*December 2017 Archeology E-Gram*
*NPS NEWS*
Brenda Todd Selected as Superintendent of Knife River Indian Villages
National Historic Site
Brenda Todd will be the next superintendent of Knife River Indian Villages
NHS in Stanton, North Dakota. Todd is a 10-year veteran of the NPS and is
currently the Program Manager at the Public Lands History Center at
Colorado State University. She holds a Ph.D. in anthropology with a
specialization in archeology from the University of Colorado, Boulder. She
has worked with tribes and agencies throughout the country and conducted
fieldwork in the Southwest and Midwest.
Her tenure with the NPS began in the Office of Indian Affairs and American
Culture in the Intermountain Regional Office. She served as a Cultural
Resource Specialist and later became a Project Manager with the Denver
Service Center Planning Division. While at the center, Todd worked with
over 30 parks on management challenges and oversaw the development of the
Knife River Indian Villages NHS Draft Archeological Resources Management
Plan.
Her new assignment will begin February 4, 2018.
*by Alexandra Picavet*
*Trail of Tears National Historic Trail Celebrates 30 Years of
Partnerships*
The Trail of Tears NHT marked its 30th anniversary in December 2017.
President Ronald Reagan signed the law designating the trail on December
16, 1987. Portions of the Trail pass through or adjacent to eight NPS
units, several National Forests, and a number of state and county parks.
Dozens of private landowners also share their piece of this tragic story by
opening their properties to the public.
In 1830, Congress passed the Indian Removal Act, compelling the removal of
southeastern Native American tribes to places west of the Mississippi
River. Ignoring an 1832 Supreme Court decision ruling the Cherokee had
sovereign rights to their lands, President Andrew Jackson forced removal of
American Indian tribes. From early 1838 through late 1839, thousands of
Cherokees and other indigenous people were marched or ferried west over
5,000 miles of roads, trails, and rivers.
The non-profit Trail of Tears Association (TOTA) formed in 1993 to protect
and preserve of trail resources and to promote awareness of the Trail’s
legacy. Since 1996, over 70 partnerships have been established to preserve
and interpret key sites along the Trail of Tears NHT.
For more information about the history of the Trail of Tears, go to
nps.gov/trte
<http://www.google.com/url?q=http%3A%2F%2Fnps.gov%2Ftrte&sa=D&sntz=1&usg=AFQjCNHV8uaVBchtYvNEiTX5SL8b3PqQ3g>
or www.nationaltota.com
<http://www.google.com/url?q=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nationaltota.com%2F&sa=D&sntz=1&usg=AFQjCNEbFrNfSWkhO_9P0fCTu39aXgJ90Q>
.
*From story by Jeffrey Denny*
*GRANTS AND TRAINING*
*National Park Service Accepting Proposals for the Save America’s Treasures
Grant Program*
The NPS in partnership with the Institute of Museum and Library Services,
the National Endowment for the Arts, and the National Endowment for the
Humanities is now accepting applications for $5 million in matching grants
to support the preservation of nationally significant historic properties
and collections through the Save America’s Treasures program. The Save
America’s Treasures program was established by in 1998. In 2014, the
American Architectural Foundation (AAF) became the official nonprofit
partner of the Save America’s Treasures program.
The program requires applicants to raise project funds from other sources
to “match” the grant money, which is awarded after a competitive review of
project proposals. Grantees must provide dollar-for-dollar match, meaning
for each federal dollar put towards the project, at least one non-federal
dollar must also be used. Buildings and collections which have previously
received Saving America’s Treasures grants are not eligible to receive a
second grant for the same building or collection.
Save America’s Treasures has assisted more than 300 National Historic
Landmarks (NHL), 28 properties contributing to NHL historic districts, over
250 buildings individually listed in the National Register of Historic
Places, over 70 properties contributing to National Register historic
districts, as well as hundreds of nationally-significant collections in
museums across the country.
The Save America’s Treasures program is funded using revenue from Outer
Continental Shelf oil releases, not tax dollars. The program began in 1999
and has leveraged over $315 million in federal appropriations to attract
$377 million in private investment to help communities preserve nationally
significant properties and collections across the country, creating more
than 16,000 jobs along the way.
Eligible projects include the conservation of collections and physical
preservation work to historic buildings. All projects must be nationally
significant; meaning listed as National Historic Landmarks or at the
national level of significance in the National Register of Historic Places,
or a case made for a collection’s national significance.
The deadline for applications is February 21, 2018 (11:59 p.m., EST). More
information, including grant application materials, is available on the
grant program website at *https://go.nps.gov/sat
<http://link.email.dynect.net/link.php?DynEngagement=true&H=WAA0HYy4enWklLGLVOCoftvRiKxkwcx7028A%2BNZlWSzSEaUD3cyAX7GV5vfHsxB7vE7yGO77gvAeJ%2FmSQ2UsXe85hE7zwtbAH2JCbMVDYQfdoQaMgUluxMgPy84F%2FShD&G=0&R=https%3A%2F%2Fgo.nps.gov%2Fsat&I=20171220150424.0000001d9304%40mail6-33-usnbn1&X=MHwxMDQ2NzU4OjVhM2E3YjgwMWMwNzhlYWZhMDJjMTUxMTs%3D&S=eGQen_rjbSYjjqw1uNtQgtJiNwMM8mQBIBlI2G-ZhLc>*
*National Park Service 2018 Archaeological Prospection Workshop*
The National Park Service’s 2018 workshop on archaeological prospection
techniques, Current Archeological Prospection Advances for Non-destructive
Investigations of the Marksville Prehistoric Indian Site (16AV1),
Louisiana, will be held May 21--15, 2018, at the Marksville State Historic
Site in Avoyelies Parish, Louisiana. The site is the type site for the
Marksville Culture, a local variant of the Hopewell Tradition. The site
contains numerous earthworks built by the indigenous prehistoric people of
the southeastern North America.
This will be the twenty-eighth year of the workshop dedicated to the use
of geophysical, aerial photography, and other remote sensing methods as
they apply to the identification, evaluation, conservation, and protection
of archaeological resources across this Nation. The workshop will present
lectures on the theory of operation, methodology, processing, and
interpretation with on-hands use of the equipment in the field.
Lodging will be at the Paragon Casino Resort in Marksville, Louisiana.
The lectures will be at a meeting room in the Paragon Casino Resort. The
field exercises will take place at the Marksville Prehistoric Indian Site
at the Marksville Sate Historic Site.
Co-sponsors for the workshop include the NPS Midwest Archeological Center
and the National Center for Preservation Technology and Training, as well
as the Marksville State Historic Site and the Office of Cultural
Development, Division of Archaeology of the Louisiana State Historic
Preservation Office. There is a registration charge of $475.00.
Application forms are available on the Midwest Archeological Center’s web
page at <http://www.nps.gov/mwac/>. Payment will be made by credit card
through the Friends of NCPTT at <https://www.ncptt.nps.gov/
training-conference-events/>.
For further information, please contact Steven L. DeVore, Archeologist,
NPS, Midwest Archeological Center, Federal Building, Room 474, 100
Centennial Mall North, Lincoln, Nebraska 68508-3873: tel: (402) 437-5392,
ext. 141; fax: (402) 437-5098; email: <[log in to unmask]>.
*National Park Service Park NAGPRA Program Offers Recorded Webinars*
During FY 2017 the NPS Park NAGPRA program conducted the following webinars
as part of the 2017 Park NAGPRA Training Series:
· *Disposition of Unclaimed Cultural Items* April 26, 2017
· *Plans of Action & Comprehensive Agreements* May 24, 2017
· *Inadvertent Discoveries/Intentional Excavations* June 28, 2017
· *NAGPRA in the Parks*
o Day One – Overview, Basics, Definitions, Collections Aug 7, 2017
o Day Two – Collections, Intentional Excavations/ Inadvertent Discoveries
(Section 3) Aug 8, 2017
o Day Three – Section 3, Consultation, Claims, Transfer of Control/Custody,
Reburial Aug 9, 2017
The first three webinars -- *Disposition of Unclaimed Cultural Items*,* Plans
of Action & Comprehensive Agreements*, and *Inadvertent
Discoveries/Intentional Excavations* -- are now available for viewing in
the Training Opportunities section of the NAGPRA page of Inside NPS. The
three *NAGPRA in the Parks* videos will be uploaded as soon as captioning
is completed.
Also available is *The "WHY" of NAGPRA*, a presentation by Dr. Joe Watkins
which took place during the August 2015 *NAGPRA in the Parks* webinar.
*SLIGHTLY OFF TOPIC: ** Archeologist Challenging Idea that Prehistoric
People in the Southwest Relied on Corn*
University of Cincinnati archeology professor Alan Sullivan is challenging
the idea that prehistoric villagers planted corn to survive the dry and
hostile conditions of the American Southwest. He argues instead that people
routinely burned the understory of forests to grow wild crops 1,000 years
ago. "There has been this orthodoxy about the importance of corn," said
Sullivan. "It's been widely considered that prehistoric peoples of Arizona
between A.D. 900 to 1200 were dependent on it. But if corn is lurking out
there in the Grand Canyon, it's hiding successfully because we've looked
and haven't found it."
Sullivan has spent more than two decades leading archeological field
research to Grand Canyon NP and Kaibab NF. and published papers outlining
the scarce evidence of corn agriculture at more than 2,000 sites. The Upper
Basin, where Sullivan and his students work, is home to mature forests of
juniper and pinyon trees. On these high-elevation plateaus, Sullivan and
his students have unearthed ceramic jugs adorned with corrugated patterns
and other evidence of prehistoric life. Sullivan is particularly interested
in the cultural and social practices of growing, sharing and eating
particular types of food.
"What would constitute evidence of a corn-based foodway?" he asks. Like a
detective, Sullivan has pieced together clues from scientific analysis to
make an argument that people used fire to promote the growth of edible
plants such as amaranth and chenopodium, wild relatives of quinoa. These
plants are "ruderals," the first to grow in a forest disturbed by fire or
clear-cutting.
Lab analysis identified ancient pollen from dirt inside clay pots that were
used 1,000 years ago. "They've identified 6,000 or 7,000 pollen grains and
only six [grains] were corn. Everything else is dominated by these
ruderals," Sullivan said. And, the corn itself looked nothing like hearty
ears of sweet corn people. The ears were puny, about one-third the size of
a typical cob, with tiny, hard kernels.
So if prehistoric people were not growing corn, what were they eating?
Sullivan found clues around sites that people set fires big enough to burn
away the understory of grasses and weeds but small enough not to harm the
pinyon and juniper trees, important sources of calorie-rich nuts and
berries. Evidence for this theory was found in ancient trees. Raging
wildfires leave burn scars in growth rings of surviving trees. In the
absence of frequent small fires, forests would accumulate vast amounts of
underbrush and fallen timber to create conditions ripe for an inferno
sparked by a lightning strike. But examinations of ancient juniper and
ponderosa pine trees found no burn scars, suggesting big fires are a
relatively new phenomenon in Arizona.
This year, Sullivan found contemporary evidence supporting his theory that
prehistoric people generated a spring bounty by setting fires. Sullivan
returned to the Grand Canyon last spring to examine forest destroyed by the
Scott Fire, a massive 2016 fire that laid waste to 2,660 acres of pines,
junipers and sagebrush. Despite the intensity of the forest fire, Sullivan
found edible plants growing thick everywhere underfoot just months later.
"This burned area was covered in ruderals. Just covered," he said. "That to
us was confirmation of our theory. Our argument is there's this dormant
seed bed that is activated by any kind of fire." NPS archeologists have
found evidence that corn grew below the rim of the Grand Canyon, said Ellen
Brennan, NPS cultural resource program manager for the park.
"It appears that the ancient people of the Grand Canyon never pursued corn
agriculture to the extent that other ancestral Puebloan peoples did in
other parts of the Southwest," Brennan said. "In the Grand Canyon, it
appears that there continued to be persistent use of native plants as a
primary food source rather than corn."
The first assumptions about what daily life was like in the Southwest 1,000
years ago came from ethnographic observations of Native Americans such as
the Hopi, said Neil Weintraub, archeologist for Kaibab NF. He worked
alongside Sullivan at some of the sites in the Upper Basin. "Corn is still
a big part of the Hopi culture. A lot of dances they do are about water and
the fertility of corn," he said. "The Hopi are seen as the descending
groups of Puebloan." While Native peoples elsewhere in the Southwest no
doubt relied on corn, Weintraub said, Sullivan's work has convinced him
that residents of the Upper Basin relied on wild food—and used fire to
cultivate it.
Weintraub recently studied the forest burned in the Scott Fire. The exposed
ground was thick with new undergrowth, particularly a wild relative of
quinoa called goosefoot, he said. "Goosefoot has a minty smell to it,
especially in the fall. We actually started chewing on it. It was pretty
pleasant,"
Fire also seems to increase the diversity of forest species. Vegetation
surveys find less biodiversity in forests today than he found in his
archeological samples. Today, federal land managers conduct controlled
burns when practical to address this problem, even in national parks such
as the Grand Canyon.
The National Park Service often lets fires burn in natural areas when they
do not threaten people or property. But increasingly people are building
homes and businesses adjacent to or within forests. Forest managers are
reluctant to conduct controlled burning so close to population, Sullivan
said. "The fire management program for Grand Canyon NP seeks to reintroduce
fire as a natural agent of the environment," Brennan said. "That is to
reduce ground fuels through prescribed fire, mechanical thinning, and
wildland fire."
Scientists also are studying how to adjust forest management techniques in
the face of climate change, she said. "Program managers are working to
understand how climate change affects forest management and how to restore
forests to the point where fire can follow a more natural return interval
given a particular forest type," she said.
*From story by Michael Miller, Phys Org*
Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2017-11-archaeologist-idea-
prehistoric-people-southwest.html#jCp
*Archeology E-Gram*, distributed via e-mail on a regular basis, includes
announcements about news, new publications, training opportunities,
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public archeology in the NPS and other public agencies. Recipients are
encouraged to forward *Archeology E-Grams* to colleagues and relevant
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pagewww.nps.gov/archeology/public/news.htm
<http://www.nps.gov/archeology/public/news.htm_> on the NPS Archeology
Program website.
*Contact*: Karen Mudar at [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]> to contribute news
items and to subscribe.
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