HARTVILLE – During a late October field visit to the Patten Creek archaeologic site, last excavated in the mid-‘60s, “several skeletal elements were discovered eroding out of a cut bank” located 10 miles north of Hartville, stated Camp Guernsey base archaeologist Blake Griffin at a meeting in Hartville on Feb. 27.
“This is why I’m excited to talk to y’all tonight,” he told the group gathered for the monthly meeting of Sunrise Historic and Prehistoric Preservation Society.
He explained, the remains were discovered literally a stone’s throw away from a 12’ wide, 6’ deep excavation block which yielded around 400,000 artifacts in flakes and bones. During the excavation conducted by Harvard under the supervision of Sara Keller in the 1960s, the artifacts included atlatl projectile points dubbed “Sudbury points” (after the landowner at the time) dating from 5,000 to 6,000 years ago, and Patten Creek atlatl points dating from 1,500 to 3,500 years ago.
“These bleached bones were the ones that clued us to the fact this portion of the site was in danger of being lost to erosion, and there were still intact, buried deposits,” Griffin said, adding later, “Optimistically we can infer from these bones, there is a well preserved, mostly complete bison skull [ buried deeper in the bank.]”
After careful excavation last fall, Griffin and his team unearthed two bison humeri, metacarpal, several articulated thoracic vertebrae, a left ulna, and a nearly complete bison mandible and atlas vertebrae – the very first vertebrae behind the skull – a jaw, first vertical rib, and part of the hyoid bone which was almost complete. Basically, many elements from the front end of a bison. These bones were found in a well-preserved stratified deposit, with a rsmall fragment of bone sacrificed for a radiocarbon date, which came out to be 1190 AD.

Griffin pointed out that date conveniently gives a connecting point in world history in which to place artifacts being unearthed. The years 1189 to 1192 AD saw Richard I of England, Phillip II of France and Holy Roman Emperor Frederic I involved in the Third Crusade in Europe.
Above the lower layer of bone and cultural material (approximately 18 inches below the ground surface), last fall’s excavation found 13 chert flakes and a fragment of animal bone which gave a radiocarbon date of 1585 AD.
“We conveniently have another world event to put this date into perspective. Within a year or two of this bison dying, there was a colony building a fort on Roanoke Island, the first English settlement in America. People were in for some major changes over the next three centuries,” Griffin said.
These dates were obtained from well preserved, concise layers laid down by geological processes which left cultural deposits relatively undisturbed at the site, giving a good perspective of timeframes and anthropologic (the study of human history) activity through time.
The chert flakes found in multiple levels during both Griffin’s excavation and Harvard’s excavation work together to paint a picture of the past.
“The dates and the deposition tell us that our two dates are very significant. The upper level could potentially contain Plains Apache, Dismal River (a pottery culture from Nebraska) component from the 1400s to 1600s. The lower date (deeper in the earth) could be associated with the late Plains Woodland, Chadron occupation (another pottery culture). But because of the deposition and degree of preservation at that site, we could continue to learn more about the archaic and pre-historic cultural lives of the past,” Griffin said.
The significance, Griffin explained, is it is rare to find such well-preserved cultural sites. “Most sites of those time periods are not buried: all or mostly all of them are on the surface. As a result, most sites this age don’t get preserved,” Griffin said. “Here we have them well preserved in these layers at Patten Creek.
Though the excavation of exposed bison bones was recently completed, the Patten Creek site has been carefully marked and filled back in, Griffin said he hopes to be able to excavate further, but “it would take more funding and a lot more people.”
Griffin said he’d like to do a project next season with funding enough to properly curate everything that is discovered, which can become expensive. “I want to make sure everything is being analyzed and we are getting as much information as possible,” he said.