Fieldwork

Water Canyon

Project name: Water Canyon
Site type: Prehistoric hunting site
Period: Late Paleoindian
Project director: Robert Dello-Russo

Clovis projectile point baseI originally recorded the Water Canyon site (LA 134764) in 1999 during an archaeological inventory for a proposed astronomical facility in Socorro County. The site was characterized as an open lithic artifact scatter created during the late Paleoindian period (ca. 10,000-800 cal yrs BP) based on a Scottsbluff projectile point fragment (see illustration below), part of the Cody Complex of late Paleoindian tools. An incised arroyo northeast of the site contained an extensive layer of blackened sediments about 2 m below the surface—the remains of an old cienega, or marsh, thought to date to the end of the Pleistocene and the start of the Holocene geological epochs (ca. 13,000 to 8,000 years ago).

In 2008 I returned to the site with Patrice Walker (Escondida Research Group), Vance Holliday and Bill Rietze (University of Arizona), and Bruce Huckell (University of New Mexico). We retrieved four datable samples from the buried cienega deposit and documented a possible bison bone fragment. By the following spring we received dating results confirming that the cienega existed between the early Paleoindian (Clovis) period (ca. 13,325–12,975 cal yrs BP) and the late Paleoindian period, and that the bone fell squarely into the late Paleoindian period.

We now believe that the site represents only the third intact Clovis site known in New Mexico. Given the results of our testing efforts in 2008 and 2009, the potential for the site to provide high-resolution paleoenvironmental, chronometric, faunal, and cultural data for both the early and late Paleoindian periods seems immense. Pending the acquisition of sufficient funding, plans are now afoot to return to the site and continue research efforts in the fall of 2009 and/or the summer of 2010.

For more photos and additional information, go to Water Canyon article.

Bison bones and Scottsbluff point