|
QUESTION:it is not clear that the sample you dated is directly
associated with the Bat Creek Tablet. The Bat Creek site is
a series of mounds, not one single mound. The Hopewellian
copper earspool wood you dated may not have come from the
mound that "produced" the Bat Creek tablet. Smith said records
aren't clear as to precisely where any of the materials currently
in the Smithsonian collection were recovered, in spite of
the descriptions in Thomas (i.e., Thomas may or may not be
describing the objects you dated). Any discussion as to whether
or not the wood sample was contaminated is moot at this point
since we can't prove it came from the same place as the tablet.>
ANSWER: Not so. The Naational Anthropological Archives, down in the basement of the
NMNH, has the extant records of the Mound Survey. The original of the
excavator's report on the three Bat Creek mounds is in MS 2400, in a long
letter dated 3/7/1889. Cyrus Thomas's 1894
description of the excavation in the _12th Annual Report_ was lifted almost
verbatim from this report. Smith to the contrary notwithstanding,
Thomas's description, published 5 years later by a
man who was not there, is therefore not the primary source; this letter,
written about a month after the dig by John Emmert, the man who actually
soiled his boots finding the stone, is. (There's even documentation in the
archives that Emmert's boots actually had mud on them! More on this below.)
The description of the three Bat Creek mounds, and which artifacts came
from which mound, is all right there in Emmert's letter,
just as it appears in Thomas's tome, with only minor omissions
and editing. (I have quoted all the omissions in my two Tennessee
Anthropologist articles, just so they will be available to the interested.)
Emmert concluded, "I have packed the specimens carefully and put the engraved
stone in a box separate as you directed [he had allerted Thomas to the unusual
stone in an earlier letter] and have made two catalogues, one to you and one to
Maj. Powell [the director of the Bureau of Ethnology and Thomas's supervisor]."
The "Catalogue of Specimens shiped [sic] Mch 7th 89" with his letter lists 14
items, #6-11 of which are identified as being from skeleton no. 1, mound no. 3,
Tipton group. (In his report, Emmert had identified the Bat Creek Group as
having been on the land of a farmer named MM Tipton, and it was the Bureau's
custom to name mounds and artifacts after the landowners.) Item #6 is "two
copper bracelets." In a bound catalogue Smith showed me in the Processing
Laboratory, Emmert's #6 was assigned NMNH # 134898 upon receipt. (These are
the brass bracelets shown on p. 51 of my BAR article. Emmert called them
"copper", and Thomas repeated this without analysis.
They area really brass, containing about 27% zinc.) Emmert identified #7 as
the "pieces copper stained wood," that he had described in his report. These
were assigned NMNH # 13899, which is visible 5 times over in the photo on p. 52
of my BAR article, along with the copper staining that preserved them.
(There are 6 more pieces the size of the 5 in the BAR photo. These are
portions of at least 2 more ear spool disks, but don't fit together as
nicely as the 5 shown do. One spool would have two disks, one inside the ear
and one outside.) Emmert's #8 included 2 items, a "drilled stone," actually a
naturally open crinoid fossil (-:the inhumee was America's first
paleontologist:-), and a piece of "Red paint" (paint stone is a common
burial item). These two were assigned NMNH nos. 134900 and 134901, resp.
#9 was the "engraved stone", # 134902. #10 was the
"Jaw bones of skeleton no. 1 mound no. 3 Tipton Group", NMNH # 134903, but
unfortunately now lost, and # 11 was a "bone instrument", the probable awl I
mentioned in my 8/19 follow-up posting, aka NMNH 134904.
Nos. 2-5 were clearly identified as being the items described in the letter and
in Thomas's report as being from Bat Creek Mound #2, and #1 and #12-14 were
identified as being from the Lane, Blankenship, Charles Tipton, and
Wear mounds. Other artifacts collected by the Mound Survey may have fuzzy
proveniences, but Emmert was a particularly experienced and careful excavator.
Smith is simply mistaken.
|
|
|
|
