Archaeologists discover site dating back to Ice Age in Kisatchie Forest

VERNON PARISH – It's been hundreds or even thousands of years since humans last touched some of these artifacts excavated from this archaeological site in Kisatchie National Forest.

Dating back to the end of the last Ice Age around 10-12,000 years ago, archaeologists with the Kisatchie National Forest and the Public Archaeology Laboratory at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette have determined that this is one of the oldest and largest prehistoric archaeological sites in Western Louisiana.

They have found material while digging about 7-8 feet down at the site that indicates that, said Matt Helmer, Heritage Program Manager with Kisatchie National Forest. Through luminescence dating, they can date the last time those sediments were exposed to sunlight, and that will give them a good idea of how long the human occupation was in this area.

The 100-acre site is much older than Poverty Point World Heritage Site in Northeastern Louisiana which dates back to around 1500 B.C., said Helmer. And it's important because it point to evidence of a potentially larger, permanent occupations of Native Americans in Western Louisiana.

"This could rewrite the history books on what we know about the Native Americans in this area," Lisa Lewis, Forest Supervisor of Kisatchie National Forest.

Stone tools and pieces of pottery indicate that Native Americans continuously occupied this area for thousands of years prior to European contact.

Kisatchie National Forest partnered with ULL to do a field school at the site. They are training about 10-15 students and a large staff from the school, ULL and LSU working there.

Gray Tarry, a ULL graduate and a hired tech for the Field School, was sifting dirt with a large screen looking for artifacts.

"It's super exciting to see what you’re able to find, especially if you find something you're not expecting. You're touching things that have never been touched in hundreds of years and there's a glory of seeing evidence of past humans and their technologies, their tools. It makes you feel very connected to people that were here," said Tarry.

Artifacts are fantastic to find, said Mark Rees, Director of the Louisiana Public Archaeology Laboratory and Professor of anthropological archaeology at ULL.

"I mean, that's the thrill. That's why we do it to a large extent," said Rees. "But if that's all it was, then it's a dead end. What we want is the artifacts in context, artifacts in their precise location, so that we can tell associations with other artifacts and ideally with what we call cultural features."

"The big find over here are these round stains in the soil," said Erlend Johnson, Project Director and ULL Adjunct Instructor. Those stains are caused by rotted wood.

"When we're talking about Native American populations here, unlike Mexico or South America, they were building buildings out of wood. Think about Louisiana. How long is a piece of wood going to last? It's not going to last thousands of years. What we find, as archaeologists though, are stains in the soil, often where the wood rotted, and sometimes different colored soils fall in," he said.

Standing inside an excavation site of what could have been an ancient structure, Helmer points to one of a series of circular features.

"That's where a piece of wood, a post would have been. You can see how it's very symmetrical. It's not like what you would see from a natural tree that would have been decayed in place," he said. "And it's associated with, you can see some of this gray that's a lot more compact, you can see some charcoal flecking there. We believe that's an ancient floor that's associated with these, and we were trying to make out. It's just not very well preserved."

"There's also a historic pit. You can kind of see that in the wall as well," said Johnson. "We found some pottery that comes from a couple hundred years ago, maybe. It's called whiteware."

Further down, they found square nails that dated from the 19th and 20th centuries, said Helmer.

He points to a line in the soil of the pit called an intrusion. It visibly changes from yellow to an ashy color. Helmer said they are always looking for different textures and colors of the soil.

This pit could have been an outhouse or refuse area, said Helmer. The compact soil around it is yellow while the looser soil in the pit is ashy with tree roots growing through it. The bottom of the pit was burned.

One of the core research questions was to find out if the site was used as a short term hunting camp or if it was a permanent settlement, said Helmer.

They still have to go through all the material collected and date it but there is evidence that many different groups of people came through this place over time, he said. It may have been used as a hunting camp but towards the later years of occupation or it could have been a permanent hamlet or village site which is pretty significant.

"We're pretty far from the major river valley systems like the Mississippi River Valley and the Red River Valley," he said. That's where most Native American villages tend to be located.

They were really excited when they found the post molds because they belonged to a sizable structure that wouldn't have been built if it was just going to be used for a few days, he said.

Rees showed examples of the kinds of artifacts found such as Williams Point and San Patrice Point arrowheads along with a petrified wood arrowhead.

"In fact, quite a number of San Patrice Points like this one have been found in the forest and also at Fort Polk. This variety is actually a pretty old variety of San Patrice from about 12,500 years ago. It looks kind of stubby. It's probably been sharpened, cut down a bit, used perhaps as a knife - halved it as a knife," said Rees.

Helmer said a Clovis Point arrowhead, which is one of the oldest stone tool points in all of the Americas, was found during the phase I survey when the site was originally recorded.

"The Clovis Culture was the first people of the Americas. Now, we know that it actually dates farther than that but for Louisiana, that's as old as we have," he said.

There are no bones to be found on this site. Louisiana soil is very acidic so typically bone does not preserve very well, said Helmer. In addition, the humidity and moisture there is no preservation of anything beyond ceramics, stone tools and carbonized materials.

What they will do is take soil samples that they will put in water and any ancient seeds will float to the surface.

"We can either look at those under a microscope or do specialized analysis to look at plants that will give us an idea of the paleo environment as well as the types of plants that people might have been eating here, any plants that might have been cultivated, things like that," said Helmer.

Lewis said they have known about the site for awhile but didn't know the extent of it because it had not been fully excavated.

Johnson said the site was originally documented in 2003 when they did small excavations to figure out where the sites were and to see if they met criteria for the National Register of Historic Places.

In 2020, the area was heavily impacted by Hurricane Laura so they were able to get funding that allowed them to do a full scale excavation with professional archaeologists, said Lewis.

"This was one of the largest salvage excavations that we did just because of the extent of the storm damage here," said Helmer.

They also have a big problem with illegal excavations or "looting," said Helmer.

It's a federal felony to excavate on federal land, he said. The U.S. Forest Servide has a separate law enforcement branch that enforces the Archaeological Resources Protection Act.

"You can see all around here there are all these holes. These were all dug through illegal excavations here in the forest. In fact, we caught someone and convicted them of looting here on this site," he said.

Between the storm damage and illegal excavations, they were worried the site was going to be destroyed.

He also pointed out that looting also destroys the heritage of the Native Americans.

Helmer said the excavations will wrap up in the next couple of weeks. For the next six months to a year, they’ll be working on laboratory, analysis and report writing.

"After that we're going to look into getting this site listed on the National Register of Historic Places," he said.

They also plan to develop a site protection plan and monitoring of the site. They also plan to get information out about what they have found so that the public can know what they are doing why they have to preserve what they have.