-Holocene transition. “Our data collectively suggest that changes in climate and ultimately key mammal resources during the Younger Dryas led to human responses of widening diet breadth to incorporate multiple species of freshwater and anadromous fish, setting a pattern that would be expanded upon later in the Holocene as fish, particularly salmon, became key resources to Alaska Native lifeways,” the authors write.

The bones were found inside homes and hearths and tended to be associated with base camps, rather than short-term hunting camps. They also were far from lakes and streams, so it’s unlikely that predators moved them.

The absence of fishhooks or spears at the sites suggests that the early Alaskans likely used nets and perhaps weirs to harvest the fish.

“This is a compelling, evidence-based case for freshwater fishing at the end of the last Ice Age,” Potter said.

Until the beginning of the Younger Dryas, people relied more on waterfowl to augment large game like bison and elk. When temperatures started dropping around 13,000 years ago, that changed.

“While we don’t know why the use of waterfowl diminished, we know that the climate was changing,” Potter said. “One of the ways the people were able to adapt is to incorporate these new species and new technologies. Burbot, in particular, can be caught in late winter and early spring, when food resources were most scarce.”

The solid tie to modern subsistence activities is also compelling, he said.