Kincaid Shelter

Although we will never know the full details of its construction, the stone pavement at Kincaid Rockshelter provides a rare glimpse into the mindset and way of life of some of North America's earliest peoples. There is no doubt that improving the shelter required considerable effort and signified that the people who built it intended to stay for a while, re-tooling their weapons and staging hunts and other expeditions from that locale. But who were the builders, and what was their life like, there on the banks of the Sabinal?

Based on a small array of distinctive tools and the bones of now-extinct animals deeply buried in the shelter's deposits, University of Texas archeologist Michael B. Collins believes these early Hill Country stone masons were Clovis peoples. If he is correct—and all evidence appears to support this—the Kincaid stone pavement is the oldest known structural feature in North America.

Located some 60 miles west of San Antonio, Texas, Kincaid Shelter is significant as one of a mere handful of Clovis-period occupation sites—a place where people lived and invested their labor, unlike more-temporary open camp sites and animal "kill" sites. As such, Kincaid helps take our knowledge of Clovis beyond the oft-repeated stereotype of "nomadic big-game hunters following the herds" to a picture of ancient peoples who selected a place to stay for an extended period, improved their accommodations, and explored the full bounty of the area's resources.

Beyond Clovis, Kincaid Shelter also holds a long record of later prehistoric peoples. Countless generations of travelers and campers left behind tantalizing reminders of their stay along the Sabinal River—Folsom hunters on the trail of a wounded bison, a succession of Archaic period peoples, and Late Prehistoric pottery makers and hunters wielding bows and arrows. In more recent times, a traveler wearing a Confederate uniform jacket lost a button in front of the shelter, perhaps en route to battle in New Mexico. Over the millennia, deep layers of sediment and human debris filled the shelter and formed a thick terrace deposit outside.

Twentieth-century visitors, however, left a very different imprint in Kincaid shelter—gaping holes and mounds of shoveled-out backdirt. Searching for legendary riches made famous by Texas writers such as J. Frank Dobie, treasure hunters mined the deeply layered deposits of Kincaid Shelter and, in the process, nearly destroyed its rich archeological potential. When a young college student brought the site to the attention of researchers, the fate of Kincaid Shelter was changed, however, and its systematic exploration was begun.

Archeological investigations at Kincaid Shelter were conducted in late 1948 under the direction of Elias H. Sellards and Glen Evans from the Texas Memorial Museum in Austin. One of the missions of the Austin museum, like others across the country at the time, was to find and collect artifacts of "early man" to fill displays and exhibits. Many such collecting operations were done haphazardly, with an eye more for the objects themselves than for understanding their context.

Fortunately, Evans and Sellards took a more scientific approach that was to be particularly critical in verifying the age of the deepest cultural layers. As geologists, Evans and Sellards were keenly aware of the importance of depositional processes and stratigraphy. After clearing and sifting the backdirt, they excavated a deep trench from the front to the back of the shelter in order to gauge the depth and character of the shelter fill. This critical process, unusual by archeological standards of the time, provided a vertical "window" to view the complex layers of shelter deposits and guided further excavations.

Five years later, University of Texas anthropology professor Thomas Nolan Campbell led a field school to investigate the deep terrace deposits directly in front of the shelter. Although it later became evident that the deepest layers of the terrace formed after the critical Late Pleistocene "early man" levels inside the shelter, the terrace investigation provided additional information on the Archaic and more-recent cultures.

In the following sections, readers can learn more about Kincaid Shelter, from its serendipitous "discovery," to systematic excavations by geologists and archeologists, to trials and errors with trailblazing scientific techniques, and finally, to the re-analysis of a few stone tools that solved a decades-long mystery. In the process, readers will see glimpses of the ancient—and more recent—peoples who visited and investigated the shelter along the Sabinal.

In the first section, we explore the site in its Natural Setting in the scenic Sabinal River valley. In Discovery and Investigations, we learn of the events that led to the site's discovery by Charles E. (Gene) Mear, whose career path in geology was charted at Kincaid, and track the investigations at the site by the TMM and UT-Austin.

Reading the Layers interprets the shelter's complex natural stratigraphy, discusses how the deposits accumulated, and looks at the cultural materials discovered in the various zones. Examples of the hundreds of artifacts recovered at Kincaid are presented in Fragments of the Past. A special gallery, Mysterious Stones, highlights prehistoric artistry at Kincaid: an array of pebbles, some engraved with a variety of enigmatic patterns, others used to make red pigment. All artifacts shown in the exhibits are curated at the Texas Archeological Research Laboratory at UT-Austin.

In Kincaid Revisited: Clovis and Beyond, the story of archeologist Michael B. Collin's serendipitous involvement with the site unfolds, and the Paleoindian evidence is examined further. We also look at Kincaid's significance within the North American archeological framework.

Learning about Kincaid is a special section now under development for teachers and students. The first activity, Kincaid Creatures, challenges students to identify the various animals—both extinct and modern— represented at the site and to understand the concept of stratigraphy. Watch for more activities and lessons to be added.

The Credits & Sources section provides brief biographical sketches of the Kincaid researchers and references and links for learning more about various topics in the Kincaid exhibits.