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Interactive Media Littleton, Colorado 303.850.9697 Guernsey Exhibit Storyboard Date: 6/1/16 Version: 1.0 Display 6: Spanish Diggings/Native American Quarry Pits (Combination of two existing displays) Copy Spanish Diggings During the late 1800s, settles near the town of Hartville found excavated pits and trenches littering the landscape. The extensive quarry sites, covering an area of more than 400 square miles, were believed to be the work of Spanish conquistadors prospecting for gold and the sites became known as the Spanish Diggings. Visuals Map: Illustrated map showing the extent of the excavation sites Caption: George The sites captured the attention of several Dorsey, curator of scientific institutes including the Bureau of anthropology at the American Ethnology, the Field Museum of Field Museum of Chicago, and later the National Geographic Natural History in Society and University of Wyoming. Chicago, published An Scientists who visited the area in the early Aboriginal Quartzite Quarry in Eastern 1900s discovered that the diggings were Wyoming in 1900 describing the quarries. actually the work of Native Americans searching for materials to make stone tools. Caption: Hundreds The pits, some excavated to depths of 10 to of excavation pits 30 feet, exposed rock layers containing are scattered over extremely high-quality cherts and quartzite Spanish Diggings for the making of tools such as knives, site. scrapers, arrowheads, and spear points. Excavating the material was an extremely difficult, requiring the removal of tons of overburden, and then a process of heating, Caption: Example of stone cooling, wedging, and prying of cracks in an wedge used to expose chert effort to break apart the rock and expose and quartzite. the pockets of chert and quartzite. Stone wedges, hammerstones, and bones and antlers were used in the quarrying process. 1 Interactive Media Littleton, Colorado 303.850.9697 The chert and quartzite rich layers of PreCambrian, Paleozoic, and Mesozoic rocks are part of a structural arch Hartville Uplift, which was uplifted during the Laramide Orogeny more than 70 to 40 million years ago. Stone tools made from Spanish Diggings cherts and quartzites have been found across Wyoming and throughout the Northwestern Plains. Scientists believe that Native Americans excavated the sites as early as the Paleo-Indian Period (12,000 to 8,000 years ago) and continued mining until the Historic Period (late 1600s). Thousands of Native American campsites around the Hartville area support the extensive use of the area. Caption: Extensive excavations covering an entire hillside were the result of stone quarrying by Native Americans Caption: Chert was a precious commodity for making knives, scrapers, arrowheads, and spear points Step 1: A hard hammer produces an initial shaping a core by a series of direct percussion blows. River cobbles or other dense rocks make good hard hammers. Step 2: Direct percussion with a soft hammer is use for more controlled shaping of large flakes into tools and weapons. Antler, ivory, or dense wood can be used as soft hammer. Caption: Quartzite bifacial knife Step 3: small pressure flakes are removed by pushing against the edge of a preform during final stages delicate shaping. Antler tines make the best pressure flaking tools. Captions left to right: Quartzite bifacial knife, Pressure flaked chert tool 2