HARLINGEN, Texas Nov 13, 2004 — Archaeologists have discovered a cache of artifacts near South Padre Island that they say could be up to 5,000 years old, potentially providing new clues about early peoples of the Texas coast.
The items, found in a protective clay dune about 6 feet underground, appear to be part of a fishing camp for a nomadic group of hunter-gatherers, archaeologist Robert Ricklis said. They include fragments of shell tools, chipped flint projectile points, and a fish earbone, or otolith, that can be analyzed for information about the bay environment of the time.
Ricklis said the find is significant because so little is known about the ancient Rio Grande Valley. Most early manmade items would have been eroded by sand and sea air, or washed out by the ever-changing course of the waterways of the Rio Grande basin near the Mexican border.
"We don't have a chronology for the Rio Grande Delta," said Ricklis, who works for the Corpus Christi office of Coastal Environments Inc., an archaeological research company based in Baton Rouge, La. "We really have no idea of what the culture's prehistory was."
The artifacts were found in May during the environmental company's archaeological survey of the Bahia Grande, a 6,000-acre lowland between Brownsville and Port Isabel. The survey was required before the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service proceeds with plans to restore wetlands lost to the digging of the Brownsville Ship Channel during the 1930s. ...cont'd
http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=250696
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
