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Narrator: Lying in the backyard of Las Vegas and the City of Henderson is the Las Vegas Wash.
Few people realize that the Wash is an archaeologically rich environment and is designated as an archaeological district.
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Reclamation, in partnership with the Southern Nevada Water Authority and the Clark County Parks and Recreation Department
is conducting archaeological investigations in the Wash.
These investigations are conducted for erosion control, wetlands restoration and recreation development.
The first major archaeological investigations started in the 1970's. In 1975 a rock shelter site was discovered.
Richard Ahlstrom: We have two settings for archaeological sites open sites and sheltered sites.
A rock shelter is a kind of sheltered site where the over hanging cliff provides some protection from the elements.
This rock shelter is located at the edge of the flood plane of Las Vegas Wash, and 500 to 1,000 years ago when people lived here
this setting would have provided essiential resorces for life; water, food, and again the shelter provided by the site itself.
Narrator: Archaeologists found artifacts lying on the ground in front of the rock shelter including fragments of clay pottery
believed to have been used 500 to 1,000 years ago.
The site, as well as the debris and artifacts are being tested to determine important information about the people's activities.
Richard Alstrom: The investigation of this site began with the picking up of the artifacts preserved on the ground surface
that made us know there was an archaeology site here in the first place.
Then we laid out our grid and that provides the basis for our mapping of the site and now we're excavating the units that you can see
to determine if there are archaeological remains preserved below the ground surface.
These new tests may tell us that people may have inhabited the site much earlier than thought.
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Narrator: The archaeological investigation in the Wash tells us that several cultural groups used the area over a long span of time.
Some of the amazing site discoveries in the Wetlands Park include a Clovis-like projectile point,
which is a style used by hunters during the Ice Age,
and pit house sites such as the Three Kids Pit House, which was buried under many feet of silt.
Later prehistoric occupation includes Ancestral Puebloan, Yuman, and Paiute peoples.
Pottery from these three cultural groups was found at several sites in the Wash.
More recently, finds such as a cellar and foundation remains of a Milk House were discovered.
This find, The Bishop Ranch, is associated with 1900's era homesteading. The family abandoned the homestead in the 1920's.
The Milk House was excavated and carefully dismantled and transported to the Clark County Museum in Henderson, Nevada,
because of the good preservation and interpretive value of the masonry foundation, it is being reconstructed
as an outdoor exhibit about pioneer homesteads in the area.
While the investigations of the Wash provide us with a better understanding about the activities of people in the past,
the archaeological sites there continue to offer surprises and inspire numerous research topics for the area.
James Kangas: The archaeological testing project here at the Beehive Rock Shelter site in the Las Vegas Wash Archaeological district
has meet our discovery expectations.
The archaeologist have exposed small firepits. We intend to analyse the content of these firepits
to determine what activities were occurring here in the past.
We also discovered projectile points and pottery that were manufactured during the same period of time
500 to 1,000 years ago. This will help us better understand people's activities here in the past.
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