November 13-14, 2004                                         
 
Preparation for the November 13-14 excavation began on Wednesday, November 3, the week before the scheduled excavation, when the Mather and Sons of Coin, Iowa extended the north bank excavation 20 more feet to the north and 15 feet to the east of the previous enlargement. The coffer dam separating the excavation from the West Tarkio Creek also was reinforced. The road down into the site (Brenzel Boulevard) from the farm field was improved so that a crawler could access the dig floor and remove the remaining six to 12 inches of overburden (muck to those working the site) on top of the blue-grey matrix containing sloth remains. A sump also was constructed in the southeastern corner of the previous excavation area that had been cleared of bone.  The operation did result in the accidental removal of our eastern-most control stake. David Brenzel and Holmes Semken represented the UI at this time. 
 
On Thursday, Nov.11, a crawler from Strickler Tree Service, Clarinda, Iowa, cleaned the remaining muck (6-12 inches) from the area to be excavated in the eastern end of the enlarged pit. On Friday morning, Nov. 12, nineteen volunteers assembled in the Day’s Inn parking lot on Friday at 7; 30 to caravan out to the dig from Shenandoah. The excavation floor was quickly cleaned, thanks to the work by the crawler, and the crew fanned out over the pit and removed sloth bearing matrix to 18 inches below the surface. All sloth remains have been recovered well above this depth in previous excavations. Only one bone, a carpal/tarsal, was recovered over the two day dig. This demonstrated that there was little hope of finding bone either to the north or east of the bone concentration and that future excavation should extend elsewhere. Also, twenty-four feet of overburden under good farmland would have to be removed to continue north. The large number of volunteers let us know that work on Friday does not reduce the number of volunteers.   Participants in the November 12-13 dig were Ron Vogel, Alex Versackas, Gary J. Dalecky, Don Wirth, Sonya Housholder, Twyla Bloxham, William Mott, Melissa Mott, Tamsen Foote, Pete Eyheralde, Duncan Hansen, Steve Randall, Alex Bryk, Jerry Parks, Linda Zintz, Dennis Miller, Holmes Semken and David Brenzel   
 
Holmes A. Semken, Jr., December 3, 2006