Revisiting Spirit Eye: Ongoing Research from a Cave in West Texas

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

This poster presents some of the preliminary results from two seasons of excavation work at Spirit Eye Cave, a prehistorically occupied site near Presidio, Texas. Despite being heavily impacted by decades of collecting, the Center for Big Bend Studies began excavations in the cave in 2017 and recovered thousands of artifacts discarded by collectors as well as intact deposits. More excavations were planned, preceded by efforts to preserve the deposits with 100-pound stock mats and mapping the cave with a terrestrial LIDAR scanner. In 2018, a SRSU/CBBS field school produced thousands more artifacts, many of them perishable items such as cordage, corn, and a sandal, and located intact features and deposits. Our field efforts have produced some unanticipated results, such as a Clovis-aged fiber bed and, at the moment, the oldest maize in Texas. Spirit Eye is an excellent case study that illustrates the useful, collaborative studies that can be done at previously looted sites with an unconventional research agenda.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 24290