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Dig
Continued from Page 7
“When I first got out here, and
slept out in the field for the first time,
I couldn’t believe the stars,” he said.
“I’ve lived in a city all my life — I
didn’t know you could see so many.”
Wiehn scanned the small buttes
across the horizon, squinting against
the glare of the mid-morning sun.
“I don’t know if I could do this as a
career, but it’s definitely been worth it.”
* * *
Back at the bonebed, David Rapson
looked eagerly into the pit before him.
The professor of archeology at the
University of Wyoming has been work
ing at the Hudson-Meng Site for the last
three summers. He has overseen most
of the excavation since 1991.
And he is still doing it now.
The student in the pit gingerly re
moved the bison bone from it’s rest
ing place in the earth. Rapson men
tioned something about the shape and
length of the bone, pointing at a small
protrusion on the bone’s surface. The
student nodded, carefully labeled the
bone and put it away.
His lecture about the site is techni
cal but warm; he is obviously passion
ate about his work, and wants others
to feel that way as well.
Rapson explained that the bonebed,
which could contain over 1,000 com
plete bison skeletons, is the largest
natural death site in the country. There
has been nothing like it before, and
I may not ever be again.
As Rapson looked out at the sheds
covering the exposed bone sites, he
did not see a hot and dusty tomb for an
extinct species: he saw an ancient
plain brimming with life.
Huge Bison antiquous, almost 10
percent larger than modern-day Bison
bison and sporting longer, straighter
horns, roamed these plains, moving
wherever food allowed.
And following them was a tribe of
Paleoindians.
Rapson doubted it was Indians that
• killed this herd, however. There is too
' much evidence that states otherwise.
He said a prairie fire, or some other
| natural event, killed this large herd
I 10,000 years ago.
The mission to find out the truth
I began in 1991 for Rapson. He was
| asked to help re-excavate the site by
| Larry Todd, an adjunct professor of
archeology at Colorado State University.
There had been the discovery of
| possible human occupation at the site,
i which had been originally excavated in
I 1971 by Larry AgenbroadfiomChadion
* StateUniversity. For Rapson, the chance
I to piece together ancient history was
I enough to make him commit his sum
■ mers for the next three years.
“It was in all the books that Hudson
I Meng was a kill site, that Indians
I wiped out this herd somehow and
I used them for food and supplies,”
i Rapson said. “It seemed strange
I though, so we decided to have another
| look.”
Now the truth is starting to come to
MOVIES ON THE GREEN
RESCHEDULED!!!
Due to inclement weather earlier this summer
the following films have been rescheduled for...
Dial M For Murder August 7
Reality Bites August 24
_ Movies start at dusk (about 9:30 pm)
"v':"bn the green space north of the Nebraska Union
CoSponsored by
University Program Council & Mary Riepma Ross Film Theater
Matthew Waite/DN
Work at the Arner site is a speculation game. Here, piano Circo works on his one-foot square hole
the students are using to find a pit hearth, an oven in the ground.
light.
Rapson said there was evidence of
a tribal occupation of the site, any
where from five to 50 years after the
herd’s death. Why the tribe decided to
stop there and whether the bison’s
presence was a factor were anyone’s
guess.
“These were two close, separate
events,” Rapson said. “It’s not strange
that people would live here, but it is
interesting that we have evidence of
two separate species right on top of
each other.”
Rapson said it was unknown who
the descendants of the Paleoindians
might be, but it was clear they were
very different than the tribes that de
veloped a horse-based culture after
European contact.
“Who these people were and what
killed these bison may always be a
mystery, but it’s not important,”
Rapson said. “What matters is that
they have both left behind things that
tell us what their world was like.”
* * *
In the middle of nowhere, music
played.
It was The Rolling Stones’ “You
Can’t Always Get What You Want.”
For Kat Geiger, it is the truth.
Climbing a mesa in the middle of a
small valley, the UNL junior anthropol
ogy major eagerly awaited the results of
her modem pit hearth experiment.
With her instructor and two other
students, Geiger helped unearth a sack
of potatoes that had been baking in the
ground for 16 hours.
“I hope this worked,” she said. She
pointed to a small mound of charred
vegetation. “Our yams didn’t turn out
too well.”
She reached in the hot burlap sack,
fished out a potato, cut it and hesi
tantly took a bite.
She winced and swallowed, turned
to her instructor and said, “Done, but
not enough.”
LuAnn Wandsnider, a UNL assis
tant professor of anthropology and
director of the UNL field school,
smiled at Geiger and said three words.
“Maybe next time.”
It is Wandsnider’s third year of
research on the Grasslands. Much like
her associates at the bonebed, she
wants to find out the truth.
But she is not interested in bison,
or the habits of 10,000-year-old In
dian tribes. Her research is much more
closer to the present-day.
The tribes she studies are only 2,000
years old, if even that.
“What I want to do out here is
discover what these tribes did and
how they operated,” she said. “A lot
of that traditional knowledge has been
lost by modem people, and we’d like
to find it out for ourselves.”
The “we” is Wandsnider and her
students. The field school is a chance
for interested students to help
Wandsnider learn more about ancient
people, while helping the scientific
community and enriching their own
lives.
“We’ve got a great group of kids
out here,” she said.
“We always do; they all want to learn
and help out, and they all think the
sacrifices are worth the benefits.”
The field school is funded through
summer sessions and the Nebraska
National Forest. The students pay tu
ition for nine credit hours, then take a
week of class, spend six weeks in the
field and return for another week of
ciass.
The final week in the field is upon
them.
“These kids work hard,”
Wandsnider said. “It’s boring work
sometimes, especially when you don’t
find any goodies, but in the end, all of
them have said they feel it’s been
worth it.
‘To them, and to me, archaeology is
truth. That’s what matters to all of us.”
Wandsnider followed Geiger and
her friends down off the mesa, into a
valley that had once been a river that
sustained an Indian tribe thousands of
years ago.
* * *
At 3 p.m. the UNL students return
from their site. They are hot, dirty and
tired.
Normally they would take naps,
play volleyball, read or just talk, but
tonight is a little different.
Tonight they celebrate their final
week in the field.
A few of them pick up large plastic
bags laying on the ground and walk to
a row of wooden partitions set up on
the far end of camp — close to their
small community of “Little Lincoln.”
The bags are solar showers, spe
cially-treated bags filled with water
and left out in the sun during the day
to heat me water.
It is a refreshing experience for them,
to be sure, but is soon delayed by the
pincer-like movement of a wall of storm
clouds closing in on the small camp.
Soon hail falls and rains beats down
on the tent community, but it is not
enough to dampen the spirits of the
group. Even as it rains, the students
eat buffalo roast and laugh, talking
about all the things they have done.
It is a community; a warm, safe
place in the midst of cold weather and
a cruel environment.
A west wind blows across the camp,
clearing a place in the clouds and
stopping the rain. A rainbow appears,
signalling the return of the sunshine.
There are many different people in
this group. At one end of the field, ,
Dan Paxton, a sophomore general stud
ies major, tells stories about his time
in the Gulf War.
/vi a iaoie near me Kiienen, jau
Peterson, a volunteer worker from Las
Crucas, N.M., tells about the four other
digs she has been on or will be a part of.
Over by the volleyball net, Koji
Oyama, a Japanese student, talks about
studying archeology in Japan.*
Wandsnider leaves her place at a
picnic table inside the kiosk at the
edge of camp and walks outside. It has
started to sprinkle again — the clouds
are closing in again, this time much
thicker and darker.
But she does not run for cover, and
neither does anyone else.
She looks up at the clouds and
jokingly says she and her crew may
have to bail out their hearths the next
morning.
“This is the most rain we’ve had in
a long time,” she says. “I’m sure
everyone’s going to enjoy it while
they can.” . *
Wandsnider walks to her van to get
some notes, stopping at the door and
pickingupapieceofpaper on the ground.
She looks at it thoughfully for a
moment and says, “You know, we
look at people’s garbage to find out
how they lived. Garbage doesn’t lie.”
She drops the piece of paper in her
pocket, gets her notes and heads back
to camp.
“It’s funny when you think about
it,” she said. “In a couple thousand
years, some other camp may be right
here, trying to figure out what we
were doing.”