July 20, 2005

Southern Oregon University student Erin Galbraith brushes rocks at what is believed to be the remains of the guardhouse at Fort Lane, built in 1853 outside Gold Hill to protect local Indians from settlers. Galbraith is part of a two-week dig at the site, the first tangible presence of the federal government in the Rogue Valley of southwestern Oregon. Photos by Jeff Barnard | The Associated Press

Looting mars excavation efforts

By Paris Achen
For the Tidings

Brushing away clumped dirt from a prehistoric spear point, anthropology student Auricia Tama-Sweet uncovered one clue about American Indian activity four or five millennia ago in the Rogue River uplands.

“When you find a point it’s easy to get awe-inspired to think people lived here 4,000 to 5,000 years ago,” said the Southern Oregon University junior. “I imagine a girl my age with her family. I imagine what their lives were and how connected they were to the land.”

The excavation during the last two weeks on a 5-acre site in the hills over Trail is part of an archaeological field school held annually by the university and the Bureau of Land Management’s Medford District.

For the past five years, the field school has focused on finding out how American Indians used the uplands.

Much more is known about prehistoric life in the densely populated villages along the Rogue River that were excavated during work on the Lost Creek Dam, said Mark Tveskov, associate professor of anthropology at SOU.

The arrowheads, spear points, rock tools and deer-bone fragments unearthed at the Trail site date back 500 to 5,000 years.

Mark Tveskov, associate professor of anthropology at Southern Oregon University, explains the history of Fort Lane.

Combined with the artifacts from the other four sites, American Indian oral tradition and previous research, the items tell a story about the uplands’ past.

“We’ve shown there was long-term occupation of the Rogue uplands,” Tveskov said.

“People had villages on the main trunk of the river, but they moved with the resources.”

In the spring and summer, the resources were in the uplands, where people hunted deer and elk and harvested plants from meadows. A popular plant was camas, part of the lily family. The flower’s bulb was used to make food.

But the story has tremendous gaps caused in part to looting, said Ann Ramage, the BLM district archaeologist.

“If you think of history as a book, looting is like ripping a page out of the story,” Ramage said.

Looters pillaged the Trail site just a week before the field school, leaving crudely dug holes, exposed tree roots and a discarded screen.

“Those (artifacts) sat here for thousands of years and in one night a lot of it was destroyed,” Tveskov said. “The site was patchy, and the richest patches have been looted.”

The future of the annual dig is uncertain. It won’t take place next year because Tveskov is going on sabbatical.

The information gathered from the digs, however, will be published in technical monographs and incorporated in curriculum at the university.

Tveskov said he also plans to write a book about the finds and what they say about prehistoric life in the uplands.

“What people know about the native people in the Valley is scanty,” said Amy Cohen, an anthropology student at SOU. “Any information collected is going to add a new perspective.”