Ancient village found at Arizona's Petrified Forest
Ancient village found at Arizona's Petrified Forest
Amy B Wang, The Republic | azcentral.com 8:33 a.m. MST October 10, 2014
The sandstone slabs peeking from the dusty dunes were the first clues something promising lurked underfoot.
Fanned out over the Petrified Forest National Park, a team of 10 archaeologists painstakingly walked in straight lines all summer and noted, acre by acre, anything that seemed unusual to the naked eye. A ceramic shard here. Some yards away, a fragment of a stone tool.
Back in the office, they pieced together the GPS coordinates they had marked each day. As the weeks passed, they watched as the collective picture formed by their notes grew larger.
And larger. Until they knew they had struck upon something significant.
"You're out in the sun, walking around. They're long days," said Amy Schott, a seasonal archaeologist with the park. "But it's exciting, too, because you get finds like this."
Archaeologists were looking at an ancient village, estimated to be 1,300 to 1,800 years old. It's a discovery that not only bodes well for future archaeological projects at Petrified Forest National Park, but one that hints at what life was like for Arizona's earliest settlers.
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http://www.azcentral.com/story/travel/2014/10/09/arizona-petrified-forest-national-park-ancient-village/16995169/
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