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I can tell you from personal job-related experience that this sort of thing happens ALL the time in the US. You wouldn’t believe the horror stories I could tell you...but, I won’t. Especially not on here...too many spies. Walmart is one of the biggest ones guilty of it though...They bulldoze anything. Stop shopping there, if you want to make a difference. I could list page after page of unethical corporations, but bad things would happen from it... Ironically, the petroleum companies now days do more for preserving archaeological sites than ANY other groups, including the Federal Government... you all have it so backwards... no offense meant.

What?! Modern plague of Native Americans? I beg to differ, and take offense to that... So would many, many modern tribal councils. Archaeologists are the last hope that many tribes have to recording their ancestral heritage before it is destroyed by all of us. WE get one shot at trying to find what is there, before the land gets blown up. And, most sites found are only 25% excavated, as is the Federal guidelines. NO sites get 100% excavated, which is sad in so many instances...Wanna point fingers at who destroys what? Scream about Walmart...they bulldoze whatever is there...prehistoric graves, paleo sites, mound complexes, paleo point manufacturing sites, historic cemetaries, etc...pay their environmental fine for not completing the mandatory survey required by the Federal government, and build a store that makes up for the loss in one week. Wanna put a stop to destruction of our history? Start by not shopping at Wally World anymore...

Anyone who shops there both indirectly supports modern terrorism, and the destruction of American Indian heritage...Now who’s at blame?

Yes, the copper comes from Michigan, but can be found along prehistoric trade routes that extend all the way to Charleston, SC, and down to beyond Valdosta, GA during this time frame. Also, ceramics from the Savannah River area can be found up near Michigan. The same exact people lived in at least two sites on the far opposite ends of that trade route, with more found every year....They got around...

The link at the top of the page goes to a site that tries to download a trojan virus.

I have seen 7,000 yr old acts of love from one person to another expressed through how they were prepared for burial: hair made, hands placed under their head, buried with their dogs curled up at their feet, in a hole dug @2 meters down through red clay by hand big enough for all of them to stretch out. That also implies dogs regularly slept at the foot of the bed, even 7,000 years ago, and were adored members of the family. There was also a burial of a male/female couple with their arms placed around each other by their loved ones after death. That site was in North America, but it can't be discussed in further detail until the site report comes out.

I know several other archaeologists working in these regions in SA right now that that are working on sites even bigger than this site. Wait until you see the things that they’ve found that haven’t been published yet. You won’t believe what’s coming out in the next few years...trust me...

I have roamed through many hundreds of miles of the Central Texas creekbottoms, and let me tell you, I personally have seen sites there that are AT LEAST 15 meters deep, with stratified layers all the way to bedrock. One site I know of will rewrite history, just like this one. It’s not real far from this site, but back in the cave it is in, the ceiling is collapsed, and natives ran herds of bison off into the cave in a pile for butchering. (I believe there are only 2 other sites in all of the Western Hemisphere like that. VITALLY IMPORTANT TO BE PROPERLY DOCUMENTED! That site hasn’t been looted ever, AND other than me and a few old guys in nursing homes, no one has any idea about it.) I have also seen on many occasions very large primary flakes a meter below the Caliche layer at several sites around Central Texas, totally different material and craftsmanship than higher strats, and the artifacts above those strats were Late Paleo.

What people don’t get is that in Central Texas there are sites like this everywhere...AND landowners can shoot looters if their property is properly marked. There is one landowner in Coryell Co. that has signs on his fence every 30ft or so that say, ‘Trespassers will be shot, Survivors will be Prosecuted!’. That man has killed three looters so far, and got off chargers because his land is properly marked acording to state law... Used to live right down the road for years...

Wow. It’s depressing to read only smart-ass comments... Anyone have anything intelligent to say, at all?

You people make me want to drink...heavily.

No, I’m NOT a Liberal. NO, I’m Not a Democrat..

Wanna kill a mammoth? Use a Mark V.460 Weatherby...
Or, start killing members of ‘ALF’, ‘ELF’, and ‘Earth First!’

That’s where millions of dollars for these projects is coming from. They want to irradicate man and replace him in these green zones and conservation corridors with these mammoths. Oh, and sabertoothed cats. They already have a plan to start a ‘Pleistocene Park’ in the middle of the US for these animals.

But..you probably already knew this info, so I’m just going to go. Have fun...

Oh, hey SunkenCiv, long time no see.. Hope you’re doing well. Been busy digging in the dirt, but I’ll stop in more...

Have a Great day!

I researched all of this when studying genetics and the revival of ectinct species from the pleistocene era. It has also applied to the mapping of specific traits in the human genome that in some instances tell us EXACTLY which Village a person originated from in a foreign country. That has obviously worked up to the age of the Swiss frozen mummy being traced back to an actual modern day relative in that village. Why don’t they use a proven technic? All they need to to is do a DNA mapping tree of all sub species of baboons in the world and cross reference it to the DNA samples from the mummies. Not easy, but easy enough to not be a waste of time like they’re doing. Stories like this irritate me. Grrr...Wish I had MY doctorate degree, I’d show ‘em a thing or two...

Power to the People. That’s the way it should be. I was moved by the injustices I saw, and they weren’t by us.

P.S. - Certainly you understand that views I may express on here are my own opinions, and not necessarily the opinions of those that are farther up the food chain? Just thought I needed to state that before I was quoted for some reason.

Have a Blessed day...You are a proud people.

Personally, I have my own own opinion that they have arrived in the past in the Americas from multiple different origins. I believe that most all theories are the truth, not just one. I firmly believe that the original Celtic tribes of Northern Europe aren't given enough credit for their explorations of the world, either from the Northern Atlantic regions, or from the Far East to South America. The world of historians in the Americas has a huge tendency to be ethnocentric about who got here first, as if there is some form of competition in a race to get here. I believe there is the possibility that all of them may be true at once. Who EXACTLY are the pre-Clovis? We'll know soon. FOR SURE! The directions of differing fields of science will cross each other and bring about revelations in the next few years, I can feel it. The answers aren't far off. It wouldn't surprise me if the original Celtic tribes didn't originally come from advanced civilizations existing on the continental shelves of the world and displaced by the rising oceans after the melting of the glaciers, but at the current time that sort of thinking would be considered scifi. It also wouldn't surprise me if what we end up finding out about who we think they were now and where they came from in the distant past is completely rewritten. What I mean is this, If they were originally an advanced civilization that existed within the English Channel, North Sea region, and were obliterated during the massive floods that occurred after the last ice age, they would be in turn relocated to higher ground, and nowadays we might speculate that they actually originated from that higher ground and our ideas of who they REALLY are would only be based upon our limited knowledge of what we currently know, AND, we would think that their DNA markers are original, when in fact they may just be evolved from an even EARLIER people of which we have no reference material to base conclusions about DNA lineages on. Understand what I mean? (sorry for the run-on sentence..lol.) If this turns out to be the case, or something similar, then this thought-thread opens Pandora's box, in a sense. In other words, are there other situations like this that occurred around the world that the native peoples of the continental shelf didn't survive the rising ocean levels, except in small groups? I suspect that the pre-Clovis cultures could very well be much more diverse than the Clovis, but due to the chaotic world that they lived in they had a very hard time maintaining any existence. With the undersea explorations going on nowadays in search of evidence of these ancient peoples, we should start to piece things together soon. Now, these are just thoughts that I have, and I don't expect that I'm entirely correct about them, but I wouldn't be surprised to find out that this ends up being the case. The pre-Clovis artifacts I have personally seen have shown me that these people are totally different than the Clovis. I mean, not even distant cousins. There's a HUGE piece of our history missing about those times and I believe the two civilizations aren't hardly related at all. Bear in mind please, these thoughts of mine are only my personal opinions, and do not reflect the mainstream beliefs of most of my peers in the field, so far. I believe most of the missing answers are laying out there somewhere on one of the continental shelves. I personally think there's a few answers in caves located on the tops of mountain ranges around the world, too. Especially in those regions that were mostly covered by glaciers during the ice ages. It just seems to make sense to me. We'll see. Both are frontiers, in a sense, in the realm of archeology. And both we know almost nothing about yet. I think that the field of archeology is still in its infancy, so to speak. Things they are a-changin’, though.

Where are you from? I lived right down the road until 2 years ago myself. I lived in and around Waco my whole life. I know several archaeologists in that region and they do use volunteers, although most of the time they are archeology students from various Universities. If you wanted to get a chance to dig there, and are one of the local Bell/Coryell county arrowhead hunters (of which I know several), your best bet is to join the Texas Archaeological Society and go to their field-school for a week. That field-school (or next summer any other university sponsored field-schools) should be going on in the next few weeks and it is a prerequisite to being on any official digs with any groups that do this sort of thing. Go to a field-school, write a good resume, join yahoogroups/shovelbums or facebook/shovelbums, get the daily announcements for job postings, submit your resume every day to whichever job suits you, and you too can be paid to do what I do. Without one field-school under your belt, you don't have a chance. Seriously, though, the TAS field-school is next week or so. Disregard anything, or anyone that says it's too late to go, call the TAS secretary in charge of it personally. They fit me in the first time that way. (Had to sleep in the front seat of my truck for a week though,lol). Don't forget to take a long extension cord, a 6way outlet, a TV, video games, beer for conversational starters, and something positive to add to the festivities. Don't worry about archaeologists being out of touch with normal people, most of them got their start by wanting to get involved in some way, just like you. Personally, I spent 15 years being a contractor in Central Texas(mainly framing custom homes)Since a few years ago when I went through all of that, life's been a dream. I spent 4 months in Puerto Rico, One month walking shorelines in north Alabama collecting transitional-paleo points, one month walking shorelines in southern TN collecting pottery and points, and now I'm recording new sites in northern TN in overhangs and creek bottoms. That is just in the last 6 months. Oh yeah, hotel, mileage, and food is covered, AND someone actually pays me to do this for a living. BTW, I just got my first permanent position about a week ago with free medical/dental benefits..wooohoooo! If you are a local looter (kinda hate that stigma myself), it's not in your best interest to inform anyone of that once you get involved in it as sometimes there are those that consider picking up a piece of ceramic white-ware from your grandmothers backyard akin to raping and murdering children. Most aren't like that, but there are some...trust me. If I can be of any further help, just let me know.

Yeah, ‘shovelbums’. Job postings are located both on yahoogroups/shovelbums and on facebook/shovelbums, although the latter I have not subscribed to. I found my first job doing this through yahoogroups. Since I got my foot in the door, I've worked for several companies via that daily posting. I have not seen the article you are referring to, but I heard it bashed the practice of living out of a hotel and laptop as you're ‘slutted’ around to different companies. It's not that bad. It's just mainly your first step in ‘paying your dues’ in the field. Some do it forever, some, like me, get picked up by a major firm eventually. I was hired as a permanent employee just in the last few weeks by another firm than the one in PR and we'll have to see if that's a good thing or not. But, everyone has to start somewhere. If someone is ONLY an archaeologist, with no other skills to offer, but a masters or PhD, sometimes they get stuck in the shovelbum life. I've worked as an archaeological tech side by side with PhDs, and we were both making $14/hr. I'm not a PhD, but I bring alot more to the table than most of the people in this field. Many kids that get into this after spending years in school don't have a clue as to how to sniff out a location for a site. That kind of thing just comes built into your DNA from birth. I also have a very broad level of experience in other things that, until now, I didn't understand why God had sent me down those weird paths in life. Now, it all makes sense. Ironically, I'm not the only one in this field that that has happened to. Now, don't get me wrong, I have seen posts on shovelbums that would have left me screwed several hundred miles from home if I had not thought it out first, but most companies just won't let that happen. The worst part of traveling for work is that I'm married with kids and almost the whole time I'm gone I'm daydreaming of playing with my wife and kids. But, on the flip-side of that, when I'm home I'm dreaming about archeology and the thrill of discovery. It's a stressful life, having two mirror images of emotion and passion all the time. Thank God my wife loves me so much. I'd have to say that probably 90% of this field is ‘rent-a-diggers’, but we all have alot of fun on the road. Some guys have their XBOX360’s and tote around 46” flat-screen TV's. Others fish all weekend, and then have a fish-fry in midweek for the entire crew(donations accepted). Some are just complainers who sit in their room and don't socialize with anyone. But, really, how can you beat the chance to be on a boat surveying shorelines and finding EVERY single artifact there is there (legally), then get shipped off to PR for 4 months, then get to record for the first time overhangs and caves with sites in them in the canyons of North Central TN, all in the space of 6 months. I love my job, I love my job, I love my job!!! lol.

As for what you said about the pre-Clovis era peopling of the Americas, I personally completely agree. Check out these three links. I really think the second is compelling evidence for something that the world cannot begin to digest as being a recurring event.
http://www.subversiveelement.com/BiminiRoad.html
http://www.creationscience.com/onlinebook/FrozenMammoths6.html
http://www.oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/
I've written many papers over the years on the coming ice age, and have occasionally been accused of being a hack that needs shock-treatment, but if you read all the way through the second ebook link you may end up on the same belief path as me. Or, you may laugh and shake your head...lol.

Many groups are currently mapping the continental shelf in search of civilizations that once existed. One is off the southern edge of Texas on the shelf extending from Galveston Bay. Some others are off the coast of Florida, off the north side of Cuba, in the English Channel, the North Sea, the Black Sea, and off the southern coast of Puerto Rico. People got around back then, and I firmly believe that that will be proven in the next few years to those that are overly conservative in their beliefs about that. Not any archaeologists that I've spoken to actually still believe that native peoples only arrived here via the land bridge during the Clovis era. There's just too much stuff that we see in the field that discounts that theory. It's like someone still believing that photos really steal your soul...lol. I've personally dug down beneath the paleo layer (in TX), beneath the caliche layer(usually another 2 feet), and found LARGE flakes that came off of tools that had to have been massive in size, but never seen the tools that they actually came off of. The tools themselves aren't there, but the materials left behind from their manufacture are. The type of flaking is COMPLETELY different from anything above them in the strata, so much so that a 5 year old kid would see the difference. But, they ARE flakes, and you would have to be a moron not to admit that. I've also seen layers of almost permanent occupation (in TX) that are sometimes as deep as 40 feet along large rivers in Central Texas. I've got one of those sites in my back pocket, just in case I eventually trust a local archaeologist to excavate it without taking advantage of the landowner, which I know. That particular site is well hidden, the evidence of it is only just beginning to show, it's buried in such a way as to be a deathtrap to any looters, and it's guarded by river-folk with no bones about using trespassers as trot-line bait for catfish.

The evidence is overwhelming for these pre-Clovis peoples and I'm happy to be one of those trying to prove it to the rest of the nay-sayers. ‘The Truth is Out There’, as they say.

Notice: The images in this post don't truly give these stones the justice they deserve, as some of the stones have shaving marks left behind from 800 years ago and small scratches made after the more noticeable petroglyphs were created. These stones were worked and flipped upside down several times over the ages by the native tribes of that area.

Frogman petroglyph (notice the use of the rock sticking out for his penis...lol. kinda cool..

Pillar stones in north wall of ball court. They tend to be around 4 to 5 feet tall. Pillar stones haven't been seen in over 60 years, but were mentioned initially by early archaeologists to the region.

Who REALLY created the smiley face image? Wasn't the Americans, and I have proof..

Ehhh... who knows what this is. Nice though. Notice the other faces down the face of the pillar stone?

Notice: at the level of the head and up, the decapitated head is embossed. Below that, the lines are etched..Unusual Further note: she is giving birth, as there is an upside down image between her legs of another style of petroglyph showing a face. Thank you csvset, you've changed my life for the better...:)

lol... yeah, when I get upset about something I see I do get a lil passionate at times. It tends to come across as if I'm debating a point. I've been bottled up for four months now not being able to discuss anything to anyone except my wife.

The average archaeologists down there are fantastic and care about the history of PR. The ‘politician’ archaeologists that make all the calls are pissy, territorial, self-absorbed, maniacal, 14 year old boys in their behavior. The head arch. for one of the PR governmental agencies was picking up pottery and sticking it in his pocket, standing right next to the PR governor while several news crews were interviewing them about the site. This happened right before I got there, but it was quite the buzz when I arrived. Evidently, the only ones that noticed and then mentioned that he couldn't do that was the people that I worked with. That's not just a small mistake. That kind of blatant action comes from years, if not decades, of doing that. What bumfuzzled me most was the press, though. The PR governmental entities (which there were around three that had to sign off on any kind of plan before we were allowed to do anything) told our company that we had a select time to finish the project, so dig with whatever, as fast as we could, including using heavy equipment, to determine if there was anything there. So, we did as we were told, but troweled and brushed any areas with extreme care that were cultural. The press blew the whole thing way out of proportion for their own agenda, and ran with the opportunity to turn the public against Americans. Anyone with true experience with a bobcat or backhoe knows the different densities of earth that you run across, and so you know when not to cut into a cultural layer. You can FEEL the difference, trust me. This site was full of concrete slabs from houses, cars and trucks shoved off into the woods over the last 100 years, jungle that you couldn't crawl through, giant trees, random large metal objects that 4 grown men couldn't lift, 1000’s of bottles and cans, refrigerators, washers and dryers, and boulders deposited from large landslides or floods, and various other unnamed modern trash. There was no way to look for anything at all without using some form of heavy equipment. We left it looking like a golf course. We put huge piles of sandy soil on top of the most important areas, such as the one in the photo above, in order to protect those areas from future looting by making it incredibly dangerous for someone to just dig a little hole to steal something. We even spent a week reseeding the entire site with native grasses of that elevation to both fight erosion, and blend the site properly into its surroundings. What we did to cover it was so thought out, that we actually were able to coin the process a phase IV, which is the first one in archaeological history. We even wrapped the entire site (excavations, back dirt piles, and anything else across that 9 acres) with a material called geotex to ensure that the strata would never move, and to mark the exact location of the ground level where we stopped. The excavations have several layers of it in order to keep the ground from shifting. Geotex allows water to pass through it, but stabilizes it from sinking or eroding. The site is wrapped like a Christmas present now, and in effect, it is that. There's so much dirt on top of it now, it'll take heavy equipment just to remove it all, if in fact it is EVER dug back up. Personally, I doubt it'll ever see the light of day again, and this may well be the last time you ever hear about it.

The artifacts are on loan for study in Georgia(which took multiple agencies to clear), from what I understand. But, anyone else, from any other country doesn’t have to deal with the permits that are required. I do agree that PR needs to have the artifacts and not the US, but PR just needs the facilities to handle that instead of the dumpsters that they eventually put their history in. If tourism isn’t involved, most archeologists there couldn’t care less what happens to them there. It’s real sad. Pisses me off everything I learned there. European Universities pillage PR and no one seems to care, even though it’s common knowledge. Yet, mention someone from America borrowing artifacts, and everyone there gets possessive about the fact it belongs to the people of PR. Huge double standards regarding the US. Look up the Universities in Holland(i think). They publically sell PR artifacts on the web. They make no bones about where they came from either, or, how they got them. It just infuriates me. BTW - You DO understand that I fully agree with you, right?

WE won’t do that. Other foreigner have, and always will, as long as y’all keep letting them. And, from everything I saw, foreigners aren’t necessarily the problem. Puerto Ricans will get the artifacts back from America, but who knows where they will be in 30 years after they come home. Ever wondered why no burials have ever been found in the other sites around the island, or, why no postmold patterns have ever been found at any other sites except the one we were at? The best hope Jacana has is for it to be turned into a national park like Tibes. The surveyors (puerto rican) at Jacana slipped up and told us they are going to cut down every tree at the site so that the trees don’t stick out of the water when the lake is built. The Corp doesn’t just do whatever it wants to in spite of what people may believe. DNR and other governmental agencies on the island do whatever they want. Don’t point fingers at the Americans or you’re just falling into the propaganda the press in PR tries to make you believe. TRUST ME when I say that the archeologists from America have Puerto Ricans best interests at heart. Puerto Ricans and Europeans don’t have PR in mind and never will, in my opinion. I love Puerto Rico, it’s archeology, it’s people, and it’s food. I hate the tourism, the politics, and the chaos that is created there by corruption.

No, that’s a very bad idea.