Billings, Montana. I worked specifically in the office of the Billings Curation Center as an

Michael Mathews Internship report Summer 2008 Introduction My internship for summer 2008 was with the Bureau of land management office in Billings, M...
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Michael Mathews Internship report Summer 2008

Introduction My internship for summer 2008 was with the Bureau of land management office in Billings, Montana. I worked specifically in the office of the Billings Curation Center as an archaeological curation assistant. I learned about the culture history of the Northern plains, as well as the archaeological history of the area. I visited two archaeological sites and got a closeup look at the areas where artifacts I was working with came from. I got to read different site reports from various locations in Montana, as well as attended a Native American rejuvenation ceremony with the Crow Nation. I visited the Museum of the Rockies at Montana State University in Bozeman and saw Native American artifacts. I also got a back stage tour of the museum during which I saw the storage areas and artifacts in various stages of the curation process. This internship allowed me to use skills I acquired as an anthropology undergraduate student, as well as knowledge of cultural resource management processes and oral history studies I recently have been studying as a Folklore graduate student. I also learned about museum science procedures by studying various artifact collections from Montana, and the Dakotas. I took those collections through the curation process, from identifying individual artifacts to cataloging, registering, and archiving them both on catalog cards and a computer database.



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About the Bureau of Land Management The Bureau of Land Management is the nation’s largest land manager. The BLM is responsible for the administration of over 262 million acres of public land as well as 700 million acres of federal subsurface land. The main BLM land is located in the Western areas of the United States. The BLM manages fish and wildlife habitats, wilderness areas, historic trails, recreation lands, and national monuments like Pompey’s Pillar, located near Billings, Montana. The BLM also has a law enforcement program, which is responsible for public safety and resources on public as well as federal land. The BLM also is in charge of the wild horse population in the Northern Plains. The BLM feeds the horses, as well as finds areas in which to let the animals roam. The bureau runs an adoption program to keep the population of wild horses down. They also have fire crews that help suppress wildfires. They helped fight five large fires while I was in Billings. The BLM also works with the forestry service to reduce the danger of wildfires in the areas they manage. The BLM is also responsible for the survey and title records of the public domain, private land claims, and Native American lands. The bureau is in charge of public recreation areas such as streams and lakes, and hiking trails, as well as conservation programs. The BLM monitors endangered plant and animal species. BLM lands contain many archaeological sites and Native American sacred sites. The BLM also uses some land for commercial activities such as oil and gas, and forest products. The land yields natural gas, coal, and oil. Renewable resources such as wind power are produced on BLM land. Other minerals used in the nation’s domestic supplies include silver, gold, and copper. These are some reasons why the Bureau of Land Management is called “The Open Space Agency.”



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About The Billings Curation Center The Billings Curation Center is the main repository for archaeological and ethnographic collections from BLM lands in Montana and the Dakotas. The BCC encourages archaeologists, students and the researchers to utilize the resources available to study area archaeological history. The main collection is artifacts, maps and other documentation from various sites in Montana and the Dakotas. The BCC keeps lithics and faunal remains on hand to allow for comparative studies, has an extensive library with volumes about plains archaeology, Montana history, and anthropology in general, as well as museum procedures manuals and cultural resource management studies. The collection includes professional journals and reference books. The BCC also keeps slides and photographs dealing with the archaeology and history of the Northern Plains. The center only accepts collections that have been systematically collected and professionally documented. The center keeps collections from museums, universities, and private companies. The BCC staff curates each collection and documents each artifact. The BCC divides its collections into two categories: research collections, which are used to gain insight into prehistoric and historic occupations in Montana and the Dakotas, and education collections, which consists of unprovenienced artifact loaned out to local schools and universities, as well as used for local exhibits. The BCC does not have any sacred or funerary objects. The BCC obtains collections through donations, loans, transfers, and exchanges, as well as field collections found casually by the public. The BCC uses collections for exhibits, interpretive programs, and research.



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Curation, curation, curation Upon my arrival at the Montana field office of the BLM, I was issued a temporary employee identification badge. I filled out some paperwork and David Wade, the curator of the BCC showed me around the facility, pointing out the map room where I could look up locations of sites in Montana on USGS maps. David said that I would need to learn the different regions in the state for my curation duties. The state is divided into different field office regions and I needed to learn them by name in order to save time looking up information by region. I worked with two other students, one from Kenyon College in Ohio, and the other from Colorado State University. David showed us videos about the archaeological record of the region, as well as videos about historic and prehistoric sites in Montana. My first assignment was the collection of artifacts from the Keaster site in Phillips County, Montana. The site was a bison kill and occupation area from the Late Prehistoric period. The site illustrated the use of an impoundment area in which large numbers of bison were kept until they were killed and processed. The occupants of the site used it as a butchering and occupation site rather than setting up a separate camp. The collection of artifacts was mostly bison bones and lithics. My job was to get an accession number for the collection, go through the artifacts, determine the time period from the shape of the projectile points, and package the lithics in plastic bags, label the bags with a curation number and site number, enter the information into the computer database, and put the collection in new boxes on the shelf. I would then complete a package of paperwork, labels and catalog cards. This process was the same for every collection I was assigned. The Keaster site report contained information about the collection such as when artifacts were excavated, as well as where in the area they were located. The report contained pictures of the projectile points that were recovered, which allowed me to discover that some of the items



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were missing. The collection was from Montana State University archives, and had been collected between 1964-1965by Leslie Davis, now retired from MSU. I had to call MSU and speak to people in the anthropology department and try to track down the missing items. I had no luck with that. This happened frequently, as different collections had gone through different stages in various locations. Sometimes I called and found out that someone had loaned out a missing object, or they could not find it at all. This was an aspect of the job that became familiar to me, calling different university departments or archaeological firms and trying to find missing items. The next set of artifacts I archived was the Miles City site in Miles City, Montana. This was a Late Prehistoric site located near a flood plain. The Miles City site was also a bison kill site. The curation process was the same as the previous sit, but for this one I did not have any records to look at. David Wade had to email someone from the Mils City District Office to get some information sent. The report was sparse but the collection was not. There were over 800 pieces in this one. The artifacts were mostly lithics, with some bison bone and quite a large amount of sandstone that came from a hearth area. This site was unremarkable as far as yielding anything of significant interest. There were relatively few lithics recovered, mostly unidentifiable bone fragments of animals such as bison and deer.

Crow Nation Ceremony On June 24, David and state archaeologist Gary Smith took us to a nearby area called Sacrifice Cliff for a Crow Nation Rejuvenation ceremony that the Crow hold at the cliff yearly. The purpose of the ceremony is to pray for the health and spirituality of the Crow’s younger



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members. These young men are taught about Crow Nation history and the tribe elders want to ensure that the younger men will be able to carry on the traditions of the Crow in the future. The name of the cliff comes from the story told from generation to generation about members of the Crow tribe who were infected with smallpox from European immigrants who moved to the west in the late nineteenth century. The Crow leaders took their horses to the cliff blindfolded them and rode them over the edge to appease the spirits. The story goes that the men thought by sacrificing themselves, the spirits would see fit to spare the rest of the Crow. This did not happen however, and a large number of Crow contracted the disease. Since then the Crow hold ceremonies at the cliff yearly. The ceremony began with the arrival of warriors on horseback. They were wearing traditional dress and wore war paint. The Crow elders then sat in a circle, prayed, smoked a ceremonial pipe, and then blessed the assembled young men, who then rode off. There was a large number of people watching this, as well as media representatives from the area. The ceremony is yearly at about the same time of year as when the Crow leaders were said to have died for the betterment of their people.

More curation and some field trips David took us out to the Stark site in Musselshell County, Montana. We just looked at the original site such as layout, and where the bison jump area was. We also went to Steamboat Butte which is a large rock formation where pictographs have been found. I ended the work on the Miles City site and began work on a National Guard training site that contains an unnamed Late Prehistoric site. We went to the Museum of the Rockies in Bozeman, Montana on the campus of Montana State University. We looked at Native American



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displays as well as dinosaur bones and fossils found throughout Montana and the Rocky Mountain region. I worked on the collections from two more sites that were bison kills from the Late Prehistoric period. These collections were not as large as the first sites I worked on, so I took photographs of some of the artifacts to put in the literature boxes with all the paperwork. Once each collection is finished there is a correlating box of reports, photographs and maps that is called grey literature. This literature is available for people to look up any preliminary information they want to see about a particular site. They can then locate the collection on the shelves in the curation room, and look at the artifacts. Our last field trip was to Castle Butte, which is a rock formation that from a distance resembles a castle. There were various pictographs on the walls and we went out with one of the BLM archaeologists to put up warning markers to tell people not to deface the pictographs. We put up five markers along the top of the butte. After the trip to Castle Butte I continued curating smaller collections from three more sites which had only site numbers, not names. I also sat in on a two hour brainstorming session in which I helped develop ideas for a game David Wade was tasked with creating. In 2007 David had created a game called “History Mystery” for middle school students to learn about Sacrifice Cliff. He had to create another game for this year. The game was based on the wild horse adoption program mentioned previously. We came up with a ‘Monopoly’ type game board with large plastic horses as game pieces. The game will teach students about how the BLM wild horse adoption program works by having them roll dice and move spaces on the board. They will draw cards and have either good news or bad news. They will see how the BLM deals with these



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issues and learn more about a program that is right in their own back yard. The finished product will not be available until October and David said he would send me pictures of the game.

Conclusion My internship with the Billings Curation Center this summer helped me to put to use not only folklore related skills I have acquired but archaeological skills as well. I got to learn about the culture history of a region I was not at all familiar with. I had never heard of Sacrifice Cliff until I went to Billings. I learned about museum science and curation techniques that I feel will help me if I decide to work in either an archaeological or folklore related museum setting. Actually, the training I received should help in any type of museum or curation job. I also learned about cultural resource management. I got to see how BLM policies and procedures, such as with the wild horse program, impact the land and the people on it. I learned a little about the background of BLM oil and gas operations on land they administer, and how the resources are distributed, although I did not spend a great deal of my time on this particular area. David showed me some maps of areas that the BLM is currently working in to produce resources for use throughout the country. I also studied Native American oral history through museum displays, and first hand observation of Crow Nation ceremonies. I discovered a number of different versions of the Sacrifice Cliff history that were passed down from generation to generation, and got to see the various differences in some of the narratives. I feel that this internship has helped prepare me to move on in my studies, and has helped me understand more about what is expected of me once I get into the museum or archival field, which is what my ultimate goal is. The experience was helpful in developing my skills as both a folklorist and an anthropologist, which are the two academic disciplines I have studied so far.



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