Student Kelly Goodner at Wenas Creek, WA

For eight weeks this summer I participated in the Wenas Creek Mammoth Field School, WA. The school was sponsored by Central Washington University and headed by Dr. Pat Lubinski. The excavation focuses on excavating the bones of a 16,000-year-old adolescent mammoth; this summer was the final year of excavation, and about 20% of the mammoth has been uncovered and excavated. We also uncovered the almost complete left rear leg of a Bison antiquus. The only human artifact found so far at the site is a small piece of a flake. The goal for the summer was to remove the baulks left from in between previous units and to remove the bones left in these baulks.

During my time at Wenas Creek this summer, I was able to excavate an unidentified mammoth bone and one of the second phalanxes of the bison leg. I also learned how to use total station to map both the site and the individual bones that we discovered. This field school gave me the opportunity to meet new people from across the county and work in a completely different environment from southern Indiana.

Kelly is a junior Archaeology major at UE.