Anomolous LIBI artifactual Luce Blummer MTC record

[herosrest]

^Ducemus

[herosrest]

^Ducemus

There is something of a mystery associated with this plot of artifacts to aerial imagery of LBH. I wonder if anyone is able to ask Robert Utley for some advice and the history of it.

[tubman13]

HR, do you have the Bonafede map, how does it match? Interesting to say the least.

Regards,
Tom

[tubman13]

HR, do you have the Bonafede map, how does it match? Interesting to say the least.

Regards,
Tom

[herosrest]

^Ducemus

Dec 9, 2018 18:54:00 GMT -6 herosrest said:

William A. Harris (Battlefield Superintendent) arranged for an aerial survey map of Little Big battleground to be marked with the locations of artifact finds. The map plots inventory of relics then recovered up to the early 1970's. I believe the artifacts were removed to the Battleefield collection and are now in Arizona and as time passes, fewer and fewer people know about them.

I quote Jerome Greene - '  I worked here in the summers of 1968, 1970 and 1971. In 1970, Superintendent William A. Harris assigned me the task of compiling as complete a list as possible of artifacts recovered from the battlefield over the years and recorded in the park research files, and of correlating their recovery points on a large aerial survey photo map of the terrain. One purpose was to try and determine clues to Custer’s defeat in 1876, based on materials dropped by the soldiers and their Sioux and Northern Cheyenne pursuers in the form of weapons, horseshoes, and military accoutrements, and primarily the hundreds of expended cartridge casings discarded during the fighting.

I soon found that this approach would not work by itself. The Custer field was too vast, the concentrations of artifacts that had been recorded, though plentiful, were too widely scattered to offer concrete answers by themselves. Something more than this kind of information would be needed to arrive at tentative conclusions regarding the demise of more than 225 cavalrymen at the hands of perhaps 1,500 warriors in 1876. Thus, I turned to investigating Sioux and Cheyenne accounts, hopeful that they would complement the record of artifact locations and give me more insight into what happened on the field. What I discovered was a largely untapped body of historical evidence that when meticulously integrated with other historical and archeological data promised to help round out knowledge of the Little Bighorn as well as of other engagements between the Indians and the army.' ^Source


Greene  verifies his artifact map as a valid research source which (for example) indicates an area of finds in the swale between accepted locations for Companies L and I, besides the trail of artifacts along the eastern flank of the Luce, Blummer, NC, ridge line. This information pre-dates the 1983 fire and subsequent investigations and inventories and is not understood other than some worthwhile dissemination of data by Fed Wagner III and the limited stock of publications by the landowners. I'm just pointing this up and not making points or opinion.

[AZ Ranger]

The map is only good as the multi contributors whose data was used. The production idea was good but what do these huge brown dots represent. A curry comb or bullet? Who collected the data and where? What year was the data collected?

The best tool we have available is GIS where you could create a layer for each finder including date collected. Nye Cartwright has findings over time by different finders. The first finder is not even included in the name. I think Douglas Scott is actually working on it to some degree.

Regards

AZ Ranger

[herosrest]

^Ducemus

The data gathering was undertaken by 'Stricken Field' author Jerome A. Greene, a retired National Park Service research historian. He has authored numerous books, including 'Stricken Field: The Little Bighorn'.

Good reads

Waterstones

Jerome Greene

In undertaking the work he concluded that the relics alone could not explain what took place. The concentrations of artifacts that had been recorded, though plentiful, were too widely scattered to offer concrete answers by themselves. Something more than this kind of information was needed to arrive at tentative conclusions regarding the demise of the cavalrymen and he turned to investigating Sioux and Cheyenne accounts.