By JOHN VEYSEY
Posted: July 25, 2004
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Eagle River - Dirt can tell a story.
Kneeling on kneepads, crouching over a meter-wide square of the forest
floor, 63-year-old Blair Gilbert carefully scrapes off a thin layer of dirt.
He's looking for traces of a 1,000-year-old Native American food storage and
processing camp. Usually this means trash - broken tools, flakes chipped off
rocks, or whole rocks turned red in the heat of a fire. Broken pottery is
pay dirt.
Gilbert isn't an archaeologist. He's on vacation from his job as a
supervisor in a metal fabrication facility in Illinois. But he knows that a
dark round spot of dirt might show where a tent pole once stuck into the
ground. Gilbert is one of 20 volunteers and students who have come from
around the country to help Mark Bruhy, Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest's
only archaeologist.
Their site dates from between 700 and 1100, and is one of many near
Butternut Lake, just east of Eagle River. Since 1974, Bruhy has found more
than 30 sites dating back at least 4,000 years. But the current site is
unique, with about 30 "cache pits" that were once used to store food and
supplies.
Unless it rains, the site is open for public tours through Wednesday, from
9:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.
"We have only recorded three cache pit complexes in northern Wisconsin,"
Bruhy said. "This is the only one on National Forest Service lands."
Bruhy thinks the rarity of cache pits will help him create the
Butternut-Franklin Lake Archaeological District. He will nominate the
district for the National Register of Historic Places, a distinction that
would protect the sites from road-building and logging.
This couldn't happen without volunteers from the Passport in Time program
and students from Northland College in Ashland.
Katie Egan-Bruhy, the regional director of the Commonwealth Cultural
Resources Group in Minocqua, teaches at Northland and coordinates the
volunteer program.
Egan-Bruhy and her husband are the reason that people such as Joan Peterson
travel from Fort Myers, Fla., to northern Wisconsin.
"That's what's great about this, that they'll take you in and teach you,"
said Peterson, who had no training when she began helping the Forest Service
in 1992. This year she left her husband on their second anniversary for the
two-week archaeological dig.
"Of course, my husband thinks I'm nuts," Peterson said.
Together, the volunteers and scientists hope to figure out the riddle in the
dirt. They had previously excavated much older buildings on the north shore
of Butternut Lake.
Were the cache pits part of seasonal migrations?
Did the same tribes live near the lake for 3,000 years?
"We don't have a clue," Mark Bruhy said. Not yet. But they want to find out.
"What we can do in just two weeks is come up with a pretty good estimation
of what was going on here, and how these pits were used," Bruhy said. "It
has the potential to let us learn how people lived in the past."
Passport in Time volunteers will also be helping guide the public tours.
Through Wednesday, visitors can tour the excavations. They won't see the
remains of buildings, or a lot of bones, but with hiking gear and insect
repellent, they can see the cache pits and share the thrill of finding
buried history.
This thrill bonds volunteers of all ages, and they come back year after
year.
"A lot of times it's the same people," said Gilbert, of Fox River Grove,
Ill. "We stay in contact through the Internet, and sometimes go and visit."
The diverse group is bound together by an interest in learning, and learn
something new every year.
"They have a great core program, and do group activities," said Michelle
Cox, a teacher from Providence, R.I. "They really try to give you the big
picture."
Preserving cultural resources is the really big picture, and Bruhy seeks out
the cooperation of nearby Native American tribes for his projects.
Giiwegiizhigookway Martin, the Tribal Historic Preservation Officer of the
Lac Vieux Desert Band, appreciates Bruhy's sensitivity.
"If Mark's involved, I can rest assured that things are going to be done
correctly, even if I'm not there," Martin said. "His main concern is the
protection of those sites."
Nobody knows how the prehistoric Native Americans are related to the tribes
that now live in Wisconsin. But if more pottery is found, decorations could
be used to link modern and ancient cultures.
"Someday somebody could know," Bruhy said. "Most of the work will be left
for the future. We will probably only look at point-zero-one percent of the
land surface. Ninety-nine percent will be left protected and available for
future investigations."
With current excavations laying the foundation for admission to the National
Register of Historic Places, the North Woods' history should be protected
for people like Angela Viles, a Northland College student.
Only a few days into her first dig, Viles already has learned that: "It's
not just dirt anymore. It's something to interpret."