Digging at a new archaeological site near Troy revealed a translucent obsidian arrow point the day the excavation began in early November.
"It's neat, because there isn't any obsidian around here," said Lee Sappington, a research associate for the University of Idaho Anthropology Laboratory. "The nearest obsidian is probably in northeast Oregon," he said.Sappington is supervising the systematic excavation of earth and the meticulous sifting for artifacts at what is thought to be the site of a 3,000-year-old hunting camp on a pine-shaded terrace beside a grassy creek.
The site was found earlier this fall during a routine check of the land where Troy's new sewage treatment lagoon will be constructed next spring. According to federal law, archaeologists must search for artifacts at the site of any new project that uses federal dollars.
Sappington has made dozens of these inspections, and usually, they turn up nothing. But this site was different. Sappington and a co-worker dug a series of small holes across the project area, and found artifacts in six out of the seven holes.
They found spear points, stone-cutting and scraping tools, traces of cooking fires and fragments of animal bones.
Sappington said the site probably was used by ancestors of today's Nez Perce Indians as a base camp for hunting and perhaps gathering camas root. The site is largely undisturbed, and one of the first archaeological finds of its kind in Latah County.