Eagle Cave is one of the largest and most significant rockshelters in the Lower Pecos Canyonlands (LPC) of southwest Texas. Located within Eagle Nest Canyon, a short tributary to the Rio Grande, the site was occupied by Indigenous peoples for over 13,000 years before it became integrated into a sheep ranch in the early 1900s. Inside the shelter an observer is dwarfed by the ca. 950 m2 of floor space and a ceiling 20 meters overhead. On the downstream end of the site, 3,200-year old Pecos River style pictographs are visible on the shelter wall. Scattered across the surface of the shelter are thousands—perhaps millions—of fire-cracked rock (FCR) fragments, the durable remains of earth ovens constructed by LPC foragers over several hundred generations. Beneath the scattered FCR are deeply stratified deposits containing all matter of perishable artifacts preserved by the dry, arid environment. All aspects of the site have drawn archaeologists and visitors to Eagle Cave for nearly a century. But, perhaps more importantly, it speaks to Eagle Cave as a "persistent place" imbued with cultural significance for the Indigenous peoples who called it home.

View of Eagle Cave.

Matting fragment.

Nearly complete atlatl dart point.

Wooden artifact wrapped with cordage.

Butchered bison bones associated with the extensive Younger Dryas component.

I was fortunate to help direct the most recent Eagle Cave excavations between 2014-2017 as part of the Ancient Southwest Texas Project at Texas State University. Over three major field seasons we re-excavated an old archaeological trench through the center of the site focusing on a motto of Low Impact, High Resolution: excavate as little as possible while learning as much as possible. During those three field seasons we sampled over 4 meters of stratified deposits spanning from 500 to over 14,000 years ago.

​The earliest evidence of Indigenous occupations are from the Late Pleistocene. We identified a Clovis-age (ca. 13,000 years ago) assemblage of fractured mammoth, a rock feature, and lithic debitage. Stratigraphically above the Clovis-age assemblage is a substantial Younger Dryas component (ca. 12,500 years ago) consisting of a hearth feature, butchered bison bones, and lithic artifacts that may be related to bison drives at nearby Bonfire Shelter. These two archaeological assemblages indicate Eagle Cave was one of the earliest sites in the LPC occupied by Indigenous peoples. Although maybe not as exciting as bison bones and lithics, we also recovered bighorn sheep dung pellets from the Late Pleistocene strata. This may seem insignificant to archaeologists working in other areas of North America, but this is the oldest--and only--paleontological evidence of bighorn sheep in the LPC.

 As exciting as it was to identify Late Pleistocene archaeology within Eagle Cave, that was not our primary research focus. Instead, we wanted to understand how the diet and subsistence strategies of the Indigenous occupants changed over the duration of the Holocene, and specifically the role earth ovens played in their economic and social lives.  To accomplish this, we first developed a rigorous stratigraphic sampling and documentation strategy that used Structure from Motion (SfM) photogrammetry to document the 3D positioning of artifacts, features, and strata. Through this process we generated hundreds of 3D models recording the stratigraphic context and provenience of all samples. Thousands of sediment and bulk matrix samples were collected by strata for use in future analyses, and these samples are supplemented by "Rock Sort" data to allow us to quantify the change in FCR through time.

​Continuing to evaluate the role of earth ovens for LPC foragers is part of ongoing Eagle Cave research. As a collaborative team, we are combining multiple lines of evidence--FCR, faunal, lithics, macrobotanical, geoarchaeological--to evaluate whether earth oven use fluctuated in response to climate, or whether social changes caused people to invest more energy into earth oven construction. This analysis was at the core of my dissertation research, but there are many research questions left to ask by myself and future students.

Eagle Cave crew member Kelton Meyer annotating a stratigraphic profile printed from a SfM 3D model.

Eagle Cave crew member Amanda Castañeda quantifying FCR using the Rock Sort methodology.

Ongoing zooarchaeological analyses of Eagle Cave materials.

Geoarchaeologist Ken Lawrence using a magnetic susceptibility probe in Eagle Cave.