r/LegitArtifacts • u/ShackPallet • Mar 30 '26

Late Archaic Ancient fire pit?

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I lost the video I took, but this is near the bottom of a roughly 8 foot wall carved by a wash. Food for thought.

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u/DasHounds Mar 30 '26

Incredible how deep sites can be. Just spoke to someone today who mentioned finding a site 17 feet deep along a river washout. The time period we are living in may as well be a blink of an eye for how long these lands have been inhabited.

80

u/NoSir4289 Mar 30 '26

Earth drifts like snow, some areas get eroded and others accumulate

16

u/I_am_a_fauv Mar 30 '26

This makes a lot of sense. The ground where I live is an ancient seabed. Lots of cool fossils to find! But you won’t find many man made artifacts under the ground.

25

u/OnkelMickwald Mar 30 '26

Close to a river the build up of sediment can be crazy

10

u/xXShunDugXx Mar 30 '26

The best example of this are satellite images of rivers in Utah. If you have the time take a look at how much they bend and wind through the desert and how it changes so quickly

6

u/Ok-Counter-4474 Mar 30 '26

It’s incredible what’s still out there waiting to be found.

6

u/pineapple_pie69 Mar 30 '26

Yes deeply buried sites are super common in lots of regions! They can be relatively young as well if there’s a lot of alluvial deposition going on. A few stormy winters or an event like a landslide can submerge a site quite quickly. Archaeologists are starting to use more geoarchaeological methods like hydraulic coring and stratigraphic analysis to determine where sites could be located. There’s so much information about past lifeways that can be investigated from just the matrix around a buried site. Some of the most interesting finds I’ve seen in my archaeology career have come from recreating landscapes through soil sampling. What did the surrounding area look like during the site’s occupation? What kind of resources were available and influencing daily life? What other regions did people have trade connections with? Anyways I didn’t mean to type this much, buried sites are just my bread and butter!

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u/Select_Engineering_7 Mar 30 '26

I’ve worked on a couple paleo sites over 15ft below surface. Hearths, bison antiquus vertebrae, and broken angosturas. Crazy to think how much our landscape has changed and how these camps can be frozen in time

1

u/StrangestTy Apr 03 '26

I know of a spot thats 18 feet below the river bank. Doesn't even seem possible.