A Reconsideration of Seven Prehistoric Sites in the Lower Rio Grande Plains of South Texas Steve Carpenter

Index of Texas Archaeology: Open Access Gray Literature from the Lone Star State Volume 2010 Article 3 2010 Cuatro Vientos: A Reconsideration of Seven Prehistoric Sites in the Lower Rio Grande Plains of South Texas Steve Carpenter Michael Chavez Kevin A. Miller S. Christopher Caran Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.sfasu.edu/ita Part of the American Material Culture Commons, Archaeological Anthropology Commons, Cultural Resource Management and Policy Analysis Commons, Historic Preservation and Conservation Commons, History Commons, Human Geography Commons, Other Anthropology Commons, Other Arts and Humanities Commons, Other History of Art, Architecture, and Archaeology Commons, Other Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons, and the Technical and Professional Writing Commons Tell us how this article helped you. Repository Citation Carpenter, Steve; Chavez, Michael; Miller, Kevin A.; and Caran, S. Christopher (2010) "Cuatro Vientos: A Reconsideration of Seven Prehistoric Sites in the Lower Rio Grande Plains of South Texas," Index of Texas Archaeology: Open Access Gray Literature from the Lone Star State: Vol. 2010 , Article 3. https://doi.org/10.21112/ita.2010.1.3 ISSN: 2475-9333 Available at: https://scholarworks.sfasu.edu/ita/vol2010/iss1/3 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by SFA ScholarWorks. It has been accepted for inclusion in Index of Texas Archaeology: Open Access Gray Literature from the Lone Star State by an authorized editor of SFA ScholarWorks. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Cuatro Vientos: A Reconsideration of Seven Prehistoric Sites in the Lower Rio Grande Plains of South Texas Licensing Statement This is a work for hire produced for the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT), which owns all rights, title, and interest in and to all data and other information developed for this project under its contract with the report producer. The er port may be cited and brief passages from this publication may be reproduced without permission provided that credit is given to TxDOT and the firm that produced it. Permission to reprint an entire chapter, section, figures or tables must be obtained in advance from the Supervisor of the Archeological Studies Branch, Environmental Affairs Division, Texas Department of Transportation, 125 East 11th Street, Austin, Texas, 78701. This article is available in Index of Texas Archaeology: Open Access Gray Literature from the Lone Star State: https://scholarworks.sfasu.edu/ita/vol2010/iss1/3 CUATRO VIENTOS - A RECONSIDERATION OF SEVEN PREHISTORIC SITES IN THE LOWER RIO GRANDE PLAINS OF SOUTH TEXAS WEBB COUNTY TxDOT CSJ No. 0086-14-025 TxDOT Work Authorization No. 575 24 SA007 Prepared for TEXAS DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION 125 East 11th Street Austin, Texas 78701 Prepared by Steve Carpenter, Michael Chavez, Kevin A. Miller, and S. Christopher Caran SWCA ENVIRONMENTAL CONSULTANTS 4407 Monterey Oaks Blvd. Building 1, Suite 110 Austin, Texas 78749 www.swca.com Principal Investigator Kevin A. Miller Texas Antiquities Permit 3755 SWCA Project Number 14565-126-AUS SWCA Cultural Resources Report No. 07-502 May 14, 2010 FORWARD Scott Pletka, Supervisor Archeological Studies Program Texas Department of Transportation, Environmental Affairs Division INTRODUCTION With this report, Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) begins a reconsideration of approaches to the evaluation and treatment of those areas where surface lithic scatters are the main constituent of the archeological record. The reconsideration was inspired by the Cuatro Vientos project in Laredo, Webb County, Texas. The project and the ideas surrounding it developed slowly. The ideas continued to evolve through discussion between SWCA Environmental Consultants (SWCA) and TxDOT as additional work on the project occurred. Because this project proceeded in an idiosyncratic fashion, some words of explanation might be helpful. The following discussion provides an account of how the project developed and where future work might be heading. PREVIOUS WORK AT CUATRO VIENTOS Blanton and Associates (Blanton) conducted the initial survey of the project’s area of potential effects (Ringstaff et al. 2004). The survey identified 14 sites. The Blanton survey report showed the local archeological record to predominantly be a messy landscape of mixed assemblages. Within this landscape were some pockets with potentially-preserved, isolable components and features. The Blanton survey report thus recommended eight of the 14 sites for additional evaluation. TxDOT, in consultation with the Texas Historical Commission, accepted those recommendations. TxDOT then tasked SWCA with developing a scope for the fieldwork under one of TxDOT’s general archeological services contracts. SWCA’s approach concentrated on the identification of those select areas that had a high level of integrity, with horizontal and/or vertical separation of assemblages and components (Carpenter, Houk, and Miller 2005). This integrity-focused approach has been explicitly advocated by TxDOT in the past and continues to inform TxDOT’s evaluations of the effects of its projects. INTEGRITY AND THE EVALUATION OF SOUTH TEXAS SITES The integrity-focused approach can perhaps be refined, however. Two issues must be addressed. On the one hand, the archeological record of south Texas and its upland lithic scatters is not amenable to many interpre- tive strategies. The data from the uplands are typically of poor quality. In many places, the ground surface has remained stable or has eroded. Preservation of many types of material is poor. The same general areas have seen repeated occupation. This combination of factors has produced an archeological record that can be difficult to render meaningful. Many aspects of past human behavior and adaptations can not be inferred under these circumstances. On the other hand, the activities that occurred in these areas may have played a significant role in local adaptations. We should not be willing to treat such a large portion of the archeological record as a black box, where significant activities remain unidentified. To ignore the uplands makes an appreciation of the valley settings more difficult, since data would not be available from the upland areas for comparative analysis. Refining current approaches means splitting the difference between asking too much of the existing record and asking too little. Some existing guidance can assist in these efforts. The regulations that govern the evaluation of archeological sites (36 CFR 60.4) list seven aspects of integrity: location, design, materials, workmanship, association, setting, and feeling. The National Park Service has produced guidance that explains how to apply these aspects of integrity to the characteristics of archeological sites (Little et al. 2000). To summarize this guidance, four aspects of integrity—location, design, materials, and association—are particularly relevant for the evaluation of archeological sites. These aspects of integrity characterize i the spatial arrangement of a site and its constituent elements, the preservation of materials at the site, and the ability of the site’s data to be linked to important research questions. The importance of these aspects is relative to the kind of research questions being asked. If integrity could be measured on an absolute scale, many south Texas sites would likely be regarded as having “low” integrity. Such lithic landscapes are not often considered to have sufficient integrity to be able to address important questions of history or prehistory. An integrity-focused approach potentially generates a picture of past adaptation that is focused on those areas that were likely to be buried and preserved. Such a picture often amounts to an archeology of material near rivers and creeks, where alluvial and colluvial processes were the primary depositional processes in operation. Integrity is not, however, measurable in an absolute sense. Site integrity should be evaluated relative to the data needs of particular research questions. Some questions might require the spatial arrangement of artifacts to have been preserved as humans originally deposited them to within a meter or less horizontally and to have been mini- mally moved vertically. Other questions might be answerable at much more coarse scales of spatial resolution. SOME POSSIBLE RESEARCH QUESTIONS Several questions appropriate to the south Texas archeological record come to mind. These questions can be addressed with artifact and feature data from upland sites, because the individual artifact, individual feature, or the site as a whole is a suitable unit of analysis for them. The questions concern the manner in which hunter- gatherers adapted to challenging local conditions. The archeological record suggests that this adaptation endured over a long period of time across a large area, which may indicate that the constituent elements of this adaptation could be used flexibly in a variety of settings. Stability seems to characterize the material culture employed in south Texas.Artifact types in south Texas, such as projectile point types, changed slowly compared to similar types in central Texas. The persistence of these south Texas types may be attributable to the wide range of functions that the tools could perform. Compared to tool types in central Texas, tool design may vary less among different use contexts. Using chronologically-diagnostic artifacts, these questions could be addressed through use

Load more