Graham Jaehnig/Daily Mining Gazette Among the significant finds in the last days of the Michigan Tech archaeology field school at the Delaware Mine, is what appears to be a stone used extensively for grinding. Deep grooves cut deeply into the face of the stone, worn to a buttery texture, strongly suggest that the stone was most likely used in the manufacture of other tools. The face of the rock, which is in stark contrast to other rocks unearthed in the trench, indicates that the marks and smoothness are cultural, or man-made.

By GRAHAM JAEHNIG

gjaehnig@mininggazette.com

KEWEENAW COUNTY — In June, the Michigan Technological University’s Social Science Department began an archeology field school at a site near the current Delaware Mine that was believed to have been mined out at some point before the first Europeans arrived in America.

With just a few days left in the field school term, the site trenches and pits that have been excavated have revealed some significant artifacts.

“We are now in Week Six,” said Carl Blair, Ph.D., teaching professor, history and anthropology, anthropology program adviser and one of the faculty leaders of the project. “We’ve moved our operations to the second vein that was explored by the Europeans and rejected in the 1840s, because of lack of copper.”

“This is a little different than the first vein we went through, in that this is partially dug in conglomerate rather than (basalt). So, it’s quite different; it’s a mix.”

Along with having unearthed more than a dozen hammer stones from the prehistoric period of mining, Blair said they have also found fragments of charcoal, which will assist in establishing the age of the site.

“We have good samples of charcoal for dating from all areas. We won’t know the dates of course, until we send them off to be analyzed, which I will be doing after we get done in the field. Hopefully, we will know by September how old things are.”

The most common process used in determining the age of a site using charcoal is radiocarbon dating.

At this point, said Blair, they have no idea of the ages of the sites. As he said in July, the age could range between 300 and 8,000 years.

Blair said that primarily the school is focused on tools, charcoal and evidence of occupation and use.

Blair said excavation for the season will end Aug. 10, when the trenches will be filled back in.

“We are reaching the end (in this trench) at the north end here, because we’re getting to the OSHA safety limit of five feet,” said Blair.

Blair said regulations prohibit trenches from exceeding five feet in depth unless the walls are shored up.

Most of what is being found in the trench has been exposed before the five-foot limit, he said, except for one pit that just keeps going down.

During a Daily Mining Gazette interview, one of Blair’s students unearthed a flat stone that, on initial examination appears to have been used for grinding.

“With the incisions on its face, I would almost say it was for stone,” said Alex Atkinson, and MTU alumnus who earned his bachelor’s degree in archeology before going on to earn his master’s at the University of Durham, in England. “The incisions cross all over one another. But it’s not the incisions that excite me.”

The texture of the surface is what drew his attention, he said, but the stone will have to be cleaned up in order to know with certainty. Based on the location of the stone when it was found, as well as the marks and the texture on the top of it, Atkinson concluded that it is cultural. Blair concurred.

“That is not natural,” said Blair, explaining that the object was probably used in the making of additional tools.

As the first season of the dig comes to an end, Blair said it is much too soon to draw any conclusions.

“We have to take things back to the university,” he said, “clean them up, analyze them. The simple answer is, just by looking at this hillside, there is a generation of work that could potentially be done here.”

In addition to the prehistoric sites currently under study, said Blair, there is a village, now long gone, just to the west, that needs to be investigated; the later town of Delaware, along the current U.S. 41 is another site.

“There are all sorts of historic stuff (as opposed to prehistoric),” he said. “The limitations are going to be time, funding and what is what is of interest to people at different times.”