March 9, 2019
Most of my terribly onerous jobs at the Crane Festival involved hauling a loud speaker system on a bus and turning it on for the person leading the tour. Then I sat back and enjoyed the tour. My boss even pulled strings to get me on the Archeology Tour - she said I really needed to know about it.
Imagine my surprise when the bus turned into my yard and parked. I found that my little house on the prairie is on the edge of the Scott Mill site. I had already been wowed by the talk given by Meg Van Ness, the Region 6 archeologist. She said this site, identified in June 2009, documents over 10,000 years of use by native Americans and also holds the bones of several species of late Pleistocene animals, including giant bison, mammoth, camel, and horse. And it holds artifacts into the twentieth century. It is a huge site, comprising at least 250 acres.
I thought the most amazing thing collected from the site was a mammoth tooth. Later we visited the exact spot where it had been dug up. The tooth is now protected with a concrete edging and reinforcement in the root area.
This site has been studied and the surface cleared, but continuing wind erosion continues to uncover new artifacts.
And got to enjoy all this without EVEN hauling the speakers. There were three volunteers on this trip and I deferred to the other two. And what fun to think that I am to put another (micro) layer of history on the surface of this site.
This site is off limits to the public, except for when there are special guided trips to it. That is one of the main reasons, we know about it. Most such sites are kept secret to help preserve them from artifact hunters.
The festival ended on Sunday. The next morning saw me get 8 inches of snow which caused a power outage. But the mountains sure look pretty. I stayed in Alamosa that night and enjoyed the view of Mt. Blanca.
Most of my terribly onerous jobs at the Crane Festival involved hauling a loud speaker system on a bus and turning it on for the person leading the tour. Then I sat back and enjoyed the tour. My boss even pulled strings to get me on the Archeology Tour - she said I really needed to know about it.
Imagine my surprise when the bus turned into my yard and parked. I found that my little house on the prairie is on the edge of the Scott Mill site. I had already been wowed by the talk given by Meg Van Ness, the Region 6 archeologist. She said this site, identified in June 2009, documents over 10,000 years of use by native Americans and also holds the bones of several species of late Pleistocene animals, including giant bison, mammoth, camel, and horse. And it holds artifacts into the twentieth century. It is a huge site, comprising at least 250 acres.
I thought the most amazing thing collected from the site was a mammoth tooth. Later we visited the exact spot where it had been dug up. The tooth is now protected with a concrete edging and reinforcement in the root area.
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| Mammoth tooth - one twenty-eight |
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| We passed a field with about 2000 cranes feeding |
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| This is my house and work truck. The bus parked just behind where my truck usually parks |
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| Meg explaining the site to us |
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| Most of the people doing the archeology tour |
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| One of the flints we found on the site |
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| This was another artifact we found |
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| A flint knapper probably sat here and made a point. We found lots of his little chips |
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| What a flake looks like in situ |
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| This is a mano - the upper rock used to grind grains |
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| We found two points - this is one of them |
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| This is a fragment of a mammoth tooth |
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| Another view of the same tooth |
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| This is a glass top to a jar - it is pre world war I because it has turned purple due to the manganese dioxide used to keep it clear |
This site has been studied and the surface cleared, but continuing wind erosion continues to uncover new artifacts.
And got to enjoy all this without EVEN hauling the speakers. There were three volunteers on this trip and I deferred to the other two. And what fun to think that I am to put another (micro) layer of history on the surface of this site.
This site is off limits to the public, except for when there are special guided trips to it. That is one of the main reasons, we know about it. Most such sites are kept secret to help preserve them from artifact hunters.
The festival ended on Sunday. The next morning saw me get 8 inches of snow which caused a power outage. But the mountains sure look pretty. I stayed in Alamosa that night and enjoyed the view of Mt. Blanca.
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| An evening picture of cranes flying across Mt. Blanca |
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| Mount Blanca and the frozen pond at Alamosa - it thawed last Thursday |
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| Mt. Blanca from behind the Alamosa Visitor Center
On a personal note, I'm rushing to do and document our annual inspection of our fire extinguishers. I had to take a test to get certified to do this. And I'm working to complete a spread sheet of expected plants that bees visit, together with their bloom dates. I'll get to visit my daughter and grandson who will be visiting Colorado for spring break next week.
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