Skip to main content

Search the Special Collections and Archives Portal

geo000665 18

Image

File
Download geo000665-018.tif (image/tiff; 100.26 MB)

Information

Digital ID

geo000665-018
    Details

    Rights

    This material is made available to facilitate private study, scholarship, or research. It may be protected by copyright, trademark, privacy, publicity rights, or other interests not owned by UNLV. Users are responsible for determining whether permissions are necessary from rights owners for any intended use and for obtaining all required permissions. Acknowledgement of the UNLV University Libraries is requested. For more information, please see the UNLV Special Collections policies on reproduction and use (https://www.library.unlv.edu/speccol/research_and_services/reproductions) or contact us at special.collections@unlv.edu.

    Digital Provenance

    Digitized materials: physical originals can be viewed in Special Collections and Archives reading room

    Publisher

    University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Libraries

    find Has been made at the south end ot Money JuaKe, whichis oji 1^J?Qpfer between California and Nevada. Dr. CharlesRosaire and Dr. Richard Shutler of Idle Nevada State Museum are investigating die find. On June 6, while they were digging a post-hole on their ranch, Bill West and his son discovered what ap­peared to be some Indian remains. They immediately reported their find to Dr. Warren d’Azevedo, anthro­pologist at the University Unfortunately there was no Billy West Jr., beside the site he and his father recently discovered, on the West ranch in Herlong Junction. erf N evada* W h e n h e n o ti fie d th e m u s e u m , Dr* d’Azevedo wasr asked to take charge a t ’un til'th e mu-beads, r a & ints clustered at tie aMomeh ^ die skeleton as if they had been in. a pouch, sev era! scrapers, and a grinding stone which apparently had been placed cm top of the dhest after the body was buried, . Burials are rarely found In tins area. Ux^oitunately, even, more rarely does an archaeologist see them before they hav"el tb*e> e^n d, is> Meaningful Experts can learn a,,lot from tiie position in which objects are found. If disturbed, the remain­ing pile of W e s and artifacts is much less meaningful to * 1 J|1 same m aterial intact. L * kTfoe Wests axe to foe commend­ed for t o very responsible way to y reacted to their find. Dr. d’Azevedo was particularly im­pressed by the very expert work of young Billy W est a teen-ager, whom he says “would make a good archaeologist.” The Wests left t o skeleton in "position. They kept tourists and vandals away, although m ^ y people tried to vis- 4t the site as news ot the find spread. They notified responsible “If everyone who made such discoveries acted as: the Wests have, it would be a great boon to science,"*. Dr, d’Azevedo said. At the site the earth was care­fully sifted as jt was .removed from the ta ia l^ t o location of ;; jj§&, bones was noted, and Dr. dAze-vedo photographed' t o m aterial. Later, D b, Shutler and Hosaare visited the isite and began iden-tifying and interpbting the things they found., . , Prehistoric Dr. Kosaire says the grave ap­pears to be quite old and pre­dates historical time in this area. The projectile points of basalt and obsidian appear to belong to the M artis culture^ other te n s seem related to; J^ngs Beach. culture. Absolute dates have not been as­signed to these cultures, and they may have overlapped in time. Ar­ticles resembling both cultures appearing in this grave is a hint that this, m ay be the case. The Honey Lake find is also in­teresting because it indicates the cultures had a wider geographical distribution than had been estab­lished previously. there was no charcoal in the burial, and ra­dio- carbon dating is not possible. Although bones can foe dated, they Artifacts found in the burial on the West ranch. Eleven obsidian and basalt points (left), three bird bone beads (center) and a number of scrapers (ri^ it); . , ; PROF. MORDY are so easily contaminated that the dating is not considered, re­liable. Each find, of this kind adds a I few more pieces to the puzzle of I the cultures of prehistory. If all such .discoveries were promptly reported to the museum or ..the; university and excavation left to experts,, our knowledge of pre-j history in Nevada would advance much more rapidly than it has so] far.'