NATURE NOTES: Archeologists unearth unexpected wonders in a cave near Marfa

Transcript

By Andrew Stuart

“The journey is the goal.” It may be a cliché, but it rings true in many human endeavors, including science. Researchers pursuing a specific aim often make unexpected discoveries along the way.

That’s the case at the San Esteban Rockshelter, south of Marfa. Archeologists began digging the cave for evidence of the Big Bend’s earliest people, its Ice Age inhabitants. But the excavation has yielded vivid glimpses into the full sweep of human life here.

Dr. Bryon Schroeder is director of Alpine’s Center for Big Bend Studies.

“It’s just taken so long to dig,” Schroeder said, “because there’s so much of it and it’s so complex. It’s just so intensely occupied that we can’t get down through it. There’s all sorts of cool stuff in those deposits.”

In 2019, the Center partnered with Kansas University’s Odyssey Project. Odyssey is pursuing traces of the continent’s earliest cultures, and the cave was a promising locale. Though collectors had dug here, San Esteban’s Ice Age deposits were believed to be untouched.

But as they worked, the team found a remarkably intact record. The cave preserves artifacts dating from early ranchers and the storied trade route called the Chihuahua Trail, back to ancient Indigenous farmers and foragers.

Perhaps most stunning is a cache of items between 6,400 and 7,200 years old.

In the cave’s recesses, the team found a pronghorn-hide cape, neatly folded and capped with a metate, or grinding slab.

“I have never seen anything like that in my life,” Schroeder said. “And we just sat there, and everybody just stared at it, like ‘It’s pronghorn. It’s a 6,400-year-old pronghorn hide.’ It’s like they had every intention in the world of coming back.”

There was a bracelet of Gulf Coast shells, and an awl — a hide-and wood-punching tool — made of bone, with marks that ancient craftsmen may have used for measurements. There were sandals. And, there was a collection of weapons.

The hunting “kit” included not only stone points, but wooden darts and so-called “rabbit sticks.” In skilled hands, these “straight-flying boomerangs” would have packed a punch. The wooden darts are tipped with a residue the team suspects was poison.

“So we have almost all of a hunting kit at one time period,” Schroeder said. “It’s the most complete early example that we know of from any time period. If we want to understand how those weapons work, we’ve got to understand how the whole thing was made. And that shows us how they’re using those things.”

The weapons are broken, and their owners appear to have salvaged what they could — including the feathers used to stabilize the darts. Traditional hunters are known to honor their implements. In the cave, these broken weapons may have received a kind of ceremonial burial.

The Archaic hunting kit isn’t the only revelation. The team has found corn, beans and squash — evidence that Big Bend agriculture dates back at least 2,000 years.

And there are signs of how this land has changed. From 3,800 years ago, the archeologists discovered bracelets made of eastern gamagrass. It’s a plant found today in Connecticut and Florida. These desert plains, it seems, were once a lush tallgrass prairie.

“It would’ve looked like the Great Plains,” Schroeder said, “and you would expect big grazers down here for sure.”

Indeed, the cave has preserved evidence of those “big grazers” – in the form of bison bones.

Now, five years in, the archeologists may have discovered the Ice Age evidence they’ve been seeking. There are remnants of fires here from some 15,000 years ago. The team is taking great care to confirm if these fires were natural, or made by people.

But San Esteban has already revealed wonders from the Big Bend’s past.