Uncovering the mystery of very early humans in New Mexico

Uncovering the mystery of very early humans in New Mexico

March 18, 2016 by Karen Wentworth



Excavation in progress in Water Canyon.

Shaggy, heavy-shouldered bison have grazed the wide open spaces of the American Southwest for thousands of years. They made a tempting target for the hunters who walked the empty landscape between 9,000 and 13,000 years ago. The bison were attracted to a lush landscape west of Socorro, New Mexico where wetlands created by mountain runoff stretched across hundreds of acres. The hunters were attracted to the bison.

In 2000, archeologist Robert Dello-Russo was hired by the Energetic Materials Research and Testing Center (EMERTC) at the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology to survey land where they wanted to build a new observation facility for their explosives research. He contracted to look for archeological sites on the state-owned land, and found much more than anyone expected.

"We found the Water Canyon Paleo-Indian site and a lot of other early Holocene sites because we were right at the edge of this big alluvial fan so there were other sites eroding out and basically, we said well if you are going to build this, you are going to have to move it some place that is not littered with archeological sites," said Dello-Russo.

EMRTC is internationally famous for the quality of its research and a welcoming spirit that brought the television show Myth Busters back repeatedly to blow up all sorts of things. The EMRTC scientists didn't realize an obscure part of their 14-square-mile field laboratory was a major archeological site.

More:
http://phys.org/news/2016-03-uncovering-mystery-early-humans-mexico.html#jCp