ICAS 2025, Part III: The Papers

So, we’ve covered the trip to Hallstatt in Part I, the stop at Auschwitz-Birkenau in Part II. Now, we’ve made it to the conference and it’s time to get into the research presented there. Part IV is coming and will cover the final day’s trip to the Wieliczka Salt Mine.

The cover art for the conference abstracts was next level!

The conference was held at the University of Rzeszow, in Rzeszow, which is in eastern Poland only about 50 miles from the Ukrainian border. Getting there was easy by train; PKP Intercity trains were pretty good throughout the trip. Rzeszow is a nice city, very walkable and with some nice architecture around the train station area.

The planners of the conference (Maciej Debiec from the University of Rzeszow and Ashley Dumas from University of West Alabama) set up a schedule where there were longer plenary sessions each morning, followed by numerous papers, a late (by American standards) lunch, then more papers in the afternoon. There was only one session at a time, so everyone was there for each presentation and there were some involved conversations after some of the questions, which illuminated some of the presentations.

One of the fascinating things about the conference is that this was an internationally-oriented conference in a way one often doesn’t see for conferences of its size (about 70 registrants). There were numerous papers from North America, South America, Europe, and Asia. I will admit that areas with their important histories of salt production, like China, were not represented. Within these, some areas were extra-heavily represented, notably Eastern Europe, particularly Romania, which had a LOT of researchers present. Research spanned the period from the European Neolithic to the present, and was the source of some interesting conversations as we had several discussions about how archeologists classify the past in different parts of the world.

There are a couple of things that stand out as main impressions from all of these papers. First, there is commonality between when different communities started making salt, not temporally, but when cultural change and innovation made it fit best into their needs. For some parts of the world, this was 5,000 years ago. For others, it was 500. But the changes in settlement, subsistence, and culture that appear around the time that many salt sites were first developed show some interesting global parallels.

Second, things like extraction technology, fuel costs, and transportation also showed some parallels. Descriptions of the making of salt ceramics in Neolithic Europe versus modern day southeast Asia versus precontact Native America showed very similar developments around the world, particularly when a group is making salt from brine (as opposed to mining rock salt).

A bit of Arkansas being broadcast to world scholars

For my third point, I would note that there were researchers who nudged up to a topic but didn’t really push heavily on it; that topic being the connection between salt production and urban settlements. There are some close ties, clearly, but how those interrelate is fascinating and something that deserves a little more attention. [Bear in mind this is only taking the papers presented at the conference under consideration… there is a much larger body of scholarship out there]

Finally, and this is here primarily to antagonize certain parties, there seems to be a fascination with 30km as a maximal distance people will travel to collect salt. That’s… certainly something I’m interested in reading more about.

There is so much that could go in here, as there were a LOT of papers over those three days. I did enjoy hearing a room full of folks working on pronouncing the Caddo word “Nakuukuwidish” from my title slide (I was the first paper after one of the lunch breaks, so the slide was sitting there as people were milling about). I’m working on a longer, peer-reviewed article that will hopefully be printed in Analecta Archaeologica Ressoviensia in the future, but that’s down the road.

Side/Additional Notes

During one of the breaks, I got buttonholed by a student from the university who really needed a coffee, saw they were giving out free, and gate-crashed the conference. He wanted to talk so he looked like he belonged there. Good on you, dude!
The Google Translate app was a life-saver. It even worked to translate the Polish train announcements in real time.
Rzeszow was a nice city. Good restaurants, good infrastructure, pleasant enough people. I did NOT have a repeat of an incident I had in Oswiecim where I made the briefest of eye contact (as one often does to be polite here in Arkansas) with a passing pedestrian and he started staring me down like he wanted to fight. So, kudos on that.
Minor thing, but Poles are much more attentive to people in crosswalks than folks here.

ICAS 2025, Part II: Auschwitz-Birkenau

Entrance to the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum

This is a very different experience from the last post, about Hallstatt, Austria. My work covers a lot of different things, including conflict sites and how sites primarily associated with death and destruction are memorialized and presented to the public. I have published about this some, and it’s an ongoing area of fascination. So, as I was crossing across southern Poland, it was important to see how Polish state officials and heritage professionals built the interpretation of perhaps one of the darkest, most soul-destroying places on earth.

I took a tour of Auschwitz.

First, understand that there is a really fascinating body of literature out there on the history of interpretation and preservation of the site, which was first set aside for some form of memorialization in 1946. As with many sites made significant by their connection to death and suffering, interpreting the site to the public is unendingly complex and contested. Was the site primarily about an outrage against the people of Poland (Jewish and gentile), or was the Jewish connection salient? How are different aspects of such a place to be presented to the public? How do you convey the depths of what was done to people (including thousands upon thousands of children) in a way that does not downplay but also does not sensationalize the violence?

Second, my experience was through a tour, one of dozens that was going through the site that day. You can also tour it on your own, taking more time if you like, but you need to bring your own preparations.

Presenting Mass Murder to the Public

Auschwitz Main Gate

Perhaps the best starting point for talking about this is noting the degree of preservation of the site. The brick buildings that comprise Auschwitz (technically, Auschwitz I… more on that later) largely still stand, meaning that the public can move through the space much as the victims did during the genocide. Certain parts have been rebuilt, like the “Wall of Death” next to Block 11, but most elements remain in place. This includes the gas chamber that was used early on at the camp, which the tour walks visitors through, allowing them to see where people were herded, killed, and then (in the adjoining space) cremated. It is a frank and somber experience, as the guide was careful to point out how small pieces of the camp’s built environment were used for killing and torture. It surrounds you from the moment you pass through the infamous “Arbeit Macht Frei” of the main gate.

Some of the most powerful ways that the museum conveys the deep meaning of the site is through artifacts. They display the eyeglasses, luggage, shoes, cooking implements, and other things that the victims brought with them on their trip to the camp. They also have an entire wall case containing the hair of 40,000 women whose heads were shaved before they were murdered in the gas chambers. The museum has one of the detention blocks, Block 11, which was used as a disciplinary barracks, set up as it would have been when the camp was in operation. This includes detention cells in the basement set up either as dark cells, starvation cells, or special punishment cells measuring 1 square meter where four (FOUR) people would be made to share for hours on end. It also contains the cell where Zyklon B, the gas used to murder millions, was first tested on Soviet POWs early in the camp’s history. They use both real Zyklon B crystals (obviously sealed behind glass) and expended containers to underscore its use.

Shoes left behind by children murdered at Auschwitz

Main gate at Auschwitz II – Birkenau

As hard as Auschwitz is to experience, it should be remembered that “Auschwitz” is often a gloss for “Auschwitz I,” the first camp. Little prepares one for the second half of the tour, Auschwitz II – Birkenau, often called simply “Birkenau” (there was also Auschwitz III – Monowitz in Oswiecim). Birkenau has the iconic railroad gate through which hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people were shipped, of whom at least 80% were sent immediately to the gas chambers, and the remainder were put to labor until they died. The gas chambers and crematoria are still there, despite being blown up by the Nazis when the camp was closed. Birkenau is jaw-dropping for its sheer expanse, the number of barracks that were once there (up to about 300), and the lack of pretense about the site being anything but a landscape for murdering people in vast numbers. The guides took us through one of the barracks, which somehow once held over 700 people.

So, this was a hard day. It is hard to walk through there and not consider what would have happened to my family had we been sent there. There was one small glimmer of… not “hope” and certainly not “joy,” but… maybe “light?” in that space. The main gate at Auschwitz is the one that has the iconic “Arbeit Macht Frei” worked into it. The eagle-eyed among you will note that the “B” in “Arbeit” (German for “work”) is upside down. This is, apparently, a deliberate act by the victims who were forced to construct the gate, a small challenge to the insanity of what was taking place there. The upside-down “B” was taken on a symbol of resistance after the war and was made into a statue near the Birkenau gate. It was donated by workers from Volkswagen (a company that used enslaved labor during the war, it should be noted).

Inverted “B” memorial, Auschwitz II – Birkenau

Notes on Memorialization

There were a couple of interesting things about how the site was managed that seemed important to note. First, when you enter the site you have to go through metal detectors. The only other museum I can recall having to do this at is the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis. That’s an interesting convergence, no? Second, though there hasn’t been a ton of archeological research at the site, as far as I know, the use of artifacts to tell the story of the people who endured the site, and the ends that they suffered, was crucial to conveying the power of the place. The ashes of the victims were frequently dropped in the local rivers or used as fertilizer on local fields, so there is no mass grave containing the 1.4 million (MILLION) people who were murdered there, a point that Holocaust deniers often lean on. That brings up another thing. Our tour guide had two recent instances in which people were removed from the tour and the site for attempting to use their access to the site for public celebrations of Hitler and what took place there. There is clearly no space given to celebration or denial of the site. There shouldn’t be.

Remains of gas chamber and crematorium, Auschwitz II – Birkenau

One thing came up at the end of the conference, well after the visit. As I was on the train towards Krakow, an ad came on one of the TVs for a museum dedicated to the residents of Oswiecim that colluded to subvert the Nazi works there. That aspect of the history was really not substantially emphasized in the camp, itself. I also thought it was interesting that the ad was only in English, not Polish and English like the others they were showing. It seemed a little bit like projecting something primarily to tourists…

Finally, I noticed that our tour guide consistently described the murders as “Nazi Germans,” not “Germans.” She was asked about it at the end of the tour and she talked about how this was a deliberate choice to place emphasis on them being Nazis. This was less about exonerating non-Nazi Germans (who committed plenty of their own atrocities throughout the war), but emphasizing that Nazis are still with us, not just in Germany. There are Nazi Germans, yes, but also Nazi Poles, Nazi French, Nazi British, etc., and that’s the real threat here. It’s the ideology, not the ethnicity.

Side/Additional Notes

The gift shop has basically only books and a few refrigerator magnets. Because how would you sell a t-shirt or a Lego set for this place?
Scholars have pointed out that the landscape of the heritage tourism industry around there is a little tough for the city of Oswiecim, where the camp was built. Most of the tours come in from neighboring Krakow, so the local town doesn’t benefit as much as you might like to think.
The literature around the site points out that the camps were only one part of the city being created as a Nazi model community, which involved the forcible deportation of the prewar population, the administrative folding of the town into “German” territory, and the influx of German settlers who were to set up a Nazi utopia in western Poland. This isn’t really addressed in the public interpretation, but it matters in that the current populace of Oswiecim basically isn’t descended from the people who lived in the town during the war.
Much like Arkansas, most businesses are shut down or on limited hours on Sundays. Luckily, the pierogi place near the train station was open and was lovely. Feels weird to comment on something like that given the weight of the rest of the trip, but there it is…
Weird but I have yet to have a hotel room that doesn’t require you to have the key to open the door from the inside. Panic hardware isn’t a thing here, I guess.

ICAS 2025, Part 1: Hallstatt, Austria

View from the Hallstatt mine entrance overlooking the lake below

Hallstatt, Austria

The 5th International Congress on the Anthropology of Salt convenes this week at the University of Rzeszow, in Poland. We were fortunate to have a paper be accepted for presentation there, so I am in Poland at the moment preparing to give the paper tomorrow.

As one does not get to Europe with any regularity, this was an opportunity to visit a small set of heritage sites that are germane to various aspects of the work we do in southwest Arkansas. This post deals with the first stop, which lies alongside a lake in the Austrian Alps. It is the Saltzkammergut, a salt-producing region centered on the town of Hallstatt. I spent Saturday touring the salt-related heritage sites there.

Hallstatt is remarkable in that it claims to have the world’s oldest salt mine, dating back to 7,000 years ago. It’s also remarkable in that salt is still mined there. Basically, if you go back 250 million years, continental drift split off a part of the ocean that eventually evaporated into a massive salt deposit that was then folded up into a discrete deposit up in the Alps through plate tectonics, with the African continent pushing northwards.

The human use of that deposit is told significantly through two institutions, Saltzwelten Hallstatt (the Salt Museum) and the Weltebe Museum (World Heritage Museum). The first involves going into the mine, entering via a shaft started in the early 1700s, then traveling through several kilometers on three different levels (“horizons”) within the mine. You can see there the marks of miners’ picks and other tools made hundreds of years ago, see the process by which water is injected into salt deposits to produce brine that is then pumped out to the local plant for dehydration into tradeable salt. In the process, tour groups move between levels using the old wooden slides that miners used to take to move quickly and safely (well, more safely than climbing down a slanted hallway in the dark). If that sounds like fun… that’s because it is. It’s a literal rush.

Entrance to the mine that is the focus of the Salt Museum, Hallstatt

In one of the old galaries, the tour shares a movie suggesting how mining began there around 5,000 BC. Like we see with our work at Nakuukuwidish and other salt sites in North America, the belief is that hunters at the time observed that local deer and other game species made a point of coming to the waters there to drink and to lick the ground. After testing the waters and finding them salty, they eventually figured out a way of gathering and reducing that brine into salt for trading and local consumption. There is also a 3,000 year old staircase that was uncovered by miners, as well as numerous pieces of clothing and equipment preserved by the salt conditions inside the mine.

Stairwell found in the Hallstatt mine, dating to 3,100 years ago

Hallstatt is also remarkable in the annals of archaeology in that it was one of the first major excavations in systematic archeology, which gave rise to the definition of the “Hallstatt Culture,” one of Europe’s deep history. A lot of that comes from the Hallstatt Necropolis, an ancient burial ground that was the subject of those early excavations. The route to the mine at the Salt Museum goes past the site where those excavations took place (including a permanent display of one of the burials). More of the finds are presented at the World Heritage Museum, which contains an array of the metal and ceramic items excavated back in the 19th century.

There are a few things that stand out as initial reactions to this visit. First, both Hallstatt and the Caddo/Settler salt making sites we have been working on in Arkansas draw on salt deposits formed as evaporite strata, where seawater under proper conditions evaporates away, leaving behind the salt, which gets compressed into solid deposit. Second, human use of these resources is likely based on observation of animal behavior, using insights from nature to develop cultural features. Third, both Hallstatt and Nakuukuwidish draw not on producing hard salt crystals but on brines that are then deliberately heated to turn them into salt. In Hallstatt, despite the fact that you can (I did) put your hand on the salt deposits, those deposits are now harvested by pumping water into the mine, letting the salt turn it into brine, then pumping the water out. That brine is then collected and heated to evaporate out the water… just like at Nakuukuwidish.

Underground lake, Hallstatt

Incidentally, making brines like this removes sufficient salt from the deposit that caverns and voids open up within the mountain. Water collects in them and produced underground lakes with irregular islands in them. These areas look like they should have Gollum sitting on one of the island rocks, lovingly petting The One Ring.

It is interesting that both of these museums REALLY heavily employ archeological findings as a basis for building the interpretation they present to the public. The Salt Museum even has an archeological laboratory near the mine, and the excavations at the site still occur annually, giving the public a chance to see the excavations in progress. Archeology is so important to the telling of the story of Hallstatt that there is even a statue to Johann Georg Ramsauer, who directed excavations at the site beginning in 1846.

Early archeological finds recovered from digs at Hallstatt

It has been massively important for me to see this place and to be able to compare what is here with what we see at Nakuukuwidish. The two places seem to have so much more in common than not, even given the differences in geography and time.

There is one other major attraction there not immediately tied to salt. It’s called the Hallstatt Charnel House and it is part of a centuries-old tradition where the deceased would be buried for maybe 15 years or so, then, in part because space for burials in the Alps is constrained, the bones would be exhumed and the skull decorated with the name of the individual, the birth and death dates, and other embellishments. You can see a grouping of several hundred, the most recent being that of a woman who passed away in 1983.

Side/additional notes:

There is an Austrian soda called “Almdudler,” which is basically a limonade and is extremely tasty. It even comes in Haribo form.
Navigating around Austria by train is remarkably straightforward. NGL, I’m a little jealous. It’s nice to travel and be able to read at the same time.
I stayed in neighboring Obertraun because it was significantly cheaper (Hallstatt is definitely a tourist town and charges rates accordingly) and the local bakery is astoundingly good.
So far, my biggest mistake of the trip was not bringing a power bank to recharge my mobile phone. Searching for signal in the Alps and in a literal mine over 200 meters below the surface kills battery life. When your train out of there at the end of the day involves digital tickets… it’s best not to have to sweat it out as much as I did.

The 2024 Arkansas Archeological Society Conference

Wooden effigy of the State of Arkansas made from the dairy at Lakeport Plantation

This past weekend was the 2024 Conference of the Arkansas Archeological Society, held in Jonesboro. Both of our station staff attended, and both presented on research projects here in southwest Arkansas.

Taylor gave an update on his revisiting of the 1987 Arkansas Archeological Society Training Program at Georgia Lake, in Ouachita County. He’s been making some good progress on clearing up the ceramic analysis and getting some other research done to move the project forward.

I did a recap of the 2024 Training Program at Nakuukuwidish/Holman Springs, in Sevier County. See below for the citations for both papers.

In addition, we had numerous people involved in the Training Program at Nakuukuwidish receive certificates of appreciation from the Society. They include:

Dr. Sarah Chesney (Texas Historical Commission) for giving a presentation during the Training Program
Ms. Lauren Haupt (University of New Mexico) for giving a presentation during the Training Program
Mr. John Walden for helping with the field prep, particularly for the geophysics class
Mr. Chase Earles for an excellent pottery workshop
Ms. Scott Akridge for being Camp Boss par excellence
Mr. Steve Jacober for teaching Basic Excavation during the first week
Dr. Steve Cole and Ms. Wendy Garcia (UA-Cossatot) for their ongoing hospitality.

We were also fortunate that both Taylor and I were awarded grant funds from the Society’s Archeological Research Fund. For my research, the funds will go to carbon dating Feature 2024-022, the in situ base of a pot encountered during the Training Program. For Taylor, the grant will fund more research at Georgia Lake.

We also snagged some good books and other materials from the silent auction. I was thrilled to get a copy of Sassaman’s The Eastern Archaic, Historicized (which happened to be the late Jamie Brandon’s personal copy… nice!) and Finley and DeBlack’s The Southern Elite and Social Change which came with a piece of wood salvaged from the dairy at Lakeport Plantation that had been cut into the shape of the state of Arkansas.

We also picked up the station’s copy of the Survey’s new popular series monograph, Roy VanArsdale and David Dye’s Geology, Archeology, and the Earthquakes of the Mississippi River Valley, which YOU (yes, you) can get your own copy of from the Survey by clicking here!

Peace,
Carl

Talk Titles:

Drexler, Carl. 2024. The 2024 Arkansas Archeological Society Training Program at Nakuukuwidish: An Exercise in Cascading Feature Excavation. Paper presented at the Annual Conference of the Arkansas Archeological Society, Jonesboro

Greene, Taylor. 2024. Georgia (Lake) On My Mind: Furthering Research on the 1987 Training Program. Paper presented at the Annual Conference of the Arkansas Archeological Society, Jonesboro.

Greenbrier, a Late Mississippi Period Town on the White River

Meeting Link: Click Here!

Excavations at Greenbrier, 2000

Meeting Time: November 14 @ 7pm (Central)

The Red River Chapter of the Arkansas Archeological Society will be having a virtual meeting this month. They are welcoming Dr. Julie Morrow (ARAS-ASU) to give a talk about the Greenbrier site. This presentation describes ongoing research of the privately owned late Mississippian town at the Greenbrier site. During the 2000 field season the Society and Survey excavated part of a burned square domestic structure (House 1) measuring about 3 m east-west x 3 m north-south. Identification and analyses of more than 9,000 ceramic sherds, predominantly from House 1 supports the idea that the pottery at Greenbrier is related to Late Mississippi period sites in the eastern Lowlands, closer to the Mississippi River. Preliminary insights from artifact analyses suggest that the residents of Greenbrier made pottery from local clay sources. A large-scale gradiometer survey of approximately 30 percent of the surface artifact distribution indicates a double walled enclosure or palisade that was expanded at least once. Images from the gradiometer survey show over 90 prehistoric structures, a central plaza, and two separate fortification alignments. Domestic structures range between

Gradiometer survey results from the Greenbrier site

About Dr. Morrow

4 x 4 and 8 x 8 meters on a side and are sometimes rebuilt near to the same location. Spatial patterning of gradiometer anomalies indicates expansion of the enclosure and rebuilding episodes of square structures inside and outside of the enclosures. Recent work includes excavation of Unit 23 in the center of the house to find the center posts.

Dr. Juliet E. Morrow (Ph.D. Washington University in 1996) worked for the US Army COE, Louis Berger and Associates, and The University of Iowa before arriving at the Survey in 1997 when she became the Station Archeologist for the Arkansas Archeological Survey’s ASU-Jonesboro Research Station. She specializes in the archaeology of the Peopling of the Americas, the Clovis culture, and descendant cultures. At Arkansas State University-Jonesboro she teaches anthropology and archeology courses and manages over 4,000 cubic feet of collections, archives, and equipment. She, her assistant Sarah Stuckey, and her students discover and investigate sites of all time periods and cultures, map cemeteries, and conduct excavations to preserve artifacts, feature contents, and data. For 26 years she has worked to assist the city of Jonesboro in their parks and cemeteries, the FBI and other law enforcement agencies, the Quapaw Nation, NRCS, Ducks Unlimited and many other private and govt agencies to preserve archaeological information. The stations’ current field projects include site recording along a proposed roadway near Pocahontas, AR and excavations to recover features and artifacts to reconstruct a burned late Mississippi period house at Greenbrier.

Spring Break Dig at Historic Washington State Park

We have the opportunity to help Arkansas State Parks out and further our longstanding research in the old mercantile district of Washington, the first American market center in southwest Arkansas. Arkansas Archeological Society members can come dig with us, and anyone interested in archeology can visit us during the excavation! Let’s talk details…

Archeologist pushing ground-penetrating radar across ground. Historic building in background

ARAS staff member Taylor Greene operates the ground-penetrating radar on Block 7. The 1836 Courthouse at Historic Washington State Park is in the background.

Where: Historic Washington State Park, Block 7
When: March 18-22, 2023

So, what is Block 7? Historic Washington is gridded off into numbered blocks. We held the 2011 and 2012 Arkansas Archeological Society Training Programs at Block 6, which as the number suggests, is right across the street from Block 7. Both blocks are in the old mercantile district of the town, and lie across the street from the 1836 Courthouse. Property records for Block 7 go back to the late-1820s, about the same as we saw for Block 6.

We are going to be working in a portion of Block 7 where a recent ground-penetrating radar survey identified an anomaly, approximately rectilinear in shape, that could be something like a chimney footing or foundation element. We won’t really know what it is or what it dates to until we dig.

If you are interested in volunteering (and are a Society member), please contact Dr. Drexler at cdrexler@uark.edu. If you have questions about the dig or want to visit, feel free to email or call at 870-235-4230. If you join us, please wear closed-toed shoes and dress appropriate to the weather. Remember that the Jonquil Festival will be taking place on the 18th and 19th, so expect there to be crowds.

A Significant Update about the Training Program

Hello, friends. We have had a major development with the plans for the upcoming Arkansas Archeological Society Training Program. Due to a recent land sale, we no longer have permission to be at the Lockesburg Mounds site, which was to be the site of our field portion.

With the support of community members and the Society, we have worked out an alternative focus for our fieldwork. We will, instead, be excavating at the Holman Springs site. This is a major Caddo saltworks on the Rolling Fork River. The Training Program was at this site in 1985 and 1986, and this is our chance to clear up a few things from those projects and finish a project that the Survey and Society have had on their ledgers for almost forty years.

The laboratory portion will remain focused on finishing the analysis of collections from the 1980s digs at Holman Springs and the 1960s from the Bayou Sel site, another saltworks over in Clark County. Camping will remain at DeQueen Lake and the lab will be at UA-Cossatot.

The Central Arkansas Chapter of the Society invited Dr. Drexler to give their next talk on Thursday, May 12. It will be online, and the link should be available from their Facebook page. If you are planning on attending the Training Program or want to learn more about the Holman Springs site, please make space in your calendar to listen in.

This is a heck of a pivot to make at the last minute, but we can do it, together!

H. Newell Wardle and the People of the Flints

It’s March, and we here in the world of Arkansas archeology are deep into Archeology Month. It’s *also* Women’s History Month in the United States, and we’ve got a nice little confluence of these things for you today.

We know that one of the first archeologists to work and publish in southwest Arkansas archeology was Clarence B. Moore, who ascended the Red River in 1911 and published his results, in stunning detail, the following year (Moore 1912). Usually, histories of archeology here jump straight from Moore to the work of M.R. Harrington, who published his work almost a decade later (Harrington 1920).

In our ongoing research on Haley Place (3MI1), in Miller County, we happened upon a short article that was published between Moore and Harrington that we do not talk about much. In 1913, Harper’s Monthly Magazine published “The People of the Flints,” which stemmed from Moore’s fieldwork. It introduced Haley Place and the Foster and Gahagan sites to Harper’s readers, and being a nationally-circulated magazine, it is likely that this article reached more people than did from Moore’s books.

The author of “The People of the Flints” was H. Newell Wardle, from the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia. Like many of the period, H. Newell Wardle used a first initial and then a middle name to mask their gender, as the “H” stood for “Harriet.” This was common practice in a time when most scientific fields were dominated by men, and women were not taken seriously as scholars.

So, H. Newell Wardle published one of the first pieces of archeological scholarship on the Caddo region. That’s neat. Also neat is that she was a product of another woman’s contribution to the history of science. Clara Jessup Moore, mother to Clarence B. Moore oversaw the Jessup Fund, a scholarship for young male scholars to work at the Academy and gain museum experience. Clara Moore augmented the fund in 1892 so that it would also fund female scholars. Harriet Newell Wardle was one of the Jessup Scholars. Her education founded her career, which included positions with several prominent Philadelphia museums.

There are certainly parts of the article that the following century’s worth of archeological research doesn’t support. That’s fine. The point is, we should recognize Wardle’s contributions to Arkansas archeology and also remember Clara Moore’s efforts.

References

Harrington, M.R.
1920 Certain Caddo Sites in Arkansas. Museum of the American Indian, New York.

Moore, Clarence B.
1912 Some Aboriginal Sites on Red River. P.C. Stockhauesen, Philadelphia.

Wardle, H. Newell
1913 The People of the Flints. Harper’s Monthly Magazine. January, pp. 291-301.

Spring Break Dig at the Witter House, HWSP

Daniel T. Witter was one of Arkansas’s early legislators, serving in Little Rock during the Territorial period (pre-1836). He had a house in Washington as early as the 1820s, and remained there until 1859. The house remained until around the time of World War II before being torn down (photo shows it in 1938). Though a different house was built there in the 1980s, we want to know if some portions of the earlier structure remain to be seen on the property.

This past week, the SAU Station staff completed a small geophysical survey on the site which, combined with historic maps and photographs. We found a small geophysical anomaly that does not match up with the footprint of the 1980s house, but seems to match up with what we know of the Witter House. We want to find out whether this is the remaining portion of a very early part of Washington’s history.

So, we will be out at Historic Washington State Park on March 25-27 to do a small dig to see if we can wind anything that remains of the house. Any member of the Arkansas Archeological Society is welcome to come out and dig with us. If you are not a member, come out and watch, ask questions, and learn about Arkansas archeology. We will be having a training program this summer to teach people how to dig, so you can join and take park in future digs!

Please contact Dr. Drexler (cdrexler@uark.edu) if you want to come and join in or have questions about the project.

The S.S. Homer Rises from the Ouachita

Or, rather, the Ouachita River lowers enough to expose part of the S.S. Homer…

Drawing of the S.S. Homer from a New Orleans newspaper, ca. 1860 (Arkansas Historic Preservation program)

The leak in the Thatcher Lock and Dam, in Union County, has dropped the Ouachita (pronounced almost like “Washita” to those abroad) a lot, meaning a lot of things that are usually masked by higher water are now visible. One of these things is a part of the S.S. Homer, a Civil War-era steamboat that supported both the Confederate and United States Navy before sinking in the river at Camden in 1864.

The Homer

The Homer, like so many naval vessels used during the war, was not built as a warship. It came out of the shipyards in Parkersburg, (West) Virginia, in 1859 and carried freight and people on the Mississippi, Red, and Ouachita rivers until the start of the war. Friend-of-the-station Mark Christ’s (2021) article about the ship on the Encyclopedia of Arkansas online tells us that the Homer “was placed under contract to the Confederate government, transporting men and supplies.” I threw this quote in because there’s a difference between a ship being under contract to the Confederate government and being a Confederate naval vessel. There has been some discussion on the Facebook posts about the appearance of the wreck today including comments about it being a Confederate naval vessel, which it may not have been.

The U.S. Army (elements from the 1st Iowa and 3rd Missouri cavalry regiments) captured the vessel on or around April 15 at a place 30 miles below Camden, and were grateful for the 4,000-5,000 bushels of corn that it contained. The ship was apparently sunk in the river around when the Army abandoned Camden on the night of April 26 (Christ 2021).

What Can You See Today?

Remains of the brick flame bed of the S.S. Homer, Camden, Arkansas, December 13, 2021 (Arkansas Archeological Survey)

If you go to Sandy Beach park on the east side of Camden, you can see a large pile of bricks that is believed to be part of the remains of the ship. This would be the “flame bed” a platform of bricks that would be placed under the boilers to keep the heat and sparks from the wooden hull of the ship (Stewart-Abernathy 2008). I think it’s cool, but be aware that it literally just looks like a big pile of bricks…

Also, get on the Ouachita County Historical Society’s Facebook page and check out Dustin Hall’s excellent drone shots of the wreck!

Archeology on the Homer

My office, the Arkansas Archeological Survey, keeps tabs on archeological sites of all kinds from around the state, and keeps up with work other archeologists have done on those sites. In 1992, Charles Pearson, an archeologist with Coastal Environments, an archeological firm from Louisiana, dove on the site, following on from some earlier work in the 1980s. The site was mapped and some field notes were taken. The archeologists determined that a significant portion of the hull is there and still buried, and that it was an important part of American history that should be preserved. In recognition of that, the wreck site was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2002.

Enjoying the Homer in 2021

Though it’s strange to see the river low enough to make the Homer’s flame bed visible, it is not a bad thing to want to go out and look at the remains while you cans see them. Camden has a lot of great Civil War-related things around town, and this just adds to the landscape. So, by all means, go out and take a look. Take pictures! Use them to tell the history of the boat, the times, and your experience connecting with the past. That’s all great!

But bear a few things in mind. First, under a 2013 law passed by the state of Arkansas, all islands, submerged lands, and the property on them, including this wreck, are owned by the Arkansas Commissioner of State Lands. You cannot legally collect any item from the wreck site. I want you to know this so that you’re not placed in legal jeopardy by your historical interest. Seriously, don’t go collecting!

Second, I’ve seen some comments on Facebook suggesting that going out and collecting some of the bricks would be a way of preserving the past before the river comes back up and we lose sight of it again. I very much understand that motivation, but I want you to consider some things (besides the illegality of doing so… see above). Any archeologist will readily whip out the old maxim that “context matters,” meaning it’s not just the thing that you find, but its location, its connection to other things in the same site, etc., that are really, really important. You take a brick out of the flame bed, then you have a brick, which is cool, but you have less of the Homer’s flame bed in the wreck site, itself. That’s no small thing, as a systematic study of the entire wreck is better when it’s as intact as possible, and we ultimately get more knowledge and understanding of a site (ANY site) when it has been better preserved. So, please, if you go take a look, don’t take it home with you.

– Carl G. Drexler, station archeologist

Edits: The original post claimed that the river was down due to drought conditions here in southwest Arkansas. Thank you to Sherrel Johnson, of El Dorado, for correcting the source of the low water levels.

References

Christ, Mark (2021). Homer. Encyclopedia of Arkansas Online (https://encyclopediaofarkansas.net/entries/homer-steamboat-7755/), accessed 12/13/2021

Stewart-Abernathy, Leslie (2008). Ghost Boats at West Memphis. Arkansas Historical Quarterly 67(4):398-413.

Side/Additional Notes

Presenting Mass Murder to the Public

Notes on Memorialization

Side/Additional Notes

The Homer

What Can You See Today?

Archeology on the Homer

Enjoying the Homer in 2021

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