Ontario Archeologist Holds Skull (Many unusual finds in the Eramosa Karst)
June 28, 2006 by rockwatching
Originally uploaded by Mic2006.
As mentioned, this last weekend I had visited with a local archeologist who was investigating the possibility of human habitation in the caves of the Eramosa Member and its surroundings.
I had heard voices as I approached the woodlot and following down a leafy path I soon found Joseph Muller and his two companions combing through the soil. Joseph is a “cultural archeologist, he works for the city. I had taken the accompanying picture of Joseph two years ago as he and I worked down in the bottom of the big solution tube. I dug hoping to reveal an open lower tunnel and he, hoping to attain a greater understanding of those who had preceeded us. The successive layers hold many clues if you know what to look for. By the end of the day Joseph had a line of tiny colored medicine bottles, several bones and all sorts of unidentifyable oddments that obviously meant something to him but little to me.
“What should I look for while I wriggle around underground? What exactly is it that defines a place as a valuable archeological site”? I asked one of Joseph’s companions. Well its nothing that you might immediately recognize she told me cryptically. I peered over her shoulder onto a screen that she shook around - little pebbles and shards of glass, nothing that seemed new to me. We parted ways and I left them to work the soil through their screens. They had already accumulated a huge heap of rich black dirt in the clearing.
Touching base around lunch time the lady with which I had spoken pulled a shard of chert from her pocket. “This rock is not native to the area, it was bought here and likely chipped from a bigger piece. Somewhere there is an arrowhead onto which this flake will fit. I am quite awestruck. Holding the relic I envision the hunter crouched in one of the local crevices, whacking away the stone in measured blows, “freeing the inner tool” upon which his clan’s survival depended. It is a stone very much like a dull blackened glass in appearance. It is derived from “Quarry sites”. According to Joseph the quality varies quite widely from location to location.
MORE ON CHERT AND THE EXPLORATION OF THE LOCAL ROCK IN MY BOOK “ROCKWATCHING; ADVENTURES ABOVE AND BELOW ONTARIO”. (See the sidebar to the right)
Oh!, BTW, You wont see my usual post tomorrow, my caving partner and I are headed off to check out a really amazing cave in solid marble! It is situated in a remote forested part of the Canadian Shield and I wont be home tomorrow night. Wish us luck and expect some amazing pictures, the marble is a pure and white as fleece, translucent to the point you can actually shine you light right through thin sheets.
Wow!! Maybe with the finding of an arrow head the site may get some more emphasis on management and protection!! She found some really cool old shell buttons last time but an arrow head is definately much older.
Sorry “marble lovincaver”, I was possibly not all that clear in my excitment over the find. It is a flake of chert that had been knocked from some sort of flint-tool impliment. The first inhabitants of the continent had a distinctive way of crafting stone tools. Just seeing this thing that some ice age hunter had touched made my hair stand on end. The actual impliment was likely used elsewhere and possibly resides now in the ribacage of some long-ago-eaten bear. As for protection of the site, it is well on its way to being designated as an “ANSI” by the government. I am not sure of the exact progress there.