In 1991, Dr. Brad Logan led the joint KU-K-State summer archaeological field school at Fort Leavenworth. The site the students were investigating, however, was much older than the historic military post. Instead, they were trained in archaeological field techniques at a living site occupied by Native people 1800-1600 years ago. They made stone tools and pottery decorated with very distinctive designs that share some similarities with peoples living around the same time farther to the east. Archaeologists refer to the archaeological tradition represented by these diagnostic artifacts as the Kansas City Hopewell variant of the Middle Woodland (or Early Ceramic) period.
This site had been discovered in an undeveloped portion of the Ft Leavenworth military reservation in 1970. In 1973 it was recognized as a place that holds the potential for providing insight into how human people lived in this area along the Missouri River long ago. This was done by nominating it for listing on the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP). Although accepted for inclusion on the NRHP little archaeological work had been conducted there so little was known about the site and what it might reveal about the past. It was for this reason that the Kansas Archaeological Field School was conducted here in 1991.
Students gained a wide range of archaeological skills during their six weeks of training and research at the Quarry Creek site. Even before they started their training, the site was cleared of many of its trees (which also helped protect the site from vandalism). The students then learned firsthand about a relatively new application of magnetometry to an archaeological site. Magnetometry is a near-surface remote sensing or geophysical prospecting technique that reveals clues to the presence of humanly made features below the surface of the ground.
Under guidance of Dr. John Weymouth, a physicist at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, the students learned how to use a magnetometer to discover minor variations in the intensity of the magnetic field in the upper portion of the ground. Subtle differences in the magnetic field indicate possible disturbances buried under the surface. Using this information, the archaeologists were able to select where to locate their excavation units. This ground-truthing of the anomalies revealed the success of using magnetometry at this site to discovered buried clues to how past people used this site.
The magnetometry data helped the archaeologists locate several large pit features that people had dug during the Middle Woodland period. These features were likely made originally to store food and other items. Later, they were abandoned and filled with garbage, including discarded tools and pottery. These helped identify when the site was occupied, what kinds of technology and food people used, and other hints at their past lifeways.
While involved with collecting archaeological data from this site, the students learned not only about magnetometry, but also site mapping, careful excavation techniques and how to document the location and setting of each find, how to recover very small remains that might easily be overlooked during excavation, how to process each day's finds in preparation for analysis back in the lab, and much more!
K-State Archaeology Through the Decades: 1990s
