Kentuckians Before Boone

To Step Back in Time...

To Step Back in Time ... The story of Fishes-With-Hands and his family shows that our lives are different in many ways from the lives of prehistoric Kentuckians. We lack their clear rivers, fresh food, and slower-paced life, while they lacked our electricity, cars, and grocery stores. But our ways of life also have much in common. We share the importance of family and home, the need to work for a living, the excitement of travel, the sadness of death, and the circle of the seasons. Although their way of life vanished over 200 years ago, the Fort Ancient People can live again in our imagination when we see the things they left behind. To step back in time, all you need to do is walk across plowed fields on almost any farm in Kentucky. You can find the places where Indians once lived. Today these places are called archaeological sites. And the artifacts, the remains of things that the Indians made and used and ate, are still there. There are arrowheads, broken pots, bone beads, shell spoons, stone axes, pieces of animal bone, and burned beans and corn cobs. Traces of the Indians' houses, trash pits, fireplaces, and burials are still there, too. Every archaeological site is like a time capsule. It has a story to tell about the past. The shape, color, and size of each artifact is part of the story. So, too, are 53 the traces of houses left in the soil and the remains of trash that was thrown outside. But it takes more than just a single artifact or house to tell the story. Scientists must study where each artifact is found and what types of artifacts are found with it. Most important of all, they must read the patterns of the artifacts at sites. Archaeologists are scientists who study these time capsules to learn about past Indian lifeways. They locate sites by walking plowed fields and by talking to farmers. After they find a site, they describe it and record it on maps. Often, they dig up, or excavate, parts of sites to learn more about the past. Archaeologists excavate in a slow, careful, and organized way. They use shovels and trowels, spoons, paint brushes, and wire screens. Care is very important. Once dug up, the artifacts never can be put back in exactly the same way. Often, they are all that is left of a past way of life. The holes archaeologists dig are square or rectangular. Holes shaped like this make it easier to record what the Indians left behind. Archaeologists dig the dirt out in thin layers. They find artifacts by screening the dirt. They keep the artifacts from the top layers separated from the ones at the bottom. This helps archaeologists read the patterns of the artifacts. The location of every artifact, house, trash pit, and burial also is recorded. Even samples of the dirt are 54 roject MUSE (2024-04-25 01:09 GMT) An archaeologist draws a map at the Goolman site in Clark County. saved. Archaeologists draw maps, write notes, and take photographs of everything they find. After the excavation is finished, everything is taken to the laboratory. The photographs, maps, and notes are studied. The artifacts are washed, sorted, and studied for the patterns they can show. Computers help archaeologists explain the patterns they find. In this way, archaeologists reconstruct how the Indians lived. The shapes of the arrowheads archaeologists collect from a site tell them when the Indians lived there and for how long. By studying the animal bones and pieces of burned plants, they learn about what the people ate. They can figure out how many people lived at a site by counting how many houses they find. They learn about 55 the peoples' beliefs by studying how their dead were buried. Archaeologists also learn about the Indians in another important way. Because the Indians did not write, archaeologists cannot read about their ways of life in their own words. But archaeologists can read about Indian life in the journals, diaries, and letters of early Euroamerican explorers, traders, and settlers. These writings, like the sites, are time capsules. Archaeologists discover descriptions of the Indians' ways of life in the books and maps held in libraries. They compare these descriptions with the artifact patterns they find at the sites. Learning how the Indians lived isn't easy. As with an old puzzle, some pieces are always missing. The patterns are never complete...