The Dirt on Archaeology: The Dirt on Archaeology.....March 2010

The Mickelsen Pot In-Situ on the Manti-La Sal National Forest

I have been busier than expected this winter with new projects! The week before Christmas I was contacted by Forest Service Archaeologist Charmaine Thompson about a new find in the Manti-La Sal Forest. Wildlife Officer Casey Mickelsen found a whole jar in an alcove, and we went up with more than a dozen volunteers from the Forest Service, CVAS, and the entire Mickelsen Family to excavate the site.

The Mickelsen Family: Tori, Taylie, Casey and Kylan

The pot was "in-situ," meaning it was still in the location that it had been cached approximately by an ancient Fremont farmer in Emery County. Because Casey Mickelsen reported it, we were able to record its location, collect detailed information about the context of the artifact and found an associated artifact, a juniper mat, that we radiocarbon dated. The $595 date was sponsored by the Skyline Mine of Helper, Utah, and now we know that the jar was cached in this location by Fremont people around 830 years ago, and dates to between AD 1165 and 1260!

The Mickelsen Pot had been buried in the alcove 830 years ago, probably by a Fremont farmer who intended to retrieve it but for some reason never returned. But by the time Officer Mickelesen found it, nature had begun excavating the pot. The floor and ceiling of the natural sandstone alcove were eroding, and the sediments around the pot had washed away, tipping the pot toward the mouth of the alcove and leaving only a few cm at the bottom still buried. The pot is gobular, and would likely have washed downhill and out of the alcove in the spring run-off, and we would have lost this precious artifact forever. The top portion of the pot that was exposed to the erosion required many hours of conservation and stabilization to preserve the design, and the wall of the vessel.

The design is a black-on-white motif with black bands and white interlocking spirals. The white design is actually created by the space left beneath the black paint, a sophisticated, negative design typical of the Tusayan region of the Hitsatisinom, or Puebloan culture. It is most common between about AD 1200 and 1300 from the Grand Canyon through northern Arizona and into the four-corners. Tusayan wares were widely traded throughout the Pueblo world. We have recorded other Tusayan wares on dozens of sites in Emery County, including Tusayan Black-on-White and Tusayan Orangeware and Polychrome, but this a rare design style in Fremont region of the northern San Rafael. But while the design is certainly Tusayan, the region that the pot was manufactured has yet to be determined. It does not exhibit the typical crushed sherd temper found in nearly all other Tusayan Black-on-White wares, and may have been made locally.

We constructed a new exhibit case in the museum gallery, and announced the discovery at the February CVAS meeting. If you haven't been the museum lately, stop by to see it! The exhibit features a photo show by museum photographer and Paleodude John Bird, and graphic design by our Public Relations and advertising guru Christine Trease. The pot and the radiocarbon-dated juniper pot rest are currently on display, although we are taking the pot on a road trip in a few weeks to extract samples of microscopic pollen, starch grains and phytoliths so we can find out what a Fremont woman stored or cooked in the vessel 830 years ago.....stay tuned for more info!

Assistant Registrar Barb Benson

Barb Benson, current president of the Castle Valley UFOP chapter, is the new assistant registrar/temporary collections manager at the museum. Barb is working on the accession and registration of more than 2300 artifacts from the Keith Hansen collection, including projectile points and bifaces, ground stone, pottery, animal hides, bone whistles, beads and tools, and wooden tools, which she also helped catalog and pack at the Hansen home prior to bringing to the museum. She is a lot of fun to work with and has brought a high level of competency and organization to collections, and has already mastered our NPS computer cataloging system.

Barb Benson (B²) at the "Gooseneck Site"

The Pilling Site

In March I was invited by Bud Pilling to give a talk about the Pilling Site at the Masonic Temple, and had the privilege of recounting the story of traveling to the site with the Pilling Family, recording the site for BLM, collecting tree-ring samples and dating the site of the famous Pilling Figurines.

The Pilling Figurine Exhibit in the Hall of Archaeology

Clarence Pilling was a rancher in Range Creek who discovered the Pilling Site in March, 1950, and this is the 60^th anniversary of his discovery. He brought the figurines to Geneve Oliver, who took them on a road trip to Dr. Neil Judd at the Smithsonian, and J. O. Brew and Noel Morss at the Peabody Museum of Harvard. The Pilling figurines became famous and were featured in several National Geographic articles, and one of the Papers of the Peabody Museum in the 1950s. They have been studied and exhibited since the 1950s in Price, Washington DC, Cambridge and Salt Lake City, and are probably the most well-known and well-traveled figurines of the Southwest.


	The Original Eleven Pilling Figurines Photo (photo courtesy of the Pilling Family):

Note the Elaborate Male Figurine, upper right, now missing.

When we recorded the site we cored one of the posts still set in adobe, of a small circular masonry structure near where the figurines were found, and obtained a tree-ring date of approximately AD 995. The cutting/harvest date may actually be a few years later, because although the log had "beetle gallery," indicating it was within a few rings of the bark, or exterior ring, the exact outside ring could not be determined on this core sample due to weathering-- thus it probably dates to circa AD 995 to 1000. Also found at the site were a small rock art panel and several artifacts. The small interior alcove where the Pilling Figurines were located appears to have collapsed due to natural erosion.

Bud Pilling, son of Clarence Pilling, at the Pilling Site.

The AD 995-1000 date on the Pilling Site place the construction of the structure, and probably the time the figurines were deposited, within the same time period as the majority of sites in Range Creek. Many of the pithouse villages, rock art and storage facilities, and nearly all of the cliff granaries, appear to have been built about 960 to 1000 years ago.

Hansen Collection

We are still cataloging and photographing and conducting conservation on the Hansen Collection, and are preparing an exhibit scheduled to open April 10 at 1 pm in the museum gallery. The opening is free and the public is invited, and we will have a short presentation and refreshments.