VERNON PARISH — It’s been hundreds, if not thousands, of years since humans touched some of those artifacts extracted from this archaeological site in the Kisatchie National Forest.
Archaeologists from the Kisatchie National Forest and the University of Louisiana’s Lafayette Public Archaeology Laboratory, which date back to the end of the last ice age, have decided that it is one of the largest and oldest prehistoric archaeological sites. in western Louisiana.
They discovered excavating about 7 to 8 feet at the site, indicating this, said Matt Helmer, director of Kisatchie’s National Forest Heritage Program. Thanks to luminescence dating, they can date the last time those sediments were exposed to sunlight, giving them a clever concept of how long the human profession will last in this area.
The 100 acres are much older than the Poverty Point World Heritage site in northeastern Louisiana, which dates to around 1500 BC. And it’s vital because it presents evidence of potentially larger permanent occupations of Native Americans in western Louisiana.
“It may just rewrite the history books about what we know about Native Americans in this area,” said Lisa Lewis, forest manager for Kisatchie National Forest.
Stone equipment and pottery imply that Native Americans frequently occupied this domain for thousands of years before touching with Europeans.
Kisatchie National Forest partnered with ULL to host a boxing school on site. They exercise between 10 and 15 students and a giant of the school, ULL and LSU that paints there.
Gray Tarry, a graduate of the ULL and technician hired for the boxing school, sifts the earth with a giant screen in search of artifacts.
“It’s super exciting to see what you’re going to locate, especially if you find something you didn’t expect. You’re touching things that haven’t been touched in many years and it’s a glory to see evidence of humans from beyond. “and its technologies, its tools. It makes you feel very connected to the other people who were here,” Tarry said.
The artifacts are meant to be found, said Mark Rees, director of the Louisiana Public Archaeology Laboratory and professor of anthropological archaeology at ULL.
“I mean, it’s the excitement. That’s why we do it to a large extent,” Rees said. “But if that’s it, then it’s a dead end. What we need are the artifacts in context, the artifacts in their location, so that we can identify associations with other artifacts and preferably with what we call cultural traits. “
“The big thing here is those circular spots on the gcircular,” said Erlend Johnson, task manager and assistant instructor at ULL. These stains are caused by rotting wood.
“When we communicated about Native American populations here, as opposed to Mexico or South America, they built wooden buildings. Think Louisiana. How long will a piece of wood last?It’s not going to last for thousands of years. What we find, as archaeologists, are stains on the ground, where the wood has rotted, and rarely are floors of other colors falling,” he said.
Standing inside an excavation of what may have been an ancient structure, Helmer comes to one of the circular elements.
“That’s where a piece of wood, a pole, would have been. You can see how symmetrical it is. It’s not like what you’d see of an herb tree decomposing on the spot,” he said. “And that’s related to, you can see some of that gray that’s much more compact, you can see coal stains there. We believe it is an ancient soil related to these, and we were trying to solve it. It’s just not very well preserved.
“There is also an ancient well. You can see that on the wall, too,” Johnson said. “We discovered pottery from a few hundred years ago, maybe. This is called whiteware.
Further down, they discovered nails dating back to the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Helmer said.
It refers to a line in the well floor called intrusion. It visibly adjusts from yellow to an ashen color. Helmer said they are looking at other soil textures and colors.
That well may have been just an outbuilding or tea area, Helmer said. The compact soil around it is yellow, while the looser soil in the pit is ashen with tree roots developing there. The back of the pit burned.
One of the leading studies questions whether the site was used as a short-term hunting camp or whether it is a permanent settlement, Helmer said.
They still have to go through all the documents collected and date them, but there is evidence that many other people’s teams have gone through this position over time, he said. It may have been used as a hunting camp towards the end. years of profession or it may also have been a permanent hamlet or village, which is important.
“We’re pretty far from major river valley systems like the Mississippi Valley and the Red River Valley,” he said. This is where most Native American villages tend to be located.
They were thrilled when they discovered the post molds, as they belonged to a vital design that wouldn’t have been built if it had only been used for a few days, he said.
Rees showed examples of the types of artifacts discovered, such as the arrowheads of Williams Point and San Patrice Point, as well as a petrified arrowhead.
“In fact, several San Patrice Spikes like this have been discovered in the woods and also at Fort Polk. This variety is a fairly old variety of San Patrice from about 12 500 years ago. He looks a bit stocky. It was probably sharp, a small cut, used perhaps as a knife, cut it partly like a knife,” Rees said.
Helmer said an arrowhead from Clovis Point, which is one of the oldest stone tool tips in all of the Americas, was discovered in the Phase I survey when the site was first recorded.
“The Clovis culture was the first of other people from the Americas. Now we know it’s older than that, yet for Louisiana, it’s as old as we are,” he said.
There are no bones to be discovered at this site. Louisiana soil is very acidic, so bones don’t store very well, Helmer said. In addition, moisture retains nothing but ceramics, stone equipment and charred materials.
What they will do is take soil samples and put them in the water and all the old seeds will come to the surface.
“We can take a look at them under a microscope or do specialized research to get a look at plants that will give us insight into the paleo environment, as well as the types of plants that other people have eaten here, all the plants that may have just been grown, things like that,” Helmer said.
Lewis said they had known about it for some time but didn’t know the extent because it hadn’t been fully excavated.
Johnson said the site was originally documented in 2003 in small excavations to find out where the sites were and see if they met the criteria of the National Register of Historic Places.
In 2020, the domain was hit hard by Hurricane Laura, so they were able to secure an investment that allowed them to conduct a large-scale excavation with professional archaeologists, Lewis said.
“It’s one of the largest rescue excavations we’ve done just because of the magnitude of typhoon damage here,” Helmer said.
They also have a big problem with illegal digging or “looting,” Helmer said.
It’s a federal crime to dig on federal land, he said. The U. S. Forest ServiceThe U. S. Food and Drug Administration has a separate enforcement arm that enforces the Archaeological Resources Protection Act.
“You can see everywhere that there are all these holes. They were all dug through illegal excavations here in the forest. In fact, we caught them and condemned them for looting here at this site,” he said.
Between the typhoon’s damage and illegal excavations, they feared they would be destroyed.
He noted that looting destroys the heritage of Native Americans.
Helmer said the excavation would be finished in the coming weeks. Over the next six months to a year, they will work in the lab, research, and report writing.
“After that, we will look at the option of including this on the National Register of Historic Places,” he said.
They also plan to expand a coverage and follow-up plan. They also plan to release data about what they discovered so the public can know what they’re doing and why they want to keep what they have.