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| Even at a distance, a trained eye can spot the tell-tale signs of intense human occupation. The gray fan-like talus deposits below this rockshelter may look like the result of mining, but this is actually cooking debris—literally tens of tons of fire-fractured limestone rocks mixed with charcoal and ash. These "burned" rocks are spent cooking stones rejected after they broke into pieces too small to be useful. They are the result of the use of this shelter for earth oven cooking on countless occasions. For scale, the opening of this shelter is about 10-12 feet high and perhaps 50 feet wide. Photo by Phil Dering. |