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Earthlodge

Ap
Natural
Soil

Depression After Abandonment Ap Natural
Lodge Floor Prehistoric Soil
Wash
Two-Track
Farm Road abandonment, and post-occupation filling. This was
the first time in Iowa that such an evaluation of the
1-x-1 TU Historic Fill Ap Natural soils in the side wall of an earth lodge was made. It
Lodge Floor Prehistoric Soil demonstrated that the builders dug the lodge deeper
Wash than the floor, and that soil had washed in, probably
after a rain storm, covering the bottom of the lodge.
The Davis Oriole Earth Lodge site (13ML429), dis- Charcoal bands seen in the side walls probably rep-
covered in the 1960s by D.D. Davis at Pony Creek resent locations where the original wattle-and-daub
Park, proved to be mis-mapped, and it was only after wall (a timber frame and mud plaster structure) once
the area was peppered with soil cores that the lodge stood.
was rediscovered. Soil cores and auger tests showed
the lodge intact. A test excavation unit revealed the A few fire-cracked rocks, burned earth, charcoal, and
side wall of the lodge. Archaeologists could “read” pottery marked the location of a very small hearth on
the soil layers in the lodge wall to figure out the com- the inside edge of the lodge, perhaps where someone
plex history of the house’s construction, occupation, kept a pot warm.
A tiny, carved shell
University of Iowa Office of the State Archaeologist bead found in the
hearth probably fell
from the clothing or
jewelry of the person
tending the fire.

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