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30—Nevada State Journal Sunday, June 23,1963 SCIENCE IN NEVADA Indian At Honey Lake Important Find By PROF. WENDELL A. MORDY Director, Desert Research Institute University of Nevada A new and possibly very significant archaeological find has been made at the south end of Honey Lake, which is on the border between California and Nevada. Dr. Charles Rosaire and Dr. Richard Shutler of the Nevada State Museum are investigating the find. On June 6, while they werd digging a post-hole bn their ranch, Bill W est and his son discovered what ap­peared to be some Indian remains. They immediately reported their find to Dr. W arren cTAzevedo, anthro­pologist at the University Unfortunately there was no of Nevada. W hen he noti­fied the m u s e u m , Dr. d’Azevedp was asked to take charge at the site until the mu­seum staff eoiild take over. The Wests had found a burial which contained some bird-hone beads, :H joints clustered at the abdomen of the skeleton as if they had been in a pouch, sev­eral scrapers, and a grinding stone which apparently had been placed on top of the chest after the body was buried. Burials are rarely found in this area. Unfortunately, even more rarely does an archaeologist see them before they have been dis­turbed'. Meaningful Experts can learn a lot from the position in which objects are found. E disturbed, the remain ing pile of bones and artifacts is much less meaningful than the same material intact. The Wests are to be commend­ed for the very responsible way they reacted to thMr find. Dr. d’Azevedo was particularly im­pressed by the very expert work of young Billy West, a teen-ager, whom he says “ would make a good archaeologist.” The Wests left the skeleton in position. They kept tourists and vandals away, although many people tried to vis­it the site as news of the find spread. They notified responsible experts at once. “ If everyone who made such discoveries acted as the Wests have, it would be a great boon to science,” Dr. d’Azevedb said. At the site the earth was care* fully sifted as it was removed from the burial,, the -location of the artifacts in relation to the bones was noted,- and Dr. dAze-vedo photographed the material. Later, Drs. Shutler and ftosaire visited the site and began iden­tifying and interpreting the things they found. Pre-historio Dr. Itosatre 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 Martis culture; other items seem related to -Kings 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 may 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, charcoal in the burial, and ra­dio- carbon dating is not possible. Although bones can be dated, they PROF. MQRDY 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 I such discoveries were prom ptly! reported to the museum or the I university and excavation left to I experts, our knowledge of pre-| history in Nevada would advance! much more rapidly than it has so| far. Billy West Jr., beside the site he and his father recently discovered, on the West ranch in Herlong Junction. 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 (right);