Roald Fryxell's Strata Monolith excavation work and excavation floor work in Washington state during the 1960's
This post followings on as PART 3 from Virginia Steen-McIntyre's post on the The Pleistocene Coalition website.
But first, who was Fryxell (pronounced Frick-SELL)?
Roald Hilding Fryxell (b.1934 – d.1974) American Educator, Geologist and Archaeologist.
Eagles Rest Peak, Grand Tetons, June 28, 1953: A. E. Creswell, left, and Roald Fryxell
Fryxell was Professor of Geochronology at Washington State University. He was noted for his interdisciplinary work in Geoarchaeology. During the 1960s Fryxell worked with two members of the U.S. Geological Survey under a National Science Foundation grant to study the Hueyatlaco Archeological Site.
In 1968 Fryxell was a co-principal investigator with Richard Daugherty (WSU) during the unearthing of the Marmes Rockshelter from the floodplain of the Palouse River near the confluence of the Palouse and Snake Rivers in southeastern Washington. The site was found to contain some of the oldest human remains in the western hemisphere at 12,000 years of age.
Fryxell (above right), with Neil Armstrong (left), at a Space Symposium in 1972.
In 1971 he was selected to be part of the team of geologists in Houston who examined rocks brought back from the Moon during the Apollo program. He was also the designer of the apparatus used for collecting core samples of the moon's surface. The lunar crater Fryxell is named after him. Fryxell was killed on May 18, 1974, in a car accident age 40, when his car went off the road near Othello, Washington.
MONOLITH EXCAVATION WORK
Dr. Fryxell (above) preparing a soil monolith at the Marmes Rockshelter site, October 1968.
Source: The Marmes Rockshelter Site, Museum of Anthropology, Washington State University.
Samples of Roald Fryxell's Strata Monolith excavation work and excavation floor work in Washington state during the 1960's.
Fryxell and monolith preparation
Fryxell and monolith wrapping
Fryxell and frost cracks
Fryxell and Marmes model
TRENCHES AT HUEYATLACO
Irwin-Williams' trench at Hueyatlaco where it intersects, 1973
Source
This
blog exists to promote Hueyatlaco and Virginia Steen-McIntyre's work,
as there is no current working website that Virginia runs, which is a
shame as there is a loss in her ability to keep her work online for all
people and humanity to access, and educate themselves about her life
long work.
In 2011, Virginia was given access by the The Pleistocene Coalition to post her items on their website, that had gone from her three previous websites. Below is a direct copy of this from source: http://pleistocenecoalition.com/steen-mcintyre/index.html
Following on from the previous Post : Virginia Steen-McIntyre Recommended Reading, Research and Unpublished manuscripts published 30th August 2016, this continues Virginia's posting of information covering Trenching profiles.
TRENCH PROFILES
Stratigraphic cross-sections at the Hueyatlaco archaeological site, Valsequillo area, State of Puebla, Mexico.
INTRODUCTION
Following are the Hueyatlaco trench
profiles available to the “Classic” Valsequillo project as of October, 2005.
The bulk of Irwin-Williams’ data, including her original profile drawings, had
been removed from her files in Portales, New Mexico before Steen-McIntyre had a
chance to copy them in 1997. The
original INAH profiles have not been located. The original Fryxell profiles are archived, along with copies of other
pertinent Valsequillo data, in the Harold E. Malde file, Field Records Library, Central Regional
Library, U.S. Geological Survey, Denver, Colorado.
The trench profile drawings shown here
were transferred to computer by Steen-McIntyre using Adobe Illustrator,
with
the available profile copies used as templates. The work extended
over many months, from June 2004 to October 2005, and
was a learning experience for her. Irwin-Williams’ profile
1966 10/B-J and INAH profile 1966 66-4 were traced from copies
she gave to us
(Malde, Fryxell, Steen-McIntyre) shortly before we left for field work
at
Hueyatlaco in 1973. Her profile 1964?
8?/B-YY was pieced together from 8.5x11 sheets (exact location not
given) found
in her extant Portales materials. Grateful
thanks to Chris Hardaker, who recently uncovered the sheets for the
eastern
half of the profile while looking through her data. The 2004
Waters profile is a copy of an
interim drawing by Waters, made by me in the field. It is included
only to show placement of the
samples I collected during excavations at Hueyatlaco in May, 2004.
The Fryxell profiles were drawn
primarily from a series of annotated blue-line prints provided to
Steen-McIntyre by Roald’s widow, Helen, in 1977. Only recently did she discover that the
originals were at the U.S.G.S. offices in Denver, and Hal Malde kindly provided
sharper copies of them.
All profiles were carefully
transferred
to computer. Contact lines were traced
at a magnification of 1100 per cent for the most part. The
bedding units in the lower trenches (includes those containing
artifacts)
were identified by Irwin-Williams on her profiles, either by label or
pattern
overlay, and were the standard to which Fryxell sheet 4 and
Waters’ interim
profile 4-extension were compared when correlating beds and adding the
color
overlay.
TRENCH
PROFILES
A word here about trench profiles,
especially the Fryxell series.
Trench profiles are accurate, vertical
drawings of the sedimentary layers encountered at an archaeologic site during
the process of excavation. They preserve the record of the stratigraphy of the
site; a record that can be used by future researchers after the site itself has
been reduced to a backfilled cavity.
At
the beginning of the first season of excavation, a bench mark is chosen
and the site is surveyed. A horizontal
grid is established, usually at metre intervals, and the grid lines are
identified in some way. Excavation
usually takes place vertically in blocks controlled by the placement of this
horizontal grid. The vertical walls that
form around the sides of the blocks as the material within them is removed show
in cross section the layers of sediment encountered, the sedimentary beds. They provide the raw data for the trench
profiles.
Periodically
excavation work is halted
while the scientist in charge, after previously scribing the bedding
contacts
directly on a newly exposed trench wall, transfers the
information to a large sheet of graph paper. Sedimentary
units of interest are labeled in
the field with a number or letter, and the position of any archaeologic
or
geologic feature is carefully measured and drawn to scale. A
surveyed grid of strong twine, attached to
the vertical wall with long nails, guides the transfer. A series
of such profiles is drawn as the
excavation continues, often spaced only a metre apart. The
annotated profiles are later
reconstructed in the office or on computer to form a three-dimensional
picture
of the site.
The “Classic era” Hueyatlaco trench
profiles shown below were originally drawn in 1964?, 1966 and 1973. Site archaeologist Cynthia Irwin-Williams
provided us (Malde, Fryxell, Steen-McIntyre) with a copy of her 1966 profile
10/B-J in 1973, shortly before we left for new work there. The plan was to use this profile, in which
she identified her bedding units, and her survey datum point to tie our planned
excavation in with hers. This we were
able to do (see join lines, Irwin-Williams’ 1966 profile, Fryxell sheet 4,
Waters interim 4--extension).
Profiles on Fryxell sheets 1 through 4
were drawn in 1973 by Fryxell assisted by Steen-McIntyre. Each dashed line
represents an actual bedding plane, and shows in cross section the ground
surface as it existed just prior to the deposition of the sedimentary layer
immediately above it. Periodically over
the years, erosion would remove portions of the bedding units, then the
sequence of deposition would begin all over again. These “breaks” in the sedimentary sequence,
which actually represent periods of “lost” time, show up as lacunae , some quite
distinct, between the two series of beds. (Sedimentary beds are most easily recognized when a newly exposed trench
wall is allowed to dry naturally for a day or two undisturbed. Then, the sandy beds will appear lighter in
color than the clay-rich ones, and natural cracks, or parting planes, will
develop along the bedding planes.)
When examining a trench profile,
Fryxell first concentrated on the bedding planes at the bottom and top
of a
sedimentary unit of interest rather than the unit itself. This
enabled him to recognize the unit, deposited
during the same time period, by its various sedimentary facies: for
example, a deposit of overbank sediment
from a flooding stream will grade from sand to silt and finally to clay
as one
moves away from the ancient stream channel. This is what we found
for the uppermost sequence of the upper channel deposits exposed
in
Irwin-Williams’ Hueyatlaco trenches, the ones labeled “sand
grading to clay” on
Fryxell sheet 4.
Following excavation in 1973, a
series of stabilized columns of undisturbed sediment from the trench walls
("monoliths") were collected. Their locations are shown on the trench
profiles, and their appearance in a series of photos and brief notes taken at
Midland, Texas in 2002, when the packing crates were finally opened.The photos
and notes are located in the Hueyatlaco 1973 file, under "Hueyatlaco 1973
monoliths, Monolith photos."
Virginia
Steen-McIntyre
October
6, 2005
FILES
Introduction to the Trench Profiles (doc. same text as above)
Hueyatlaco 1973 fence diagonal (pdf)
Hueyatlaco trench map (provided by Hal Malde 2006, pdf)
Irwin-Williams pdf
profiles:
Waters profile:
