When Michael F. Hanley bought what would become the historic Hanley farm in the 1850s from newly minted Central Point homesteaders for $3,000, chances are he initially assumed there had been little human imprint on the ground.
His plow soon turned up numerous stone tools that revealed he was a late comer to the region.
Hanley had moved onto land that had been occupied for thousands of years, according to Chelsea Rose, staff archaeologist at Southern Oregon University.
"There were people living there about 2,000 years ago at least — some think it was even longer than that," Rose said. "We know they continued on there until about 200 years ago."
Rose was among the archaeologists from SOU and volunteers who recently conducted the first phase of an archaeological survey on a portion of the 37-acre farm owned by the Southern Oregon Historical Society.
The survey is the beginning of a project to better understand the extent of the land's prehistory, explained Allison Weiss, the SOHS executive director.
"Every time you put a plow into the ground, artifacts come up," she said, displaying a large mortar stone found on the farm in past years.
Originally 636 acres, parts of the farm were sold over the years until it was reduced to 37 acres. It was deeded to SOHS in 1982 by Mary Hanley, the last descendant of Michael F. Hanley to live on the land. The Hanleys farmed the area for more than a century, while SOHS also has done some farming on the land, she noted.
"We decided that if we are going to put this land into production over a long period of time that we needed to get a better handle on the archaeological resources before tying up the land," she said.
Although the mortar was not found on the seven acres that SOHS will be leasing for 10 years to a commercial organic seed company beginning this spring, the area had been previously identified as a prehistoric archaeological site, she said.
"Over the years, they've uncovered a lot of grinding stones like this," she said. "You find arrowheads, shards, cores — the rocks they used to make arrow heads from."
During the survey on the seven-acre parcel, they found more than 300 artifacts, from tiny shards to projectile points, Weiss said.
"The first stage was a walk over," she said of looking for artifacts on the surface. "We GPS'd every item found."
In addition to studying the stone tools discovered in the survey, the SOU archaeologists also will be doing research on items like the mortar and other artifacts previously found, Rose said.
"For thousands of years people chose this as a nice place to live," she said, noting the early day inhabitants were Takelma Indians.
"There is much research about the people living in that part of the valley," she said. "There is a fantastic array of projectile points, scrapers and other stone age tools. It has a lot of promise."
Both Rose and Weiss stressed it is illegal for members of the public to gather artifacts from the site.
"It's very tempting to pick up an arrowhead," Rose said. "But every little piece of material is data. Any time you take something from a site you destroy it."
The university's archaeological department hopes to work with SOHS on a long-term basis to uncover the farm's past, she said.
"It is such a rich site, both in history and prehistory," she said.
Weiss, who has a graduate degree in anthropology, agreed.
"There has been some archaeological study done here in the past," she said. "They uncovered charcoal that was radio carbon dated about 2,100 years old. But the native history in this region obviously goes back a lot further.
"Native Americans weren't just hunter gatherers," she added. "They may have been farming here as well."
The historical society is interested in all the people who have inhabited what is now called Southern Oregon, including the region's indigenous people, she said.
"Obviously, the native Americans were here much longer than anyone else," Weiss concluded. "To be able to tell that story in a more complete way is very important to us."
Source: Mail Tribune