Part of summer vacation for Mary Conrad, Sumner Academy librarian, will consist of supervising the wash lab at an archaeological dig in Kansas.
The artifacts are perhaps thousands of years old, at a native American archaeological site on the Verdigris River in Montgomery County, Kan., south of Topeka near Neodesha. Conrad has been the wash lab supervisor of the Kansas Archaeology Training Program for more than 15 years.
Leading the dig from June 5 to 20 at the site will be John Tomasic, a native of Wyandotte County and son of the former Wyandotte County district attorney. An archaeologist with the Kansas Historical Society, Tomasic is principal investigator of the two-week dig, in charge of professionals and volunteers whose experience ranges from beginners to veterans. It’s open to anyone interested in coming down there to excavate.
“The site is being destroyed by erosion, and we’re trying to salvage what we can before it’s destroyed,” Tomasic said. A stream bank stabilization project also has been proposed at the site.
What’s most interesting about the dig is that artifacts will be from a period in history when native peoples started shifting from hunters and gatherers to sedentary agriculturists, he said. There is the hope that artifacts could be found that could be significant in explaining this big change in history.
“They would tell us why people adopted agriculture and why people became sedentary,” he said. “This will help us answer those questions.”
From an earlier trip to the site in September and October of 2009, Tomasic and other archaeologists have discovered that it is about 2,500 years old, and there are probably some layers to it with later artifacts as well. Because of carbon dating on charcoal at the site, the age has been pinpointed, he said.
It was many centuries before the modern native American tribes existed, Tomasic said. It was a time before the bow and arrow, when people used large spears for hunting. At the earlier visit to the site, archaeologists found remains of deer bones, bison bones, turtle and fish.
“It looks like it’s before farming developed, but it’s at the time period where all those changes started,” he said.
“I expect we’ll find stone tools, bones from animals they were eating, ceramics from pots that were broken, seeds and charred plant remains from plants they were eating and cultivating,” he said.
Tomasic said he became interested in archaeology as a student at Kansas State University. After receiving a bachelor’s degree there, and a master’s degree from the University of Kansas, he went on to receive his doctorate degree from Vanderbilt University.
Wyandotte County has its share of important archaeological sites, and Tomasic said he welcomes questions from the public about them. The dig in Montgomery County will include evening lectures after the day’s work in the field and lab is done.
Conrad said the native peoples, although they were not in tribes at that time, were known as the Cuesta culture, and their pottery tended to be quite plain when contrasted with the Kansas City Hopewells, which had very decorative pottery. The oldest part of the multi-layered site is from the archaic period and may not include much ceramics, but there may be areas of the early ceramic period at the site.
“Those of us who like archaeology think it’s fun,” Conrad said. “Those who think it’s finding treasure or gold continually are disappointed. You move a lot of dirt before you find the good things, usually.”
She said she enjoys going on archaeological digs because she likes to see the big picture.
“Every day you see some things that are different and some things that are the same,” Conrad said. “So by the end you can develop a big picture of what these people were like.
“To me, the most interesting thing is developing the story,” she said.
For information about going on or visiting the archaeological dig, call Tomasic at the Kansas Historical Society, 785-272-8681, Ext. 258.
Source: Wyandotte Daily News