Prehistoric Punch

Here is a confounding piece of soapstone that a neighbor brought to the museum (it was found locally).   It appears to be a bowl fragment, but with a series of well-defined incised lines that run in a crisscross pattern.  I have seen references to incised lines on soapstone bowls, but only to the exterior.  This appears on the inside of the bowl fragment, and has only some faint signs of incision on the outside.  I have no explanation how these straight, precise incisions were made.

The lines might mimic the cross hatching found on the exterior walls of prehistoric pottery.    Might this be a case where soapstone bowl production was influenced by pottery style?   But why a decorative pattern on the inside?

The four page report can be purchased for $5 plus $3  for shipping.

I’d like to thank the Palisades Preschool Frog class for their visit and the wonderful oversized card they gave me. 

The photos show a transit token found by Lynn Scholz while gardening on her property at the corner of Sherier & Manning. Here is where Glen Echo-bound trains exited the middle of Sherier Place and ran between homes of Sherier Place and Potomac Ave. until Maryland.

Despite stretching the museum’s chronological boundaries, I am grateful to Lynn for allowing the museum to exhibit her token from the Glen Echo trolley. It’s not prehistoric, but it’s a token of a trolley which helped define the geography of the Palisades.

My long-standing harping over the disappearance of DC public artifacts to the private non-profit Tudor Place has been recently addressed by the city archeologist – sort of. I had requested to photograph specific artifacts in the prehistoric collection that had been excavated at the Peter House near Rock Creek, and then given to the Tudor House. The request was based on the archeological report completed in 2006. (I am providing the report on the PMOP website because the paper’s link on DC’s DDOT website has changed. Google can no longer can find it on the government’s website, but I believe google will find it here.) The city archeologist, Dr. Ruth Trocolli, gave me the images of the 78 of 87 requested artifacts which had been photographed by a contractor.

Dr. Trocolli has said that the artifacts are temporarily being housed at Tudor Place and that the collection, along with all of the city’s artifacts, will not be accessible for a minimum of 4-5 years from now.

The written report for the Peter House archeological site is incredibly thorough. Unfortunately, the site’s stratigraphy appeared to be fairly disturbed. The top Ab stratum contained the earliest diagnostic point-type of the site – an Otter Creek point (there is a similar point in the PMOP which I called a MacCorkle). The pottery sherds, and their carbon dates, follow general stratigraphic integrity with the exception of the lowest “pre-holocene” stratum where an “intrusive” Popes Creek pottery sherd was found.

The most interesting sherd was something with dentation which the authors suggests was “reminiscent of a Point Peninsula” type. It did not seem to have the zig-zag characteristic of the Point Peninsula complex pottery, but I don’t know much about the subject. I know that the burial at the other archeological excavation nearby (on NPS property) was believed to be culturally related to the Algonquian Kipp Island people which I believe is the same as the Point Peninsula peeps. Not sure if this might have influenced the connection of this sherd to the Point Peninsula.

I think I found on page 72 a small mistake where the Levanna points are mistakenly called Madisons.

Now it’s on to rediscovering the other archeo site included in this report. I wanted to research the site on DC property first because I assumed that these artifacts would be more accessible than the federally-held ones (which include burial items). We’ll see if the NPS can outdo DC in terms of bureaucratic barriers.

Record snow accumulation closes schools in the Washington DC area and gets some kids (and parents) back to the basics of “gimme some shelter”.

Snow Caves of the Palisades from Doug Dupin on Vimeo.

I made a  recent inquiry dated Dec. 10, 2009 (the inquiries go back to, well, pretty much when I started the museum) about the DC artifacts at Tudor Place.  Here is my latest request to see the artifacts and the responses:

—–Original Message—–
From: Doug Dupin [mailto:director@pmop.org]
Sent: Thursday, December 10, 2009 1:29 PM
To: Leslie Buhler; Trocolli, Ruth (OP); Maloney, David (OP)
Cc: Cheh, Mary (COUNCIL); Del Junco, Andrew (EOM)
Subject: DC’s Prehistoric Artifacts at Tudor House

Hello All,
I am requesting (again) to photograph the District of Columbia’s
prehistoric artifacts recovered in Rock Creek on DC property which are
stored at the Tudor House in Georgetown. As public property, these
artifacts are suppose to be available for research. If this request
is denied, I will file a FOIA request to make these artifacts
available. I will also pursue an IRS review of the non-profit status
of Tudor House as the practice of keeping public artifacts for private
use seems to contradict its stated Mission. The Tudor House website
also lists a collections manager and collections assistant, so lack of
staffing should not be a factor in denying access to this collection.

Another option is that the collection be moved to the Palisades Museum
of Prehistory. We can make the collection available to the interested
public as prescribed in law.

Sincerely yours,
Doug Dupin
Director, Palisades Museum of Prehistory

From: Maloney, David (OP)
Sent: Thursday, December 10, 2009 6:14 PM
To: Doug Dupin; Leslie Buhler; Trocolli, Ruth (OP)
Cc: Cheh, Mary (COUNCIL); Del Junco, Andrew (EOM)
Subject: RE: DC’s Prehistoric Artifacts at Tudor House

Dear Mr. Dupin,

Thank you for your inquiry about prehistoric archaeological collections at Tudor Place. It is my understanding that most of the prehistoric collection there is the property of the National Park Service. Any request for permission to access the NPS collection for research should be directed to Dr. Stephen Potter, the NPS regional archaeologist. The DC portion of the collection contains mostly historic artifacts, and as far as we are aware only very limited pre-historic material; the collection has also not been fully recorded and processed. We are currently engaged in concluding a contract to inventory this and the remaining DC archaeological holdings in order to establish the full extent and nature of our collections. If you can identify the types of materials you are interested in, this will help us in responding to your request.

Thanks,

David Maloney

David Maloney
State Historic Preservation Officer
D.C. Office of Planning
2000 14th Street NW, 4th Floor
Washington, D.C. 20009
(202) 442-8850 fax (202) 442-7638

NPS Cultural Resource Manager politely said that Mr. Maloney “misspoke”, and I soon received a corrected email from him:

“Mr. Dupin, My apologies for the confusion, but I have been informed by Dr. Stephen Potter that there are no NPS collections at Tudor Place. Please let us know if you have further interest in the DC holdings.

I immediately restated my original request but have yet to hear any response.   Of course this type of stonewalling leads one to conjure  various motivations for the HPO, none of which appear to be innocent.

I recently visited the Mayan complexes of Chichen Itza and Tulum, both located on the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico. I took my video camera and had to pay a small fee to shoot video at Chichen Itza. At Tulum, I was not even allowed to bring the camera into the archeological park. Like many governments in this crazy world, the Mexican Govt. was trying to control information of a previous empire, and make money off of it. The economics of this policy I think are naive. Are people going to see my video, and say to themselves “Well, now that I’ve seen it, I guess I don’t need to visit” – I hope the Mexican Govt. would understand this to be a rhetorical question. In Chichen Itza, I was stopped during shooting because I also had a small tripod. Apparently you have to get another permit for a tripod because at that point it’s getting “commercial.”

Take a look at my quick tour of Chichen Itza and then go visit the place. Oh, and tell ‘em Doug sent you! Who knows, maybe they’ll let me shoot more of “their” amazing prehistory.