My interest of study has always been with cultures associated with pre-World War III societies, especially in the former United States of America. Recently, I heard of some newly discovered sites near the headwaters of the Mississippi River, in a state formerly known as Minnesota. I expressed my interest in writing my thesis about this area, and I was given a team of workers and assigned to an area called The SCSU Site. The questions that I wanted to answer were how did people live prior to the Third World War, and more specifically, what was this particular site used for.
The SCSU Site, or St. Cloud State University as was inscribed on a large map of the area that we found, is located on the west bank of the Mississippi River about 410 kilometers down river from its source. The site itself is approximately 110 hectares and is sprawled along the banks of the river. The first artifact that was found, the one that gave the site its name, was found on the western edge of the site along a road which seems to be some sort of division line separating the site into a northern section and a southern section. The area in which I chose to dig is located about 805 meters northeast of that spot and is about 2.56 hectares. The southern and western edges of the area are bordered by what seems to be a road. When I arrived at the site, it was completely covered with rubble from the bombing attacks of World War III.
The first building that my team and I excavated seems to have been some sort of food service building, because of the huge amount of food, and food storage and preparation equipment we found there. This building is large and covers half of our excavation area. It seems to have had two levels and was connected to another building. According to the map of the area that we uncovered, this building was called Garvey Commons.
The first part of this building that we excavated was the main level. It consisted of a central kitchen area and separated eating areas surrounding this kitchen area. The kitchen area was rather large. We uncovered five large ovens, three microwave ovens, and ten deep fryers which were most likely used for the preparation of food. There was also a conveyor belt system that ran through a dish washing system. The dish washing system seems to have taken up a large amount of space. Despite this, an analysis of the equipment shows that the system was not very effective in completely cleaning and sanitizing the dishes. We suspect that there must have been times when the people who frequented this place encountered dirty dishes. This leads us to believe that people of this time were not really concerned about their health.
We discovered something interesting when excavating the eating areas surrounding the kitchen area. Each of these eating rooms were filled with the remnants of tables and chairs, which we expected to find in an eating area, but each room was also painted a different color. We believe that the reason for painting the rooms different colors was to establish differences in status, since the rooms were not all the same size. We believe that the two smaller rooms were reserved for those with higher status and that the two larger rooms were for those people of lower status.
The lower level of this building was very intriguing. This seems to be where the food was stored. We found large refrigeration and freezer units which still had food in them. We also found many sealed containers on shelves containing food, and the interesting thing about this was that some of the food still seemed edible. The people of this culture must not have known the dangers associated with high levels of preservatives.
Another curious thing that we found on this level were small enclosures and evidence that small domesticated animals like ducks, rabbits, chickens, and goats were kept in these enclosures. We think that these animals must have been used as food, since we found bones with cut marks on them. We do not know why someone would want to eat meat when they can just take protein pills. They must not have had the respect for animals that we have today.
The next section of our area that we excavated was the building that was connected to Garvey Commons. According to the map, this building was called Sherburne Hall and it was a residential building. Judging by the huge amount of rubble associated with this section of the excavation area, we determined that this was most likely a tall building. In this building, we found a large pulley-like system which possibly could have been used to transport people from floor to floor. A piece of this system had numbers on it which leave us to believe that this building had fourteen floors including a subterranean basement level. We also found a few different sets of steps. There seems to be relatively little wear on the steps so we believe that they were seldom used. We concluded that people of this time must have been extremely lazy.
This building was not completely destroyed. The first three levels and parts of the fourth were still standing. We decided to start with the top floor and work our way down. The third and fourth floors were very similar. Each floor contained about twenty-five rooms which were approximately three meters by four meters. Each floor also contained three bathrooms which were approximately five meters by eight meters. We thoroughly analyzed the bathrooms and discovered mold spores that were almost two hundred years old, which was longer than this site had probably been abandoned. This discovery leads us to believe that people from this culture were not very concerned with cleanliness.
When excavating the rooms of these two floors, we found many artifacts of a personal nature which leads us to believe that this place was abandoned quickly, probably upon notice that it was about to be bombed. In every room we found two uncomfortable looking beds, two work stations, and a storage space divided into two sections. From this we concluded that two people must have lived in each small room.
One of the types of items that we found in the rooms was clothing. The people of this culture seemed almost obsessed with clothing, since they owned such large quantities of it. The clothes was made of all different kinds of materials, mostly synthetic. A few of the items of clothing had the words “St. Cloud State University” printed on them leading us to believe that people here wanted others to know where they were from, perhaps it was even status related.
Another interesting thing that we found in all the rooms were piles of information storage discs. We analyzed the discs in our portable lab and determined that there was music on most of these discs. A small minority of the discs contained programs instead of music. We think that maybe these discs were used in the ancient computers that we found. I had heard of these ancient computers, but I had never seen one before so it was quite exciting to find these in many of the rooms. Not every room contained one of these ancient computers so we believe that computers must not have been as important to this society as they are to our society today. This could be because the computers were not powerful enough to be of much use besides for a few small, personal tasks.
After we excavated the two top floors, we excavated what was probably the main level. This level seems to have been a lobby area. Besides finding what seems to be front doors, we also found a large office area with a front desk and what was probably a mail center. Attached to the lobby area we found an area that is difficult to explain. It was possibly used for recreation. We found seating vessels, a table with six holes in it, and an extremely large monitor. Upon finding these items, I did some research and found out that the table with holes in it was a recreation device. I also found out that the monitor was a form of entertainment and that people used to just sit and stare at it for hours. This strengthens my believe that people of this culture were extremely lazy.
The last part of this building that we excavated was the subterranean level. We really have no clue as to what this level was used for. We found no evidence that this level was ever used for living quarters. It is possible that this level was used for storage or perhaps it was a temporary bomb shelter. There seemed to be many locked doors on this level, but there really was not anything behind these doors. This level seems to be one big waste of perfectly good space.
We did find one interesting item in this level, though. Behind one of the locked doors we found an entrance to an elaborate tunnel system. The tunnel system seemed to be intact so we took some lights and explored it. What we found was quite interesting. The tunnels seemed to connect all the buildings on campus, but they seem to not have been used much. There were signs of occasional use, though. In some sections of the tunnels we found piles of empty bottles. We had the bottles analyzed in the lab and they found traces of alcohol in them. Since this was the only place that they were found, we believe that the consumption of alcohol was not allowed at this place and that people would use these tunnels to drink without being discovered.
Besides the two buildings, there were also two large, flat, open spaces on the northern and western sides of Garvey Commons. We believe that they were transportation storage areas. In these areas, we found the remnants of automobiles. Judging by the amount of them we found, and by the fact that so much land was dedicated to their storage, we believe that this was the transportation form of choice of the inhabitants of this region. The people of this culture most likely either did not know or did not care that mass transit was much better for the environment than everyone driving their own vehicle.
Once we were done with the excavation, we analyzed all the artifacts that we had found. We used our mobile laboratory for this since it was equipped with all the latest technologies. To get the most accurate results, we ran most of the artifacts through our high-tech computer which was built specifically for our excavation. Some of the organic artifacts I did not run through the main computer, though. I decided that we should use a few old techniques, as well as the newest ones, so I subjected those artifacts to radiocarbon dating.
One of the main concerns that we had when analyzing the artifacts was determining exactly how old some of the items were. Since we were working with a literate society, there were dates on many of the artifacts that we found, but we were not quite sure if they used the same calendrical system that we use now. We thought that they did, but we just wanted to make sure. The analysis of the artifacts proved our suspicions and confirmed that most of the artifacts were from the 1990’s C.E., making them almost two hundred years old.
Based on all of our evidence, plus the fact that part of the site name is “University”, we determined that our site was a place of education. People were sent here to learn to be productive members of their society. The artifacts give us many clues as to how these people lived. I came to the conclusion that the people of this culture were lazy, rebellious, and valued status within their society. These people cared little about their health or the environment. I am glad that I live in a culture where people are better educated in these types of issues and actually care about things other than status. As the old saying goes, “if you do not learn from history, you are bound to repeat it,” and this is one history that I would not ever want to repeat.