During the first week of our course, we visited the Big Hole watershed. We camped at a site overlooking an array of mountains that skirted the sky. We met with Pedro, the Executive Director of the Big Hole Watershed Committee, who took us around the hills that overlooked a part of the meandering river that he helped restore.
As we walked up the dry, yellowed hill dotted with sagebrush, he causally remarked about the Neolithic site that we stepped onto. He mentioned chert and how Indigenous communities used the chert to flintknap tools. That piqued my interest because I am studying anthropology and earth sciences at UC Santa Cruz and one of my main academic interests is lithics. I had taken a class about stone tools, and handled them, but never seen them in the field. This was a dream of mine come true.
As we clambered up the hill, small flakes of red, orange, and yellow chert caught my eye. I picked them up, rubbing the dirt off of their waxy surfaces, and studied them. I could see where the person producing the flake hit the core with a hammerstone to make said flake. Chert conchoidally fractures well, but not as uniformly as a more glassy material, like obsidian. The erratic chunks taken out of the chert indicated the user was struggling to make their tool.
Lithics tell a lot about the humans who produce them. As Pedro told us, no singular Indigenous people permanently inhabited the Big Hole watershed, rather it was a gathering area for many tribes to hunt elk. The closest chert deposit was about 5 miles south from the lithic site. People could have been taking chert cores and knapping on the hill or traveling with heavy chunks of rock. Or, they could’ve taken smaller pieces and done smaller flake knapping at the site. With little information, it is difficult to know for certain what was happening during that time.
Over the course, we had many discussions about historical and current Native land usage in Montana. Though we have done numerous readings on original land usage, sometimes it could be difficult to connect information to real life. Seeing those flakes on the landscape, evidence of the ancestors of Indigenous communities who still live in Montana and other parts of western North America, really helped me connect the pieces together. Due to government funded atrocities and relocation, it has been a long time since Native groups have inhabited the Big Hole watershed. A small piece of rock, a piece that most people would step over in disregard, holds an important message: People once inhabited this place, and called it their home.
As I walked back down the hill, I fiddled with the chert. Holding the small red rock in my hand, I imagined the person who held it previously. What were they trying to make? How old were they? What did the landscape look like when they inhabited it? How long ago did they produce this flake? These questions swirled in my mind as I overlooked the restored river. They might never be answered, and that would be OK. Even the chance to speculate is important.