Need to catch up!

I decided to start this blog because, I found that as I am waltzing around Montana, there are many witty and hilarious (to me, at least) observations that roll around in my head. That and text messaging my stories to 10 different people is just too tiring.  Ergo, this!  

The view from Snake Butte, located on the Fort Belknap Reservation

Let's see....I started working for the BLM in Havre, Montana on May 13, 2013.  That means I have  7 weeks to catch up on.  Yeah, I'll just summarize:  Montana is beautiful, and I love it here.  Having grown up in the greater Los Angeles area, then living on O'ahu, and now in the greater DC area, pretty much means that I had zero idea that there was still so much undeveloped and wide-open spaces in the US.  Seriously, who knew?  But, I can now say that I have hiked around completely undeveloped lands and stood in places where no matter how long I twirled around in a circle, I could see absolutely nothing except prairie.  Awe-inspiring barely describes how it feels.  

So.....here's a gist/summary of Montana and archaeology.  Almost EVERYTHING is on the surface of the ground.  Literally.  There you are, walking along, and viola!  There sits a stone tool.....a stone tool that is 2,000 years old.  Sitting there.  On the surface.  Even after 7 weeks, this is mind-boggling to me. So, thank you retreating glaciers of thousands of years ago!  You have made my job a lot easier. Except, you also sort-of haven't. Because everything sits on the surface, and somehow we have to pick through all the natural stones to find the ones deposited by humans.   This is not an easy task, most especially given the human tendency to create patterns in apparent chaos.  It is ridiculously easy to see circular tipi rings in a scattering of stones.  The trick I have learned is that if I'm squinting to see it, then it probably does not exist.  

Cairn - A.K.A. Pile of stones - they had numerous uses.

Tipi Ring 

I'm sure that there are many archaeologists who would disagree with me on my lovely trick, and that is just fine.  I have found that some, not all, archaeologists have a tendency to over-categorize, or tend to think everything is man-made.  But, out here, that just won't work.  Now, if I have a scattering of stones that I think might be a tipi ring, and I find a cairn or lithic nearby, then yay!  Context!  I will happily find the tipi ring.  But without context, it is just a rock. 

Either a primary or secondary flake - picture taken as found

As for historic time period stuff, this begins with Lewis and Clark time frame around 1805 and 1806. Yes. Crazy, right?  208 years ago marks the beginning of the historic time frame in Montana.  Know what it is in Virginia?  16th century.  Though contact happened around 1800, it wasn't until 1910 with the railroads and homestead boom that the population really grew.  In fact, during the homestead boom Montana's population was at its greatest.  Sadly, by 1925 half of the homesteaders had lost or abandoned their farms. And that is what we find now.  Old farm houses and equipment lying out in open fields.  

Massey-Harris 90RT Self-Propelled Combine.  Sitting in a wide-open field
with only a few field-clearing stone piles in vicinity.  Nothing else.

In addition to all the archaeology stuff, Montana also has:  livestock (horses and cattle mostly, and gosh do I love them!), bison (who have the most mushable faces!!), Mule deer (they are goofy looking), White-Tailed deer, gophers and prairie dogs (so freaking adorable!), badgers, coyotes (love!), elk, bears, snakes (who like to move just as you're about to walk over them), dozens of prairie birds, owls, hawks, even pelicans (though the Magpie is my favorite bird in Montana, followed closely by a bird who has the cheeriest song EVER...meadow lark, maybe), and bees, ticks, and mosquitos. The mosquitos have got to be the absolute worse, since they are ginormous, and hang out all day long.

So, I think I shall call this one done.  I could write a whole lot more, but I don't want to give all my awesome experiences away immediately!