- Well good morning, everyone.
I'm Doctor Jason LaBelle,
Associate Professor of
Anthropology at CSU,
and Director of the Center
for Mountain and Plains Archeology
and I welcome you to
the Fossil Creek site.
This is an archeological site
in Southeastern Fort Collins
that we've been working on since 2010,
and leading excavations
with the CSU Field School
at the site since 2016.
So in the coming minutes
today we'll be walking
you through the site, showing
you some of the things
that we are doing at the site
in terms of our research,
talking to some of our
CSU Field School students
to get their first hand
perspectives of what it's like
here to be a student during
the Archeology Field School.
The site's pretty exciting
because it represents
over 12,000 years of
occupation by ancient peoples
in Northern Colorado.
The portion that you
will be focusing on today
in the coming minutes is
a component that dates
to about 1100 years ago that represents
some of the first
attempts at using pottery
in Northeastern Colorado,
using small little bow and arrow points
and processing small games, such as deer
and other kinds of plants
that they're utilizing
in their everyday diets.
So as we walk through, feel
free to ask us questions
or give us comments, feedback.
We'd love to hear from
you and we look forward
to showing you the site today.
- Hello I'm Kelton Meyer.
I'm a third year graduate student
at Colorado State University
and with the Center for
Mountains and Plains Archeology.
Today I'll be talking to
you about sites photography.
This is something that archeologists use
as a multi disciplinary
approach to try to answer
questions about context and
behavior of peoples of the past.
At the Fossil Creek site we
have four stratigraphic units
that we identify here.
The first one is gonna be
this topsoil and plow zone.
This is an area where a lot
of the artifacts that we find
are heavily disturbed from
modern or historic activity.
But what we're really trying
to find is intact sediment.
We've identified this really
dark anthroprogenic soil
or cultural soils that humans of the past
have aided in creating.
And this is where we find
the majority of our artifacts
as well as the contact of our features.
This lower unit, this tan
unit here, is non-cultural,
so we started this bound
this cultural occupation
at Fossil Creek.
Marie Taylor is going
to be talking to you all
about the presents of features at the site
which comes at the contact
of that non-cultural level.
- Hi, I'm Marie Taylor.
I'm an incoming graduate student, CSU.
So, I'll be talking to
you today about hearths.
Essentially, a hearth
is just an enclosed area
that would have been
filled with rock or wood
or some kind of fuel to provide
a heat and light source.
And all that's left here
today, 1100 years later,
is this oxidized soil color,
the red you can see clearly here.
And this is a great example
of a bell shaped hearth
and we've dug out the rest of it.
There was some rocks at the bottom
and Laura will tell you
later about the samples,
but hearths are special
because they're immovable
unlike the lithics or charcoal
or pottery that can spread
across the site due to erosion
or other bioturbation.
Hearths stay here, so
since this fire was stoked
this oxidized rim has been here
and so we can really
get a good understanding
of what people did around these hearths.
These fireplaces, and so
we can see what people
had ate in the past, how they cooked it,
and kinda what other activities
were involved around that.
So we can go over here
and Laura will show us
kinda the process of how we
get our radiocarbon dates
which is also another
very important feature
of what hearths can tell us.
- Good morning, I'm Laura.
So, this was the unit
that I was working on
and yesterday, at the
very bottom of my level,
I came down this hearth that
Maria was just talking about.
So, we really, when
we're looking for them,
wanna find that oxidized
ring that you can see
if you get this kinda wet.
Oh goodness.
It really likes to pop out.
(water squirting)
And you can see it along
there too really well
and it's also on this side.
So as we start to excavate those,
the layers that Kelton
was talking about earlier
with the very bottom
of that cultural layer
is where the top of the
hearths usually start.
This is right where we
were expecting to find it
and then as we start to
excavate, as we've done,
we start taking these
out in two liter pieces.
To find all the charcoal and rocks
that are gonna be in there.
So when we're ready to start
mapping something into there
and finding out exactly
where this is in space,
I'm gonna turn you over
to Paul and Jessie.
- Hi, my name is Paul Buck
and I'm an incoming graduate student.
- My name is Jessie.
I'm an incoming transfer
student coming in as a junior.
- And what Jessie's holding
is called a prism rod
and we use it with our total
station mapping device.
You might recognize it
from a construction site,
or from seeing surveyors.
And what this allows us
to do is to map artifacts
and features with even
submillimeter accuracy
on both a horizontal and a vertical plain.
And that is useful for us as a context,
the relation between
artifacts with one another
and with features as well
as with the (mumbles)
and allow us to interpret
our data in a whole new way.
- So I'm gonna head
over and help Laura out
to take a shot and figure out
exactly where everything is
while Paul heads on up to
shoot us in.
(wind blowing)
- So how this whole station
works is I'll focus in
on the reflecting prism that
Jessie's holding for us.
- [Jessie] Level
(wind blowing)
- And this focus.
And I'll use this device, shooting,
which will send an
infrared light wavelength
which will then bounce
off of the reflector,
you're good, and that
will calculate for us
the distance.
So now we have that point
on both a horizontal
and plain with accuracy to the millimeter
and we can record it on this data logger
and put it into programs like ArcGIS
which we can then use for spacial analysis
and here we have an example of the maps
we can make with this data.
You'll see all these other mapped items
from our third week of our work out here.
Next we'll go look at the
next part of the process
which is the initial processing of the
soil that we removed from the site
and that's called dry screening.
So here we have Maddie and Alexa
who will tell us a little
bit about this process.
- Hey, I'm Maddie.
So I'm going into my junior year
at CSU studying anthropology.
- And I'm Alexa Wallburg and I'm a junior.
- So what we have here is we
take these buckets of the dirt
that we've dug up from those
holes that you've seen around
and we screen them through
an eighth of an inch screen.
So what you'll just see
here is the big woosh
which is pretty satisfying once
you get all that stuff out.
So once you have most of
this dry dirt come out,
we move on to what Alexa
has right here which is the
smaller bits where you're actually
able to find the artifacts.
- So here's some examples
of what we have found,
flakes and pottery.
And after we're done dry screening,
we'll put 'em in these bags
and then we'll take them back to the lab
and water screen them and find more stuff.
- Hi, I'm Colt Johnson.
I'm a third generation ram.
Let's go CSU!
And I'm going into my
junior year here at CSU.
What I got here is a
piece of pottery in a bag
and all I just want to
show is how much detail
we put into it to map out
where it is, where it came from
just to get the, I guess, ethnicity of the
preserving the artifacts.
And so, right in here
we got a cord pottery,
which is a little piece
of pottery that is made
by putting cords across it
to increase surface area
for heating the food inside it.
It's like a giant crock pot almost
about the size of a five gallon bucket.
- Hi guys, my name is Amber Zubernaught.
I am a senior Anthropology student
and I want to show you
what was used at this site
and similar sites for plant processing.
So we have a ground stone
or nether stone right here
and a hand stone right here
and you can see the
smoothed over beveled edge
and you would use to
grind plant matter on here
and process it for consumption.
- My name is Jessie again
and I have a projectile point to show you
or an arrowhead.
This was found at the site,
I think, in the winter
just on the surface and I've
also got a pre-form of that
so this is what it looks like.
If you can imagine, more
of a point on the end
this is what it looks like
before they put all of the
notches and the serrating on
the edge like they have here.
- And I just have some
other variety of artifacts
that were found at the site.
So we have some samples of pottery here,
a drill, and some other
variety of projectile points.
- So on behalf of all
the CSU students here,
(laughing)
- [Maddie] Anyway, so we've
learned a lot in this class.
It's probably one of the most
enriching classes I've ever
taken at CSU just because
of things that we're doing.
This is actually the history of this site,
so what we find will tell
the story of these people
that lived here and
that's really beautiful.
- I'm a transfer student, so
I've only been going here,
this is my second semester
and it's just nice to
finally be doing something that
is related to what I want to do in life.
- Yeah, I'm Ray.
I just graduated from CSU's
History program with a Masters
and coming in as a first year PHD student.
Field school last year
is really, probably,
the reason that got me to make the
transition from History to
Anthropology and Archeology.
It's an exceptional experience
to what you can come out here
and put your hands in and
see the tangible results
of our human history here
in Fort Collins in the last
1000 years or more.
- Let's try that again.
So on behalf of all of
the CSU students here,
all the CSU alumni and any
of our supporting people,
we just wanna thank you
so much for all the effort
and support of the CSU Field School.
And we really hope to
continue and learn more
and do more research and
so thank you very much.
- Thank you!
- [Everybody] Go Rams! Woo!
