Excavation

Major excavation of the DB site took place in the summer of 1996. This work, in addition to the testing of the site, was conducted by the ARCC Office of Archaeological Research for Burns & McDonnell Engineers of Kansas City, Missouri. The project was financed by Fort Leavenworth and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Aware that the site would be destroyed soon, Dr. Brad Logan, the project director, devised a strategy to get as much information as possible from the site with the time and money available. Soil was carefully shaved away from the surface with shovels and collected for screening. The site was dug by 10 cm levels in 2 by 2 meter units. The soil was washed through screens so that all pieces over 1/8" were recovered. Special soil samples were also taken from each level within a unit to recover even smaller remains.

One of the most important kinds of information archaeologists record is provenience (where items were found). If they know the provenience of the artifacts, they may establish the number of occupations at the site, assign pieces to the different occupations, reconstruct the placement of different activities, and trace the formation of the site. Without provenience, archaeologists have a hard time testing any ideas they have about what happened at a site. An artifact without provenience or context carries little information.

The archaeologists at the DB site carefully recorded information about artifact provenience during excavation. Any artifact over 2.5 cm in length was mapped in place. Smaller pieces found in the water screen had unit and level information. This information proved to be very valuable during analysis, when the archaeologists tried to reconstruct events at the site.

By the end of July 1996, 165 square meters had been excavated. The entire site had been much larger, but the deadline for completion was approaching. Any information the crew missed now would be forever lost when the construction crews and heavy machinery moved in to build the prison. Hoping to reveal some of the last secrets of the site before it was destroyed, the archaeologists followed a grader as it rumbled around the excavation, scraping away the soil from an additional 3500 square meters and uncovering artifacts. Many of these artifacts, particularly the more elaborately worked ones, were mapped in place. The soil was removed down to about 60 cm below the ground surface, the depth of most of the artifacts.

Laboratory analysis

In August 1996, the last of the artifacts was carried back to ARCC, and the long process of cleaning, identifying, and analyzing them began. One of the tasks was to process the flotation samples collected in the field. Flotation samples are soil samples that are washed in a special tank to find small artifacts, particularly charred plant remains. (Plant remains, such as corn, nuts, or grass seeds, are normally only preserved in archaeological sites in Kansas if they are burned or charred; otherwise, they simply decay like other organic materials.) When the soil sample is dumped into a tank of water, charred plant remains float to the top and are collected in a special tray.

Samples from the water screen were sorted by type of artifact. Pieces were assigned catalog numbers. All of the artifacts were washed, weighed, and bagged, and a detailed inventory was created. After about six months of preliminary work in the lab, the archaeologists began studying the different classes of artifacts more intensively.

A wide variety of different artifact types was recovered, including axes, celts, spear and arrow points (also known as projectile points), knives, ceramic sherds (vessel fragments), grinding stones or manos, hammerstones for making stone tools, hematite or "ocher," and charred wood, nutshells, seeds, and corn. Study of how these artifacts were made, how they were used and worn, what they were made from and where they were found allowed the team of researchers to answer some basic questions about the site and the human activities that took place there.