viernes, 25 de marzo de 2016

‘Unexpected’ 3,000-Year-Old Bison Hunting Site Discovered in Southern Arizona


2/3. A corner-notched stone point (just right of center) was found among the stones and bones. (Photo courtesy Ballenger et al.)

A surprising find on a ranch in southeastern Arizona has some archaeologists re-thinking a vital period of history in this corner of the Southwest.

In the desert upland just a few miles from both Mexico and New Mexico, researchers have uncovered a 3,000-year-old bison kill site, featuring hundreds of bones and bone fragments, along with dozens of cobblestones and flaked and ground stone tools.

Adding to the surprise is the fact that this location, known as Cave Creek Midden, near the town of Portal, is already well-known to archaeologists.

When it was first investigated in 1936, the site revealed stone tools and other artifacts that came to typify a critical phase in Southwestern history: the period from about 4000 and 500 BCE, when humans first started to re-settle the desert Southwest and develop methods for farming corn.

The discovery of a large bison kill here adds a whole new chapter to the story of the site, and a new understanding of the hunter-gatherers who lived here. [...] Western Digs


Actualización: Un cazadero de búfalos de hace 3.000 años en Arizona
Se trata de un descubrimiento inesperado que se ha producido en un rancho del suroeste
 
Todos asociamos las grandes manadas de búfalos a las amplias praderas fértieles del medio oeste americano. Así que el hallazgo de un cazadero de búfalos de hace 3.000 años en el suroeste de Arizona, cerca de la frontera con México y Nuevo México, ha resultado una verdadera sorpresa para sus investigadores. La presencia de búfalos coincide cronológicamente con una fase de expansión de la población hacia el suroeste de Norteamérica, en el momento en que comenzaban a cultivar el maíz, y supone añadir un nuevo capítulo hasta ahora desconocido de la historia del territorio, aunque aún quedarían por identificar las zonas de hábitat de estos pobladores...

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