College of Liberal Arts & Sciences

College of Liberal Arts & Sciences

• April 4, 2006

  Bones extracted from site start revealing information
  

• Editor's Note: Check back daily for updates on the progress and new photos of the Department of Anthropology's team's dig at the Memorial Union.
  
  Original release
  Saturday, April 1
  Sunday, April 2
  
  
  Monday, April 3
  
  Just three days into a nine-day dig, the site at the Memorial Union is yielding wonderful results.
  
  "The conditions of the bones we are finding are extremely good," said David Rapson, affiliate professor in the Department of Anthropology.
  
  Rapson is leading an archaeology team of Iowa State students who are excavating a site near the Memorial Union on the Iowa State campus. The College of Veterinary Medicine was located on the site in the 1880s and the bones and other items coming from the ground were thought to be placed in a pit after being used by an anatomy class.
  
  "I'm surprised at how good of condition the bones are in," Rapson said.
  
  That's because pine trees were located for several years above ground at the pit site. Pine trees create an acidic condition that typically will destroy bones buried in the ground.
  
  "We're extremely lucky that the acidic groundwater didn't adversely affect the bones," Rapson said. "While some of the specimens we've recovered are losing some of the bone structure, I think we caught it in time."
  
  Initial bone recoveries from the site indicate that a vast majority of the bones are horse bones, although some cow and pig bones have been discovered.
  
  Rapson says that field examinations would indicate that while the cow and pig bones come from young animals, the horse bones show signs of arthritis and well-worn teeth.
  
  "The economic explanation would be that farmers in the area would be more likely to give up an old horse to the vet school than a cow or hog in its prime age," he said.
  
  While the archeology team has been making progress, it is slow going.
  
  Yet Rapson isn't concerned that the team only has nine days to complete the dig before construction a renovation project to the Memorial Union begins again.
  
  "While any dig is a race against the clock I think we'll get a perfectly nice sample," he said. "With any dig you have to balance the amount of items you collect with the quality of the data you get.
  
  "I'm not all that concerned with getting every item out of the ground," he continued. "We will always rely on the quality not the quantity of the data."

Day 3 - Monday, April 3

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