An Update on the Meador Site Project
May 2000
Processing
and laboratory analysis of the Meador site materials has been ongoing
since the excavations last summer. Much progress has been made, but there
is still a lot to be done. Many of the pits and other features at the
site were shoveled into bags, and we ended up with a huge number of red
plastic bags full of soil. These pit contents are important because they
potentially contain charred plant material and small animal bones that
can be identified by specialists. This information can tell us a lot about
the environment and the food habits of the people who lived there centuries
ago.
To
process the soil, we use a technique called flotation, which soaks the
soil in a specially-altered metal barrel and allows the fragile remains
to be collected with little damage. Some of this was done at
Parkin Archeological State Park, but most of the soil was transported
to the Survey's Coordinating Office in Fayetteville for flotation. Unfortunately,
about half of the soil sent to Fayetteville has not yet been processed,
so it will be some time before we have all the samples available for more
detailed study.
The
analysis of artifacts has already given us some further insights into
the 3 acre village, and has also raised some significant questions. Most
of the pottery at the site was what is typically classified as Baytown
Plain and Mulberry Creek Cord Marked, both typical of the Baytown Period
(A.D. 300-700). But as we made progress in the laboratory, a number of
other decorated pottery types were found, although in small numbers. The
names of these pottery styles include Marksville Incised, Evansville Punctated,
Larto Red, and Withers Fabric Marked. These pottery types are generally
considered earlier than the Baytown Period. In November, I showed the
decorated pottery to my colleague Dr. Robert Mainfort at the Survey's
Coordinating Office to get his opinion. Bob has extensive experience in
the archeology of this time period. He helped me identify the different
pottery types, and suggested that the site might date as early as the
Tchula Period (500-100 B.C.)! This underscored the need for a radiocarbon
date to help figure when the village was occupied.
In
April, I carefully sorted a sample of charred nut shells from a pit feature
we had excavated early in the Meador project. Most of these were hickory
nuts, with some possible pecans mixed in. I chose this pit because the
nuts were most likely all collected during one season, and the pit probably
represented refuse from one or a few meals. This meant that they should
all yield the same radiocarbon date. I sent the sample to the Radiocarbon
Dating Laboratory at the Illinois
Geological Survey in Champaign, Illinois. When the results arrived,
I was disappointed to see that the analysis had yielded an age of 750
± 70 years B.P. (B.P. means before present, "present" being 1950). That
would give an uncorrected radiocarbon date range of A.D. 1130-1270, and
when corrected using tree-ring calibration, a range of cal A.D. 1211-1302.
That time period is Early to Middle Mississippian, and none of the artifacts
we excavated from Meador are Mississippian types. Why such a late (recent)
date from the radiocarbon analysis? There are several possibilities. One,
the pit containing the nutshells actually dated from Mississippian times.
Most of the pit had been scraped away by earthmoving machines before it
was excavated. It is always possible (but unlikely) that it held the remains
of meals eaten at the location long after its abandonment by the original
village residents. The fact that we found no Mississippian pottery or
other artifacts from the 1200s (and both the scraped surface and moved
soil were carefully checked many times) makes it very doubtful that the
pit was dug and used in Mississippian times. A second possibility is that
there was some sort of error in the radiocarbon laboratory processing.
This is highly unlikely, because radiocarbon laboratories go to extreme
measures to meticulously prepare and analyze specimens and to make sure
that their apparatus is perfectly calibrated for accuracy.
The
third and most likely possibility is that the pit contents were contaminated
by some more recent carbon. The presence of more recent material would
skew the radiocarbon date to a later date. When the upper portion of the
pit was scraped away by machinery, more recent carbon could have been
mixed into the nut shells from the soil being dragged across. Contamination
could have also occurred long ago from burrowing rodents or plant roots
growing into the pit. Modern agricultural chemicals or cultivation might
have also contaminated the sample. Regardless of the cause, for now the
radiocarbon date must be viewed as spurious, because the archeological
material from the site does not fit such a late date. Another sample from
a less-disturbed feature will probably be submitted in the future.
Meanwhile,
analysis of the Meador excavations continues. Tim Mulvihill, Research
Assistant at the Parkin Research Station, has prepared a map
of the site features based on the transit readings taken last summer.
A grant from the Arkansas
Archeological Society's Archeological Research Fund has allowed zooarcheologist
Matt Compton to begin identifying some of the Meador animal remains at
the Museum of Natural History, University
of Georgia. We hope to complete the flotation of soil this summer.
If support can be obtained, additional zooarcheological analysis will
be carried out, and we hope to have plant remains identified as well.
So
what is the present interpretation of the site? I think it is most probably
earlier than we originally thought, probably dating from the Marksville
Period (100 B.C.-A.D. 300), with some possible Baytown Period (A.D. 300-700)
occupation as well. Either way, the village was a significant discovery,
because our knowledge of both time periods is lacking in this region.
Dr.
Jeff Mitchem
Parkin Archeological State Park
