from: The Courson Archeological Projects, 1986
One of the best kept
archeological projects in Texas is the Buried City Indian Ruins
which run for a distance of almost five miles along Wolf Creek Valley
in the northeastern Panhandle. The discovery evolved over nine decades
and never made the news as new discoveries often do today. The findings
at the site are unusual for the high plains area and several new
discoveries have been made recently which add to our knowledge of
the Indian culture of the region just prior to historic times.
Kirk Courson, the present owner,
was very cooperative in sending information for an update on the
recent Texas Archeological Society field school findings from their
recent two summers of digging. Work has slowed while the findings
are being researched, interpreted, and documented.
For a good understanding lets
start when the site was first discovered and documented. Dr.
T. L. Eyerly, a professor at Canadian Academy in 1907, was told
of the site and took one of his classes to investigate what was
there.
|
"...because of peculiarities here is evidence
that this small and picturesque plain may be justly considered
one of the strategic centers in American Archeology.
Dr. Warren Moorehead; 1931
|
Dr. Eyerly
later conducted some formal excavations between 1910 and 1912 and
selected the name "Buried City" which, after other titles such as
"Handly Ruins" and Gould Ruins" faded, is still used today. At the
request of Eyerly, Dr. Warren Morehead from the Peabody Foundation
of Phillips Academy in Hanover, Massachusetts became interested.
World War 1 delayed action until field teams were sent to the site
in the summer of 191`7, 1919, and 1920. Fred Sterns of Harvard was
conducting archeological studies along the Arkansas River Valley
in Kansas at that time and visited Buried City as part of that study.
The findings were a bit puzzling. The
site was not a Plains Pueblo site from the New Mexico Indian cultures
and was not typical of the Plains Indian villages. Morehead
wrote in 1931 of his Buried City field work; "...because of peculiarities
here is evidence that this small and picturesque plain may be justly
considered one of the strategic centers in American Archeology.
Apparently all agree that the remains are not Pueblo...yet it is
distinctive departure from ordinary Plains or Buffalo cultures as
we understand the term."
Texas put a stone marker on the site
in 1936 and the ruins were listed on the National Register of Historic
Places. The interpretations on this marker no longer represent the
consensus opinion of archeologists conducting the excavations sponsored
in part by the Courson family. The Texas Archeology Research Laboratory
gave the general site the trinomial designation 410C1 and 53 sub-sites
have been added and numbered since. Kirk Courson can be contacted
at his ranch located on the Buried City Site if someone has a deeper
interest in the findings of this archeological project.
The five miles of dense habitation
was built during one of the wetter periods in the region now known
as the Panhandle of Texas. The buildings are widely spaced, single
room dwellings just under the edge of the caprock escarpment. Along
Wolf Creek Valley the geological formation contains an outcropping
of the Ogallala
(to be continued
|