Gloria Church sat hunched over a small white basin gently rubbing a small shard of stone with a toothbrush.
The senior anthropology student at the University of Louisiana Lafayette focused on the ancient rock unearthed during a recent archaeological dig in the Kisatchie National Forest in north-central Louisiana.
Archaeologists have been digging up a Vernon Parish site to preserve evidence of occupation of pre-Louisiana.
Most found artifacts have been in the ground for millennia, but recent storms and thefts have proven to be a formidable threat.
Between looting and hurricane damage have endangered the site over time, U.S. Forest Service archaeologist Matthew Helmer said in June.
The site was found by surveyors in 2003, according to the Forest Service. After hurricanes Laura and Delta in 2020, Kisatchie National Forest officials decided to use hurricane relief money to begin salvage excavations.
The dig uncovered tens of thousands of artifacts, the oldest of which stretch back to Louisiana's earliest human inhabitants about 12,000 years ago.
"One of the really pressing questions ... is, when were the first people in Louisiana," said Mark Rees, director of ULL's Public Archaeology Lab.
The excavation turned up spearpoints from the San Patrice period. The period is around the "end of the last ice age," Rees said. Climate was cooler but warming slowly and humans were adapting, he said.
From a broader perspective, the finds are consistent with others that have steadily pushed back the date of the first human migrations into North America.
Now, it is widely accepted that humans likely migrated across the Bering Strait land bridge more than 15,000 years ago. (NOLA.com 07/24/23) 12,000 year old artifacts uncovered in Vernon Parish | Environment | nola.com
Kisatchie National Forest is the only National Forest in Louisiana with its HQ in Pineville, but the forest has five ranger districts in the north-central area of the state: Calcasieu, Caney, Catahoula, Kisatchie and Winn parishes.
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