News - " Amateur Archaeologists Seek Quarry "

[New Millennium]

Amateur Archaeologists Seek Quarry

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) -- They come from all corners of Kansas. Teachers,
carpenters, business people, ranchers, students, retired couples.

Most of them know a lot about Kansas. They know about the Wichita
Indians who peopled the prairie when the Spanish explorer Francisco
Vasquez de Coronado roamed up from Mexico in 1541. About Indian villages
and campsites, about old Pony Express stations and about forts long
abandoned by the U.S. calvary.

But they all want to know more. And this summer, they will get their
chance to learn about prehistoric rock quarries during a nine-day survey
in western Kansas.

The Kansas Anthropological Association and the Kansas State Historical
Society are sponsoring the June 7-15 survey as part of the Kansas
Archaeology Training Program.

Three professional archaeologists will lead more than 70 amateur
enthusiasts in a survey of the Saline and Smoky Hill rivers near
Quinter. Their quest: finding any sign of ancient campsites and
villages.

"We're learning things no one else knows," said Dick Keck, a Prairie
Village accountant who has been on several digs in the past 10 years.

"To come across a tool that someone has used 1,000 years ago is neat.
You put yourself in their shoes and imagine how they lived in the Kansas
prairie."

Whether professional or amateur, the searchers will live in tents or
motels, get down on their hands and knees, cook for themselves under the
great Western skies and pay their own way.

"All we have in common is an interest in history and archaeology," said
Virginia A. Wulfkuhle, public archaeologist for the Kansas State
Historical Society. "Other than that, the similarities kind of end."

Participants will scour the riversides looking for outcroppings of
petrified chalk deposits, sometimes called Smoky Hill jasper, a
caramel-colored rock that is easily chipped and turned into arrows and
tools. Indians used it over many centuries.

Searchers also will look for stone debris on the ground that might have
lingered for centuries.

"It's a little different than what we've done in the past," said Keck.
"This one will be more walking."

Keck said archaeologists spend most of their time on their hands and
knees during digs, in all kinds of weather.

"It can be cold and rainy," he said. "I've dug through frost, dug (in
temperatures) over 100 degrees."

Some people love the work, Wulfkuhle said. "Others find out that what
they always thought they wanted to do they really don't care for much at
all," she said.

The group's largest dig was in 1992 near Lindsborg, when a Wichita
Indian village was excavated. Wulfkuhle said there were 295 volunteers
on that one.

They found chain mail believed to have come from one of the members of
Coronado's expedition. The Spaniards might not have been in the village,
but they were in the vicinity, Wulfkuhle said.

They also found stone tools, animal bones, charred corn cobs, storage
pits and pottery shards.

In other summers, volunteers have excavated forts, a Pony Express
station and 19th-century ranches.

Before each summer's project, new participants take a half-day course on
the principles of archaeology at the Kansas State Historical Society.
Inexperienced diggers usually are paired with more experienced people.

Some volunteers work in the lab, where artifacts are cleaned, labeled
and readied for analysis.

The historical society offers KAA members a certification program
through a combination of hands-on experience and classroom work. Members
can be certified, for example, as basic or advanced archaeological crew
member and basic or advanced laboratory technicians. The process can
take several years.

But the field is where Keck and others learn about archaeology and what
life was like on the prairie in the distant past.

"The state gets a really good deal in getting a lot of archaeology done
for very little cost," Wulfkuhle said.