Archaeologists Explain Significance Of The Walker Site (Minnesota)

by Molly MacGregor, Pilot Contributor
The Pilot-Independent
Last Updated: Wednesday, January 24th, 2007 05:28:25 PM

Archaeologists dug down about two meters. The 20-some tools were found between 20 and 30 centimeters below the surface.

If you are puzzling about news of an archaeological find at the City of Walker's Tower Avenue project, then you should meet Matt Mattson. He's a volunteer who helped a team of archaeologists uncover what might be the oldest intact site of human activity on two continents.

He describes the 15,000-year-old landscape that surround the site as if he is just back from a visit. "This place was an oasis. Not like we think of an oasis, but a place that was relatively dry and habitable, and surrounded by walls of ice," he said. Thor Olmanson is director of the Leech Lake Heritage Sites program and is the project's principal investigator. He is understandably more cautious in describing the site, especially since "we are in the early stages of site material and landform analysis," he said. This fall, he and David Mather, National Register Archaeologist for the state's Historic Preservation Office, invited geologists, soil scientists, fellow archaeologists and other scientists to investigate the site. "As the natural response is skepticism, everyone who came was ready to debunk the site," said Olmanson. "And, so far, they have left convinced that this is something different, something that needs to be looked at more closely" he said.
Visiting scientists included soil scientists Grant Goltz, from Soils Consulting, Mike Lieser from the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service (accompanied by Richard Schossow, Walker SWCD), Howard Hobbs, with the Minnesota Geological Survey, Kate Pound, from St. Cloud State University, and Stephen and Susan Mulholland, of the Duluth Archaeology Center.
The Mulhollands collected soil samples from the site to search for microscopic evidence of plant materials (phytoliths), which may help to reconstruct the early site environment.

Until around 11,000 years ago, much of Minnesota was covered with glaciers, and had been for nearly two million years.
There were four major glacial advances across the state. During the last glacial period, what is now north central Minnesota was a "collision point" for several glacial lobes, from the northeast, the north, and the northwest.
As the glaciers began to recede, approximately 15,000 years ago, an ice-free "oasis" developed in this part of the state. There was an access from the southeast to this relatively stable environment which was habitable at least part of the year, although surrounded by glaciers.
It was a dynamic environment, with frequent shifts in the landscape as drainage patterns became established.

The ancient people visiting the site near Walker probably consisted of extended family groups, often up to 15 individuals, Olmanson explained.
They selected certain types of stones, flaked off just enough from the pebbles and cobbles to make sharp tools. They used the tools to prepare plants for food as well as the animals that they had killed or scavenged.
Organic materials they used, such as bone, wood, and fibers, have not survived. The glaciers around them washed out rock and soil debris as the surface melted.
These deposits settled out and formed distinct layers — "a dense soil stratum of sand, coarse gravel and stone cobbles," Olmanson wrote in his October summary report of the excavations. This dense lens lies beneath today's land surface and effectively capped or "encapsulated" the debris that the group of hunters left behind.
After the glaciers melted, the area became dry and warm. Winds deposited fine sand atop of the glacial materials. Over the centuries, the debris left at the site was covered, and left intact, until it was discovered by chance.

The layers of windblown materials and then the deeper layer of stone and gravel literally sealed the site, protecting it "from intrusions of most rodents — subject primarily to those intrusions imposed by tree roots, industrious children, ever-curious archaeologists, and urban development," Olmanson wrote in the report.

Because no organic materials, such as bone, appear to have survived in the acidic soils at the site, conventional carbon dating of the site is not possible.
The preliminary dating of the site is based on the location of the stone tools within the glacial deposits.

Future work should include use of other absolute dating methods are possible, recommended Colleen Wells, field director for the Leech Lake Heritage Sites program. Wells proposes using a dating technique known as Optically Stimulated Luminescence (OSL) which measures the last time that buried sand grains were exposed to sunlight.

The site can be preserved if the proposed extension of Tower Avenue south of the site — an area currently being used as a road, Olmanson said.

"I would assume moving the road is possible," confirmed Ben Brovold, vice-president of the Walker Area Community Center. "The community center would have to reconfigure our parking spaces and retention ponds, but it could be done.
This site will not stop or hurt the community center in any way," he added. "It can be a terrific thing for our project, and something I think we can incorporate into the community center. This could be a huge benefit to Walker."

Options for the site are the topic of an 11 a.m. meeting Friday, at the Walker Fire Hall.

Representatives of the Minnesota State Historic Preservation Office, the Leech Lake Heritage Sites Crew will meet with the City of Walker and Walter Area Community Center.

The site might have gone undiscovered. Because the Walker Area Community Center received a federal grant to build, an archaeological survey was required. The first survey was simply a walk over the 10-acre building site, plus some shovel tests.
The team identified a formation that looked like a "pit house" which sat in an unusual location and was similar to temporary houses built during the fur trade period in the 18th and 19th centuries.

In a second, more intensive investigation, archaeologists determined that the "pit house" was really the remains of a child's fort.
They found several "artifacts" from the early 1960s, including a cap gun. However, in "bottoming out" the site, they found some materials suggestive of stone tools and kept digging. "A deeply buried, intact, sealed component site, situated in this geomorphological context, clearly represents a rare property type in a poorly understood context," Olmanson's report summarized.
The site is important because it is in an unusual location, high above the current level of Leech Lake, because it is intact and sealed, and because there is no "context" for the site — that is, there are no other known sites for comparison that have been identified from this early time period in Minnesota.

The working hypothesis has been that the North and South American continents were populated by people crossing the Bering land bridge (which is now the Bering Strait) no earlier than 12,000 years ago.
This site suggests that people were in North America thousands of years earlier, as the glaciers continued to advance and recede. The Walker site may be similar in age to a village site at Monte Verde, near Chile's southern tip.
It was 1976 when archaeologist Tom Dillehay, then at the University of Kentucky, started working at Monte Verde, on Chile's southern coast and claimed that people lived there 12,500 years ago.
After more than 20 years of work, his claims have been accepted by the scientific community, thus complicating the long-held theory of when humans first crossed the Bering Strait.

Olmanson, Wells and Mattson will discuss results of their work at a forum at WHA High School Auditorium at 7 p.m. Feb. 8. They will share a presentation they are preparing about the site for the Council of Minnesota Archaeology.

Just as archaeologists visualize the past, the discovery of the "Walker oasis" might inspire imaginations about how this archaeological discovery can change Walker in the next 25 years: The Walker Area Community Center has just completed its new Cultural Center, including a public library and museum for the Cass County Historical Society, located just across the road from the archaeological site.
Visitors start their tour at the center, where local art students created dioramas of the Walker Oasis as it looked 15,000 years ago. From the center, the visitor can stroll through the site, along a path that winds through the excavation and then descends into the development of houses and shops located on "Glacier Terrace" below the site.

In the excavating pits, a full crew of archaeologists, geologists and field staff are working. This year, a group from Oxford University is visiting.
Twelve lucky people were selected through annual lottery to help the working archaeologists continue the excavation of the site. This year’s winners submitted their bids two or three years earlier and stay at local resorts for their three-weeks on the dig.
The Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe still manages the program, which added a crew of high school students in 2008.

The International Archaeological Society has just concluded its first North American meeting in Walker, where a series of papers on the Walker Oasis — as the site became known — were the heart of the event.
The 500-plus members spent five days in workshops, conferences and touring the event, scheduled to coincide with the town's annual fall celebration, Walker Mammoth Days — changed from "Ethnic Fest" in 2009.

Highlight of the conference were posters prepared by the Leech Lake Magnet School and University, Minnesota’s first high school and college located in the same facility. High school students have the opportunity to work side by side with visiting scientists from archaeology programs around the world. The school was created when ongoing budget shortfalls threatened the existing public school.

Sensing an opportunity, the school board created a school with a rigorous academic curriculum that uses the local geology and archaeology to educate students in the science, math, language, history and social studies.
The school also developed vocational programs in robotics, manufacturing, graphics and mapping that support the ongoing work at the site.

This posting is actually directed to everyone who has questions about the site...

Why don't you people wait for the official results from the RESEARCHERS who actually did the work? Relying on the media to present acurate data is beyond irresponsible. We all know that sensationalism sells, and that's what the media plays on. They have to sell a story. For everybody's information, I was a researcher involved in the project, and I can tell you all that the last thing we wanted was for the media to release the story before we completed our analysis. Everybody should take this into consideration before they start attacking the work they know nothing about. The three principals involved in this project have combined experience of over 60 years. We are not "enthusiasts" (whatever that means) but rather professionals, and in fact the reason the story was released by the press is because we have the support of numerous well-respected archaeologists, glacial geologists, soils scientists, and geologists in the state. If you want to know what is really going on with this site, wait for the professionals (me and my colleagues) to present our findings in an official report. Until then, be patient.

Why don't you people wait for the official results from the RESEARCHERS who actually did the work? Relying on the media to present acurate data is beyond irresponsible. We all know that sensationalism sells, and that's what the media plays on. They have to sell a story. For everybody's information, I was a researcher involved in the project, and I can tell you all that the last thing we wanted was for the media to release the story before we completed our analysis. Everybody should take this into consideration before they start attacking the work they know nothing about. The three principals involved in this project have combined experience of over 60 years. We are not "enthusiasts" (whatever that means) but rather professionals, and in fact the reason the story was released by the press is because we have the support of numerous well-respected archaeologists, glacial geologists, soils scientists, and geologists in the state. If you want to know what is really going on with this site, wait for the professionals (me and my colleagues) to present our findings in an official report. Until then, be patient.

Good advice, and welcome to FR.

Coyoteman (also a professional archaeologist)

Retracing the footprints of time
by Steve Sandford
September 9, 1996
web archive version
Direct radiocarbon dating of the Calgary site is not possible because the ancient artifacts were not found in conjunction with organic matter, such as bones or decayed plant matter, which is necessary for such testing. Absent such verification, Prof. Young dismisses the find. For one thing, he says, the artifacts are so simple they could merely be naturally-occurring rocks; he says that most informed scientists are doubtful they are tools. And even if they are tools, he adds that there is no way to be sure that they were originally situated where they were found under the gravel, since the site has served as an exposed gravel pit for the last 100 years. Comments Prof. Young: "Any dude could have put that rock there."
Ancient stone tools chip away date of early humans' arrival
by Margaret Munro
National Post
Jan 16 1999
web archive version
Recently, Dr. Chlachula and his colleagues have discovered three more sites containing what they believe are preglacial stone tools. One set of choppers and scrapers, described in the current edition of The Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences, was found in a gravel pit near the town of Grimshaw in northern Alberta. The other tools were unearthed last summer at two locations west of Lethbridge. All of them, says Dr. Chlachula, indicate that humans roamed through the Prairies between 20,000 and 40,000 years ago... Dr. Richard Morlan, curator of paleo-environmental studies at the Canadian Museum of Civilization in Hull, Que., says he has no reason to doubt Dr. Chlachula. Few people in the world, says Dr. Morlan, can match the 36-year-old researcher's expertise. Professor Nat Rutter, the former head of geology at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, agrees, noting that Dr. Chlachula has three PhDs and extensive field experience in both old world and new world archaeology... Prof. Rutter, at the University of Edmonton, also has much confidence in his research skills. "Jiri's work embarrassed a lot of other people," he says, because it suggests that Canadian archaeologists have been looking in the wrong place for human artifacts and they should be hunting underneath glacial deposits. "They may not admit it," says Prof. Rutter, "but they're all out there looking now."

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