BWCA "New" Knife Lake Archaeological Finds Boundary Waters Listening Point - General Discussion
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Landstryker
member (47)member
  
12/09/2009 10:36AM   (Thread Older Than 3 Years)
Sorry if something on this has already been posted, but it was new to me...

A couple months ago I was regaling my father with tales of my trip last summer to Knife Lake when he told me of an interesting story he had written about when he was a reporter for the Duluth News-Tribune back in the 70s. In '67, Norm Saari was camped on Gold Island in the South Arm of Knife Lake when he discovered some human remains partially exposed at his campsite. He carefully packed the bones out and gave them to the U of M to study. The results were inconclusive - the remains were very old (5 - 6 thousand years) and some thought they resembled Neanderthals more than modern humans...which was highly problematic given that Neanderthal remains have never been found in the Western Hemisphere. A few more surveys were conducted, and some similar sites were found elsewhere in the region, but little is known about paleoindian cultures from that far back.

A couple weeks later my father attended a lecture by Lee Johnson and Billy Clayton of the Superior National Forest Heritage Program about some very recent work on Knife Lake. I haven't found any info from them online, so here's my dad's summary of the lecture. I can also post my dad's original articles about the Saari find if anyone's interested.

"On Monday night, Dianne and I attended a lecture in Superior where the u.s. forest service disclosed that it had found five new stone-age stone quarry sites and stone-toolmaking-workshops on Thunder Point between the north and south arms of knife lake. One of the quarries is four acres in size and caches of stone blanks for adzes and knifes were found in caches. Stone chips from working the blanks into finished implements and spear points were found at numerous workship sites between the Thunder Point ridge top and the water line of the lake. No excavations have been done yet, only a preliminary walking survey. Dating the site has not been done either and will be very difficult to do because of the thinness of soils in the area, but the forest service archeaologist think the site is the work of paleo-indians and is very old by northern minnesota terms. Because of the remote area where they were found, the sites are literally untouched since the forest claimed them thousands of years ago.

The new discoveries wered credited to Norm Saari's find, arch. work nearby in Canada and the 1999 blowdown in the BWCA. In 1975 the Cannucks did a survey of the border route looking for signs of indians and voyageurs but they also found four stone quarries on the canadian side of the north arm of knife lake. Additional work uncovered 11 more sites in 1977 and 20 in 1992.

The rocks on knife lake apparently drew paleo indians because it provides exceptional material for making stone implements that isn't found anywhere else near by. The rock is called siltstone or graywacke. It was formed when rock from a volcanic range in canada eroded and formed siltbeds in lakes around knife lake. In time the silt became shale and was in turn metamorphised into flint or chert like rock by the heat from a granitic intrusion near Saganaga lake. The rock can be easily worked by a process called knaping that produces excellent sharp edges for knifes, spears, scrapers, and adzes.

The forest service was aware of the canadians' work and norm saari's find but a water line survey of the u.s. side of knife lake turned up only one stone quarry prior to 1999. The blowdown and the subsequent prescribed burns to get rid of the forest fire fuel it left changed all that. Surveys of burn units done between 2002-09 uncovered 78 prehistoric sites of various kinds, including many in the Knife Lake area. a burn on thunder point in 2005 was particularly hot and removed 50 to 90 percent of the ground cover, opening up a vast area for easy inspection.

In september the fs formed an interagency team of archs. to canoe into knife lake and do a walking survey of thunder point, concentrating on the area away from the lake that had never been looked at. The eight members walked the area and rapidly found five new stone quarry sites along the south facing edge of the ridge top of thunder point. one was four acres in size and had associated caches of 'blanks' for later working into knifes, spearpoints, etc. and areas where stone chips indicated the final work was done.

The site is rapidly being reforested so the the window for excavation is rapidly closing. The fs will probably try to organize more work there next summer. they are looking for volunteers and I plan to do so.

I've found the newspaper article i wrote about norm saari's find and will send you a copy soon. Norm died at 67 on June 20, 2008, so he'll never know what the result was."
 
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Beemer01
Moderator
  
12/09/2009 07:01PM  
Put me on the list for next summer.
 
12/09/2009 07:46PM  
That's really neat. I'm planning to go into the Knife Lake area for my trip next summer so this will give me another adventure while I'm there.
 
wetcanoedog
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12/09/2009 11:55PM  
thats some high quality information,do you have any links with more detail?
 
marsonite
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12/10/2009 05:52AM  
I recall that there was a find back in the seventies. The story I remember was that some guy was bored (it was raining) and went poking around on a portage trail and found some human bones. I remember them to be much older, like 10,000+ years old. But my memory could well be faulty. Is this the same find or was there another find back then? Anyone know?

A while back there was a thread on this forum about "what do you think about on portages" and I think about that find just about every portage.
 
Red Beard
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12/10/2009 03:00PM  
Very cool stuff!! I remember reading a similar story this summer in the Star & Tribune. Someone found some human remains on a island in a small lake in northern WI. I want to say they dated the remains to be about the same age(give or take a few thousand years) The reserchers conclued that at that time the island was part of the shoreline where a settlement had been. Over the years thru various forces it became an island. More history in this area than we realize. Be sure to post with info on volunteering.
 
bojibob
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12/11/2009 10:22AM  
This thread interest me so I contacted Walt Okstad who is the Historian/Heritage Program Manager for Superior National Forest

Here is Walt's email response: (posted with his permission)

From: Walt Okstad [mailto:wokstad@fs.fed.us]
Sent: Friday, December 11, 2009 9:03 AM
To: Robert Doane
Subject: Re: Request for Information.


I think your write up was pretty inclusive of what we know to date. Norm Saari was a close friend of mine for about 45 years and you are right -He would have been very excited about the quarry finds. Except for one creationist author, the neanderthal angle has been debunked. It is enough to know that people were living up here 10,000 years ago and probably spent 3000 years working the quarries.-small groups every so often, over a very long period of time. We have recorded over 3,000 sites on the Superior (about 1200 prehistoric sites) and a high % of those sites demonstrate people were using the Knife Lake material either by going there and getting it or finding cobbles in the glacial til.--We are hoping to get some graduate theses generated in relation to these sites - which will result in good accurate information to the public on the back side. The risk of putting out to much info, too soon, is that it might encourage visitors who may intentionally or unintentionally damage the sites before they can be properly studied and recorded.
**********************************************************
Walt Okstad
Historian/Heritage Program Manager
Superior National Forest
8901 Grand Avenue Place
Duluth MN 55808
Ph# 218-626-4321
Fax# 218-626-4398
Email: wokstad@fs.fed.us

"If the facts don't fit the theory, change the facts."- Albert Einstein
 
12/11/2009 07:22PM  
It would have been fun...
 
12/11/2009 08:38PM  
Very interesting. Keep the info. coming! I hiked to the top of Thunder Point the last two summers--to think I was right on top of some really old history!
 
wetcanoedog
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12/11/2009 11:22PM  
that's a real mind bender--people found their way up there in what would have been post glacial tundra with ice sheets still in parts of Canada.they were able to transmit the location of these quarry's from generation to generation over century's.it really reinforces the idea that we are no different from them except we eat sandwiches and not mastodons.
 
prewar70
member (14)member
  
03/19/2010 09:24AM  
Can you post your Dad's original articles regarding Norm? Or feel free to email them to me too, jfriedrichs1@comcast.net Good stuff and very interesting.
 
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