Post by UKarchaeology on Jan 29, 2016 17:57:18 GMT
This footprint is among the dozens found at the road-construction site, under a layer of mineral-rich sediment. Archaeologists estimate their age at 2,500 to 3,000 years, making them the oldest human prints yet found in the American Southwest. (Copyright Western Digs. May not be used without permission.)
TUCSON, ARIZONA — A day’s work in an Arizona corn field some 2,500 years ago has been frozen in time, thanks to the footprints of some ancient farmers, their children, and even their dogs, which have been found perfectly preserved at a construction site just north of Tucson.
The prints number in the dozens and depict the movements of several adults and at least one child, as they tended to their neatly arranged crops and the small irrigation ditches that watered them.
Discovered in November by archaeologists investigating a parcel of land near Interstate 10, the prints are likely the oldest human tracks yet found in the American Southwest.
What’s more, the footprints provide a glimpse into the daily life of people who practiced some of the earliest agriculture in the region, in intimate detail.
“One of the things in archaeology that we always wish for is a time machine — to go back in time and see what people really did, to look at a dirt pile and go, ‘So, that’s what they were doing,’” said Dan Arnit, the excavator who made the find.
“Well, I think I found a time machine. Because the only thing that’s missing here is the person standing in the steps.”
The barefoot tracks are distinct enough that the movements of specific individuals can be followed across the 15-meter-square field that’s been uncovered, Arnit said.
In one case, a set of deep, large prints shows that a heavy adult male trod diagonally across the field, stopped to do some work on an earthen berm, or perhaps to open a weir to let in water, and then took a different path across the field and over the ditch.
Full story: westerndigs.org/oldest-human-footprints-in-the-southwest-discovered-at-tucson-construction-site/