Page 5 - RAGBRAI2012

BREWSTER SITE DAY 3 - LAKEVIEW TO WEBSTER CITY
Three miles north of Cherokee, the
Brewster Site (13CK15) occupies high
ground adjacent to Mill Creek, the name
chosen for the cultural group to which
the site belongs (see Day 2 article on
Mill Creek Culture). Even after years of
erosion, cultivation, and periodic surface
collection of artifacts, archaeology at
the site in 1970 produced a wealth of
information about the diet and the ma-
terial culture of Mill Creek peoples.
The six-foot deep deposits at Brew-
ster allowed archaeologists to trace
changes in pottery styles and hunting
over the decades people lived at the site.
These studies suggest that the site was
not occupied as long as the scientists
once thought. Overall, the site con-
firmed that Mill Creek largely represents
a local, grass-roots development.

DAVID CARLSON, LASTING CONTRIBUTIONS

TO IOWA ARCHAEOLOGY
After 40 years of combing the valleys and glacial lakes of Webster and Hamil-
ton counties, David Carlson of Otho, Iowa, magnanimously donated his meticulously
documented archaeological collections from over 80 sites to the state collections main-
tained at the Office of the State Archaeologist, University of Iowa. Not only did Dave
record his sites in the official Iowa Site File, he kept his collections in superb order—
curating them by site number, using the Smithsonian trinomial system, and labeling
the more diagnostic items. Because of his methodical care, Dave’s collections of more
than 60,000 items are invaluable to the research on north central Iowa prehistory. He
is shown here with State Archaeologist, John Doershuk.