WMAR<\/a>) \u2014 State archaeologists and geologists are working together to solve a more than 10,000-year-old mystery at the Piney Grove archaeological site near Reisterstown, building on discoveries first made in May.<\/p>\nState Terrestrial Archaeologist Zachary Singer and State Geologist Rebecca Kavage Adams are tracking the earliest inhabitants of this region \u2014 the Clovis people who walked these lands about 13,000 years ago, long before modern humans built the church that now stands nearby.<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery piece of chalcedony we\u2019ve found at the site has been worked. Has been flaked,\u201d Zach updates Rebecca. \u201cSo this was the hangout and do the work site.\u201d Zach, \u201cYes, this was the reduction site.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Clovis people hunted animals now extinct during a time when estimates suggest only around 150 people lived in all of Maryland.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a fun partnership because there\u2019s so much common sense to like people\u2019s pathways,\u201d Adams said.<\/p>\n
Zach says what typically survives in the archaeological record from 13,000 years ago are stone tools, which researchers use as evidence to recreate how people lived during that time period.<\/p>\n
Singer and Adams are working to prove that the paths the Clovis walked were governed by their search for a specific stone that would bring hunting success \u2014 chalcedony, a translucent stone pointing researchers to a specific time period.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe chalcedony must have been found very nearby because we\u2019re finding lots of evidence of people breaking down larger pieces to make hunting tools,\u201d Singer said.<\/p>\n
Chalcedony is uncommon in Maryland\u2019s archaeological record, but when researchers do find it, it\u2019s mostly associated with 13,000-year-old archaeological sites.<\/p>\n
At the end of the last ice age, this land looked much different than today. However, the nearby stream where the team is digging was likely present then, and something made it an ideal location for the Clovis people to make their tools.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis site is likely where people were first making those stone tools and then carrying them around the rest of the region,\u201d Singer said.<\/p>\n
The discovery of this site was fortunate for both the ancient Clovis people and modern researchers. When a road was built here in 2001, archaeologists found the site contained a large amount of chalcedony.<\/p>\n
Singer provided state geologists with samples from the collection to determine the type of chalcedony used to make Stone Age points.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo I think we could even term it agate because agate is spherically banded fibrous microcrystalline and quartz,\u201d Adams said.<\/p>\n
To make that determination, geologists had to grind back into the stone\u2019s past. Over time, the surface becomes muddled by other elements, so state geologists created billets from the interior of the provided samples. Under the microscope, an identifying pattern emerged in these samples.<\/p>\n
With that part of the mystery solved, researchers can now focus their search for the source of that stone, bringing Adams closer to walking in the ancient steps of the Clovis people.<\/p>\n
\u201cRight now we\u2019re on what\u2019s known as the Cockeysville Marble. So this is a marble that underlies a good portion of Baltimore County. It\u2019s what the Washington Monument was made of,\u201d Adams said. \u201cIt\u2019s possible there\u2019s an outcrop of the Cockeysville marble that has this chalcedony that has precipitated in it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Using GPS mapping, Adams and her colleague traverse the land to register data points of rock outcrops that could be the original source of the stone brought to the dig site during the Stone Age.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf I am looking for a nice place to live and an easy path to walk, I\u2019m certainly going to do that in a valley that is formed by the Cockeysville marble than hiking over a whole bunch of ridges and difficult terrain, so the two, you know, the archaeology and the geology really go hand in hand that way. I think that\u2019s neat,\u201d Adams said.<\/p>\n
The next step in their search involves blood protein residue analysis on the tools they find. This DNA research allows scientists to extract samples from micro cracks in stone tools. By comparing them to known samples, Singer hopes to identify what these people were hunting.<\/p>\n
\u201cBased on blood residue and protein analysis on stone tools on the East Coast, people have found direct evidence for people 13,000 years ago hunting mammoths and mastodon and bison and extinct horse,\u201d Singer said. \u201cWe don\u2019t have that evidence yet directly from Maryland.\u201d<\/p>\n
The emphasis is on \u201cyet.\u201d With the evidence found during this research, a deeper story of Maryland\u2019s past is coming to light at the Piney Grove archaeological site.<\/p>\n
This story was reported on-air by a journalist and has been converted to this platform with the assistance of AI. WMAR verifies all reporting on all platforms for fairness and accuracy.<\/p>\n
This story was provided to CNN Wire by an affiliate and does not contain original CNN reporting.<\/p>\n
Please note: This content carries a strict local market embargo. If you share the same market as the contributor of this article, you may not use it on any platform.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"State archaeologists and geologists are working together to solve a more than 10,000-year-old mystery at the Piney Grove…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":409342,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[2847,192710,159,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-409341","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-archaeology","9":"tag-piney-grove","10":"tag-science","11":"tag-united-states","12":"tag-unitedstates","13":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115624170777964175","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/409341","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=409341"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/409341\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/409342"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=409341"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=409341"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=409341"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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