DUANE
Duane's take
Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say about the Gatlin Site, right here in Kerr County. Now, most big discoveries don't announce themselves. They wait.
And this one waited a long time — thousands of years, in fact — right on the banks of the Guadalupe River, just sitting there patient as the limestone bluffs above it, until 2004 rolled around and the construction of the new Spur 98 bridge forced somebody to actually look. That bridge project was the catalyst for an archaeological investigation, and what they found near this location was no ordinary scatter of old stones. What they found was an unusually large and diverse assemblage of chipped stone projectile points and other stone tools.
Some of those tools are older than seven thousand five hundred years. Let that settle in for a second. Some of these artifacts — found right here, in Kerrville, Texas — are older than the earliest Egyptian dynasty artifacts.
Older than the pyramids. Older than pharaohs. The Hill Country was already old news by the time ancient Egypt got started.
Radiocarbon dates tell us that Native Americans returned to this spot intermittently between seven thousand five hundred and twelve hundred and fifty years ago. This wasn't a one-time camp. People kept coming back.
Generation after generation, century after century, they found something worth returning to here on the Guadalupe. And who were they? Likely small groups of hunters and gatherers, the marker tells us, folks who moved frequently and knew how to read the land the way you and I read a road map.
They harvested fruits, nuts, cactus pads, and roots of native plants. They hunted bison, deer, and rabbit. And they used the local limestone — the same limestone you see cutting through these hills today — to construct hearths and ovens for cooking.
That takes knowledge. Not the kind you look up, but the kind that lives in your hands and gets passed down through the smoke of a fire. Now the world they walked through looked a little different than the one we're drivin' through.
The ancient climate of this region was variable, but overall cooler and wetter than today. The Edwards Plateau back then held savannah, grasslands, some woodlands, and springs and streams flowing from the limestone outcrops were more common than they are now. It was a different Hill Country — lusher, wilder, and full of game.
Through all of that time, through all those shifts in climate and landscape, the Gatlin Site kept absorbing the story. The projectile points changed form through the centuries, and those changes — right there in the stone — add significantly to our understanding of how tool-making evolved across the ages. Each layer a new chapter.
Each artifact a word in a very, very long sentence. The marker puts it plainly: the Gatlin Site contains a record of more than six thousand years of lifeways and adaptations of the native peoples of Texas who camped here. Six thousand years.
All of it hidden under the ground, all of it waiting, until somebody decided to build a bridge. Funny how that works. Sometimes the road leads you right to the story.
What the marker says
The construction of the new Spur 98 bridge across the Guadalupe River in Kerrville in 2004 was the catalyst for an archeological investigation yielding an extensive ancient Native American site near this location. The site yielded an unusually large and diverse assemblage of chipped stone projectile points and other stone tools, some older than 7,500 years, adding significantly to the understanding of how they changed form through time. These cultural artifacts, and many others found at the site, are older than the earliest Egyptian dynasty artifacts. Radiocarbon dates indicate that Native Americans returned to the site intermittently between 7500 to 1250 years ago. These ancient Native Americans were likely small groups of hunters and gatherers who moved frequently and harvested fruits, nuts, cactus pads and roots of native plants, along with hunting game such as bison, deer and rabbit. They used the local limestone to construct hearths and ovens to cook a variety of foods, requiring an intimate understanding of the local environment and its resources. Through the thousands of years the site was visited, the ancient climate was variable but overall, cooler and wetter than today. The ancient landscape of the Edwards Plateau contained savannah, grasslands and some woodlands, and springs and streams flowing from the limestone outcrops were more common then. The Gatlin Site contains a record of more than 6,000 years of lifeways and adaptations of the native peoples of Texas who camped here on the banks of the Guadalupe River. (2013)