Today's date: September 3, 2010
| News | |
| Top Stories | |
| Sports | |
| Community News | |
| Police/Courts | |
| Editorial | |
| Obituaries | |
| Business | |
| Announcements | |
| Columnists | |
| Ag Issues | |
| Classroom | |
| Legals | |
| Racing | |
| Weather | |
| Search | |
| Advertising | |
| Classifieds | |
| Top Stories | |
|
|
| Digging for facts |
|
| |||
|
|
By: JoAnn Biren, staff writer |
May 17, 2006 |
|
|
| |||
Ken Bakken, an archeologist from Summit Envirosolutions tries to maintain a signal on his cell phone with a colleague back in the lab. "It is hard to get a signal out here!" he said, as he turns in a complete circle. 
This archaeologist is ready to start carefully excavating the square as she first carefully removes the sod, to be replaced at the end of the search for articfacts. | Archaeologists excited about Lake Shetek excavation |
|
Ken Bakken, an archeologist from Summit Envirosolutions, St. Paul walked from one dig to the next, never in a hurry, smoking a rolled cigarette, anxious to share some of what he and his colleagues have found as they unearth artifacts from another century around Lake Shetek.
Bakken and fellow archaeologists from Summit Envirosolutions, along with volunteers from around the area, have a seven-day time frame in which to dig, bag and number what they uncover. The digging around the lake, specifically at three sites on Tepeeotah Road and another at Sandbar Road and the final site on Valhalla Island have kept the team busy. The dig is a result of the sewer project that will soon be constructed around the lake. "A lot of folks have said, 'yes'," Bakken said of homeowners who have given permission to dig on their property. Once permission is given, the tools of this century come to the fore as Global Positional Systems are used to determine where to dig. Bakken, his face creased and burnt by sun and wind stands and looks over the area. He points to the body of water, Lake Shetek and an area of higher ground and states, "This looks like it would have been a good spot to make camp." He looks back in time and doesn't see the vehicles driving by on the road, the outboard on the lake or the two-story home built along the shore, instead he sees tall grass, a good water supply as well as a source of food and he knows that what he is seeing in his mind is what the area around Lake Shetek must have looked like 100 years ago to Native Americans. "The same reason that draws people to the lake today, drew them to the lake years ago," he stated, interrupted in his look back at the sight of a beaver swimming in a swampy marsh. "Look. There's a beaver!" Today and yesterday might not be as far apart as some imagine. How do they determine where to start digging? They look over the area, Bakken explained, to see if the site is intact, if it has been plowed recently or disturbed by other construction such as a roadway. "You erase from your mind the ditches, the road, you look at the terrain, you take 150 years of landscaping away in your mind," he said, turning in a full circle, pointing to the rise in the road where water might have run down to the lake at one time, long before the road was constructed. What is it they find when they dig down, and sift through the dirt? Arrowheads? "We're really not going to find a vase or intact tools," Bakken said. "We find at sites like this one waste flakes, shards. That is day to day garbage from years ago. It has more research value. It doesn't have to look pretty for us to (find) info out of it." This is not an easy job. It takes patience. The archeologists at Lake Shetek sift, take photos, take notes, bag and number each item they find and after the week is up, take it all back to St. Paul where they will study their finds, catalog, tabulate, compare and analyze. "Then you write up a report!" Bakken said with a laugh. For every hour spent in the field another hour or more is spent in the lab. Bakken is working on his Ph.D. He became interested in the study of the past after sitting through a lecture in a classroom while a student at the University of Minnesota, Morris. "I found it interesting and decided to take a lab course," he explained. His reaction? "Boy, that's the most interesting thing I've seen or done. I want to do that!" He has put together, like a jig saw puzzle without the photo on the box and with a couple of pieces missing, ceramic vessels. "Sometimes you have two puzzles within the one and they are really mixed up!" This is said with a smile and anyone overhearing the conversation knows immediately that Bakken enjoys his work immensely. The sites around Lake Shetek are prehistoric Native American sites. "There are (remnants) of ancestors of the local Native American communities," Bakken said. That may be why high school history classes, college classes and interested residents have come to the sites and helped with the sifting and digging around Lake Shetek. They are looking for a part of yesterday before the progress of today, a centralized sewer system, are put in place around the lake's area. What would man, or woman, do without today's Global Positioning Systems to tell them where to dig? |
©Murray County News 2010