A LAGUNA ATASCOSA BURIAL SITE YIELDED SOME SUPRISES

(Nowadays, when we think of the southern Texas shoreline, we think of space ships and rocket launches. But the few archeological sites found along the southern Gulf Coast indicate that bands of human beings trod these shores for hundreds – if not thousands – of years, before the first Spanish caravels plied the waters off the mouth of the Rio Grande. A Spanish cédula of 1519 from a voyage by Alonso Alvarez de Pineda relates that the voyagers sailed six leagues up a "very large and fluent river," the banks of which were populated with forty native villages, and there spent forty days cleaning and repairing the ships. This river has been variously taken for the Rio Grande or perhaps even the Mississippi.  What we do know, however, is that our knowledge of the region's first inhabitants is very limited and huge gaps exist in the area's prehistory.)

By Juan Montoya

No one knows who they were, where they were going, or how they died, but a 1976 excavation of a secondary burial site of the remains of three distinct individuals found at the Laguna Atascosa federal reserve yielded some unique discoveries.

The Texas Historical Commission was alerted that summer that  a grader operator doing work on a road in the federal reserve had uncovered human remains and stopped worked on the road. Unfortunately, the top layer of a shallow grave and some of the remains interred there were destroyed before the operator saw the bones and told refuge personnel of his find.

Refuge personnel contacted the THC and they in turn hired archaeologist Robert J. Mallouf with the assistance of Texas Southmost College Anthropologist Dr. Anthony Zavaleta to study the site.

Because of the damage done to the site, the findings were sketchy. But several conclusions were reached by the researchers aided by a team of assistants and laboratory findings.

Their work was published in the Office of the State Archaeologist Special Report 25 in 1979 and titled "The Unland Site: A Prehistoric Group Burial From Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge Cameron County, Texas.

The researches found that the remains belonged to three males – one estimated to have been from 17-21 years of age – and two others in their mid-40s or 50s. All three were buried in a small hole atop a small ridge facing Los Cuates resaca, a favorite  aborigine burial site.

The grave did not contain the entire skeletons of the three males, and researchers were unable to determine the cause of death. They theorized that since many parts were missing, they were buried by their band or some other group who came upon them after they had died.

But it was what was found buried with them in the shallow grave that made the findings unique among those that have been found in Cameron County. At least five projectile points (arrowheads) were found with the remains, including a Fresno type which had never been found in Cameron County burial sites. The other four were identified as the more common Matamoros type projectile and Cameron projectile points.

The use of the projectiles made of chert – from some deposits near Central Texas – is thought to have been dated in a wide range between A.D. 800 to 1800. At the time, no carbon dating was done at the Unland site to determine their exact age and has not been done up to now.

In at least one excavation prior to the Unland site, intrusive Huastecan pottery had been found in one site, although none was found here. In others further north up the shoreline, pieces of jade jewelry have been uncovered, indicating a commercial relationship between the shore tribes and Central America.

Instead, the researchers think that the Laguna Atascosa burial was performed with minimal social or cultural rites or preparation due to the scarcity of cultural artifacts. In other words, they think that the band came upon the disarticulated remains and that predators had carried off some of the limbs and other body part, including some of the cranial bone.

They did find a hairpin or weaving implement made out of a sliver of human bone that could have been a decorative ornament. And they also found turtle shells – one with a hole bored as if to wear as an ornament, the first time turtle shells have been found in local digs. The remains of marine shells in the grave was thought to have been used to dig the shallow grave by the group who buried them.

Who were they? What cultural  or social rites did they follow? And how long ago did they precede the European presence in the Rio Grande delta?

The paucity of answers to these questions illustrates the gap in knowledge of the original dwellers of the Rio Grande delta. These hunters/gatherers obviously roamed the area that is now Cameron County long before Europeans set foot on this land. We can only hope that further research will shed light on the people who were here before us.