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Unearthing history
A group of Iowa State students, alumni and volunteers attempt to save a little history
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The floods of 1993
were some of the most devastating natural disasters in recent U.S. history.
The disaster along
the Midwest rivers also provided an opportunity to rediscover some history
of this region at least a thousand years old.
After the '93 floods,
two individuals affiliated with the Dallas County Conservation Department
were canoeing down a section of the South Raccoon River near Redfield,
Iowa. As they rounded a corner they saw that the overflowing water of
the Raccoon had cut back the river bank revealing portions of a Great
Oasis era settlement circa 900 AD.
Federal money available
after the floods allowed archaeologists to excavate a portion of the site
in 1994. Joseph A. Tiffany, associate professor of anthropology, was involved
in that initial project, but funding ran out and no significant work was
done on the site since.
The result to the
Maxwell Site was as devastating as the original flood.
"Since that
initial salvage excavation, we have lost 30 to 40 feet out of the site,"
Tiffany said. "The river is destroying this site."
The initial excavation
salvaged one house from the settlement. A second house and many other
artifacts were eroded into the river.
But this past summer,
Tiffany and others took a step in preserving what they could out of the
site before the river claimed it. Tiffany and Lynn M. Alex of the Office
of the State Archeologist coordinated a three-week project, which continued
the excavation on the Great Oasis site. The project was funded by a $30,000
grant from the State Historical Society in conjunction with the Dallas
County Conservation Department, the Office of the State Archaeologist,
the Iowa Archeological Society and Iowa State.
Funding from the
grant didn't allow Tiffany to hire a professional crew, so volunteers,
including Iowa State students, alumni and members of the Iowa Archeological
Society worked in the July heat to "try to salvage as much of the
site as possible."
"We had a mix
of people working the site," Tiffany said. ÒSome of the volunteers
were fairly seasoned at this type of work. Some of the others were absolute
greenhorns."
The volunteers did
a variety of activities including shovel skimming, troweling, screening,
note-taking, and mapping at the site, processing of soil samples, and
artifact washing, sorting, cataloguing and record-keeping. Their work
netted numerous artifacts consistent with a Great Oasis society including
storage pits, evidence of intensive corn farming, pottery, bone tools,
and plant and animal remains.
"Culturally
these people were transforming from hunters to farmers," Tiffany
said. "There are remains of charred corn throughout the site."
By the time Tiffany
and his crew got to Dallas County this summer, approximately only the
back third of the site remained. And even though many of the artifacts
have been lost to the river, at least portions were excavated.
"There are a
lot of sites like this," Tiffany said. "There just isn't the
money to do them all."
Around LAS
September 3-9, 2001
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