One of my earliest memories of ancient humans involves Louie F.  Louie showed me his collection of Paleo-Indian arrowheads, spear points, pottery.  It was an impressive array of antiquities mounted in a large glass-covered case.  Louie grew corn and soybeans on 2,000 acres in northern Illinois farm country. He had a keen eye for tiny objects in his fields and collected them after they reached the surface as he plowed his fields each spring.  He didn’t destroy the prehistoric villages or campsites of ancient Illinoisians.  That was accomplished by earlier farmers who first modified the prairie landscape.  Louie had an avid interest in archeology, glacial geology, and wine making.  We would sip his vin ordinaire and discuss glacial advances and retreats, Mound Builder sites, and Pleistocene landforms.  I wonder what happened to his collection.  How old were some of the relics?  Were Clovis or Folsom points part of the assortment?  Could some of the artifacts shed light on early Illinois prehistory? 

Rocks and minerals, stratigraphy, and deep time are my first love, but archeology fascinates me too.  My anthropological interests developed in college when I read about the evolutionary history of primates in Anthropology 101.  Recent breakthroughs in evolutionary biology and DNA analysis have revealed much about Hominid migrations out of Africa, across Asia, and ultimately into North and South America.  The Out of Africa Theory, is the most widely accepted model for the dispersal of modern humans.  These migrations may have begun intermittently as early as 2 million years ago with Homo erectus and later by early modern sapiens.  Human fossils discovered in Israel and Greece date back 200,000 years.  Sapiens was entrenched in Europe by 40,000 years ago and may have been responsible in some way for the disappearance of Neanderthals.  Migrations into North America began as early as 20,000 years ago (or even earlier) during the final glacial maximum when global sea level was much lower than today.  That date may be revised as more sites are discovered.  I’m especially intrigued by Neanderthal discoveries because sapiens and Neanderthals share DNA, and they lived together for countless generations, maybe in harmony, maybe not.  We humans are mesmerized by our evolutionary story. 

I’ve had many archeological experiences.  Doing field work as a geologist required that I stare at the ground for hours each day while wandering through sagebrush forests, along ravines and river banks, and over hilly terrane.  Steep river terraces occasionally yield charcoal layers, the remains of ancient man made fires.  I’ve found arrowheads and functional lithics including axe heads, scrapers, and spear points.  Nineteenth century pioneer bottles, rusted tools, and even an old rusted rifle couldn’t escape my keen eyes either.  I donated the rifle to a local Montana gun enthusiast.

I acquired my first heavy dose of prehistory around 1980 when I assisted Ruth L with her MS thesis.  She was interested in Pueblo era kivas and wanted to determine if there were variations in their structure and style through time and space in the Four Corners region.  She gathered data on size, shape, location, and configuration of sites through time.  I helped her set up and analyze several data matrices using multivariate statistics.  I don’t remember the details and conclusions of that work but it was fun.  I have fond memories of hiking to remote sites in the desert with a measuring tape and notebook. 

I’ve visited ancient Roman sites in Britain and Italy, ruins in Greece, Viking sites in Iceland, and Mayan sites in the Yucatan of Mexico, but one site in particular left me with a profound sense of awe.  The island of Santorini in the eastern Aegean, south of mainland Greece is a volcanic caldera, the remnant of a larger island that exploded during a violent eruption 3,600 years ago at the height of Minoan civilization.  The Minoan Bronze Age culture developed 5,000 years ago from earlier Neolithic peoples in the region.  The Minoans were an urbanized, artistic civilization later dominated by the Greeks.  The Cyclades island group, including Santorini (or Thera), lies along an active crustal plate convergence zone, a region of violent volcanism and seismicity. 

The Santorini eruption ejected eight cubic miles of tephra into the atmosphere.  It was assuredly preceded by warnings, numerous minor eruptions and earthquakes.  There are no historical accounts of the eruption, but the geological and archeological evidence suggest thousands were killed by suffocation or the intense heat and explosive activity of the event.  The Thayan settlement of Akrotiri was excavated several times beginning in the mid-19^th century, revealing much about a vibrant Minoan culture.  The north coast of Crete probably experienced a massive tsunami resulting in even more death and destruction.  I stared out at the Caldera from a high viewpoint on the island while cruise ships parked in the deep-water harbor, and their tenders ferried tourists to the island’s shops and restaurants.  

Whenever I drive US-50 across Nevada to points west, I visit Stillwater NWR, a well-known birding venue.  It lies east of Fallon in the Carson Sink, a lowland region that was part of Glacial Lake Lahontan.  Grimes Point is an archaeological site at Stillwater that was discovered by guano miners in the 1930s.  It was home to Native Americans for at least the last 10,000 years.  As the lake advanced and ebbed, tribes lived along its shores. They hunted and fished, leaving traces of their culture.  Burials, lithics, and an extensive rubble field of polished basalt boulders adorned with rock art suggest a long lasting and vibrant occupation.  I’ve hiked the short trail through the boulder field and marveled at the range of figures and forms etched on the glossy black patina. 

During the early 2000s my wife, Jenni, and I lived in northern New Mexico.  We owned a house on three acres north of Taos Pueblo, a thousand-year-old community built along a tributary to the Rio Grande River.  Living in Taos illuminated the blend of early Euro American culture with prehistory in a dramatic high desert landscape.  I found arrowheads and lithic shards, pottery, and broken rock art objects on our property.  It was always rewarding to wander through our Back 40 and discover fragments of life from an earlier time. 

The Hudson-Meng Research Center is nestled in a remote valley north of the village of Crawford in far northwestern Nebraska.  The site preserves the skeletal remains of at least 600 extinct bison, Bison antiquus, a once common herbivore in North America during the Late Pleistocene.  The site is extraordinary, in part because it’s uncertain whether it was an early man kill site or simply the remains of many generations of natural death along the edge of an Ice Age swamp.  I’ve been there several times and enjoy hiking the local trails and looking for much older megafaunal mammal bones in the White River Group, the local sedimentary rock that formed 30 to 40 million years ago. 

Several years ago, I was invited by my brother-in-law, Mark, to join him, his wife Chris, and a friend of theirs, on an excursion to the Maze District, a remote area in Canyonlands National Park southwest of Moab, Utah.  The Maze deserves its name.  Salt tectonics near the Colorado River and the desert climate have fabricated a harsh but colorful landscape of mesas and buttes, fins, dead end canyons, and tear drop pinnacles. It’s the least accessible area in the park and entry demands a high clearance four-wheel drive vehicle and self-sufficiency.  I was flabbergasted by the abundance of Paleo-Indian artifacts in the Maze.  I found projectile points, lithic shards, and fragments of broken or discarded tools.  I even stumbled onto a complete Plainview projectile point near a dirt track somewhere on our journey.  Plainview points date back to 9,000 years BP and probably originated in central Texas or Oklahoma where they succeeded the Clovis lithic style.  I looked at it in wonderment, photographed it, and to the disdain of my colleagues, threw it as far as I could away from the track to avoid future discovery.  It belonged to the spirits of the Maze.

I’m still hoping to find a Folsom point.  I’ve driven the lonely road east of Folsom, in northernmost New Mexico along the Dry Cimarron River.  The first Folsom point was discovered west of Folsom in 1908 by a local cowboy, George McJunkin.  The point was imbedded in a bone of the extinct bison, Bison antiquus.  It was later found to be 10,000 years old based on radiocarbon age data.  The Folsom lithic tradition extends back to 13,000 years.  I always make a brief stop there on my way through the region and stare out at the high desert panorama.  The region was still in the Ice Age 10,000 years ago, a very cold place with frigid winters and cool summers. 

I’ve also visited the original Clovis site at Blackwater Draw, 10 miles southwest of Clovis, in eastern New Mexico.  It is generally believed that the Clovis projectal tradition slowly replaced Folsom and spread throughout North America.  The site was first discovered in the late 1920s.  These lance-like points were larger than Folsom points.  They were discovered with bones of megafauna including mammoths, horses, bison, and sloths.  There were numerous springs and playa lakes in the area and hunting big game may have been a lucrative business.

Cedar Mesa is a dissected desert plateau in southwestern Utah, home to Grand Gulch, Bears Ears National Monument, Comb Ridge, Valley of the Gods, and Natural Bridges National Monument.  The landscape is a maze of incised canyons, a red rock country of immense morphologic complexity and the former home to thousands of ancestral Puebloans.  Cedar Mesa and I have an arrangement of shared affection.  It’s my second home.

I knew the sign would be there even before I saw it: Mule Canyon Ruins.  I had been to Mule several times while exploring for pueblo dwellings.  Today, I’m wandering my way west along Utah highway 95 hoping to discover evidence of prehistory and a tranquil place to camp for the night.  It’s mid-morning on a blue sky day in late May, the very beginning of the hot summer season when the region is nearly deserted.  The temperature will reach into the mid-80s today with the potential for thunderstorms in the late afternoon.  I want to survey the surrounding area for evidence of occupation, maybe some ruins, a few pot fragments, lithics, some indication of ancient peoples.  I’m looking for an access road to an area south of highway 95 where I might find clues to life on the Mesa a thousand years ago.  I slowly pass the sign for Mule and continue a quarter mile until I glimpse a dirt road heading south.  It’s well camouflaged by red silt and a stunted forest canopy of pinyon and juniper.  I make a sharp left turn onto the route, a hard packed clay-rich pavement, an excellent surface during dry weather but probably impassable when wet.  Cell service is still good, so I check the weather forecast.  High of 87 with a 20 percent chance of thunderstorms in the afternoon.  One needs to take the weather seriously here, so I send myself a neural note to watch the sky and check the forecast again in the early afternoon. 

I slowly drive a couple miles while looking for evidence of possible archeological sites, mounds or rocky debris, collapsed walls or maybe just rough rock foundations.  The road trends due south, up and down tree covered hills within an entanglement of pinyon-juniper. It’s a remnant of the old uranium mining days of the 1950s but used today mainly by local ranchers checking their cattle, maybe some hunters, or archaeological buffs like me.  At the three-mile mark I park near a deserted corral.  There are no cows today.  This is marginal grazing country, a land of little grass, but Mormon ranchers seem to make a living here.  I use my cell phone tracking app to scan the local topography for proximity to deep canyons and to establish a route through the desert forest.  Its extremely easy to become lost here.  I’ve done that before.  I first check my fanny pack for essentials: water, snacks, rope, emergency bag, first aid kit. 

I’m parked on a grassy meadow, a field of dry, sticky grasses, the stuff that clings to sox and pants, so I attach my ankle gators to my hiking boots and head west along an active cattle trail.  I usually don’t mind cows, but I always watch for bulls and fresh cow pies.  With phone in hand, I establish a tentative route and decide to parallel a nearby canyon.  I think about what ancient farmers may have favored, maybe an expansive vista for observation and protection, nearby water, maybe the best soils.  Ruins are not hard to find.  Midway through my route, I notice a low mound of rubble about 300 feet from the canyon rim, a rocky pile comprised of blocks of White Rim Sandstone, the local bedrock.  A fully grown pinyon pine has planted itself in the middle of the mass like a lonely sentinel guarding against intruders like me.  A few of the slabs appear to be part of a foundation, but the collapsed walls have obliterated the interior.  The dwelling was about 10-feet square.  I see pot shards and lithic fragments nearby.  They seem to increase in abundance about 20 feet down slope from the ruin.  I find fragments of burned functional pottery, everyday household pots, then a few pieces of decorative black on white pottery.  I’ve discovered their waste bin, a midden containing information about the people who inhabited the area.  How long was this site occupied, who were their neighbors? Lots of questions.

I circle the mound with increasing distance and soon spot another rubbly mound, smaller than the first, and more pottery, then a flat centimeter-sized object with a tiny hole at one end, an ornament from a necklace shaped from a piece of white hardened chert.  There are no kivas here.  Kivas are ceremonial structures for social or religious uses.  I seem to have found outlier dwellings, homes to local farmers trying to make a living off the land.  They may not have been poor, just middle-class folks living out their lives on the Mesa a thousand years ago.  I find a downed log a few meters away, sit down, and stare into the past.  What were the myths and rituals that allowed these people to survive the occasional onslaught of nature?  What were their hopes and dreams?  It’s all hidden in the ruins, of a time long gone. 

I see clouds brewing in the southwest and decide to check my cell phone.  I still have service and load the current Doppler radar image.  A storm is approaching, with rain predicted in about two hours.  I take a few photographs and start back.  A successful venture.  When I reach my van, I decide to drive closer to highway 95 to avoid getting mired in mud.  I find a secure camp spot about a quarter mile from highway 95 and wait for the storm.  The squall now seems to be south of me heading to the northeast, directly toward my newly discovered ruins.  The sky darkens, wind increases in intensity, lightning, and then pea-sized hail pellets my roof.  The temperature drops 20 degrees.  Then the hail stops and a steady light rain begins to fall.  It’s time for dinner.