Honey Creek is a tributary of the

Llano River The Llano River ( ) is a tributary of the Colorado River (Texas), Colorado River, about long, in Texas in the United States. It drains part of the Edwards Plateau in Texas Hill Country northwest of Austin, Texas, Austin. Two spring-fed tributa ...

, and an archaeological site located on the

Edwards Plateau The Edwards Plateau is a geographic region at the crossroads of Central Texas, Central, South Texas, South, and West Texas. It is bounded by the Balcones Fault to the south and east, the Llano Uplift and the Llano Estacado to the north, and the ...

, between Grit and Streeter, in

Mason County, Texas Mason County is a rural county located on the Edwards Plateau in the U.S. state of Texas. At the 2020 census, its population was 3,953. Its county seat is Mason. The county is named for Fort Mason, which was located in the county. History * ...

. The prehistoric

midden A midden (also kitchen midden or shell heap) is an old dump for domestic waste which may consist of animal bone, human excrement, botanical material, mollusc shells, potsherds, lithics (especially debitage), and other artifacts and ecofact ...

site (41MS32) has been of interest to scientific research since 1987, when Glenn T. Goode of the

Texas Department of Transportation The Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT ) is a government agency in the American state of Texas. Though the public face of the agency is generally associated with the construction and maintenance of the state's immense state highway system ...

uncovered it during an otherwise routine infrastructural project. Stephen L. Black and the Texas Archeological Research Laboratory included it in a wider study of burned-rock midden. Researchers have been able to date the midden at Honey Creek, used to bake native plants, to having evolved between 1110 and 1700 AD, and is the result of an estimated 165

ovens upA double oven A ceramic oven An oven is a tool which is used to expose materials to a hot environment. Ovens contain a hollow chamber and provide a means of heating the chamber in a controlled way. In use since antiquity, they have been us ...

used by

hunter-gatherer A traditional hunter-gatherer or forager is a human living an ancestrally derived lifestyle in which most or all food is obtained by foraging, that is, by gathering food from local sources, especially edible wild plants but also insects, fungi, ...

bands over that six-century period.

Texas A&M University Texas A&M University (Texas A&M, A&M, or TAMU) is a public, land-grant, research university in College Station, Texas. It was founded in 1876 and became the flagship institution of the Texas A&M University System in 1948. As of late 2021, T ...

archeobotanist Phil Dering identified 14 varieties of local plants in charred remains found. The oldest artifact found at the site is the "Martindale dart point" believed to date to between 5000 and 6000 BC for hunting, but chipped and refashioned in later years to be used as a tool at the midden.

See also

References

Further reading