{"id":3742,"date":"2025-04-09T20:27:34","date_gmt":"2025-04-09T20:27:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nau.edu\/anthropology\/?p=3742"},"modified":"2025-04-18T20:22:01","modified_gmt":"2025-04-18T20:22:01","slug":"apex_flotation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/department-anthropology\/apex_flotation\/","title":{"rendered":"Apex Flotation Sample Analysis"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Allyana Marshall<\/h3>\n

April 10, 2025<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Allyana (Ally) Marshall is an anthropology major and geology minor at NAU. She currently works in the environment archaeology lab with Dr. Davis and has been working on multiple different samples ranging from Tempe to the Grand Canyon. After graduation, she hopes to work for the National Park Service or the Forest Service through Cultural Resource Management.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

For more about Apex or the Apex, Arizona Archaeology Project, visit our website<\/a> or email Dr. Emily Dale at emily.dale@nau.edu.<\/p>\n

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In Summer 2024, Bruce Phillips, a geoarchaeologist and archaeobotanist, and the Apex field school students took two samples from a possible privy. The privy depression had several wooden beams around it, suggesting a small building had once been built over the top. A wood plank around 50 to 60 centimeters below datum potentially marked a floor board or other evidence of a building over the depression, and the samples were collected of and below the plank. The depression was located at the former home of Arvid Anderson, the camp superintendent, who lived there with his wife and three young children. Bruce and I processed the sample to learn more about the excavated depression and the lives of Arvid and his family.<\/p>\n

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Methods and Results<\/b><\/h2>\n

Bruce Philips and I ran the two soil samples and one wood sample given to us for subsampling, flotation, and pollen process and analysis in the NAU Environmental Archaeology Lab . The goal was to find signs of plant food used by the family that once lived in the area of sampling as well as anything else the sample would show about the environment. During the flotation analysis, we found charcoal, construction materials and bits of metal from unknown sources as well as natural deposition of amaranth seeds, seed casings, roots, and other pieces of wood.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Alongside the flotation analysis, we also ran a pollen analysis showing high concentrations of Pinyon-pine, Ponderosa-pine, and daisies.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Looking further into the flotation pre-sorts, I believe there was evidence of a fire. Whether this fire was natural or man made is unclear, but evidence shows a decent amount of charcoal as well as charred roots and seed casings from each soil sample.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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Possible sources for the fire include a natural fire, like a wildfire or root fire, or human-caused fire, such as burning trash or building materials before disposing them in the privy.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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More evidence of a building was visible in the soil sample from pebble-sized pieces of what seems to look like plastic, found in one of the pre-sorts. It has a glassy outer layer while the inside material was more grainy. It almost looked like biting into a jelly filled candy, where you have one texture around the outside and another texture \u201cfilled\u201d in the inside. Most likely, it is tar paper that would have lined the interior of a building to keep out wind and rain.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Conclusions<\/b><\/h2>\n

The soft soil, and tar paper, metal, and wood fragments in the samples all point to a man-made hole. The large number of naturally-occurring species so deep in the unit, and both above and below the wood plank points to high levels of disturbance. As no organic-rich level was found, however, it is unclear if it was a privy, or if the cultural soils were deeper than excavation allowed.<\/p>\n

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Working in the lab has opened my horizons for opportunities and knowledge for future careers.\u00a0<\/span>This was the first year I got to use the flotation machine and it was so fun to use. Using it for different prehistoric and historic samples was so rewarding because it was my first time finding artifacts and remains. Finding and analyzing the artifacts really confirmed that this is something I want to do in my life; in fact this entire internship is constant validation that anthropology is the right path for me.<\/span><\/p>\n

Mystery Artifact!<\/h2>\n

This month, we need some help with ceramic Maker’s Marks! First, we have two Buffalo China plates with the letters “EAA” under the logo and can’t decipher what they mean. They aren’t part of the company’s date code. Second, a partial maker’s mark seemingly reads “TU[…] \/ ROS […]” with the T extending down into the R. We haven’t been able to identify this one at all.<\/p>\n

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Let us know if you recognize either of these!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Allyana Marshall April 10, 2025 For more about Apex or the Apex, Arizona Archaeology Project, visit our website or email Dr. Emily Dale at emily.dale@nau.edu. In Summer 2024, Bruce Phillips, a geoarchaeologist and archaeobotanist, and the Apex field school students took two samples from a possible privy. The privy depression had several wooden beams […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":874,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[19],"class_list":["post-3742","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-apex","tag-apex"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/department-anthropology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3742","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/department-anthropology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/department-anthropology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/department-anthropology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/874"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/department-anthropology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3742"}],"version-history":[{"count":26,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/department-anthropology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3742\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3781,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/department-anthropology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3742\/revisions\/3781"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/department-anthropology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3742"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/department-anthropology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3742"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/department-anthropology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3742"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}