June is a busy month for the Arkansas Archeological Survey. Each year, we help run the Arkansas Archeological Society’s annual Training Program dig, a 2.5 week-long excavation on some important site, somewhere in the state. The Society Dig, as we call it, rotates around the state, and was last in our neck of the woods in 2011-2012, when we dug at Block Six, in Historic Washington State Park (Hempstead County). This year, it was at site 3MN298, a Caddo/pre-Caddo site up in Montgomery County, near Mt. Ida. Both Dr. Brandon and Dr. Drexler were in attendance, helping Dr. Mary Beth Trubitt (ARAS-HSU Station Archeologist) and Mr. Meeks Etchieson (U.S. Forest Service) with the digs. Several Kadohadacho Chapter members, including Bob Campbell, Kelly Schnell, and Don Hall, were in attendance.
Dr. Brandon taught the class on ceramics, playing to a room full of very experienced Society members, which kept him on his toes. This is the seventh different class that Dr. Brandon has taught at a Society Dig, suggesting that he is banned by the cosmos from ever repeating a course. In another ten years, we may have him teaching archaeoastronomy, just to ensure that his streak continues. While not teaching ceramics, Dr. Brandon was out at Area V, assisting Vanessa Hanvey (ARAS-HSU Station Assistant) with excavations there.
Basic Excavation Units, Covered Against Rain
During the first week of the dig, Dr. Drexler taught the Basic Excavation course, working on three 2x2m units (see photo) with 12-13 students, most of whom were eager, enthusiastic college students or recent graduates. Dr. Don Bragg helped out as an unofficial teaching assistant, and proved to be invaluable. Though the Basic Ex units were supposed to be relatively quiet (one doesn’t want to jump into a really complex area when just learning how to dig), each of the units encountered some interesting feature… or features (they averaged over five features per unit by the end). These included a possible hearth, a maze of post holes, and a large storage pit. We even found excavation pits and auger holes from the first fieldwork at the site, back in the 1980s, allowing us to tie this archaeological research in with preceding efforts. Given that we were under instructions to recover all feature fill as flotation samples, we trucked dozens of bags of soil out of the site every day, which boggled the mind of Dr. Jeff Mitchem (ARAS-Parkin), who served as lab director, and gave Dr. Elizabeth Horton (ARAS-Toltec) more than enough to keep her flotation tanks running each day.
Since getting back, Dr. Brandon has continued his preparations to move to Fayetteville and take up his new position as UAF Station Archaeologist. Today is, actually, his last official day as SAU Station Archaeologist, and we wish him all the best in his new opportunity.
Dr. Drexler spent the bulk of the week following the dig assisting Dr. Horton at Toltec Mounds State Park. We laid out a grid over a proposed septic tank litchfield in preparation for Dr. Jami Lockhart’s (ARAS-CSP) upcoming survey of the area. We also established the basic footprint of Dr. Horton’s new garden, which will show park visitors the kind of things that the occupants of Toltec would have been cultivating. Keep an eye on this effort over the coming years!
