The Kalispel Tribe is collaborating with Washington State University researchers on a 5,000-year-old archeological dig.

Ancient Tribal earth ovens are being excavated as part of the first archeological project ever made public by the Kalispel Tribe of Indians, said WSU researchers in a news release on Tuesday. The ovens were built long before the Egyptian pyramids.

The excavation will happen on June 5 near Newport with WSU archeologists. Attendees will see uncovered artifacts at the site and learn more about the history of the Kalispel Tribe’s indigenous food systems.

The artifacts are being carefully removed from the ground to make room for essential housing for the Tribe, according to researchers.

At the same time, explained archeologists, the excavation provides an opportunity for the Tribe to discover more of its history. Archeologists believe the site was an ancient tribal hunting camp on the banks of the Pend Oreille River and believe the project could reveal insights into the foods the Kalispel people have been preparing and eating in the Northwest for the last 5,000 years.

Shannon Tushingham, a WSU professor of archeology who has worked with the Tribe for many years, is leading an archeological field school where students will get first-hand experience practicing techniques.

“It is really about teaching students the archeological skills they will need to get jobs in the growing field of cultural resource management,” Tushingham said. “We are training the next generation of professional archeologists how to work with tribal communities and interact with them in a meaningful and professional way. We are honored to be hosted by the Kalispel Tribe.”

Find out more

Yahoo! News

The discovery of 2,000-year-old, iridescent green figeater beetle (Cotinis mutabilis) jewelry at two sites at Bears Ears National Monument in southeastern Utah may help solve a long-standing historical mystery.

For years, archaeologists have debated why decorative metals and semi-precious stones have never been uncovered in the American Southwest from the period 500 BCE to 500 CE, when Basketmaker II society was in the thick of an agricultural revolution. It’s a major exception to a universal cultural shift from hunting and gathering to agriculture with which those artifacts are almost always associated.

Archaeologist William D. Lipe, a professor emeritus at Washington State University in Pullman, agrees that the iridescent beetle adornments from Bears Ears were prestige goods and status symbols. But, he says, the artifacts, which date to around 70-60 BCE, are by no means the first ones associated with Basketmaker II society. It’s just that archaeologists have historically interpreted objects made of perishable materials as less valuable than those made from metal or stone, in part because they were less likely to survive the last 2,000 years than the decorative metal and stone goods of other early agricultural societies.

Find out more

Atlas Obscura
Real Clear Science

If you looked inside a T. rex mouth, you’d see some 12-inch teeth. That’s longer than my tail!

I asked my friend Aaron Blackwell if dinosaurs used those big chompers on humans. He’s an anthropologist who studies human biology at Washington State University. He told me dinosaurs and humans didn’t live at the same time.

“Dinosaurs died out 65 million years ago—before there were even primates,” Blackwell said. “So, they could never have eaten a human or even a monkey.”

Find out more

Dr. Universe