Current Archaeology in Kansas Number 5 2004 Contents Title and Author(s) Page Bluff Creek Revisited – Donald J. Blakeslee 1 A Note on an Isolated Middle Ceramic Pot from Harvey County, Kansas – Mark A. Latham 6 Six Obsidian Artifacts from the Kansas High Plains – Janice McLean 8 Preliminary Results of the 2004 Kansas Archeology Training Program at 14MP407 – C. Tod Bevitt 17 Kansas Archaeological Field School Investigations at the Caenen Site(14LV1083), Stranger Creek Valley, Northeastern Kansas – Brad Logan and Trever Murawski 24 Prehistoric Phase III Archeology Project Recently Completed by the Kansas State Historical Society – Christine Garst 33 Phase III Investigation at Site 14SN321 Sherman County, Kansas – Timothy Weston 35 Phase III Investigations of Two Sites on the Proposed Veterans’ Cemetery, Fort Riley – Donna C. Roper 42 Abstracts of Several Reports Recently Submitted to the Historic Preservation Office 45 Another Solomon River Clambake? Salvage Archaeology at 14ML1590 – Mark A. Latham 48 The Stauffer-Allison Collection – Donald J. Blakeslee 52 Lovewell Renaissance: Archaeological Investigations at Lovewell Reservoir, Jewell County, Kansas—2004 – Brad Logan 53 Radiological Examination of a Rifle and a Pair of Revolvers from a Native American Burial Site, 14KW310, in Southern Kansas – Jim D. Feagins 67 Excavations at the Meadowlark Cemetery, Manhattan – Jeremy W. Pye, Holly C. (H.C.) Smith, and Donna C. Roper 77 Bluff Creek Revisited Donald J. Blakeslee Wichita State University The Bluff Creek complex is one of the Wichita State University provided partial least well understood archaeological funding for a field school, so WSU became complexes of the Middle Ceramic Period. the lead institution for the project. Work on Bluff Creek began with a small excavation in the Dow Mandeville site (14HP1) conducted by students from Kansas University (Munsell 1961). Later, a student Wichita State University, Ron Gould, wrote a Master’s thesis (Gould 1975) based in part on a survey that located a number of related sites and in part on his analysis of material salvaged from a county road that cut across site 14HP5. His survey showed a fairly dense cluster of Bluff Creek sites near Anthony and a thinner scatter downstream, between Bluff City and Caldwell. Unfortunately, Gould did not specify the extent of his survey coverage, and we do not know whether other sites might lie upstream or downstream. In 1969 and Figure 1. Location of site 14HP5 and related 1988, two KATP digs investigated two Bluff sites Creek villages, uncovering remains of houses and other features (Berger 2003; Huhnke The salvage work was accomplished in 2000; Witty 1969). late May with the active cooperation of a number of institutions. Keith Custer, the Early in the spring of 2004, Tod Bevitt superintendent of public schools in Anthony, and Scott Brosowske discovered allowed the field crew to camp on the archaeological material eroding in a roadside elementary school grounds, and John ditch at site 14HP5 in Harper County (Figure McClure of the Harper County highway 1). They notified Bob Hoard, the State department provided use of their machine Archaeologist, who brought the issue to the shed for water screening. Jerry Keene, editor attention of the Kansas Antiquities of the Anthony Republican gave valuable Commission. State law gives the commission publicity to the project while not disclosing responsibility for preserving archaeological the exact location of the site, and Wynona sites on state, county and municipal land, but Mandeville, the landowner, allowed our crew unfortunately it makes no provisions for the to map the portion of the site that lay in her costs associated with salvaging threatened pasture. sites. The commission decided to sponsor a volunteer project, with the participation of Don Blakeslee was in charge of the field professional archaeologists, avocational school, but other professionals provided archaeologists, and students. Eventually, Bill valuable service. They include Bob Hoard, Bischoff, the Dean of Fairmount College at Martin Stein, and Jennifer Epperson of the Current Archaeology in Kansas Kansas State Historical Society, and analyzed at the Illinois State Geological Lauren Ritterbush of Kansas State University. Survey. Students who participated, some for credit and some as volunteers, include Alan Albers The results of the work indicate a (WSU), Marcia Meier (WSU), Norm Conley sizeable site on a ridgetop on the south side of (WSU), Sarah Meitl (KSU), Audrey Ricke Bluff Creek. The contour map (Figure 2) (WSU), MacKenzie Stout (WSU), Sydney includes only about two-thirds of the site, as Stout (WSU), and Brent Weeks (WSU). the field on the west side of the road Avocational archaeologists who spent time at contained a crop of mature wheat. A few the site include Don Henkle, Melanie Naden, cultural items were visible on the surface of and Gayla Corley. the pasture but were left in place, as per the landowner’s request. Their distribution gives In the field, Martin Stein used the an indication of the size of the site, as does historical society’s total station to prepare a the distribution of the surface material seen in contour map of the site, and Bob Hoard made the ditch on the west side of the road. The a controlled surface collection of the west landowner reported that the site did not ditch of the county road. That collection was extend very far into the (large) field on the made necessary by the large number of west side of the road. features found in the eastern ditch where the first investigation were made. A total of fifteen features were located there, and the week allotted to the fieldwork allowed for the excavation of only thirteen of them. The field crew first cleared the vegetation from the spots where archaeological material was visible, and then recorded the profile of the ditch slope and the surface extent of the individual features. Then, taking advantage of the roadside ditch, they cross-sectioned the features and removed the remaining fill up to the edge of the right-of-way. All of the fill from the features (about 4.5 tons) was waterscreened, with samples from each Figure 2. Map of 2004 investigations at feature reserved for flotation. 14HP5 About half of the waterscreening was Site 14HP5 was first investigated in 1967 done in the field and the rest was finished at and 1968, when the county road was the home of Brent Weeks of Wichita. improved. At that time, a crew from the Flotation was done by students from the field Kansas State Historical Society that included school at Wichita State University. The Tom Witty, F. A. Calabrese, Jim Marshall, collection from the site has been washed and and Tom Barr excavated a series of features cataloged, and the flotation samples are being exposed in the road and the ditches. They sorted. Bob Hoard paid for two radiocarbon found 27 features, including shallow basins, dates from his budget, and the samples were trash-filled pits and a few burials. Our work located portions of two of their excavation 2 Number 5, 2004 units along with fifteen new features. complex differs dramatically from Middle Hoard’s collection from the ditch on the west Ceramic complexes found further north in side of the road suggests that an equal number Kansas. One of the ways that it differs is in of features lie there as well, and the total the density of cultural material in the caches, record is of a dense concentration of cultural especially in the density of the pottery. An features. average of only 38 sherds per pit was found in our excavations, a number that includes even We excavated portions of thirteen the smallest of sherds. While the fact that the features, of which two were wide, shallow roadside ditch had destroyed portions of all of pits, one was a trench, and the rest were trash- the features means that the number should be filled storage pits. Of the two shallow pits, at least doubled to estimate the number that one appears to have been a shallow basin, were present originally, the numbers are still while the other may have been the edge of a low compared with those from Upper house floor. The trench appears to have been Republican and Solomon River phase sites. about a meter wide and a meter deep, and the contents consisted primarily of partially disarticulated bison bones at the very bottom of the trench. This is the second site at which a trench has been found, but the function of the trenches remains obscure. In both sites, the trenches lie inside the site, not at the perimeter as one would expect of a fortification moat. The trash-filled storage pits were all approximately a meter deep, but the ways in which they were cut by the roadside ditch left varying proportions of them intact. The best preserved, Feature F (Figure 3) is a bell- shaped cache pit that was filled with wood Figure 3. Cross section of Feature 5, a bell- ash and a variety of cultural items. Two other shaped trash-filled cache pit features appear to have been lined with clay, and one of them, Feature E, contains Not only is the number of sherds waterlain laminated silt layers above some of relatively low, but the number of stone flakes the cultural fill and below the rest. This is very high. At Waconda Lake, the three feature was apparently left open for a long largest site collections have sherd:chipped enough period to produce at least seven layers stone ratios of from 3:1 to 1:1, while at of silt. Since an open pit in a village that had 14HP5, the ratio is 1:10. This is a remarkable no artificial light would have been a safety difference that can be explained only in part hazard, the fact that the pit was left open for a by the low numbers of sherds.