FORT HOOD - In tale after tale where treasures rumored beyond imagination drove men to uncharted territory and distant lands, “X” was said to mark the spot.
But in the tale of real life, where men and women who thirst for history and work feverishly to preserve it, there is no specific “X,” just a few broken shards of pottery, a pair of rusty discarded dog tags dating back to World War I or a child’s toy.
“These were lives,” said Sunny Wood, an archaeologist with Fort Hood’s Cultural Resources Management Program. “Some of this stuff people would consider collectors’ items or antiques.”
But there is much more than that, especially when ancient history mixes with the present day.
“What always sticks out in my mind is that we’ll find a projectile point that is 8,000 years old on the same surface as a Pepsi can from last week,” Wood said. “It drives me nuts.”
One man’s trash
A hole in the ground has been Ginny Hatfield’s and Tim Griffith’s office for the last four weeks.
Archaeologists Tim Griffith and Ginny Hatfield sift through sediment collected from Fort Hood’s site No. 41CV1553, a recently discovered collection of fire rocks in paluxy soil. Artifacts from the site date from 200 to 1,500 years ago. Scott Gaulin/Telegram
Off the beaten path, and only a few yards from a deeply rutted tank track, Griffith and Hatfield had staked a handful of tiny white and red flags to make a series of shallow digs for artifacts, and into the lives of an ancient people.
Under a canvas canopy, Hatfield had staked several grid squares outlined with twine that stretched 1 yard wide by 3 yards long.
The rock oven or roasting pit that ancient people used to cook wild onions, plants and game. Scott Gaulin/Telegram
Using a small shovel and a brush, she’d been digging carefully with Griffith, meticulously sifting mounds of sandy soil through a screen.
What they’d uncovered was what’s commonly known in archaeological circles as a rock oven or a roasting pit that ancient people used to cook wild onions, plants and game. It dates from 200 to 1,500 years ago.
In one small square, Hatfield had uncovered only a small part of the oven and hoped to collect some ancient plant materials to determine what was cooked.
“From this one we’ve taken several samples of soil,” Hatfield said.
They also have collected some rock samples to see if residue can be collected from those, Hatfield said.
“We are in the beginning stages of examining all of this,” she said.
Researchers have not just found the large roasting oven, but also stone chips that may have been used to fashion spear points and arrow heads.
Of course, a lot of the discoveries might have remained long buried if it were not for technology.
Aside from shallow digs with tiny shovels, archaeologists use imaging technology to find anomalies.
“What they did is come out here and put a grid over this whole area,” Wood said. “They ran ground-penetrating radar to figure out where these clusters of rocks are, to kind of hone down where we were going to put our focus. Otherwise you are coming out here with a probe or a shovel to see what’s out here.”
Once those anomalies are found, archaeologists get to work digging, and sifting through time itself.
Griffith shoveled a small amount of sandy soil and watched the fine remnants fall back to the earth.
What was left were fragments of rocks that intrigued Griffith.
That’s because the burned rocks that fashioned the oven, when you strike them together will emit a sulfuric scent, much like a match being struck.
Thousands of years ago, prehistoric cultures learned that heated rocks could be used to bake foods, specifically bulbs or fibrous plants.
These were usually cooked at least overnight and sometimes for several days before they could be eaten.
Rocks, heated within a pit and covered by layers of plants and insulating earth, can hold heat for up to 48 hours, and that is why these ovens were so effective. The larger and more numerous the rocks, the more slowly they will dissipate heat and the longer they will stay hot enough to cook the food.
“This is really kind of a neat project,” Wood said. “We’ve got some guys from Texas A&M who are interested in this. We’re going to get some good data out of this.”
This specimen is a bi-face beveled knife, meaning that it was worked on both sides of the stone. Scott Gaulin/Telegram
A metates was recovered from the site. The center was cored and dissolved in acid to reveal it was used to grind acorns, wild onions and garlic, hyacinth and camis. Charred nutshells were also found that archaeologist Sunny Wood suspects are pecans and walnuts. Scott Gaulin/Telegram
The program
The Cultural Management Program, which manages resources representing more than 10,000 years of occupying the land, has been in existence on Fort Hood since 1978 and is one of the stronger programs situated on military posts in the United States.
“We have 98 percent of the installation surveyed for archaeology and cultural resources,” Wood said.
Over the years, there have been some pretty significant finds on post.
In 1970 construction crews who were building the Pershing Creek Housing area discovered the partial tusk of an extinct wooly mammoth.
Discoveries on the more than 2,200 recorded archaeological sites range from prehistoric rock shelters to historic homesteads and cemeteries, early military structures and even a few sites considered sacred by a number of Native American tribes.
Chances are pretty good that researchers and archaeologists have barely scratched the surface since most prehistoric sites go quite deep.
Building goodwill
Fuller coordinates with seven Native American tribes in the United States to ensure their ancient sites remain intact, and as protected as possible.
Those tribes include the Apache, Caddo, Comanche, Kiowa, Tonkawa, Mescalaro Apache and Witchita.
“Obviously, some are more interested than others, it just depends on the tribe and how active their cultural resources division is,” Fuller said.
When tribal remains are located or stolen remains recovered, Fuller contacts the tribes to see what they’d like done, and often they will agree to come to Fort Hood to perform a sacred ceremony.
Many of the tribal remains are reburied at the Leon River Medicine Wheel, which is regarded as a sacred ceremonial site, or at the Comanche National Indian Cemetery, both of which are managed and protected by Fort Hood.
But coordinating and cooperating is not just about reburial, it’s also about learning, especially when archaeologists find something new.
“We provide them all of our stuff and they give us feedback on what they think the archaeological site means,” she said. “As opposed to us telling them what it is, we want them to tell us what they think it is, too. It’s very much a cooperative effort.”
