It looked like any other hillside in Illinois. The owner decided to pocket some extra cash and sell its dirt to the state as fill for a nearby highway project. But before the digging could begin, state law requires that an archaeological team search for artifacts and excavate any it finds. Good thing. That hillside in Damiansville, Illinois about 35 miles east of St. Louis has turned into an archaeological boom.
The Associated Press reports that digging crews have found hundreds of 1,200-year-old stone arrowheads and pottery fragments, as well as what may have been a small village. "It's a significant site. They discovered a keyhole-shaped house and what appears to be a small village," Brad Koldehoff, a state archaeologist, told AP. The village dates from about 600 to 800 A.D. Archaeologists could tell from the debris they found in ancient garbage pits that the inhabitants ate venison and turkey, as well as plants that we now consider to be weeds.
Made of clay and logs, a "keyhole" house has rooms that are partly submerged in the ground. AP notes that the large, dome-shaped living area at one end was reached by a long, straight, covered entrance, giving rise to the name "keyhole." This isn't the first significant find in recent years. In 2001, 70 handmade ceremonial stone ax heads were found in a field in Shiloh, Illinois.
Look what archaeologists found while digging on the grounds of the opulent Biltmore Estate in Asheville, North Carolina.
--Cathryn Conroy
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Archaeologists digging on the grounds of the opulent Biltmore Estate in Asheville, North Carolina have found an American Indian mound that offers the most complete picture yet of the culture of a prehistoric people known as the Connestee, reports The Associated Press. The Connestee, who lived there between 200 and 400 A.D., may be the ancestors of the Cherokee tribe.
So far, they've found evidence of five different earthen floors and about three dozen postholes suggesting a series of large structures, about 75 to 80 feet in diameter, as well as fragments of tools, pottery, hunting weapons, and pieces of clay figurines. They've also found artifacts from the Hopewell Indians of southern Ohio, indicating the two tribes had a trade relationship. "This mound has the potential for answering the questions and writing the whole history of the time period," Biltmore landscape curator William Alexander told AP. "The reason we're focusing on this site is that it's so pure."
What really has the archaeologists excited is the dirt. The site, which measures 1,000 square feet, has multiple layers of dirt that are clearly stratified and distinguishable. Each layer--from mossy green to medium brown to orange to tan to dark brown to yellow--offers the trained eye valuable clues as to what happened at different points in the Connestee occupation. The dirt tells the real story. For example, the deepest layer is a yellow subsoil when the site was home to a Connestee village.
The excavation is taking place on what was once a cornfield next to the Swannanoa River. The mound is located near the intersection of two major American Indian trails, what AP describes as the prehistoric equivalent of interstate highways. It has survived this long because it was inside the sprawling and largely undeveloped Biltmore property, which is now a national historic landmark. Its 8,000 acres include agricultural fields, woodlands, and forested mountains, as well as the nation's first professionally managed forest. When George Vanderbilt constructed it as a country retreat, the landscape architect gave strict instructions that no Indian remains were to be disturbed.
Appalachian State University archaeologist Scott Shumate told AP that he thinks the large structure that's been found was a council house. "We can say as a tentative hypothesis that this was a council house," Shumate said. "People came from all surrounding villages for important ceremonies. It was the equivalent of a county seat. Maybe this place represents the social and spiritual center for a number of villages."
Only half the mound will be excavated, a process that will take another 10 years to complete. The other half will be left undisturbed for future archaeologists who may have new technologies and different questions.
Archaeologists made an astounding find when they were digging in the dirt about 20 miles southeast of Reno, Nevada: The remnants of an Old West saloon.
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--Cathryn Conroy
More than two years ago, archaeologists made an astounding find when they were digging in the dirt about 20 miles southeast of Reno, Nevada: The remnants of an Old West saloon that was open for business from 1864 to 1875. But this wasn't just any old saloon. It was the Boston Saloon of Virginia City, and it was owned by William A. G. Brown, a free black man from Massachusetts who catered to the community's small population of African-Americans, as well as the white people in the town. This is the first known excavation of a black-owned saloon of the 19th-century American West, reports The Associated Press.
The Boston Saloon was likely one of the nicest taverns in the Old West, where its customers dined in elegance by the light of newly-patented gas lamps. They played dominoes. They ate the finest cuts of meat, including leg of lamb. "The Boston Saloon appears to have had a great deal of ambience and atmosphere. It was a lively, well-lit place with music," State Historic Preservation Officer Ron James told the Reno Gazette-Journal.
Some 40,000 artifacts have been found, and quite a few of them have reshaped the traditional views of our nation's frontier. Maybe the wild west wasn't so wild! Oh sure, they found pistols and poker chips, but they also found crystal-stemmed goblets, remnants of expensive lighting, and a mouthpiece from a trombone.
A small cache of perforated and disfigured coins was found beneath the floorboards; the people of this mining frontier town likely believed those coins could be transformed into objects of supernatural control. They found bottles that once held champagne, wine, ale, Italian bitters, and "Gordon's Gin," as well as bottles that contained mineral water from Germany and soda water from Ireland.
One of the most remarkable discoveries was a 130-year-old bottle of Tabasco. Reconstructed from 31 shards of glass, it is now officially the oldest style of Tabasco bottle known to exist. Historians speculate that the Boston Saloon was among the first eateries to introduce Tabasco. "The Tabasco bottle is particularly intriguing because of what it implies about African-American cuisine and the development of the West," Kelly Dixon, administrator of the Comstock Archaeology Center who supervised the dig, told AP. "This was an exotic product, and Comstock African-Americans were apparently the ones breaking this new ground." Tabasco was created by a New Orleans banker name Edmund McIlhenny, who blended aged red peppers, salt, and vinegar to create the Tabasco brand pepper sauce in 1868 on ***** Island, Louisiana. He first used discarded cologne bottles, but then made his own. "This discovery helps us fill the earliest chapter of our company's history," said Shane K. Bernard, a Tabasco sauce historian and curator of the company archives.
But the greatest find of all isn't as tangible as these artifacts. James told the Reno Journal-Gazette that said the discovery of the tavern is significant because it helps break down stereotypes of an ethnic group that has been targeted throughout history with prejudice and racism. "We learned that in Virginia City during the second half of the 19th century where there were hundreds of saloons, African-Americans had a place to go to that was respected and dignified," James said.
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Not to be taken internally, literally or seriously ....Suki ebaynni IS THAT BETTER ?
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