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The finding could have 'profound implications,' experts said.
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| Archaeologists discovered a pristine hunting kit, possibly the oldest in North America, inside a remote cave in Big Bend. |
What could potentially be the oldest intact full weapon system in North America has been discovered in a remote cave system in West Texas. Archaeologists recently unearthed a pristinely preserved hunting kit made of broken components of weapons hidden deep inside the massive cave system of the San Esteban Rockshelter in Big Bend, south of Marfa, shedding light on the lives of the region's earliest residents. Byron Schroeder, director of the Center for Big Bend Studies (CBBS), told Louie Bond of TPWD Magazine that the discovery is a "pretty monumental finding."
"A person came to the back of the cave and went through their hunting gear piece by piece: 'This is good. This is not good. I need to remake this leather pouch a little bit.' And then went on their way," Schroeder said. "But that one small act is going to have profound implications in understanding a wide range of topics, including the environment."
Some of the tools contained in the hunting kit include four dart nock ends that fit against an ancient spear-throwing device known as an atlatl; a straight flying boomerang; six stone-tipped foreshafts to connect knapped stone points to the atlatl; four hardwood foreshafts, possibly used to deliver poison; and a partial atlatl. "The dart foreshafts fit into sockets or sleeves in the end of a dart main shaft," Bond wrote. "The nock ends of the darts fit against the atlatl spur; the dart flexes when thrown to maintain straight flight."
| A sampling of some of the weapons found in the ancient hunting kit. |
None of the components are complete, but nearly all of the pieces of the atlatl were found. Devin Pettigrew, a weapons expert and CBBS assistant professor, said they don't have all the socket ends needed to understand how the foreshafts of the weapon fit into the main shafts. "We're also missing the proximal (handle) end of the atlatl, but we know enough about this type to reconstruct what it may have looked like," Pettigrew said.
In addition to the hunting kit, the archaeologists also found human feces, and a folded, tanned pronghorn hide with hair still intact. The perimeter of the hide had spaced holes to tie to a framer for softening, a common practice among historic Plains groups."It's akin to holding dish gloves that somebody put over the sink after doing the dishes," Schroeder said. "Somebody folded that hide up and sat right on top of this rock. And nobody touched it for 6,000 years."
Caves were often special places in Indigenous American cultures, where hunted prey could be reincarnated, Pettigrew said. However, it's unclear if the deposit of the broken components in the rock shelter served a symbolic or spiritual purpose as "interpretations like this, based on more recent cultures, are more difficult the further back in time you go," he added. Schroeder said they can use wood to reconstruct the environment to learn more and apply that new knowledge to other archaeological sites in Big Bend.
SOURCE: https://www.chron.com/life/wildlife/article/big-bend-weapons-20246556.php
