Stone pieces found on a hill above Walker, Minn., don't look like prehistoric tools, don't indicate the earliest human habitation in the state and don't even make the hill an archaeological site, the state archaeologist said Monday.
Mostly what was in an earlier post. But there are a few more tidbits:
Sue Mulholland of Duluth, an owner of an archaeological firm and president of the Minnesota Council for Archaeology, said of Anfinson's conclusion, "I think he's slamming the door a little too soon."
Some people in Walker, a county seat of about 1,100 people 190 miles north of Minneapolis, think the site could become a tourist attraction.
Errr. . . to see some glacial stratigraphy and a few rocks?
However, David Mather, the state's archaeologist for the National Register of Historic Places, who was involved with the Walker site, said most archaeologists he talked with felt there were some genuine artifacts, or items they did not feel comfortable dismissing.
But Mather added that "none of the artifacts are what we would call a museum piece, I suppose."
And:
The Walker City Council, which was to discuss Anfinson's report Monday night, has agreed to leave the site alone and access the community center from hilltop streets.
Mather said his office and the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Rural Development branch still believe the site should be preserved for further examination.
"We can professionally disagree," he said. "[But] if it's gone, it's gone forever, and all it will be is a question mark."
Probably a good idea.
4 comments:
I feel sorry for these people. I'm sure they are sincere, just like my brother in law who has a large collection of assorted rocks that he thinks are artifacts and tools of early Native American origin. They sort of, kinda of look like pounding tools (milling) and so on, except they have no marks to indicate being worked. They just have a general shape and heft to them. (And he is a research scientist, but not in archaeology.)
Who can say they are not?
Well, the jury is still out, and it's interesting that at least some professional archaeologists think that these putative artefacts might be real. It's just one of the problems in identifying a site by lithics alone - no other traces of human activity, such as fire-cracked rocks, or animal bones bearing butchery marks etc. have been found in this context.
I can quite understand why local people are keen for this to be proved as a genuine pre-Clovis site - such sites are extremely rare, and this would definitely put Walker on the world archaeology map.
Work will resume in the summer, and we can only wait and see what further research might yet yield - but for the time being, Minnesota State Archaeologist Scott Anfinson has given some fairly convincing explanations of why he thinks the artefacts might be geolithic rather than man-made.
This seems similar to the controversy over the Calico site, the one Leakey worked on. The contexts are similar, more or less: an alluvial fan vs. glacial outwash. The controversy there was over the authenticity of the artifacts as well. Although Walker doesn't appear to have 60,000 supposed artifacts. . . .
Much thought and research needed to be done before this site was ever exposed to the media or the public. Those in search of publicity and those who wanted to be fountains of knowledge jumped the gun and opened their mouths without the needed data to back up their claims.
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