Sand, Chute, Carts, and Waddles: Eagle Cave and Bonfire Shelter Restoration Project

Summary

Eagle Nest Canyon, a box canyon draining into the Rio Grande in the Lower Pecos Canyonlands of southwest Texas, houses Bonfire Shelter, the oldest and southernmost bison jump site in North America. Bonfire was excavated in 1963-64 and again in 1983-1984, leaving open a 3m-deep excavation block. Nearby Eagle Cave was excavated in the 1930s and again in 1963, leaving the central trench unfilled. In 2015-2016, the Ancient Southwest Texas Project of Texas State University re-excavated the 4-meter deep trench bisecting this massive rockshelter to document and sample complex stratigraphy spanning 10,000+ years. In 2017, the ASWT project "restored" Eagle and Bonfire. At Eagle Cave the challenge was refilling the wide, 4-meter-deep trench bisecting the shelter. Most original backdirt had washed down the canyon decades earlier, so we added 20 dump truck loads of Rio Grande alluvium via a complex chute and cart system. At Bonfire Shelter the still-open excavation block was badly impacted by exposure and water erosion, as was the talus cone where bison fell. We stabilized the talus cone and installed erosion control features across much of the site to protect the extant deposits and allow time for new investigations before Bonfire is completely backfilled.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 83rd Annual Meeting, Washington, DC (2018)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 21555