The map above shows the area excavated and the location of the circular feature. The lines of the feature that are outside of the excavated area were inferred by Cooper.  

Though there are pre-contact artifacts in the area, it should not be automatically assumed that the concentric circles were also from pre-contact times. The pre-contact artifacts from this area were from soils between and below the darker soil of these ruts. As mentioned in one of our earlier blogs, the crew’s notes only record technical information about where they dug and what they found. The notes do not record what they were thinking and why they did things a certain way. So, often we are left to speculate about their intentions.  What we do know is that about half way through the summer, Leland Cooper left the excavation, Elden Johnson took over, and the crew stopped excavating the circular feature to focus their attention on the stone-lined features on the east side of the terrace. By this time, over half of the circle had been exposed, much of it excavated, and there are almost no records of any interpretation about the nature of this feature. 

 When we arrived at Ranelius this summer, we tried to spot any remaining parts of the circle and any evidence of where the old excavation units would have been. The soil at this part of the Ranelius site is extremely sandy and, after fifty years, all visible evidence of the units and the circle had completely disappeared.  Though we never witnessed the strange feature personally, the fast pace of erosion at this part of the site brought to our attention an important question. If all surface evidence of the excavation units had disappeared after 50 years, then what are the chances that a circular feature that could be seen on the surface in 1955 would have been ancient?  Our current thinking is that this was a feature from historic times – probably not dating from before the 19th century.  There were historic-period artifacts found near and within the circle. We know there was a small historic settlement nearby.  As one field volunteer pointed out to us, horses are known to walk in circles when tied to a post, creating similar circular ruts. Could this feature be where the people from the historic house, just south of the circle, tied their horse? It is almost impossible to be absolutely certain of the true nature of the circle with the limited information that remains, but it seems very unlikely that it is product of any pre-contact activity.