Archeology E-Gram June 2022

NPS Archeologists Contribute to Global Research on Sustainable Harvesting

Archeologists from NPS Southeast Archeological Center (SEAC) contributed valuable research to a global study finding that Indigenous groups sustainably harvested massive amounts of oysters over hundreds and sometimes thousands of years, published in Nature Communications last month. The researchers analyzed samples from Indigenous oyster harvest sites in North America, including at Canaveral NS, De Soto National Memorial and Everglades NP.

NPS archeologist Margo Schwadron and her team of researchers concluded that indigenous people lived sustainably, and integrated knowledge into sustainable practices. They learned that oyster harvest sites were significantly more productive for thousands of years when managed by Indigenous communities. Today, a major decline in oyster fisheries is a global concern.

“This study is significant because it highlights the importance of indigenous knowledge in ecosystem management. A failure to take traditional ecological knowledge into account contributed to the collapse of oyster fisheries associated with European settlement," noted NPS archeologist Michael Lockman.

NPS Chief Archeologist Position is Open

The NPS Chief Archeologist position is with the Park Archeology Program within the Cultural Resources, Partnerships, and Science Directorate, under the Deputy Associate Director for Park & National Heritage Areas. The incumbent is a principal expert on archeological matters, providing policy development, guidance, interpretation, and professional leadership in the field of archeology and archeological resource management for the National Park System. The incumbent is also the Departmental Consulting Archeologist.

Open to the first 150 applicants or until the closing date of the announcement, whichever comes first. All applications submitted by 11:59 (EST) on July 13, 2022, will receive consideration. Open to status candidates, Land Management eligibles, VEOA eligibles, Career Transition eligibles, and those eligible for special/noncompetitive hiring authorities (including Public Land Corps).

Apply through USAjobs, at USAJOBS - Job Announcement

Bears Ears National Monument to be Co-Managed with Tribes

The Biden Administration has signed a historic cooperative agreement with five tribes for the co-management of Bears Ears NM. The agreement was signed between the BLM, USFS, and the five tribes who were original stewards of the monument: Hopi Tribe, Navajo Nation, Ute Mountain Ute Tribe, Ute Indian Tribe of the Uintah and Ouray Reservation, and the Pueblo of Zuni.

The objective of the cooperative agreement is to coordinate on land use planning and implementation. On October 8, 2021, President Biden restored the 1.36 million acres of the Bears Ears National Monument, a large portion of which was previously reduced under former president Donald Trump. Included in Biden’s order was the re-establishment of a Bears Ears Commission, with an elected tribal member from one of each of the five local tribes.

Summer 2022 Issue of Park Science Now Available

The Summer 2022 issue of Park Science magazine is now live! Articles include:

• Why a Navajo scientist is seeking to restore traditional peach horticulture.
• How riparian restoration experiments are helping protect natural and cultural sites along the Colorado River in Grand Canyon and Glen Canyon.
• The importance of imagination in park planning.
• How we discovered that people’s breathing can influence the growth of cave formations.
• How an insect became an NPS superhero in the search for environmental mercury.

Park Science make science and stewardship visible to a general audience. It provides stories that demonstrate how science informs and advances the agency's mission. Park Science is published by the NPS Natural Resource Stewardship and Science Directorate. Two Park Science editorial board members are cultural resource specialists.

Learn more at nps.gov/parkscience.

National Historic Landmarks Program Releases New Theme Study

The National Historic Landmarks (NHL) Program has released a new theme study, Labor History in the United States, which highlights stories of Americans at work through current scholarship on labor history and nationally significant places. The study is organized into chapters focusing on workers in agriculture, extraction industries (like mining or lumbering), manufacturing, transportation, and the service sector. While labor organizing is a theme throughout, the focus on occupational groups highlights current research on working people. Beyond discussion of existing and potential labor history landmarks, the context can inform National Register of Historic Places nominations.

The study can be downloaded at Americans at Work - National Historic Landmark Theme Study on Labor History (U.S. National Park Service) (nps.gov)

Contact: Lisa Davidson, at e-mail us

Detail With National NAGPRA Program

The NPS National NAGPRA Program is offering a detail for a Grants Management Specialist. GS-1109-11 DOI Internal Merit Promotion vacancy announcement (# 11504392) has been posted on USAJOBS, opening at 12:00 AM Eastern Time Tuesday, 07/05/2022 and closing after 11:59pm Eastern Time on Tuesday, 07/19/2022.

This position is open to current career/career conditional employees of the Department of the Interior, Land Management eligible, and CTAP eligible.

Apply through USAJobs at Grants Management Specialist GS-1109-11

Future Archeological Sites Affected by Current Practices

Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland has issued Secretary’s Order 3407, to phase out single-use plastic products on Department-managed lands by 2032. The Order implements President Biden’sExecutive Order 14057, calling for federal agencies to minimize waste and support markets for recycled products.

The Order also directs the Department to identify nonhazardous, environmentally preferable alternatives to single-use plastic products, such as compostable or biodegradable materials, or 100 percent recycled materials. Single-use plastic products include plastic and polystyrene food and beverage containers, straws, cups, cutlery and plastic bags designed for or intended to be used once and discarded.

Less than 10 percent of the plastic that has ever been produced has been recycled, and recycling rates are not increasing. Plastics, including unnecessary and easily substituted single-use plastic products, are devastating fish and wildlife around the world.

Oceans are downstream of all pollution sources and bears the brunt of the impacts: of the more than 300 million tons of plastic produced every year for use in a wide variety of applications, at least 14 million tons of plastic end up in the ocean every year and plastic makes up 80 percent of all marine debris found from surface waters to deep-sea sediments.

Missouri Man Indicted for Archeological Site Destruction

A 70-year-old man has been indicted by a federal grand jury for illegally excavating a prehistoric Native American site near Tightwad, Missouri, causing more than $300,000 in damage. Johnny Lee Brown was charged in an 11-count indictment by a federal grand jury on April 26, 2022.

According to the indictment, from 2016 to 2021 Brown participated in a conspiracy to unlawfully excavate archeological resources from federal lands at Harry S. Truman Lake in Henry County, Missouri. The site is a Native American site that dates to the Late Archaic Period (3,000-5,000 years ago). Brown and co-conspirators used tools ranging from small handheld trowels to full-size shovels, rakes, and hoes to dig at large areas of the site.

Brown is charged with five felony counts of excavating, damaging, and otherwise altering and defacing archeological resources and five felony counts of injury or depredation to government property. The indictment cites 10 specific occasions on which Brown and his co-conspirators excavated the site.

This case is being prosecuted by AUSAs David A. Barnes and Cari Walsh. It was investigated by the FWS and ACE.

The Federal Archeologist’s Bookshelf:

Words are Monuments: Patterns in US national parks place names perpetuate settler colonial mythologies including white supremacy, McGill, B. M., Borrelle, S. B., Wu, G. C., Ingeman, K. E., Koch, J. B. & Barnd, N. B. People and Nature Vol. 4 (3) 1-18. 2022

Using the NPS as an example, the authors of Words are Monuments illustrate the need to examine our choices of place names in the National Park System and benefits of changing names. The authors point out that place names are important, especially within the context of recreational lands. Parks are key places where people develop awareness of and empathy for the more-than-human natural world and construct and socialize identities such as environmental steward and naturalist identities.

The authors examined the origins of 2,241 place names in 16 national parks. Based on information from research on origins, they placed the name into one of four categories 1.) Indigenous names and/settler colonial language names 2.) derogatory names/ racial slurs; 3.) the current name erases or replaces an Indigenous name 4.) The name represents a dimension of racism and colonialism.

Of the names examined, nearly 80% could be classified and were assigned one of the categories for derogatory, erasure, and dimensions of racism and settler colonialism. A total of 12% of place names on visitor maps use words from Indigenous languages or names of Indigenous peoples. Less than 5% of named features bear traditional Indigenous place names. All 16 parks examined had at least one or more places or features named after people who supported racist ideologies, capitalized on Indigenous dispossession and colonization, and/or participated in acts of genocide. More detailed analysis can be found in the article.

In November 2021, Secretary Haaland established the Advisory Committee on Reconciliation in Place Names and the Derogatory Geographic Names Task Force to assist the Board on Geographic Names (BGN) to remove derogatory names from geographic features on Federal land. This action has already had a positive effect. The NPS announced on June 9 that Yellowstone NP has renamed one of its largest mountains to honor Native Americans after research showed the peak’s original namesake led a massacre that killed at least 173 members of a local tribe. Known previously as Mount Doane, the peak has been renamed First Peoples Mountain.

One facet of decolonizing ecological and conservation methods is to normalize a practice of building cultural competence in the places where we work and play. Archeologists can help change place names by being thoughtful about naming sites and avoiding the common practice of naming sites after landowners; proposing name changes when the indigenous name is known; and supporting proposed name changes.

Read the full article at Words are monuments: Patterns in US national park place names perpetuate settler colonial mythologies including white supremacy

GRANTS AND TRAINING

Community Science Fellowships
Applications are now open for the 2023 NPS and AGU’s Thriving Earth Exchange (TEX) Program. This a great development opportunity for building professional skills and relationships with communities and their cultural heritage.

Fellows must be NPS permanent employees, but the project team can include partners or scientists from National Heritage Areas, NPS-affiliated sites, universities or friends groups. Fellows and communities apply in tandem, and projects may or may not take place on NPS lands.

TEX Fellows facilitate projects with a scientist and a community to identify research questions, develop protocols, collect and manage data, and apply the results. Projects are driven by communities’ priorities but are assisted by resource experts. Fellows can expect to spend 2-3 hours per week in the first month as the project develops, then 2-3 hours per month thereafter, for between 6 to 18 months. Small amounts of funding may be available for communities.

Among the many exciting possibilities, TEX Fellows might help a community on a project that:

• Develops a research design for an archeological survey of a battlefield
• Assesses future availability of plants and animals for traditional gathering practices
• Forms treatment and management plans for cemeteries and burial grounds threatened by sea-level rise
• Identifies invasive vs. native species ahead of creating historic house gardens
• Tests recipes for long-term protection and maintenance of traditional building materials

The due date for applications is September 8, 2022. Fellows will be notified in late September and projects will begin in the Fall, to continue for 6-18 months. Supervisor permission is required.

Find more information and apply at AGU Thriving Earth Exchange Community Science Fellowship.

Tribal Consultation Webinar Series
Federal agencies are required to engage in regular and meaningful consultation and collaboration with Tribal officials. Government-to-government relationships should include regular and timely communication so that tribes may provide input on issues that may have a substantial direct effect on them. The Tribal Consultation Webinar series is being offered for NPS employees looking for an introduction into the Tribal consultation process, or those who want to refresh their skills or ask experts for advice on best consultation practices for managing park resources.

July 12, 2022 - Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about Tribal Consultation but Were Too Afraid to Ask - Part II

August 16, 2022 - Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about Tribal Consultation but Were Too Afraid to Ask - Part III

September 13, 2022 - Historical Trauma and Mistrust of the Federal Government

October 11, 2022 - Players in the Tribal Consultation Process

November 15, 2022 - Cross-cultural Communication - How to Communicate with Tribes

December 13, 2022 - Shared Stewardship

January 10, 2023 - Applied Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK)

These webinars are offered on the second Tuesday of the month, using the MS Teams platform, 3:00 pm – 4:30 pm ET.

Register through the Common Leaning Portal. The link registers you for full series but you may attend as few or as many as you wish. Speakers for each session and additional information are available on the Common Learning Portal.

Contact: Cari Kreshak, e-mail us

SLIGHTLY OFF TOPIC: Archeologists Find Pieces of the Beeswax Wreck

Archeologists in Oregon have found pieces of theBeeswax Wreck. Stories of a shipwreck are known from the earliest days of Euroamerican presence in the Pacific Northwest and for centuries beeswax and Chinese porcelain have washed ashore on Nehalem Spit, on the north Oregon Coast. Fur traders and explorers learned from American Indians that a large ship had wrecked on the spit, with survivors and cargo that included beeswax. The stories captivated treasure-hunters who searched for a century and a half on nearby Neahkahnie Mountain and the adjacent beaches.

Scott Williams is an archeologist who for 16 years has been searching for the ship. Two years ago, a resident told Williams he had found what looked like wood from an ancient ship. Crews found 13 pieces of timber trapped in a sea cave which they believe to be from the Beeswax Wreck. The timber was difficult to access, and one piece weighed hundreds of pounds. The local sheriff’s department helped with the recovery. It was a race against a rising tide.

“The last few timbers, I ended up staying behind to get those bundled up so I had to swim out to the jet ski because I got trapped where I couldn’t get out any other way,” said Coastal Region District Archeologist Stacy Owen.

Earlier, the Beeswax Wreck Project, headed by Cameron La Follette, undertook wide-ranging research in the archives of Spain, the Philippines, and Mexico to locate all available information about the Beeswax Wreck. Their research identified the ship as either the Santo Cristo de Burgos, which sailed in 1693, or the San Francisco Xavier, which left Manila in 1705. Neither ship arrived at its destination.

Based on the type of wood and the size of the pieces, Williams says he’s 90% sure this is the wreckage of a Spanish Galleon involved in the Manila Trade. Archeologists say the wood is a tropical hardwood not native to Oregon and radiocarbon dating will determine when the wood was harvested. The Beeswax Wreck Project learned that the Santo Cristo de Burgos was carrying 2.5 tons of liquid mercury. Testing the wood for mercury could provide confirmation of the ship’s identity.

The Beeswax Wreck Project published the findings in the Summer 2018 issue of the Oregon Historical Quarterly OHQ which was completely devoted to the Beeswax project. The website also features a fun short video on the Beeswax Wreck.

You can read the abstracts and watch the video at Summer 2018 (ohs.org)

Archeology E-Gram, distributed via e-mail on a regular basis, includes announcements about news, new publications, training opportunities, national and regional meetings, and other important goings-on related to public archeology in the NPS and other public agencies. Recipients are encouraged to forward Archeology E-Grams to colleagues and relevant mailing lists. The E-Gram archive is available at https://www.nps.gov/orgs/1038/archeology-e-gram.htm.

Contact: Karen Mudar at e-mail us to contribute news items and to subscribe.