TELL-TALE ASH HEAPS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 23061, 11 June 1938, Page 9 (Supplement)

TELL-TALE ASH HEAPS

The flowers that bloom on the rubbish heaps and ruins in Alaskan villages have been helping excavators in detecting buried prehistoric American villages. , The earth of these ancient rubbish heaps is mixed with organic refuse, ashes, rotten wood, and animal bones, and it appears that the flowers which grow there are quite unlike others _ in the neighbourhood, which are growing on ordinary soil. At Agatu, at the western end of the Aleutian Island chain, Doctor Hrdlika, of the Smithsonian Institute, has identified village sites by means of the thick high grass growing on the slopes, thickets of monkswood, wild parsnips, and other flowering plants. In other words, old village sites can be detected by their plant covering. Doctor Hrdlika, an eminent explorer, has stressed the importance of this botanical clue in aiding excavation, and states that hundreds of sites have been chosen for archaeological exploration by means of these ash-heap indications.