Grand Traverse Bay – Stephen Saunders

Mammoth discovery beneath Grand Traverse Bay?

Holga: Grand Traverse Bay by Matt Callow

Interlochen Public Radio’s Tom Kramer has a fascinating interview with underwater archaeologist Dr. Mark Holley. While surveying shipwrecks, Holley may have stumbled upon one of the most significant finds in recent Michigan memory – a discovery that could shed light on a time period known as “the black hole of Michigan archaeology”. On one rock in a circular pattern of rocks on the bay’s floor, he found an etching that appears to be a mastodon with a spear in it.

Listen to Rare Find in GT Bay from IPR News Radio because it’s really, really cool. IPR has an update to the story with John Bailey of the Grand River Band of Ottawa Indians who thinks that the ancient rock carving in Grand Traverse Bay could bolster his view of the span that Native Americans have been living in the Great Lakes.

By the way, Dr. Holley was surveying shipwrecks for the Grand Traverse Bay Underwater Preserve, and you can check that link to learn more about that organization and their efforts.

Underwater images from a Lake Michigan Stonehenge

January 13, 2009

Lake Michigan Stones, photo by bldgblog.

In Stonehenge Beneath the Waters of Lake Michigan, Geoff Manaugh of BLDGBLOG writes:

In a surprisingly under-reported story from 2007, Mark Holley, a professor of underwater archaeology at Northwestern Michigan University College, discovered a series of stones – some of them arranged in a circle and one of which seemed to show carvings of a mastodon – 40-feet beneath the surface waters of Lake Michigan. If verified, the carvings could be as much as 10,000 years old – coincident with the post-Ice Age presence of both humans and mastodons in the upper midwest.

Regarding the slightly repurposed “sector scan sonar” device that Northwestern Michigan University professor and underwater archaeologist Dr. Mark Holley & Brian Abbott were using to survey some old wrecks when they made their discovery, Geoff writes:

The circular images this thing produces are unreal; like some strange new art-historical branch of landscape representation, they form cryptic dioramas of long-lost wreckage on the lakebed. Shipwrecks (like the Tramp, which went down in 1974); a “junk pile” of old boats and cars; a Civil War-era pier; and even an old buggy are just some of the topographic features the divers discovered.

You’ll definitely want to click through to read the rest and see more pictures!

You can read a detailed feature about this in U.S. archeologists find possible mastodon carving on Lake Michigan rock at NowPublic and listen to some radio reports from the time of the discovery in August of 2007 that include an interview with Dr. Holley and another with Grand Traverse Bay Ottawa Indian tribal member and historian John Bailey in Mammoth discovery beneath Grand Traverse Bay? on Absolute Michigan.