Closing in on a Mastodon

Ashland University and College of Wooster students make up a substantial portion of the volunteers on the Morrow County, Ohio, mastodon dig that began on August 23, 2014.  Photo, taken during lunch break on August 30, shows trench dug  to locate the path of the backhoe that first exposed mastodon remains. Plots are marked by string, with teams of four removing and examining soil, one 10-centimeter- deep layer at a time   (Photo by Don Comis)

Mastodon teeth.   (Photo of teeth from an unrelated dig,; photo found online, in public domain.)

After the second Saturday (August 30) of the Morrow County mastodon archaeological dig, co-leader Dr. Nigel Brush, said, “We believe that we are closing in on our quarry.”

He reported that on this second day—the first day I began participating in the dig—“We continued to find even more bone fragments, tusk fragments, and part of another tooth (in Unit 15).  Much of the bone is coming from disturbed soil in Unit 15.  The two teeth that have been recovered so far are from Unit 5.  Therefore, it is beginning to look like these two units are at the heart of the site.  For the past two weeks we have been focusing our efforts on Units 4-6 and 14-16, because this is where most of the surface scatter of broken bones and tusks was concentrated.

“However,” Dr. Brush, associate professor of geology at Ashland University, continued in an e-mail report, “we are beginning to wonder how much of the skeleton has been damaged.  It appears that most of U-15 has been disturbed.  This is why we cut such a long, deep cross trench through this unit before the excavation began - we were looking for the disturbed soil of the drainage ditch, but we found disturbed soil throughout most of the unit.  We were in hopes that the damage to the skeleton was confined to a 12-inch wide cut made by the backhoe.  Unfortunately, the disturbance seems to be more widespread than this.  By taking these units down in 10 cm. levels, we hope to better understand the nature of this disturbance, as well as recover any bones, flint flakes, or tools that might be in this disturbed soil."

I guess that means we’re narrowing down where the skeleton is, but it could be really broken up.

This was my first archaeological dig and I had a great time.  During my lunch break, on the grass by a bog, I just enjoyed staring at the trench and the square plots marked with staked string and the tools--all under a tent--and the nearby screens to sieve the soil removed from each plot.  And I was sobered by the thought that this was the cemetery of a mastodon who died maybe 12,000 years ago!

To keep up our morale, Dr. Brush made sure we all got to see and touch every find; the one I remember was a piece of tooth which seemed to be about an inch in diameter and length.  I read that a mastodon tooth can be 6 ½ inches long.

I spent the day on the Unit 4 team, with three of the  ten College of Wooster students volunteering on the dig.  Two of us worked on removing the first 10 centimeter layer, while other two sifted the soil and put anything possibly interesting into a small paper bag.   To dig carefully, we stuck the point of a trowel into the dirt and then twisted the trowel, to upend the soil.  If we struck something hard or interesting, we put the trowel aside and brushed away dirt to expose it and then carefully removed it.

Once it became obvious that we weren’t likely to find anything in the first 10 centimeters of Unit 4, I was able to dig with a regular size scraper shovel, shoveling off thin layers while the student members of the team sifted.

I soon learned to spot sandstone, since it easily resembles bones to a novice like me.  One of the students also advised me that bones usually don’t show up as white.

I also met co-leader Dr. Nick Kardulias, chair of the archaeology program at the College of Wooster.

Dr. Brush said that there were more than 30 volunteers on both Saturdays.  In an earlier report, he said that on the first day the volunteers included 10 Ashland University students and 5 College of Wooster students.  The Ashland students couldn’t come on August 30, because unlike the Wooster students, they had a Labor Day break from school.

I'll return for the next dig on Saturday, September 6.

The soil from the plots is sieved through a screen at the teepee-like frames to the right of the tent-covered plots.  (Photo by Don Comis)