Kelly J. Dixon

MEN, WOMEN, AND CHILDREN STARVING : ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE DONNER FAMILY CAMP

In spring of 1846, the George and Jacob Donner families and some 80 traveling companions began their overland trek to California. When the party ascended the Sierra Nevada in late October, a snowstorm forced the group to bivouac. At this point, the train became separated into two contingents; the larger party camped near Donner Lake and the smaller group—including the Donner families—settled at Alder Creek. Though written accounts from the Lake site imply many resorted to cannibalism, no such records exist for Alder Creek. Here we present archaeological findings that support identification of the Alder Creek camp. We triangulate between historical context, archaeological traces of the camp, and osteological remains to examine the human condition amid the backdrops of starvation and cannibalism. A stepped analytical approach was developed to examine the site’s fragmentary bone assemblage (n = 16,204). Macroscopic and histological analyses indicate that the emigrants consumed domestic cattle and horse and procured wild game, including deer, rabbit, and rodent. Bladed tools were used to extensively process animal tissue. Moreover, bone was being reduced to small fragments; pot polish indicates these fragments were boiled to extract grease. It remains inconclusive, however, whether such processing, or the assemblage, includes human tissue.

The Signature of Starvation: A Comparison of Bone Processing at a Chinese Encampment in Montana and the Donner Party Camp in California

Analysis of faunal remains from the historic China Gulch site in western Montana have shed light on behavioral strategies deployed by a marginalized population in a relatively undocumented historical context. China Gulch is a site where Chinese miners set up a temporary shelter after they were ostracized by white miners. Small bone fragments recovered at the site near a hearth suggest that the group underwent nutritional stress. The faunal remains were analyzed for evidence of butchering and processing following methods used to assess the bone recovered at the Donner Party Alder Creek campsite. The China Gulch findings were compared to the processing patterns identified at the Donner site to further support skeletal evidence for a qualitative signature of starvation.

Survival of Biological Evidence on Artifacts: Applying Forensic Techniques at the Boston Saloon, Virginia City, Nevada

The Boston Saloon was an African American-owned business that operated during the 1860s and the 1870s in the mining boomtown of Virginia City, Nevada. Most materials recovered from this establishment are similar to artifacts from other Virginia City saloons due to the widespread availability of mass-produced items. This challenges any attempt at investigating relationships between gender and ethnicity from saloon artifacts. Cooperative efforts between forensic sciences and historical archaeological studies provide a solid foundation for developing unequivocal interpretations of these topics by extracting DNA from common, mass-produced artifacts. Specifically, these efforts resulted in the retrieval of a DNA profile from a clay tobacco pipe stem. Choosing the pipe stem and other likely candidates that could have served as material hosts for ancient DNA (in this case, at least 125 years in age) was a learning process, the results of which may require archaeologists to modify standard recovery methods so as to maximize information retrieval. This process led to other techniques, such as the use of a gas chromatograph-mass spectrometer (GC/MS), to identify residues on artifacts.

Sidling up to the archaeology of western saloons: historical archaeology takes on the wild of the West

Abstract The historic period in the American West retains an infamous reputation because of sensational tales that sold newspapers. Nineteenth-century media audiences were subsequently exposed to a wilder West than the one of reality. This pattern continued into the modern era, as western films and television shows built upon the existing, romanticized imagery. The western story has been told most powerfully on film, providing mass audiences with a surface realism that can be incorrectly taken as actual historical events associated with the region. Historical archaeology can help revise the prevailing mythic understanding of western history by fostering an anthropological research agenda to highlight the Wests lesser-known, but cosmopolitan heritage. The archaeology of boomtown saloons, including research at an African-American saloon in Virginia City, Nevada, USA, provides a venue for such an endeavor, using the popular appeal of archaeology in the ‘wild West’.

Inscribed in Stone: Historic Inscriptions and the Cultural Heritage of Railroad Workers

AbstractHistoric inscriptions accompany rock art panels and sandstone cliffs throughout Montana and the North American plains. The two historic inscription locations described here emphasize the cultural and historical value of these provocative archaeological signatures. One of these includes a cliff face incised with Chinese characters near the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul, & Pacific Railroad in southeastern Montana. The Chinese characters are among other historic inscriptions associated with a coal mining district established by that railroad to supply the fuel for its engines, underscoring the inherent connections between extractive industries and railroad rights-of-way. The second location includes a collection of Japanese words and names, as well as Irish and Norwegian names, incised into a sandstone cliff face adjacent to a section of the Northern Pacific Railroad. These inscribed archaeological sites represent text-aided resources that may be some of the only written accounts available to better understand the lives and identities of people in transnational work camps of railroads and associated extractive industries in the American West.Chouxiàng在蒙大拿州和北美平原的岩石画壁与沙岩悬崖上, 历史碑 铭四处可见。本文所描述的两处历史碑铭凸显了这些令人 兴奋的考古学地标的文化与历史价值。其中一处碑铭刻有 中文, 靠近芝加哥、密尔沃基、圣保罗以及蒙大拿东南部 的太平洋铁路。它们与为铁路提供燃料的煤矿相关, 展现 了冶金工业与铁路通行权之间的内在联系。第二处碑铭包 含一系列日文、爱尔兰以及挪威的姓氏, 均刻于靠近北太 平洋铁路的一处沙岩悬崖上。这些考古学遗址为我们更好 地理解在美国西部铁路以及相关冶金业的国际性劳工营内 生活和工作的人, 提供了可能是唯一的文字性资料。

Native Sod Rescue— A Viable Business Model (Montana)

A Texas, is a city known nationwide for its live music, environmental awareness, and high standard of living. Now the city can also boast an improved quality of life for its feathered and furred residents by becoming the thirtieth community to receive the National Wildlife Federation’s (NWF) Community Wildlife Habitat certification. It is the first Texas community, also the largest city and first state capitol in the country, to earn this special wildlife habitat designation. To date, over 113,000 individual habitats and 31 communities have been certified by the national environmental conservation organization. The desire to make Austin wildlife friendly stemmed from the fact that the region is one of the fastest growing metropolitan areas in the country. Austin’s current population of 774,000 is expected to reach over one million people by 2025 (Robinson 2009). The city wanted a plan to help wildlife and maintain the region’s biodiversity and unique ecosystems, and NWF’s Community Wildlife Habitat project gave the city a template to help meet several environmental conservation goals under one umbrella program. These goals include minimizing climate change, conserving water, enhancing the quality of wildlife habitat within the city, and improving air and water quality. In March 2007, Mayor Will Wynn and the City Council passed a resolution to obtain NWF certification and demonstrate the city’s long-term commitment to creating new wildlife habitat within the city by educating citizens and encouraging natural, native landscapes community-wide and on city-owned sites. Alpine, California, became the first-ever certified community in May 1998. The community-wide certification grew out of NWF’s Certified Wildlife Habitat program that began in 1973 as a way to help habitat enthusiasts turn their yards and other garden spaces into enticing wildlife refuges. To qualify, a site needs the basic elements that allow wildlife to flourish: food, water, cover, and places to raise young. Creating habitat is as simple as planting native plants that offer nectar, seeds, and berries year-round, including a reliable water source, and providing places for protection and rearing young such as evergreen shrubs or a birdhouse. Applicants must also practice sustainable gardening techniques, such as reducing or eliminating chemical fertilizers and pesticides, conserving water, planting native plants, removing invasive plants, harvesting rainwater, and composting. The Community Wildlife Habitat certification is based on a point system determined by population size. Points are acquired by completing habitat, education, and community project goals. Austin needed to accumulate 1,000 total points. The most challenging goal was habitat certification, which required that a minimum of 600 homes, six schools and ten businesses, places of worship, or other locations in Austin be certified through NWF’s Certified Wildlife Habitat program. When the city originally announced its plans to become a certified community, there were approximately 340 NWF-certified habitats in Austin, including 15 schools and 12 businesses, places of worship, and other common areas. A new Parks and Recreation Department program, Wildlife Austin, was created in February 2008 with a budget that included the salary of one staff person to lead the certification effort and approximately

Saloons in the Wild West and Taverns in Mesopotamia

7,000 for program costs. Restoration Notes

Boomtown Saloons: Archaeology and History in Virginia City

Two serendipitous occurrences occurred during a comparative study among the archaeological ruins of a handful of diverse, nineteenth-century boomtown saloons in northern Nevada’s Virginia City. The first involved an experiment to retrieve DNA from a tobacco pipestem recovered from one of these establishments; the pipestem is associated with late nineteenth-century stratigraphic deposits from an African American saloon. The DNA profile indicates that a woman used the pipe, evoking questions about gender roles in Virginia City’s saloons. The second incident involved an examination of an image from a Near Eastern cylinder seal from the third millennium BC. The image depicted men and women taking part in communal drinking and presents some of the earliest recorded forms of drinking in ancient Mesopotamia. Other, second millennium BC documentation from that region describe laws associated with women and drinking houses in urban centers such as Babylon. This influenced interpretations about the various levels of interaction between men and women in public drinking over the course of literate history. These events — one based on scientific methods and the other based on a text-aided approach to archaeology — induced a gender-based research agenda that complements studies of the antiquity of public drinking houses. This paper describes that agenda, presents case studies that represent different points on the timeline of public drinking, and advocates an archaeological approach that fuses scientific and humanistic research methods.