By Unsie Zuege

A Carver County woman is hoping her land will be recognized as an important archeological site and that it will be preserved under the permanent protection of the Archeological Conservancy. If her property is so designated, the conservancy could purchase the title to her land, allowing her to continue living on it, and create a perpetual archeological preserve.

A representative from the Archeological Conservancy visited the property near Norwood Young America last week, upon the recommendation of Patricia Emerson, head of archeology at the Minnesota Historical Society.

Three weeks ago Emerson and Kent Bakken, an archeologist and teaching assistant at the University of Minnesota, reviewed an extensive collection of items — including points (arrowheads), scrapers, axes, drills, scrapers other stone tools — reportedly found on the property.Both Emerson and Bakken said they believe the collection includes authentic artifacts from the Paleoindian era, about 10,000 to 12,000 years ago.

Previous finds

It wouldn’t be the first time an ancient artifact has been discovered in the county. In 2001, a mammoth tooth was discovered at the Wm. Mueller & Sons gravel pit in Carver, and donated the Carver County Historical Museum where it is on display. Later, another mammoth tooth and fragments of a tusk were also pulled from the pit.

In 2004, Beth Ahern of Chanhassen and her daughter found a black shiny rock on a hiking trip near their home. They eventually learned from a state archeologist that it was a dart point called Matanzas, possibly dating between 1,000 to 3,000 B.C.

While it might be hard to imagine today, the 60-mile radius around Lake Minnetonka was a frequent and productive area for Paleoindians, according to Bakken. The Minnesota River and connecting waterways, and Lake Minnetonka provided a rich source of food, transportation, and with the receding Ice Age glaciers, plenty of rocks with which to make tools.

Archeologists Kent Bakken of the University of Minnesota and Patricia Emerson of the Minnesota Historical Society examine Paleoindian artifacts.

Collection 

The Norwood Young America woman, who doesn’t want to be identified in an effort to protect her privacy and her property, has more than two dozen display cases of her finds. They’re organized by where they were found — nearby hillsides, former lakeshores and rivers.

According to Bakken, that these items have been carefully catalogued by location is important. “Without provenance it’s just a box of rocks and points,” Bakken said. “If we know where it came from, we can get a bigger picture of who lived here, where they lived, how they lived and how it relates to the early history of this area.”

Three weeks ago, Emerson and Bakken spent the afternoon with the woman, examining her collection. Bakken used a jeweler’s loupe, and examined many of the points and stone tools, taking them to the window to better analyze the stone and the markings in daylight. Rocks reveal historyThe three huddled over the cases stacked on the living room coffee table, conferring, comparing notes and discussing how the shapes and markings might help identify particular time periods. “These were heat-treated to get that pink color.” Bakken said.

They identified the items as they continued their review and tossed out terms such as Agate Basin bottom, Cody complex, fluted points, bone tools, scrapers. “In the work I do, all those little pieces are part of the story,” Bakken said. He took a closer look at something he described as an expedient knife with a long sharp edge.Bakken picked up what looked like an ordinary rock. “This is more Woodland,” he said. “It’s more broad.”

He examined another stone that appeared unfinished.“This is a clumsy re-working,” he said turning it over. He joked, “This is an amateur hour. Maybe they were sitting around the fire and someone said, ‘Hey kid, come over here and learn to sharpen a point.’” Emerson and Bakken also looked at pieces of pottery in the collection. Bakken held up a small shard. “It looks like it’s from near the bottom of a pointy ended jar,” he said.

Significant finds

Mark Muñiz, a professor of archeology at St. Cloud State University who specializes in Paleo points, and several students reviewed the collection last May.

In a followup letter, Muñiz indicated that many of the items are from the Paleoindian era. “The projectile points you showed us from the locations you call “B Spot”… both contain Paleoindian points that are over 10,000 years old,” Muñiz wrote.

“The projectile point we labeled B Spot 1 is an Agate Basin point … Paleoindians made Agate Basin style points on the western Great Plains… [they] date from around 11,400 to 12,600 years old. To date, no Agate Basin sites have been excavated in Minnesota and we have no idea of how old the culture is in this part of North America, nor do we really know anything about what kind of lives these people lived. Excavating even one Agate Basin site in Minnesota could add a tremendous amount of very important information to fill in this large gap of human history.”

Muñiz also suggested that pieces in the collection could reveal that Paleoindian people were contemporaries of other groups of people (Clovis, Folsum, and Cody) that knew and hunted with each other.

“Almost any cultural data we could collect from excavating [such a] site in Minnesota would be truly amazing as no one has ever done this before and we know next to nothing about [this period] in this region,” Muñiz wrote.“You have some very old pieces in your collection,” Muñiz concluded, “and I am interested in learning more about the sites where these objects were found … . The next step is to conduct careful, controlled test excavations at the sites themselves in order to see what else we can learn.”

Larry Hutchings, curator at the Carver County Historical Society and museum in Waconia,  said artifacts have been found in other areas in the county but their locations are usually aren’t identified to protect them.“While the sites might be significant,” Hutchings said, “what prevents further investigation, research and professional digs is funding,” he said.

“As far as I know, all of her finds have been from surface collecting as she walks the land. Digging a site destroys a site unless it’s done by a professional. Absolutely, there would be learning opportunities there, but unless it’s supervised by a professional, we discourage people from digging on their own.”

Always evolving

Paleoindians used Lake Minnetonka, the Minnesota River and the connecting networks of rivers and lakes as their highways. “When you think about it, you can figure out why,” Bakken said, “and why they kept coming back to the same places over the centuries. Until the Europeans came, the lakes and rivers provided their transportation, their boundaries, their food sources for turtles, fish, wild rice, cattails.”

The Minnesota River Valley would have been a favorite site for Paleoindians, Bakken said. “People liked to be where they had a broad view of the land with shelter nearby.” He said. “What better spot than the edge of bluff over the Minnesota River? If you look at a spot down from a gully or a creek, you’ll see a fan of soil that looks like a delta. That sand and mud builds up gradually. Imagine 5,000 years ago, someone camped on the delta, left behind their tools. And then it was covered up by more soil and pretty soon you have deposits that are stratified. So the deeper you get you’ll find more materials.

“People tend look at landscapes as always being the same,” Bakken said. “But in archeology, you realize the landscape is dynamic. It’s always evolving and changing.”