WORK CONTINUES IN THE LAB FOR CWU'S SUMMER MAMMOTH PROJECT

September 4, 2008

ELLENSBURG, Wash. -- The 2008 summer season proved exciting at the Central Washington University Wenas Creek Mammoth Field School. Students and faculty working at the site uncovered the dig's largest number of bones so far, said Dr. Patrick Lubinski, archaeologist and CWU anthropology professor.

"We found several interesting specimens, including a mammoth first vertebra, a left femur nearly four feet long, several foot bones and rib fragments," Lubinski said. "We also recovered several bones (left rear leg and foot bones) from a hoofed mammal, a bison or relative."

Excavations also revealed several human artifacts near the mammoth bones; however, it is not yet clear if the fragments are somehow connected to the bones, he added.

This past summer the site saw more than 2,000 visitors, including children's and senior's groups as well as representatives of the Yakama Nation, Colville Confederated Tribes and Coeur d'Alene Tribe. In addition, Dr. Jim Feathers from the University of Washington's Luminescence Laboratory visited the site to take a dozen samples for optically stimulated luminescence dating.

"These samples will provide us with a more complete understanding of the history of sediments on the site, and hopefully resolve the age of the artifact, a chipped stone flake, found in 2006," Lubinski said. The flake is believed to be a human artifact, found six inches above the mammoth's bones.

Now that activity at the site is wrapping up for the summer, Lubinski and CWU students will spend time studying the artifacts and bones in the laboratory.

"We still have a lot of work to do in the laboratory before we can make conclusions. Some of the lab work is fairly basic but time consuming, like cleaning and preparing the bones. Other lab work takes both time and specialized expertise. Still other work requires funding and expertise beyond CWU, like the OSL dating that will allow us a better picture of site age, or pollen analysis, for which we have not yet obtained sufficient funding to submit samples to a laboratory. We are also in the process of making cast reproductions of some of the bones for possible display and teaching purposes," Lubinski said.

The historical site, located near Selah, Wash., was first discovered in the Wenas Creek Valley area in February of 2005 when contractors, preparing the land for a private road, spotted a large bone in a chunk of frozen soil. The land's owner, Doug Mayo, took the bone to CWU, where Lubinski, who specializes in zooarchaeology, the study of animal bones at archaeological sites, identified it as an Ice Age mammoth bone, believed to be about 16,000 years old.

Since that time, faculty and students from across the country have spent each summer working at the site, finding more pieces to this ancient puzzle. The dig has become an invaluable educational tool for anthropology, archaeology and natural resources students by providing hands-on experience.

"Future fieldwork is planned, but we are not sure of its scale at this point'" concluded Lubinski. "But we do anticipate a 2009 field school training student excavators and extracting more of the many bones we uncovered in 2008."

Media Contact: Pat Lubinski, CWU Dept. of Anthropology, 509-899-1503, lubinski@cwu.edu Teri Olin, CWU Public Relations & Marketing, 509-963-1416, olint@cwu.edu

Central Washington University is a master's degree-granting institution with approximately 10,000 students and 1,500 faculty and staff. More than 160 undergraduate and master's degrees are offered. Founded in 1891, the Ellensburg campus is located in the heart of Washington State, nestled between the Cascade Mountains and the Columbia River. Since 1975, CWU has served the needs of place bound students at six university centers throughout the state. CWU is an AA/EEO/Title IX Institution.