Video transcript

FUN OF SCIENCE: DIGGING THE PAST

Video
Male researcher and assistant take research field equipment out of back of van.

Audio
NARRATOR:
Loren Davis is an archaeologist at Oregon State University getting ready to do something he loves -- dig up the past.

Video
Davis, wearing a sweatshirt, workpants, and ball cap, stands in a field, and when he says “99%” those numbers suddenly appear, very large, on screen. He works with a compass and a measuring tape.

Audio
LOREN DAVIS (voice over):
Ninety-nine percent of our existence on the planet is unwritten. [Insert, boy’s voice: “Amazing!”] That’s the job of the archaeologist: to write what’s not known.

Video
Following Davis’s lead, students begin to mark off an area to excavate.

Audio
NARRATOR:
Davis heads a crew of students working at windy Cape Blanco on the southern Oregon coast.

Video
View of surf at Cape Blanco from cliff.

Audio
NARRATOR:
Davis has momentarily focused this Sea Grant research project here because that’s where he made a remarkable find -- a native American artifact from thousands of years ago, jutting out of the cliff.

Video
Very quick glimpse of antique photo of Indian, wearing loincloth, sitting in canoe. View of cliff.

Audio
LOREN DAVIS (VOICE OVER):
A black obsidian biface. Now, they call it a biface – meaning it was flaked on both sides.

Video
The biface travels across the screen, mysteriously, over the cliff site in was found on.

Audio
That could be a knife or it could be a spear point.

Video
Loren Davis indicates the length of the biface with his hands.

Audio
It was about this long and it was stemmed – meaning it tapers down to a thin kind of stemmed base, you might call it.

Video
In a laboratory, an archaeological researcher - Roberta Hall of Oregon State University - hunts through various artifacts, looking for a match to a specimen. Again, the biface mysteriously appears, moving from left to right across the screen.

Audio
These kinds of artifacts – if it does end up being a projectile point; meaning a spear point or something from a spear thrower, more like a dart – potentially it could be as old as the eleven-thousand year range. [Insert, boy’s voice: “Wow!”]

Video
Very quick glimpse of antique photo of Indian, wearing loincloth, sitting in canoe. Transition to female student digging in soil at Cape Blanco.

Audio
NARRATOR:
To determine whether the biface was just the leading edge of an ancient site the crew does what archaeologists consider fun -- dig in the dirt for clues of our unknown history.

A mysterious electronic buzz announces the final image.

Video
The old photograph of the Indian in the canoe again appears, and it lingers this time.