New Perspectives on Bonfire Shelter, Texas

Summary

This is an abstract from the "The Archaeology of Eagle Nest Canyon, Texas: Papers in Honor of Jack and Wilmuth Skiles" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Bonfire Shelter contains an extensive stratified record of human prehistory in the Lower Pecos Canyonlands of Southwest Texas, and a correspondingly long history of competing interpretations of that record. The initial investigations of the site in the 1960s led to the announcement of the earliest known bison jump in North America, attributed to Plainvew and perhaps Folsom hunters. In addition, the shelter was found to contain a ca. 14,000-year-old faunal assemblage with potential human modifications, extensive deposits relating to a Late Archaic bison jump, as well as several intervening occupations. Subsequent investigators questioned some of the original conclusions, particularly regarding the Paleoindian-age deposits, and vigorous debates played out in the literature. Beginning in 2017, the Ancient Southwest Texas project has carried out detailed reexamination of the site, correlating the stratigraphy identified by previous researchers, obtaining new dates, and attempting to address the debates while also providing due attention to less contentious site components. This paper provides a general overview of the history of work at Bonfire shelter, including fieldwork and preservation carried out over the last seven years by ASWT, presents some tentative conclusions, and serves as a foundation for papers on Bonfire Shelter that follow in this session.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• The Archaeology of Eagle Nest Canyon, Texas: Papers in Honor of Jack and Wilmuth Skiles   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 38690.0