| ‘| Weber State College Comment, A Suzanne Sarver (left) collects ash from a October 1986, page 7 & Steven R. Simms(middle), Dennis DeSart (middle right) and Eva Jensen (right) watch as Suzanne Sarver (left) uncovers one of many small fire pits found on an ancient Shoshone camp in Nevada. | number of small fire pits discovered as part of an excavation in Nevada. The ancient Shoshone camp has yeilded information that will change archeological research around the world. > Dr. Simms takes a_ bore sample from a tree near a Shoshone wickiup found in Nevada. Preliminary indications suggest that the camp was inhabited somewhere around 200 years ago, and was probably used in the early fall. Shoshone Indian using a hand-held axe. The Indian stopped half-way through the project and dropped the axe at the tree’s base where students in the archeological field school found it. Archeologists make Ist excavation of Shoshone village —Humboldt National Forest, Nevada tudent archeologists from Utah and Colorado have excavated an area here containing at least five Shoshone wickiups in what they classify as a major find. Dr. Steven R. Simms, director of the archeological field school at WSC, said that such pristine discoveries are extremely rare, and this one has produced information that could alter the way archeologists around the world excavate hunter and gatherer societies. “Our best guess is that this was a pine nutting camp in the early fall,” Simms said. two small clearings. “The separation of the workshops from the camp and the nut gathering area suggests a real division of labor between males and females,’’ Simms said. The and cedar. The ground, however, is only sparsely vegetated and receives little rainfall. The dry, desert air has preserved the land in an almost non-changing state for the last two centuries. spatial relationships of the various work stations also refutes a common archeological premise that hunters and gatherers sat on their front porches to make their As a result, Shoshone grinding stones, stone axes, broken pots and other artifacts sit on top of the tools, he added. “We've documented that these people don’t put a pot fragments were found. “You can almost hear the lot of stone work around their dwelling structures,” Indian mother cuss when the pot dropped,” he said. The Forest Service plans to use the information collected by the student archeologists to nominate he said. The longer the Shoshone stayed in one spot, the Four stone circles found by the student archeologists are strong indicators that approximately 10 Shoshone inhabited the camp during the pine nut further the workshops were from camp, he said, and harvest, Simms said. The stone circles were about 35 fact alone will benefit archeologists who excavate artifacts left by any group of hunters and gatherers, be they Australian, African or Indian, Simms said. “Archeologists will typically put down a trench (looking for dwellings) wherever they find a chip, but here we're seeing the chips some ten meters away to 50 yards above the wickiup location. Apparently the Shoshone placed the pine nuts in a circle of stones that sat atop bedrock, Simms explained. covered with cedar boughs an outcropping of The nuts were then and another layer of that is characteristic not only of Nevada Indians, but of hunters and gatherers throughout the world. That rocks. The rocks kept rodents out and the cedar acted from the wickiups,” Simms said. as a natural insect repellant. The Indians probably The find, referred to as the Bustos site, went undetected from the time the Shoshones walked| away from the area approximately 200 years ago un- left the caches, and would return to the site when they needed food, he said. In addition to the pine nut storage circles and the wickiups, the archeologists also discovered what could have been a sweat house, and a series of “workshop” areas where arrowheads and other stone implements were made. “These sites are very rare,” he noted. The workshops were located below camp, main and were easily recognizable as tool making spots by the hundreds of stone chips concentrated in the site for the National Register, Simms said. That will add further protection against looters or development, and may provide federal money if the Forest Service should decide to restore the camp. The students studied the roughly 50-by-100-yard section for ten days, re-covering the site by Aug. 20 to preserve the area for further research. The Nevada Dig was the last of two excavations by the students during a six-week summer WSC field school ex- perience. Half of the ten students involved came from the Ogden campus and the other five were from the archeology program at the University of Colorado til last year when three hunters happened on the spot where no summer field experience was offered. The ten days at the Bustos site allowed only about 50 miles south of Ely. The structures had col- enough time to answer the big questions, such as time lapsed, and looked like stacks of wood leaning against the trees. The former Indian camp probably would have remained unknown had not the three of occupation, structure use and the like, Simms said. hunters the ground in pretty much the same place they were left. Simms pointed out one small circle where 40 to 50 been amateur archeologists the wickiups as such, Simms said. The tepee-like dwellings were and recognized discovered in a heavily forested tract populated with pinions, juniper “We've done some good work, but there are still a lot of ‘I don’t knows,’ ” he said. “We'll never know all the answers, but there is a lot more here to learn,” Simms added. “This is a fascinating site, scientifically,” DeSart said. “We'll definitely have to come back.”