PRESENTATIONS

October 8 IPCAS General Meeting, 7 PM, University of Colorado Museum.

Dr. Bob Brunswig - Mountain Lowland Archaeology of Southern France

October 15 IPCAS SPECIAL meeting, 7 PM, University of Colorado Museum.

Drs. Ronald and Samantha Messier - Empires of Ancient Morocco

CALENDAR OF EVENTS

General (lecture) meetings are held in the University of Colorado Museum, Dinosaur Room

Second Thursday of each Month, at 7:00 PM. The public is always welcome.

Oct 1 Executive Board, Boulder Police Community Room, 7:30PM

Oct 8 IPCAS General Meeting, 7 PM. Dr. Bob Brunswig.

Topic: Mountain Lowland Archaeology of Southern France.

Oct 15 IPCAS Special Meeting, 7 PM. Drs. Ronald Messier and

Samantha Messier. Topic: Empires of Ancient Morocco.

Nov 5 Executive Board, Boulder Police Community Room, 7:30PM

Nov 12 IPCAS General Meeting, 7 PM. Dr. Doug Bamforth.

Topic: Warfare on The Plains.

Dec 3 Executive Board, Boulder Police Community Room, 7:30PM

Dec 10 Christmas Party, 7 PM, Location to be determined.

Jan 7 Executive Board, Boulder Police Community Room, 7:30PM

Jan 14 IPCAS General Meeting, 7 PM. Bob Powell.

Map of Parking at CU Museum

Topic: Copan.

Inside This CALUMET

Calendar of Events 1

Regular October Topic 2

Special October Topic 2

No More "Anasazi" 3

Australian Rock Art 4

Mummy Exhibit 5

"Dig" That Outhouse 6

Thunder Basin Pit Project 7

Membership Renewals 9

On the Internet 9

Calumet History & Now 9

Officers/Board Members 10

Membership Application 10

Feb 4 Executive Board, Boulder Police Community Room, 7:30PM

Feb 11 IPCAS General Meeting, 7 PM. Julie Francis

Topic: Rock Art.

Mar 4 Executive Board, Boulder Police Community Room, 7:30PM

Mar 11 IPCAS General Meeting, 7 PM. Rich Wilshusen

Topic: Southwestern Archaeology or Archaeology and The

Computer Data Base.

Apr 1 Executive Board, Boulder Police Community Rome, 7:30PM

Apr 8 IPCAS General Meeting, 7 PM. Larry Todd

Topic: Archaic Bison Hunters of Northern Colorado.

May 5 Executive Board, Boulder Police Community Rome, 7:30PM

May 13 IPCAS General Meeting, 7 PM. Kevin Black

Topic: Human Burials.

CALUMET - October, 1998

Regular October Meeting

Mountain-Lowland Archaeology of Southern France - The Magdalenian Culture

The later Upper Paleolithic of Europe, with its impressive artifact assemblages and art styles, is often seen as "setting the scene" for later human achievements in the origins of agriculture and early Old World civilizations. The Magdalenian culture of Southern France (and Cantabrian Spain) represents the greatest flowering of that culture, emerging in late and terminal Ice Age conditions between 17,00 and 10,500 years ago. This presentation, based on early phases of research in France by Bob Brunswig, illustrates the cultural diversity and richness of Magdalenian peoples to Late Ice Age climatic changes in the mountain (Pyrenees) and lowland (foothills and river valleys) environmental zones of Southern France.

Dr. Bob Brunswig

Dr. Bob Brunswig is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Northern Colorado. His research interests focus on the archaeology of the High Plains and Rocky Mountains. He has been director of UNC's Southe Platte Archaeological Project since 1992. The project is involved in a comprehensive study of the archaeological and paleoenvironmental history of Colorado's South Platte River valley. His most recent work involves National Park Service funded experiments designed to explore archaeological applications of high resolution Global Positioning Systems and a current 5-year archaeological survey program in Rocky Mountain National Park. In 1998, Bob also began a five year research program to compare and contrast seasonal migratory hunting adaptations of prehistoric populations in Souther France and the Southern Rocky Mountains in the Late Ice Age - Early Holocene transition.

Special October Meeting

Empires of Ancient Morocco

On October 15th there will be a special meeting of the Indian Peaks Chapter of CAS. This meeting, co-sponsored by the University of Colorado Museum, will bring together father and daughter speakers Dr. Ronald Messier and Dr. Samantha Messier. Their presentation will be "The Grape Question in Medieval Moroccan Archaeology: Religion, Political Infrastructure, and Agriculture in the Tafileltt Oasis" The meeting will be held at 7 PM at the University of Colorado Museum in the Henderson Building at the University of Colorado, Boulder Campus.

Dr. Ronald Messier is director of excavations at the medieval trade city, Sijilmasa, which was the northern terminus of the caravan route to Timbuctu. Sijilmasa, located in an oasis on the edge of the Sahara Desert in Southeastern Morocco was the major port city north of the Sahara where large camel caravans gathered to make the long trek across the desert to the Middle-East to trade their goods for gold. As a major port city there was a fairly large permanent population. The reliance on agriculture raises a question about the very organization of the city. Medieval Sijilmasa was either a series of separate fortified villages or it was a united city with a high percentage of the urban population being farmers

who commuted to work in the fields. Medieval writers described it as a "city of gold" although no gold was mined there; rather it was the main port of entry for gold carried across the desert from as far away as Aqaba, Jordan.

Dr. Ronald Messier, who has completed six seasons of work at Sijilmasa, is presently the Director of the Honors Program at Middle Tennessee State University and Adjunct Professor of History at Vanderbilt University. He

earned his Ph.D. in History at the University of Michigan. He and colleagues have been investigating the medieval city where early in it's history grapes were the most abundant crop - unusual for an oasis environment. Why do grapes disappear from the archeobotanical record in later eras? Was it the prohibition of wine production by religious

puritans or the collapse of water resource management? Joined by his daughter, Dr. Samantha Messier, he sought to answer these questions. Against the background of the medieval site, they will demonstrate how botanical samples were retrieved and analyzed from the archaeological record to examine these questions.

Dr. Samantha Messier did her undergraduate work at Transylvania University in Lexington, Kentucky. She went directly into a Ph.D. program in behavioral biology at the University of Colorado where she received her Ph.D. in May of 1996. She was a member of the first team of excavators at Sijilmasa in 1998 as an undergraduate in college and returned this year, a decade later as a staff person, degree in hand. Dr. Samantha's current position at the University of Colorado is working with the Hughs Initiative, which provides opportunities for minorities and under-represented groups in the sciences.

CALUMET - October, 1998

CALUMET - October, 1998

CALUMET - October, 1998

CALUMET - October, 1998

Pulling Our Legos

Biblical Archaeology Review

"Discover one of the greatest archaeological finds in all history!", the caption screams. "Join Johnny Thunder and Explore the PHARAOH'S TOMB!!". And you can partake of this exciting adventure without leaving your home - if you have the right Legos.

The latest Lego catalog features four pages of archaeological adventures centered around a build-it-yourself sphinx, pyramid and various other Egyptian monuments. There's a team of bad guy figures, including what appear to be grinning, walking, crowned Egyptian skeletons, and a team of somewhat interchangeable good guys: "inquisitive" Dr. Lightning (the one with the mustache), "super-smart" Gail Storm (the one with the lipstick), both under the leadership of "fearless" Johnny Thunder (the one with the broad-brimmed hat, of course).

Needless to say, there's a lot more Indiana Jones than W.M. Flinders Petrie about these play sets. But despite all the booby traps and revolving walls, you do get the feeling that Lego tried to get some of the details right. In the packet of what they call, "cool adventurer's gear", for example, there's a sextant for measuring elevations, and a magnifying glass ("it really works!"). All the sets are covered with hieroglyphics to read with that magnifying glass, and although the hieroglyphics may not be absolutely accurate, they will intrigue the 6- to 12-year-olds for whom the sets are intended. And there's even an archaeological moral to these stories: The heroic Johnny Thunder isn't just out in the desert for a good time; he's trying to "save these rare artifacts from treasure snatchers".

CALUMET - October, 1998

Thunder Basin Stone Rings, a PIT Project

Tom Cree

Thunder Basin National Grassland is appropriately named. I attended a National Forest Service PIT Project there, this spring, and was treated to the "most awesome" thunderstorm display of my life. And the archaeology was great, also.

Thunder Basin NG is located in northeast Wyoming, and the work center is 30 miles south of Gillette.

Our team consisted of: Ian Ritchie, NFS Archaeologist,

(second from the right), Deanna Wood, NFS, (second

from the left), Alberta "Boots" Wodek, from Illinois,

Bob Baggett (middle), from Kentucky, and myself.

While the group was small, we worked hard and

accomplished a lot.

Ian took us, first, to four stone rings that were

"special". Boy, was he right! These rings were

located on a bluff with visibility for miles, including

Inyan Kara Mountain, a Native American religious

Site - 25 miles in the distance. The stone rings were

composed of a "band" of carefully placed stones, much

more numerous than the surrounding area. Inside the

rings, more stones had been placed, again more

numerous than the surrounding area but not as

numerous as the "band". The stones appeared to be spaced evenly (not random). These stone rings could not have been used for an ordinary tipi setup, the stones were too small and the number (hundreds) made it obvious that a religious or vision-quest site was at our feet. Precise measurement and alignment of the stone rings would provide additional information - a great candidate for a future PIT Project. There were tipi rings nearby that fit the much more common, habitation style.

Our main objective was along ridge closer to the NFS bunkhouse where we ate and bathed. A few stone rings had been identified in the past and the team was chartered with performing a thorough, detailed survey. We did just that, finding over 100 stone rings of the habitation style. Deanna was especially good at finding artifacts - she found numerous stone tools and flakes (more than half of what the team found). We took a measurement of each stone ring's primary axis and mapped the location of the rings along the ridge. I had complained to Ian about how, then and in the past, that the "meadow muffins" left by grazing cattle could be look, initially, like stones in a ring. I joked about how the cows get their heads together in a circle and 'deliberately' contribute to the confusion. When I wasn't looking, Ian took these fake "stones" and created a "stone" ring, then flagged it. VERY FUNNY! We got a good laugh about that. There were more rings along the ridge that we didn't have time to survey and map (maybe next year?).

One thing we noticed was a special kind of erosion that was active on the ridge. Instead of the usual vertical, gully-creating erosion, an horizontal erosion about 8- to 12-inches deep was moving up the slope in a number of areas. In one area, this kind of erosion was in the middle of a group of stone rings and we could see how the erosion displaced the stones in the rings. The rings became elongated down the slope and the stones tended to group. If the erosion had traversed the area in the past it would distort the position of the stones and could result in confused information. It would be interesting (and a good publication paper) to document the effect of this erosion - sounds like a great PIT Project, doesn't it?

One afternoon, Ian took us to a homestead that the NFS had acquired in a land swap - extremely remote. There is a story about a woman that came to visit and the wife at the homestead said that she (the visitor) was the first "white woman" she had seen in over a year. The homestead had two wells that were being pumped by reciprocating arms connected via belts to washing machine motors. How a power line was ever run to this place is beyond me. There were a lot of corrals, sheds, barns, chicken coup, outhouse, and a fairly large house. We looked into the windows (most of the glass is gone) and saw a metal board with magnetic, plastic letters - exactly like the kind my kids had. Obviously, this homestead had been occupied for decades. Ian said that Thunder Basin NG has three homesteads that need to be surveyed, mapped, documented, and considered for State and National Registers of Historic Places. That sounds like another, great PIT Project.

CALUMET - October, 1998

Now, back to that thunderstorm. On Wednesday night, the third day of the week-long project, we had a small rain and thunder storm. The news on Thursday predicted a much more serious storm for Thursday night. And they were correct.

After completing our work on Thursday, we drove back to the bunkhouse. Ian and I stood on the porch (you can see it in the group picture) and watched little tornadoes form at the base of the clouds. This was the "rope phase" of tornado formation - very preliminary and usually does not result in a tornado that reaches the ground. Picture a small rope held between your fingers and twirled. It spins and then bends all around. That is the "rope phase" with little fingers of tornado dropping from the clouds and then retreating back up or dissipating. Thunder Basin gets a lot of lightning and thunder but not tornadoes. Fine with me.

When it got dark, the thunderstorm got serious about its job. I was in my van (the brown shoebox) where I slept. The storm came over the hills to the northwest of us and the lightning show was incredible. I have heard people say, "The lightning was so bright and continuous that I could read a book". I had never seen such a storm and disbelieved them. Now, I believe. You could read a book.

I took a 24-exposure roll of film of the storm by placing the camera up to the window and clicking the shutter. If you have tried to photograph lightning, you know how difficult it is to get a picture of a bolt. I got lightning in every frame. Fifteen of the frames contained cloud-to-cloud lightning and nine frames contained cloud-to-ground exposures. A couple of the flashes were so close and bright that they "fogged" the frame. I have included three of the pictures below.

It was an fun project. Ian and Deanna were great. The facilities, especially the bunkhouse, were very convenient. With a small crew, we fit into one vehicle, which made travel more enjoyable. I look forward to another project, next year, in Thunder Basin.

CALUMET - October, 1998

Membership Renewals

The following members have renewals due in October:

Bart and Linda Beverly, Michael Braitberg, Jean Kindig, Carol Wernet and Karen Kinnear, Ken Larson,

Susan Roberts, Sloan Schwindt, Janet and Morey Stinson.

The following members have renewals due in November:

Fredric J. Athearn, Mac Avery, Dorothy & Yardley Beers, Warren Bradshaw, Kevin Gilmore, Jim Morrell.

On The Internet

Our Web-Site at http://www.coloradoarchaeology.org

Try http://www.bell.lib.umn.edu/mps.html for the early maps of Russia contained in the James Ford Bell Library. This site is an internet museum. The maps were created over hundreds of years and include a map centered on Jerusalem that shows Africa, Asia, and Europe. Examination of all features takes about 1 hour.

The Calumet - 15 Years Ago

An Atlatl Workshop was announced, hosted by Leni Clubb, to help members build an atlatl or improve their throwing skills. The nominating committee announced candidates: Vice President - James Brooks, Secretary - Mary Sucke, and Treasurer - Fred Lange. A survey of the membership was being conducted "to determine their interests and skills in various areas in order to plan our meetings and special activities". Jean Kindig scheduled a field trip survey to King Lake

The Calumet - 10 Years Ago

The nominating committee announced candidates: President - Bill Maxon, Vice-President - Bill Boyle, Secretary - Pat Hatfield, and Treasurer - Jeannie Hamilton. Rick and Sue Lippincott offered to host the annual Christmas Party. Leni Clubb's column, Desert Wind, talked about her work with the Ocotillo Desert Museum in California.

The Calumet - 5 Years Ago

Vince Spero, Rio Grand Forest Archaeologist gave a slide presentation on The Archaeology of the San Juan Mountains: From Paleo to Historic. A special thanks for work on the Rock Creek Project was extended to Pete Gleichman, Bob Mutaw, Sandy Kahru, and Dave Tucker - the professional staff on the project. Also thanked was Rick Lippincott for his work in nominating the site and Dock Teegarden, who put in many hours on the project. The other volunteers on the project were: Maureen Arthur, Pam Baker, Alice Bardsley, Yardley Beers, Francis Black, Norma Boslough, Chris Cree, Tom Cree, Cheryl Damon, Edna Devai, Peter Finfrock, Frank Gose, Leah Gose, Sandy Gose, Ed Grafrath, Jeannie Hamilton, Frank Hauke, Tom Harrold, Ann Hayes, Karen Hershberg, Kris Holien, Ken Larson, Bob Lindsay, Marie Mayer, Joe Marquez, Anita McHugh, Ellen Meehan, Steve Montgomery, Ann Mutaw, Hilary Reynolds, Richard Owens, Russell Smith, Mary Sucke, Dave Trumbo, Laura Viola, and Eden Welker.

SEPTEMBER IPCAS Board Meeting

Meeting called to order on 09/03/98 at 7:30 PM at the Boulder Police Department. Present: Cree, Holien, Landem.

Secretary's Report (Holien): No minutes-no meetings for last 3 months.

Treasurer's Report: No report.

Vice President's Report: No report.

President's Report (Landem): Magnolia Project looks very promising for 2 cave excavations based on collection of projectile points. Request for Web

Site Assistant Editors. Discussion regarding retiring Officers and need for new people and new ideas.

Unfinished Business: No report on Reynolds-Burton grant proposal.

Surveys/Excavations: Status

Big Rock Site: little activity for this summer

Magnolia: No report.

RMNP Survey: Successfully completed by Brunswig's survey crew, with a few IPCAS volunteers.

Cabin Survey: Cree reported 4 cabins were surveyed.

White Rocks: No report.

Garden Archaeology: No report.

New Business: CAS Quarterly/Annual Meeting will be Pueblo in mid-October. Approved presenting a Montgomery framed drawing to Teagarden.

Request volunteers for election of IPCAS Board members and officers, and also for Calumet Editor. Break-down of September Calumet: 42

paid membership, 37 overdue membership, 50 complimentary issues.

Meeting adjourned at 8:15 PM. Kris Holien, Secretary

1998 Officers and Board Members

President Michael Landem (303) 499-9877 mlandem@netone.com

Vice-President Martha Patterson (303) 651-2596 mmpatte@uswest.net

Treasurer Dick Owens (303) 650-4784 rowens@creosintl.com

Secretary Kristine Holien (970) 586-8982 kris_holien@nps.gov

CAS Representative Sloan Schwindt (303) 530-5712

Professional Advisor Jean Kindig (303) 443-1702 archaeomom@idcomm.com

Project Information Laura Viola (303) 442-2019

PAAC Coordinator Morey/Janet Stinson (303) 530-7727 mstinson@cris.com

Internet Manager Doak Heyser (303) 678-5728 doak@indra.com

Calumet Editor Tom Cree (303) 776-7004 tlc@lanminds.net

Membership Director Mac Avery (303) 499-3455 averycompany@sprintmail.com

Board Member Michael Braitberg (303) 443-7190 mbrait@ix.netcom.com

Board Member Leni Clubb (760) 358-7835 leniwaa@inreach.com

Board Member Cheryl Damon (303) 678-8076 cherdam@compuserve.com

Board Member Ann Hayes (303) 494-3773 annhayes@compuserve.com

Board Member Ken Larson (303) 469-2228 kglarson@ix.netcom.com

Board Member Cindy Miller (303) 415-9564 cindy@cindymiller.com

Board Member Steve Montgomery (303) 443-4414

Board Member Jim Morrell (303) 652-2874 jmorrell@gateway.net

Board Member Hilary Reynolds-Burton (303) 530-1229 hilary@plugin.com

Board Member Donna Shay (303) 443-3273

Board Member Russell Smith (303) 776-5503 rdsmith@lanminds.net

Please check the club web-site at: http//www.coloradoarchaeology.org

MEMBERSHIP APPLICATION - INDIAN PEAKS CHAPTER

____ Individual $25 / Year ____ New __________ Date

____ Family $28 / Year ____ Renewal

NAME ___________________________ TELEPHONE (____)__________

ADDRESS ________________________ E-MAIL ____________________

CITY _____________________________ STATE ______ ZIP___________

Please make check payable to: Indian Peaks Chapter, CAS

Mail to: PO Box 18301

Boulder, CO 80308-1301

When you join or renew, send a #10 SASE and you will receive a membership card, a member list, and a copy of our bylaws. You will receive the Calumet, our monthly newsletter, and Southwestern Lore, the quarterly publication of the Colorado Archaeological Society. And you will have opened the door to Colorado Archaeology.

CALUMET

Newsletter of the Indian Peaks Chapter

of the Colorado Archaeological Society

P.O. Box 18301

Boulder, CO 80308-1301 �6

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