Title

Archaeologial Artifact(s)

Description

Artifacts found during the 2017-2018 Pope County Archaeological Survey.
Forty items were found at this site, including ceramics (n=32), lithics (n=7), and faunal remains (n=1).
Ceramics include 3 rim sherds, 1 neck sherd, 2 shoulder sherds, 5 decorated body sherds, 18 other body sherds, and 3 spalls. Many of the sherds appear to represent a single ceramic type, one that is related to Plains Village ceramic traditions. Other ceramic types are also represented, but the sherds are fragmentary or worn and do not give a clear idea what other types might be present.The Plains-related type is best represented by two rims, and by a shoulder sherd and decorated body sherd that might be from the same vessel. The two rims conjoin. They indicate that the vessel has a very short, strongly curved neck that flares outward slightly at the lip. The lip is rounded. There is a series of closely-spaced diagonal (///) tool marks on the exterior part of the lip, each ca. 1 to 2 mm wide. The tool has a rounded edge. Striations along the length of the tool impressions suggest that the tool was drawn over rather than merely pressed into the lip. The shoulder sherd indicates that there is probably a sharp angle between the shoulder and upper body of the vessel. The orientation of the sherd is not entirely clear, but it is probably from the shoulder rather than the upper body. If this is the case, the shoulder thickens towards the base of the neck. The sherd preserves partial tool impressions, probably applied tothe angle between the shoulder and upper body. The shape of the impressions is not clear. The decorated sherd preserves parts of two trailed lines, probably converging to make a chevron or similar motif. The lines are shallow and ca. 2 mm wide. The neck of the vessel has a smooth surface. The shoulder sherd shows smoothed cordmarking, and the decorated sherd a smooth surface or partly-smoothed cordmarking. This suggests that the vessel initially had a cordmarked surface, and that the design field was smoothed prior to decoration. Other sherds also seem to represent this type. A second neck sherd has an angular junction between the vessel shoulder and upper body. This is decorated with diagonal (///) tool marks along one edge. These are shallow, ca. 10 mm long, and 2 to 3 mm wide. A second shoulder sherd also displays a sharp angle between the vessel shoulder and upper body. This has pentagonal tool impressions at the shoulder-body juncture. Another rim sherd has a slightly thickened lip; the lip is flat, and probably flares slightly. There are marks on lip (| | |), spaced ca. 7 mm apart. The type of mark is not clear, but is possibly a single cord impression. Diagonal (///) marks on the exterior surface, may also be single cord
impressions. These line up with the marks on the lip, and each lip-exterior pair could have been made by a single application of a cord. A decorated body sherd may be from the same vessel. This has a single impressed line running the length of the sherd, paralleling the broken edges. Again, the type of impression is not clear. If the marks on these sherds are single-cord impressions, the sherds would be typologically related to the single-cord impressed ware better represented at the nearby Barsness site. The surface of another body sherd displays a series of indistinct parallel lines, possibly cordmarking, crossed by a diagonal trailed line. A neck sherd with a fabric-impressed surface has a slight angle at the neck-shoulder junction. The typology of these sherds is unclear.

Lithics (n=7) included two Fat Rock Quartz flake tools, two Fat Rock Quartz bipolar cores, and one flake each of heat-treated Swan River Chert, a material belonging the Western River Gravels group, and quartzite. One of the flake tools has a very regular edge with at least some degree of bifacial retouch. It might be a section from a broken biface, although it is hard to be sure because flake scars are hard to read on this raw material. The other flake tool is made on a section of pebble that was split using a bipolar technique. One curved edge has nominal bifacial retouch, while the other edges are steeply angled and cortical.

The faunal sample consists of a single fish bone