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Questions about the Michigan Mammoth

10/8/2015

16 Comments

 
PictureThe skull of a mammoth is hoisted from a muddy field near Chelsea, Michigan.
The story of a partial mammoth skeleton excavated from a field near Chelsea, Michigan last week made national and international news, showing up on media sites like Fox News, The Huffington Post, the BBC, the Washington Post, and CNN. Articles about the mammoth were posted all over the various archaeology-related groups I follow on Facebook, and I'm pretty sure #mammoth was trending for a while on Twitter.

There's no doubt the unearthing of the mammoth captured the public's attention -- the extent of the press coverage demonstrates that pretty clearly. The images of the enormous, tusked skull being hoisted out of the ground are hard to beat for drama.  But I know from conversations and comments that I saw online that many archaeologists have questions about the excavation that go beyond the "gee whiz" factor that the press and the nonprofessional public love. I'm probably going to get some flack for writing this post, but I'm going to write it anyway and give voice to some of those questions. 

Full disclosure: I met Dr. Dan Fisher when I was a graduate student at the University of Michigan, and I know several of the archaeologists who were involved with excavating the mammoth.

Fisher has spent decades building a case that Ice Age humans in the Great Lakes were hunting mastodons and mammoths, butchering their remains, and storing pieces of the animals underwater to retrieve later.  His argument is based on a pattern of partial skeletons (some with cutmarks) found in wet settings with artifacts suggesting the carcass locations were marked.  He has done experiments to show that meat can be kept edible for long periods of time by submerging it in cold water.  Formal stone tools (such as scrapers and projectile points) are not found at these "sub-aqueous caching" sites, and given the nature of what's being proposed there really isn't any reason to expect that they would be. I haven't read all of his papers carefully, but my general impression is that the case is a good one. And it's interesting. Here is a (somewhat dated) summary article from Mammoth Trumpet that lays out the main points.

Fisher thinks that the Chelsea mammoth unearthed in Michigan last week, like many other sets of remains he has considered, was probably butchered and stored underwater.  The following paragraphs are from the University of Michigan press release:

    "The team's working hypothesis is that ancient humans placed the mammoth remains in a pond for storage. Caching mammoth meat in ponds for later use is a strategy that Fisher said he has encountered at other sites in the region.
   Evidence supporting that idea includes three basketball-sized boulders recovered next to the mammoth remains. The boulders may have been used to anchor the carcass in a pond.
    The researchers also recovered a small stone flake that may have been used as a cutting tool next to one of the tusks. And the neck vertebrae were not scattered randomly, as is normally the case following a natural death, but were arrayed in their correct anatomical sequence, as if someone had "chopped a big chunk out of the body and placed it in the pond for storage," Fisher said."


So the key pieces of evidence are: big rocks next to the remains; stone flake; articulated neck vertebrae.  Check, check, and check.  In my opinion, that all seems to make sense. Even better if the tell-tale cutmarks are present where Fisher expects to find them.

It's not the working hypothesis I'm worried about, however, but whether the information produced by the excavation in Chelsea is going to be sufficient to really evaluate that hypothesis.  I think what bothered many archaeologists about the Chelsea mammoth excavation is what we saw (or didn't see) in the stills and videos from the single day of excavation. 

Yes, they excavated an entire mammoth from 8-10' underground in a single day.

A day.

I once spent at least two days excavating the burial of small dog.

The news articles explain that the Chelsea mammoth was excavated in a single day because that's all the time that was available (the following is from the Washington Post):

    "After establishing that [the landowner and farmer] Bristle could only spare one day for the mammoth extraction, Fisher and his team went into overdrive. On Thursday they were deep in the muck, doing their best to carefully document and extract the bones at top speed.
    
“We don’t just want to pull the bones and tug everything out of the dirt,” Fisher explained. “
We want to get the context for how everything was placed at the site.”
    
There are a few things that make this particular mammoth exciting: It’s a very complete skeleton (although it is missing its hind limbs, feet and some other assorted parts), compared with most of the mammoths found in Michigan and surrounding areas. And because it has been carefully extracted by paleontologists, the bone has the potential to be studied much more thoroughly than those that are haphazardly pulled out of the ground.
    "
We'll have the potential to say way more about this specimen,” because of the careful excavation, Fisher said."

Picture
I wasn't there and I don't know the whole story, but I can tell you that in archaeology the combination of "carefully document" and "top speed" is a tough one to pull off.  As in many technical pursuits, you can't typically find a strategy that optimizes all three corners of the "good, fast, cheap" triangle.

​Non-archaeologists may be impressed (or dismayed) by how much time we can spend picking away at things in the field, drawing maps, filling out logs, arguing over sediments, writing notes, taking photographs, etc.  But the fact is that we're not just wasting time: details matter when you're trying to understand what you're taking apart. The working hypothesis is that the Chelsea mammoth site was the product of human behavior, so, yes, context and associations matter a great deal when you're trying to understand how the site was created. Archaeological work, ideally, is careful and thorough enough to let you more-or-less put the site back together in a virtual fashion based on the information you collect as you take it apart.  Excavation is destruction, and you don't get a do-over.
 
It's hard for me to put aside my feelings about the importance of control and details and get super excited about raising the skull out of the ground when I look at the images from the Chelsea mammoth excavation.  In the video clips I saw, it looked like an incredibly sloppy, irregular operation.  I know that I saw only what TV cameras and news photographers chose to show me, but  I saw no evidence of how spatial control was being maintained (no grid? no total station for electronic mapping?), and no hint of the existence of a level of care that I would normally associate with professional archaeology.  Was there a screen?  How about a profile wall?  I really don't know. I've seen WWF mud wrestling matches that looked more controlled than what I saw in some of the images from that excavation.

If you think I'm being too picky, I invite you to compare and contrast what you see in the images from the Chelsea mammoth excavation with this mammoth excavation in Kansas, or this one in Mexico,or the multiple seasons of work that took place on the Schaefer mammoth site in Wisconsin, or this short 2008 paper about the excavation of mastodons from wet sites in New York.  Those examples are far more typical of what a professional excavation of a human-associated mammoth site generally looks like.  These things are generally not unearthed during the course of single day for a reason:  you lose information.  A story about a mastodon being excavated by amateurs and volunteers in Virginia describes what might be considered a "normal" procedure:

"Scans produced by ground-penetrating radar have shown that bone-size objects are waiting about five feet down. Four feet of soil will be dug out using heavy equipment, then the last foot will be carefully removed by hand."

Why the rush to remove the Chelsea mammoth in just a single day?  I don't really know the answer to that. The news stories report that the farmer "could only spare one day for the mammoth extraction," but they don't say what would have happened if the mammoth had not been removed during that single day.  Was this some kind of "now or never" situation that justified quickly yanking the bones out of the field?  Was the mammoth going to be destroyed if it was left in place? Was it going to turn into a pumpkin if it wasn't out of the ground by Thursday at midnight? 

Maybe leaving the mammoth in the ground until it could be carefully excavated in the spring (or a year or two down the road) really wasn't an option.  Maybe whatever plan there was for drainage was actually going to totally destroy the site and there was no way to simply avoid the mammoth until arrangements could be made to do what has been done in the past for similar finds: use probes or geophysics to delimit the bone scatter, use heavy equipment to strip off the overburden, and then treat the remains as an archaeological site using standard excavation methods. Maybe the single day, salvage-style excavation really was the best option.  I honestly don't know. 

What I do know, however, is that I'll be surprised if the manner in which the Chelsea mammoth was excavated has no adverse impacts on how the analysis and interpretation of the remains are regarded by archaeologists in the Midwest and elsewhere.  The nature of Clovis and pre-Clovis occupations in the Great Lakes is still controversial, and I'm concerned that the potential of the Chelsea mammoth to contribute important information to the debate has been lessened by the speed and style of the excavation. It's hard to look at those pictures of the excavation, know that it was all done in one day, and not wonder what would have been different if more time and care had been taken.  

I know from social media that I'm not the only one asking the "why" and "what if" questions about the Chelsea mammoth excavation, but I am the one writing them down and I'll be the one to take the heat for them. I probably won't make any new friends with this post.  I may even get told that I'm out of line.  That's fine.  Calling me names won't make the questions go away, and I've been called names plenty of times. I think the discovery is exciting, and I hope my "outsider" impressions of the excavation are incorrect. I look forward to reading the published results.

16 Comments
David L Ulrich
10/8/2015 10:59:51 am

looks like I'm the first to jump in (with both feet, not bashful and eyes wide).

Couple of comments -- nothing more

I thought your posting was "neutral". Yes, a slower excavation was in order but then I wasn't there either. BUT, what I don't see is soil samples being taken from "undisturbed" layers. A simple core or two or three by a soils engineer would have been great. That would take about an hour of so. With that, they could date the burial site, look for nanodiamonds, etc etc. As usual with these things, it wasn't done. If all they want is "cut" marks then the rapid excavation was of no importance. This is a complicated subject and full of "political" junk with the Clovis Barrier. And as far as "impactor" people are concerned, its a done deal. Its the arkies, etc that are raising the storm. Richard Firestone nailed it.

I'd be REALLY curious if they found embedded nano's in the tusks.....

And as a side note, I used to hunt all the time when I was MUCH younger. So the thought of taking on an elephant vs going after some camel, horse, deer, elk, etc etc seems so much easier and safer. Really, which is easier to handle: 1) a stampeding elephant herd or 2) a couple of elk. People might even be upset with me if they found out that I've eaten a few "bambi's" also.

Reply
David L Ulrich
10/8/2015 11:03:54 am

just a second posting here----the core drills would have shown whether or not the animal was placed under water. But then given how long it would have taken for the animal to be buried under sediment is another whole matter. Sediment doesn't accumulated that fast -- are we talking feet depth here (was it 5 ft or 8 ft, etc) --- I would think that sort of burial would have taken decades maybe centuries.

Reply
Robin Hammer Mueller
10/8/2015 11:40:33 am

Andy, you had good questions, not deserving of any flak in my opinion. As far as my thoughts on the "rush job" done there.... My guess would have to factor in the cost of the "per hour or per day" equiptment rented... the crane for instance. Who was footing the bill for that? With those possible high costs, it might have been a "one day to get out the big pieces....as much as they could anyways".... and look for smaller pieces later.

Reply
Andy White
10/9/2015 06:11:23 am

Hi Robin,

I don't know the answer to that. Pure speculation here, but I would guess the heavy equipment was on site because it was being used for the drainage excavations when the mammoth was accidentally discovered. Perhaps the decision to go with a "one day" timeline was influenced by the availability of a (gratis) track-hoe. If that was the case (and I don't know that it was) I think it's legitimate to ask if archaeology wouldn't have been better served by pursing a different course. Again, I wasn't there and I don't know. But I think these are useful questions to consider and discuss.

Reply
David Cusack
10/8/2015 11:41:32 am

Good questions, I have wondered the same as to the situation that the excavation team encountered on that day. While the farmer, Brindle, ultimately did the right thing by calling the U of M, and subsequently donating the find to their museum, I wonder if there may have been private ownership concerns that drove some of the team's decisions?
I look forward to any answers you may uncover!

Reply
David Cusack
10/8/2015 12:05:02 pm

* Correction on the farmer's name, Jim Bristle.

A related question that I have is, Why were the remains displayed in the farmer's barn over the weekend... Excavated a week ago, but the skull just got delivered to the U of M museum today?

Reply
Craig Flickinger
10/8/2015 11:58:43 am

i was at a dig in sth grand rapids Michigan and the same thing happened a one day dig I had the same intuitive feeling as you .they just had to get on with building the house.i saw that same grey muck about the same

Reply
Andy White
10/9/2015 06:12:17 am

Was this a mastodon?

Reply
Brad Lepper
10/8/2015 12:01:33 pm

If your premise is that you do perfect archaeology or you do nothing at all, then you're absolutely right. But in the United States, we operate in an environment where, under most circumstances, the property owner has all the power to make decisions about artifacts and fossils on his/her property. In 1989, I was confronted with a situation very similar to what Dan Fisher just encountered. The Burning Tree Mastodon was discovered during construction activities on a golf course. The property owner gave us one day (though ultimately we took two days) to recover the bones and salvage as much data as we could. I know we lost a lot of data along with the ability to answer a number of important questions. And I have received my share of criticisms for the quick and dirty methods we were forced to use. But we learned a lot. (The Burning Tree Mastodon was listed as one of the Top 50 Science Discoveries of 1992 in the popular science magazine Discover.) Would we be better off if I had just walked away from an imperfect arrangement? I don’t think so. Do I wish it could have been different? Hell yeah.

Reply
Andy White
10/9/2015 05:47:15 am

Thanks for the comment, Brad. I know that these are all tough calls and that the situation was probably far from ideal. I think if the choice is between "excavate the best you can before it gets destroyed" or "don't excavate at all" then it's a no-brainer: you excavate the best you can. Maybe that was the situation in this case like it was at Burning Tree (like I said in the post, I really don't know). If the mammoth wasn't going anywhere, however, I think the situation changes and it's legitimate to ask questions about methods. We can always learn something from these cases regardless of how they come out of the ground, and something is surely better than nothing. I would just love to see what information could be gotten from an excavation of one of these things that was done as a field school and/or a planned research project rather than as a rush salvage job. Maybe that just wasn't possible in this case.

Reply
Craig flickinger
10/8/2015 12:07:02 pm

at the same depth.michigan really needs a archeological law bad I have seen things these builders excavators etc keep when digging there should bea fee for someone to show up and at least sniff around in areas of interest on an end note no elephant has been found yet north of big rapids

Reply
Jeff Gill
10/8/2015 12:24:15 pm

I was behind Brad on the Burning Tree Mastodon work, but can say from working with the process that not only did the property owner have his demands (as to progress on the project that had him digging in the first place) with timelines that didn't take archaeology into account, but the heavy equipment guy was paid by the day. I don't remember how much, but it wasn't small -- and he was heavily booked for every workable day that season. So it wasn't just indifference and greed that led to a two-day window that December, and barely two weeks that summer to search for what we'd missed. Those thousands of dollars weren't laying around for us to spend, and if we'd had it, there was the demands of the construction schedule and potential delays that left the property owner giving us a "take the opportunity I'm giving you, or leave it" opportunity.

And you're possibly frustrated, but if you're still working with that property owner and equipment operator for some weeks or months yet to come, you're not going to say to the media "I can't believe this guy won't give us more time." It just doesn't work that way.

Reply
David L Ulrich
10/8/2015 12:54:10 pm

This is not the UK where the world stops when someone finds an Anglo Saxon skull or something.

And of course, the flip side....down the road, someone who feels the urge to be obnoxious can always challenge the conclusions later and who's to say....that evidence wasn't destroyed, altered, or missed...

Reply
Dan Joyce link
10/8/2015 05:56:27 pm

I largely agree with your comments but we do not know what circumstances contributed to making it a one day dig. I also agree with Brad. Information was certainly lost but information was also salvaged. I know of so many instances where sites were destroyed or hidden from science. At Schaefer we were blessed with a land owner that said take your time and donated the mammoth. Due to that time and care, we can still analyze old data, generating more information all the time - two decades later.

Reply
Andy White
10/9/2015 05:59:40 am

Thanks for the comment, Dan. I've been envious of what you were able to accomplish at Schaefer since I first saw a paper on it at a Midwest Conference years ago. You are right, of course, that we don't know all the circumstances that contributed to the decision to get the thing out of the ground in single day. I've got my fingers crossed that we get a situation in Ohio, Michigan, or Indiana someday soon that is more like what you were had at Schaefer.

Reply
ken sachs link
10/27/2016 12:02:20 pm

Are you aware of this research site?
Professional dig for local museum.
Kenosha is in SW WI right on the WI/IL line.

http://woollymammoth.org/

Reply



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