Hello again, everyone.

By all accounts, the second annual Wine & Cheese/Silent Auction fundraiser for
the St. Ferdinand project was a great success. Despite the heat the evening of
August 19th, attendance FAR exceeded expectations and this led directly to the
raising of over FOUR THOUSAND DOLLARS for this project!

As I've said many times before, there's more to archaeology than just "digging
up stuff" and this is evidence of that. This project wouldn't exist without the
ongoing support (financial, emotional, etc.) from the both the Florissant and
archaeological communities, amd I want to especially thank everyone in the Mound
City Archaeological Society who donated time, money, and/or items to this
effort. Believe me, it was worth it.

Special congratulations to fellow Mound Citizens Gretchen Crank and Joe Harl who
were each presented with a key to the city by Florissant Mayor Robert Lowery in
recognition for their efforts at increasing awareness of the community's rich
cultural heritage.

Work is still proceeding on the official web site for this project, but until
it's ready, the Mound City Archaeological Society is happy to loan the use of
its site as a temporary repository for a few items of interest.

Specifically, you can now read the minutes from the most recent Old St.
Ferdinand Archaeology Committee meeting, which was held on August 25. Please
note that these minutes include a summary of the 2005 excavations by Joe Harl of
the Archaeological Research Center. I know many of you will be tempted to jump
straight to that part of the document, but I'd like to suggest that you take a
few extra minutes to also read the first part, just to see the kind of work that
goes on behind the scenes to keep a project like this alive.

There are two versions of the document, one in the original MSWord format, and
the other in Adobe Acrobat format. Hopefully, most of you will be able to read
one or the other. I'll try to run off some paper copies in time for our lecture
next Tuesday night (September 6).

MSWord format:
http://moundcity.missouriarchaeology.org/stferdinand/minutes/20050825.doc

Adobe format:
http://moundcity.missouriarchaeology.org/stferdinand/minutes/20050825.pdf

I've also uploaded a handful of snapshots from this year's field season. They're
not meant to be representative of the entire four-week excavation; they're
simply some pictures that our vice-president, Judy Horton, took "on the fly" and
I just thought it'd be fun to share them. A better photo "album" will come when
the official web site goes live.

The three images are:

A spear point that dates to roughly between 8000 B.P. and 10000 B.P.:
http://moundcity.missouriarchaeology.org/stferdinand/images/lithic052105.jpg

A soda bottle circa 1950-60s with the paper label still intact:
http://moundcity.missouriarchaeology.org/stferdinand/images/ritz052105.jpg

Debra from the Center for Archaeological Research working around a huge tree
root while she excavates those darn newspapers that we originally thought might
be leather-bound books:
http://moundcity.missouriarchaeology.org/stferdinand/images/treehugger052105.jpg

Enjoy!

Greg

Greg Paulus
President, Mound City Archaeological Society
bgpaulus@...
(314) 704-3507