Archaeological evidence in Park County confirms a human presence 11,000 years ago, placing the region among the earliest in North America known to have been populated. Just after giant ice age glaciers receded, the area that is now Park County was covered in steppe-tundra vegetation similar to present-day Alaska. Natives hunted wooly mammoth along the Yellowstone River and roamed the country alongside beaver as big as grizzlies and Hummer-sized giant sloths.
When a present-day resident of Park County feels pangs of hunger, a cheeseburger or a sub sandwich might spring to mind. The modern hungry human does not need to rouse a group of spear-hurtling hunters to pursue lunch, but at the end of the quest he or she will experience the age-old satisfaction of a full belly. “Whether you’re killing a jackrabbit and eating it or whether you’re going to Albertson’s, you’re doing the same thing, you’re acquiring protein,” says Larry Lahren, local archaeologist and author of a collection of essays titled “Homeland: An Archaeologist’s View of Yellowstone Country’s Past”.
In the collection of essays Lahren attempts to make archaeology accessible by noting common elements in the lives of ancients and moderns. “There is no such thing as a primitive culture; culture adapts,” he says.
The book opens with an autobiographical essay where a young Lahren is introduced to the hunt by his father, grows to engage in “tribal warfare” with neighboring gangs of 1950s toughs, undergoes rites of passage in the world of academia, and later gains intimate knowledge of animal behavioral patterns as a hunting guide. Lahren spends time in Calgary, but is inevitably drawn back to Montana.
In the book Lahren identifies basic needs that have always driven humans. “There are certain anthropological mandates that go through all cultures; there are just variations in them in time,” says Lahren. Such necessities include food, the technology to get it from somebody else, social and family organization, division of labor, and a religious system.
By focusing his research on survival needs, Lahren says he avoids what he calls “the symbolic, spiritual, noble savage thing.” Instead he interprets artifacts in the context of their use for survival in the environment where they are found. He seeks evidence of a sustained and consistent relationship with the land over generations which could contribute to the identification of a homeland.
Lahren identifies a “Greater Yellowstone Homeland,” which includes the Northern and Middle Rocky Mountains of Montana, Wyoming, and Idaho as well as the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem. He approaches the region as “an environmental and cultural system that is first viewed in and of itself, and not as a marginal part of other ethnographically known culture areas.” Lahren’s method differs from the traditional approach to Rocky Mountain archaeology, which considers some cultures in the Continental Divide area to be “marginal” or “non-typical” branches of central core areas. Core areas were identified by anthropologists according to relatively recent written historical accounts, whereas Lahren’s method identifies cultural trends in much older archaeological records of hunter-gatherer cultures.
Lahren refers to a quote by newsman Tom Brokaw, who said “regions and eras influence those who come of age in them…I will always be a descendant of those who bent their backs against the soil and hard times and held true to their bearings.” Lahren expands upon Brokaw’s notion of a lifelong connection with a place, stating his intent to tie one life to “everybody else’s lifetime over 11,000 years, so everybody’s considering this a homeland.”
The essays also cover specific “digs” led by Lahren. The most significant dig site Lahren worked was the “Anzick” site near Wilsall, which Lahren calls the “Rosetta Stone” of the people of the new world. The discovery of the Anzick site in 1968 was particularly important with regard to the religious practices of the native inhabitants of 11,000 to 11,500 years ago, during what is called the Paleoindian period. Before the discovery of the Anzick burial site, the finds from the Paleoindian period in North America were limited to a few scattered kill sites and campsites. The Anzick site is the burial site of a 2-year-old child and a wide array of intact artifacts at a location where drainages come together and trail systems meet. The burial site indicates religious practices of the ancient inhabitants. Lahren writes that the child was buried at the geographically significant location with the artifacts because “it was possible to enter the underworld passage to the ‘otherside camp’ through the most distinctive land form in the valley floor.” Many of the artifacts were coated in red ochre, which Lahren identifies as an attempt to appease hunting spirits. The inclusion of heirloom tools and an intentionally broken antler tool likely indicate shamanistic rituals performed at the site.
The remains were dated by identification of projectile points found at the site. “Clovis” projectile points found at Anzick are of the same make as a distinctive point first dated in Clovis, New Mexico. There a point was found embedded in the remains of a wooly mammoth that became extinct 11,000 years ago. Radiocarbon dating also confirms the age of the artifacts.
Lahren calls his collection of essays a humanistic contribution, because he wrote the essays for the lay reader. The credo of Lahren’s consulting firm, Anthro Research, is “to sell science and contribute to humanity.” Lahren’s firm was contracted by federal and state agencies to oversee several major digs in Montana and nearby states. The firm currently conducts environmental impact surveys of locations slated to be altered by construction. Lahren also attempts to contribute to humanity outside the activities of Anthro Research, conducting educational outreaches and seminars as well as museum work to preserve and display artifacts of Park County’s past. He recently gave a slide-show presentation at Carnegie Library in Big Timber, where master flint-knapper Ray Alt demonstrated aspects of prehistoric hunting practices and the stone tool-making process.
One notable endeavor was a summer program to educate Indian youth of the Fort Peck tribes (Assiniboine/Sioux) about their cultural identity. Lahren worked with Don Petterson and Ernie Bighorn to teach youths how to craft stone tools, construct stone hearths, and to conduct “archaeological reconnaissance” to locate places where their ancestors may have resided. Lahren says it helped teach the kids to get away from “a savage image that they were different.” Some went on to pursue degrees in anthropology.
Lahren defines a homeland as a place where one was born and one’s ancestors were buried. He says the average person with an interest in people could look at the archaeological record and see patterns and parallels relevant to their day to day world. He says archaeology and anthropology develop a historical framework so that you can look at the past and at the present and project what the future might be.
–Wes Venteicher
editor@livingstonweekly.com
Comments