Title

Archaeological Artifacts

Description

Artifacts found during the 2017-2018 Pope County Archaeological Survey. Fifty-nine items were found at this location.

Lithics (n=8) included a small triangular projectile point of Fat Rock Quartz, two Fat Rock Quartz flakes, three flakes and one piece of shatter of heat-treated Swan River Chert, one Red River Chert flake, and one Prairie du Chien Chert flake. The point is a small triangular form, typical of the Late Prehistoric period; no specific type name is proposed. The length is 20 mm, width 21 mm, and maximum thickness 7 mm. The tip is sharp, the sides strongly concave, and the base straight. The greatest width is at the base. The greatest thickness is mid-blade on the base-to-tip axis, but offset to one side of the blade on a side-to-side axis. The tip is offset from the centerline away from the thick side. The edge angle is somewhat blunt on one face along the thicker side, where the flintknapper apparently had trouble thinning one face. The central part of the base edge is blunted where about a millimeter of the thin edge is broken off, leaving a narrow facet 8 mm long. This may have been done deliberately to facilitate hafting, or it may be damage incurred where the base was in contact with the haft. In the latter case, the width of the blunted area should provide a close approximation of the width of the haft. Note that individual flake scars are hard to read with fat quartz.
 
Ceramics (n=11) included one rim sherd; one decorated, smooth-surfaced body sherd; three cordmarked body sherds; three fabric-impressed body sherds; two smooth-surfaced body sherds; and one body sherd with an undetermined surface texture. All were grit tempered. The rim is described below. The decorated sherd has two partial shallow, parallel trailed lines. These may be decorative or may be related to manufacture.

The rim is 47 mm tall, 75 mm wide, and 6 to 7 mm thick. The orientation is unclear. The vessel may have a short curved neck with a flared lip, or alternatively a contracting neck with a vertical lip. Neck and shoulder are very close in thickness. It is decorated with single cord impressions. The motif is probably incomplete and the bottom parts missing. There are diagonal (///) single cord impressions in groups on parts of the lip. It looks as though the impressions may have been evenly spaced across the whole lip but that some were largely smoothed over. These are followed by horizontal single cord impressions on the neck, spaced 3 to 4 mm apart and forming about eight lines. The ends of cord impressions can be seen, and it looks like the cord was wrapped in a spiral around the neck until the end of the cord is reached. The cord was then repositioned and wrapped in another, lower spiral around the neck. The end of one application and beginning of the next do not precisely align. In a fresh excavation break, it looks like the clay might have been folded over to the exterior of the rim and the lip then finished, or alternatively that a thin strip of clay was applied to the exterior prior to finishing. This rim does not match any formally defined ceramic type commonly used in Minnesota.

Faunal remains (n=38) included 22 avian bone fragments, five of them charred; one fragment of a mammalian tooth; 12 fragments from unidentified medium to large size mammals, most likely from long bones and five burned or charred; one fragment from an unidentified small mammal; and one other mammalian bone fragment.

In addition, two pieces of charcoal were collected. These come from an apparent feature context, although the nature of the feature is not clear without further excavation.