Ancient artifacts uncovered in East Texas highway project

TxDOT reports artifacts uncovered

Photo courtesy TxDOT - Examples of arrowheads found in the Frankston area during excavations in 2011 along SH 155 in Anderson County.

Posted: Tuesday, July 14, 2015 3:25 pm

From Staff Reports

TYLER – The Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) announced Tuesday the discovery of archeological sites along the US 175 Expansion project in Anderson and Henderson counties that contains artifacts dating back to the 1400s. The findings suggest that the locations could have been a temporary Native American settlement. The US 175 Expansion has been in the planning stages for years and is a top priority for TxDOT in an effort to improve the safety and mobility of the roadway. It includes three separate projects covering 13.8 miles from Baxter to Frankston and is designed to widen the roadway from two lanes to four-lane divided with a depressed median. TxDOT has hired a consulting firm that specializes in cultural resources which investigated and found at least three sites along US 175 that could have been small farmsteads or settlements of the native people who lived in this area from the 1400s up to 1650. Artifacts such as pieces of ceramic vessels, stone tools, and more have been found at these sites and will be researched and then curated at one of the state's facilities. The data will be compiled into a report once the field activities conclude. Archeologists are working under the guidance of the National Historic Preservation Act which prescribes how to address historic and archeological sites during the planning of transportation projects. “Our teams are working carefully to excavate these areas in order to reduce the impact of the highway project on the heritage of the tribal community and the state of Texas,” said Kathi White, TxDOT Public Information Officer. “Construction can still occur on other segments of the highway while the investigation continues at the protected locations.” These settlements are not uncommon findings for TxDOT. Over the years, other sites have been found during the environmental studies process that all transportation projects must go through prior to construction. Previous studies, which determine the impacts a project may have on history, heritage, culture and natural environments, have revealed ceramic and lithic artifacts, tools and other items. The recently discovered sites have 24-hour security while the investigation continues. It is against the law to trespass on these sites.

Stone Age village and artifacts found on local ranch

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Stone Age village and artifacts found on local ranch

The McInroe family has found a Stone Age village site and several artifacts on their ranch. Carroll McInroe has inherited the ranch and will reveal an old water well to possibly date the site.

Carroll McInroe and his family discovered a Stone Age village on the family's Erath County ranch when he was about 10 years old. Over the years, they have collected more than 25 manos (Indian grinding stones), arrowheads, a dart point, a stone drill piece and a hide-scraper. McInroe and an archaeologist are about to uncover an old hand-dug well, by the ranch creek, that he and his father discovered back in the 1950s. They are hoping to date it along with the village.

“My father and I found it in 1954, it was during a drought and we were down there digging around looking for some water for the cattle,” McInroe said.

His father, a cousin and a friend dug up the well.

“It turned out to be 8 feet deep and when they got to the bottom, the water began to come in visibly,” he said. “When we returned the next day that well was full of crystal clear cold water.”

Since then the well has been covered back up and now McInroe wants to have it excavated to reveal its true age.

“This well could only be a couple hundred years old, or it could be a couple thousand years old,” he said. “We know this is a Stone Age village.” McInroe also knows that the well was not on the property when his ancestor owned the land in the 1880s.

Another remarkable find was made by McInroe’s father in 1971. His father had gone down to the creek and said he had found something.

“He said, ‘I think I found a tusk from one of those old elephants,'” said McInroe. “We had some geologists come out and excavate it; it was clearly a mammoth's tusk.”

The tusk was found just down the stream from the water well and the family donated it to Tarleton State University.

McInroe will have a hired crew out Saturday morning to dig up the well. An archaeologist will also be on site to try and determine the age of the well and possibly link that to the village and artifacts as a whole.

“We’re going to be very careful with this thing,” said McInroe. “Carefully expose the well without doing any damage to it.”

Spear Points Found in Texas Dial Back Arrival of Humans in America

For many years, scientists have thought that the first Americans came here from Asia 13,000 years ago, during the last ice age, probably by way of the Bering Strait. They were known as the Clovis people, after the town in New Mexico where their finely wrought spear points were first discovered in 1929.

But in more recent years, archaeologists have found more and more traces of even earlier people with a less refined technology inhabiting North America and spreading as far south as Chile.

And now clinching evidence in the mystery of the early peopling of America — Clovis or pre-Clovis? — for nearly all scientists appears to have turned up at a creek valley in the hill country of what is today Central Texas, 40 miles northwest of Austin.

The new findings establish that the last major human migration, into the Americas, began earlier than once thought. And the discovery could change thinking about how people got here (by coastal migrations along shores and in boats) and how they adapted to the new environment in part by making improvements in toolmaking that led eventually to the technology associated with the Clovis culture.

Photo

Some of the artifacts from the 15,500-year-old horizon. Credit Michael R. Waters

Archaeologists and other scientists report in Friday’s issue of the journal Science that excavations show hunter-gatherers were living at the Buttermilk Creek site and making projectile points, blades, choppers and other tools from local chert for a long time, possibly as early as 15,500 years ago. More than 50 well-formed artifacts as well as hundreds of flakes and fragments of chipping debris were embedded in thick clay sediments immediately beneath typical Clovis material.

“This is the oldest credible archaeological site in North America,” Michael R. Waters, leader of the discovery team, said at a news teleconference.

Dr. Waters, director of the Center for the Study of the First Americans at Texas A&M University, and his colleagues concluded in the journal article that their research over the last six years “confirms the emerging view that people occupied the Americas before Clovis and provides a large artifact assemblage to explore Clovis origins.”

If the migrations began at earlier, pre-Clovis times, moreover, extensive glaciers probably closed off ice-free interior corridors for travel to the warmer south. Archaeologists said this lent credence to a fairly new idea in the speculative mix: perhaps the people came to the then really new New World by a coastal route, trooping along the shore and sometimes hugging land in small boats. This might account for the relatively swift movement of the migrants all the way to Peru and Chile.

The first of the distinctive Clovis projectile points represented advanced skills in stone technology. About a third of the way up from the base of the point, the artisans chipped out shallow grooves, called flutes, on both faces. The bifacial grooves probably permitted the points to be fastened to a wooden spear or dart.

Other archaeologists pointed out that the Buttermilk Creek dates, more than 2,000 years earlier than the Clovis chronology, are not significantly older than those for other sites challenging the Clovis-first hypothesis. In recent years, early human occupation sites have been examined coast to coast: from Oregon to Wisconsin to western Pennsylvania and from Maryland and Virginia down to South Carolina and Florida.

James M. Adovasio, an archaeologist who found what appears to be pre-Clovis material at the Pennsylvania site known as Meadowcroft Rockshelter, was not involved in the Buttermilk Creek excavations but has visited the site and inspected many of the artifacts. These pre-Clovis projectile points were also bifacial but not as large and well turned as the later technology. The most striking difference was the absence of the characteristic fluting.

Dr. Adovasio, a professor at Mercyhurst College in Erie, Pa., said some of the Buttermilk Creek material resembled tools at his site and others at Cactus Hill, Va., and Miles Point, Md.

“It would appear the assemblage of artifacts is enough different from typical Clovis to be a distinct technology,” Dr. Adovasio said in an interview. “But it is not as much different as not to be ancestral to Clovis material.”

That is another likely implication of the new findings, also noted by Dr. Waters and his team. It would appear that the Clovis technology was not an Asian import; it was invented here.

No one knows exactly who these migrating people were, scientists said. Genetic studies of ancient bones and later American Indians indicate their ancestors came from northeast Asia, possibly across the Bering land bridge at a time of low sea levels during the last ice age. But it has puzzled scientists that nothing like the Clovis technology has ever been found in Siberia.

The new findings, the Waters group reported, “suggest that although the ultimate ancestors of Clovis originated from northeast Asia, important technological developments, including the invention of the Clovis fluted points, took place south of the North American continental ice sheets before 13,100 years ago from an ancestral pre-Clovis tool assemblage.”

Among other implications of the discoveries, the Texas archaeologists said, a pre-Clovis occupation of North America provided more time for people to settle in North America, colonize South America by more than 14,000 years ago, “develop the Clovis tool kit and create a base population through which Clovis technology could spread.”

Why do we always assume the migrations were only in one direction? Even the title of this article assumes a single vector 'arrival' that has...

The Texas archaeologists said the new dig site has produced the largest number of artifacts dating to the pre-Clovis period. The dates for the sediments bearing the stone tools were determined to range from 13,200 to 15,500 years ago.

Given the lack of sufficient organic material buried around the tools, the radiocarbon dating method was useless. Instead, earth scientists at the University of Illinois, Chicago, used a newer technique known as optically stimulated luminescence. This measures light energy trapped in minerals to reveal how long ago the soil was last exposed to sunlight.

Steven L. Forman, who directed the tests, said that 49 core samples were drilled from several sections of the sediments associated with the tools. When the data were analyzed, they consistently yielded the same ages. “This was unequivocal proof of pre-Clovis,” he said at the news conference.

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Other scientists examined the flood plain geology at the site and determined that the clay sediments showed virtually no sign of having been disturbed during or after the burying of the tools. Lee C. Nordt, a geology professor at Baylor University, said that the traces of previous cracks in the sediment were few and too narrow to have allowed more recent artifacts from above to have settled into the deeper pre-Clovis layers.

Until recently, Dr. Waters said, archaeologists had probably overlooked earlier artifacts because the Clovis points are so distinctive and, in contrast, the pre-Clovis material has no hallmark style calling attention to itself.

“Finally, we are able to put Clovis-first behind us and move on,” he said.

A few scientists, even among those who endorse the presence in the Americas, said they had some reservations about aspects of excavation methods at the Texas site. One who did not want to be quoted or identified questioned whether the reported artifacts justified such a fanfare. He considered the whole issue settled years ago when a panel of experts judged that the Monte Verde site in southern Chile was indeed pre-Clovis.

Dr. Adovasio noted that the Clovis model had been “dying a slow death.” He recalled that “Waters himself was a Clovis-firster, but changed years ago.” At a conference in 1999, the conventional hypothesis seemed to be on its last legs after a review of the Monte Verde data; still a few holdouts stood fast in opposition.

“The last spear carriers will die without changing their minds,” Dr. Adovasio said.

Neanderthal Necklace

(Courtesy Luka Mjeda)

Eagle talons from Neanderthal site, CroatiaMore than 100 years ago, eight eagle talons were excavated from a famous Neanderthal site called Krapina, and subsequently left in a drawer at the Croatian Natural History Museum in Zagreb. Davorka Radovčic recently took over as curator, and she discovered the talons while reexamining the museum’s collections. She noticed several deep cut marks and evidence that the talons had been strung together as a necklace. The talons have been dated to about 130,000 years ago, predating the arrival of Homo sapiens in the area by about 50,000 years. The talon necklace is now thought to be the earliest known symbolic Neanderthal artifact.

IN THIS ISSUE

Bison Bone Mystery

(Courtesy Shawn Bubel)

Bison bone structure, Alberta, CanadaIn southern Alberta, University of Lethbridge archaeologist Shawn Bubel and her team were excavating a bison kill site dating to 500 B.C. when they encountered something bizarre. Beneath the remains of at least 68 butchered bison, prehistoric hunters had pressed collections of bison bones deep into the earth. “I had my students dig below the bone bed, not expecting to find anything,” says Bubel. “Then we started to see bones shoved down into clay.” Eventually the team unearthed eight of these enigmatic bone structures, which dated to the same time as the bone bed above them. Bubel says that while prehistoric Native Americans were known to use upright bison bones as anvils or to tie down tepees, none of these bones bore the telltale marks of those activities. “It’s a cliché for archaeologists to call things ceremonial when they don’t understand them, but I think in this case that’s really what we have,” says Bubel.

Ancient bobcat buried like a human being

About 2000 years ago in what is today western Illinois, a group of Native Americans buried something unusual in a sacred place. In the outer edge of a funeral mound typically reserved for humans, villagers interred a bobcat, just a few months old and wearing a necklace of bear teeth and marine shells. The discovery represents the only known ceremonial burial of an animal in such mounds and the only individual burial of a wild cat in the entire archaeological record, researchers claim in a new study. The villagers may have begun to tame the animal, the authors say, potentially shedding light on how dogs, cats, and other animals were domesticated.
“It’s surprising and marvelous and extremely special,” says Melinda Zeder, a zooarchaeologist at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. But Zeder, who was not involved in the study, says it’s unclear whether these people treated the bobcat as a pet or invested the animal with a larger spiritual significance.
The mound is one of 14 dirt domes of various sizes that sit on a bluff overlooking the Illinois River, about 80 kilometers north of St. Louis. Their builders belonged to the Hopewell culture, traders and hunter-gatherers who lived in scattered villages of just a couple of dozen individuals each and created animal-inspired artwork, like otter-shaped bowls and ceramics engraved with birds. “Villages would come together to bury people in these mounds,” says Kenneth Farnsworth, a Hopewell expert at the Illinois State Archaeological Survey in Champaign. “It was a way to mark the area as belonging to your ancestors.”
Archaeologists rushed to excavate the mounds in the early 1980s because of an impending highway project. When they dug into the largest one—28 meters in diameter and 2.5 meters high—they unearthed the bodies of 22 people buried in a ring around a central tomb that contained the skeleton of an infant. They also discovered a small animal interred by itself in this ring; marine shells and bear teeth pendants carved from bone lay near its neck, all containing drill holes, suggesting they had been part of a collar or necklace. The Hopewell buried their dogs—though in their villages, not in these mounds—and the researchers assumed the animal was a canine. They placed the remains in a box, labeled it “puppy burial,” and shelved it away in the archives of the Illinois State Museum in Springfield.

Kenneth Farnsworth

Ancient Native Americans buried these bone pendants and shell beads together with the bobcat.

Decades later, Angela Perri realized that the team had gotten it wrong. A Ph.D. student at the University of Durham in the United Kingdom, Perri was interested in ancient dog burials and came across the box in 2011 while doing research at the museum.  “As soon as I saw the skull, I knew it was definitely not a puppy,” says Perri, now a zooarchaeologist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. “It was a cat of some kind.”
When Perri analyzed the bones, she found that they belonged to a bobcat, likely between 4 and 7 months old. The skeleton was complete, and there were no cut marks or other signs of trauma, suggesting to Perri that the animal had not been sacrificed. When she looked back at the original excavation photos, she saw that the bobcat had been carefully placed in its grave. “It looked respectful; its paws were placed together,” she says. “It was clearly not just thrown into a hole.”
When Perri told Farnsworth, he was floored. “It shocked me to my toes,” he says. “I’ve never seen anything like it in almost 70 excavated mounds.” Because the mounds were intended for humans, he says, somebody bent the rules to get the cat buried there. “Somebody important must have convinced other members of the society that it must be done. I’d give anything to know why.”
Perri, who reports the discovery with Farnsworth and another colleague this week in the Midcontinental Journal of Archaeology, has her suspicions. The pomp and circumstance of the burial, she says, “suggests this animal had a very special place in the life of these people.” And the age of the kitten implies that the villagers brought it in from the wild—perhaps as an orphan—and may have tried to raise it. Bobcats, she notes, are only about twice the size of a housecat and are known to be quite tamable. The necklace seals the deal for her. She thinks it may have been a collar, a sign that the animal was a cherished pet. “This is the closest you can get to finding taming in the archaeological record,” says Perri, who believes the find provides a window into how other animals—whether they be dogs or livestock—were brought into human society and domesticated. “They saw the potential of this animal to go beyond wild.”
That’s certainly possible, Zeder says. “Taming can be a pathway to domestication.” But she cautions against reading too much into one find. “It’s just a single specimen in a very special context. Talking about domestication might be stretching it.” If the Hopewell really viewed the bobcat as a pet, she says, they would probably have buried it in the same place as their dogs. Instead, she suspects that the cat may have had a symbolic status, perhaps representing a connection to the spiritual world of the wild. “This could be more of a cosmological association.”
Jean-Denis Vigne, a zooarchaeologist at the National Museum of Natural History in Paris, calls the find “a very unique and important discovery.” He says it reminds him of hunter-gatherer societies in South America that bring young monkeys and other wild animals into their homes, rearing and sometimes breastfeeding them as a way to thank nature for bountiful game and crops. Still, Vigne says he’s not aware of people burying these animals. “There’s a lot that still needs to be explored.”
Unfortunately, further work on the bobcat may not be possible. The museum where the bones are housed is facing a shutdown due to state budget cuts, and Perri says she can no longer access the samples. Public groups and museum staff are fighting hard to stop the closure, she says.

2,000-Year-Old Collar on Bobcat a Strange Finding for Archaeologists

A 2,000-year-old collar-wearing bobcat that was buried in a sacred site alongside a group of Hopewell Native Americans in Illinois was most likely viewed as a beloved, though highly unusual, pet, according to a study published last week by Dr. Angela Perri in the Midcontinental Journal of Archeology.

According to Nature World News, no other wildcat has been buried alongside humans in the entire archaeological record. This bobcat was buried with its paws respectfully placed together and wearing a necklace composed of bear teeth and marine animals. It was estimated to be about four to seven months old at the time of its burial.

“It’s surprising and marvelous and extremely special,” said Melinda Zeder, a zooarchaeologist at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History, according to Science magazine.

Although Zeder was not involved in the study herself, she told Science magazine that it is unclear whether or not the bobcat was a pet or a revered and spiritually-significant animal.

“I’ve never seen anything like it in almost 70 excavated mounds,” said Kenneth Farnsworth, a Hopewell expert at the Illinois State Archeological Survey. “Somebody important must have convinced other members of the society that [the burial] must be done. I’d give anything to know why.”

When the remains were first hurriedly excavated in the 1980s before the impending arrival of a highway project, the bobcat was labeled as a “puppy burial” and set aside. When Perri researched the remains and opened the box in 2011, she could tell immediately from looking at the skull that it was not a puppy, according to the Daily Mail.

The bobcat’s unusual burial indicates that it “had a very special place in the life of these people,” Perri said, according to Science.

“This is the closest you can get to finding taming in the archaeological record,” Perri said. “They saw the potential of this animal to go beyond wild.”

Although many questions about the bobcat still remain, no further work may be possible because the museum that housed the bones is facing a shutdown because of state budget cuts, according to Science magazine. The museum’s staff and other public groups are seeking to stop the closure.