Tuesday, August 23, 2011
A surprise find. I am working at a historic period site right now, and so far, we are not finding what we expected to find. The most interesting thing discovered is a roasting pit or horno. Basically a big pit cut into the ground. The ancient peoples filled it with wood, then lay rocks on top, and used it as a big oven, perhaps cooking agave plants or maybe cactus.
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Roasting pit.
The photo is after Allen removed the top layer of smaller, cracked rocks, exposing larger rocks below. Later he removed these rocks and uncovered another layer of smaller rocks. This suggests the pit was used multiple times.
The nearest prehistoric site is maybe a half mile away, so this was a rather surprising discovery. It is in an area that has not been examined by archaeologists before, and so deeply buried that there would have been no surface evidence for the pit or other nearby features. The presence of pottery indicates it dates to sometime between A.D. 500 and A.D. 1450, but we will probably have to radiocarbon date some charcoal to get a better date estimate (the pottery looks like it is all plain wares, which are not very good for dating).
So hot and miserable outside, even an interesting feature like this can barely perk me up.
