Kincaid Shelter

Over the millennia, hundreds of people stayed in Kincaid Shelter, using the protected locale as a base for hunting animals, gathering plants, nuts and seeds, making tools, refurbishing gear, and carrying out other tasks of daily life. Others may have merely stopped there overnight during a longer journey. Like their modern counterparts, many of these prehistoric campers left behind a scattering of trash as well as a few more meaningful items that perhaps were lost or forgotten in the shelter's recesses.

Yet what was trash to prehistoric and later peoples often holds special significance to researchers today. Even broken or spent weapons carry important technological and stylistic information which helps researchers understand life in the past. Discarded tools and toolmaking debris provide insights into the technologies and economies of the various prehistoric visitors. Animal bones inform researchers about the prehistoric diet and may indicate changes in climate and the environment over time.

Unfortunately more than half of the artifacts recovered from Kincaid have no precise provenience, that is, they were out of place, having been dug up and discarded by treasure-hunters. Since the diggers were searching for gold and silver, they left the Indian artifacts behind in their backdirt piles. Prehistoric peoples churned the shelter deposits as well, perhaps digging pits into lower levels for hearths and, in the process, displacing and mixing items left by earlier visitors. For these reasons, many of the items from the shelter cannot be connected to a particular cultural group or time period.

In this section we present a gallery of selected artifacts from Kincaid Shelter curated in the TARL Collections. While investigators did not collect or document all the items they encountered, as is the more standard practice today, they did recover a meaningful sample that provides a window into past activities and peoples at Kincaid. The artifacts have yet to be fully analyzed and reported, although T. N. Campbell did a preliminary classification as part of an unpublished report on Kincaid. Michael Collins and Gene Mear inventoried and measured many of the chipped stone items in the collection, and Collins did a more in-depth study of the Paleoindian materials. Parts of these data are used in descriptions below and in the Kincaid Revisited section, which details Collins findings.

Weapons and Tools

Prehistoric toolmakers used many different tools and a variety of resources in their work. From stone, bone, leather, sinew, shell, and plant fibers, these early craftsmen created weapons and tools, baskets and mats, grinding implements, clothing and sandals, ornaments, and works of art. Few perishable materials survived the damp conditions at Kincaid. We know from other sites in the more-arid western regions, however, that items of wood, fiber and other organic materials would have made up the bulk of prehistoric hunting and camping gear.

Chipped stone tools constituted the great majority of artifacts at the shelter, including projectile points, scrapers, knives, perforators, adzes, and a variety of toolmaking gear and chipping debris. Prehistoric stone knappers would have used rounded hammerstones as well as bone and antler batons to remove flakes from larger pieces of chert (flint) or other stone suitable for flaking. Sharp-edged flakes derived from this process made efficient cutting tools in themselves, or could be chipped further and finished using finer tools, such as antler tines. For other tasks, chipped stone burins or gravers may have been used both for cutting and grooving bones and for ornamental incising.

Campbell identified almost 50 types of projectile points from Kincaid, including dart points and arrow tips. These diagnostics, or time markers, span almost all known cultural intervals in the region.

A number of projectile points may have served multiple purposes. For example, archeologist Mike Collins believes that many Pedernales points—a ubiquitous Late Archaic type found across much of central, south, and west Texas—were recycled for use as knives, judging from many specimens which have been worn down and resharpened repeatedly along their lateral edges. Several have been reduced to an almost lanceolate form with no barbs or shoulders remaining, as shown in the above photo.

In contrast, the series of later Montell points shown at left (in the enlarged image) suggests more predominate use as projectile points. This type of use typically causes vertical reduction in size. For instance as points were fractured on the tip or snapped on impact, they were reworked to create a new tip of a shorter point.

One unusual Paleoindian projectile point base recovered from Zone 4 is made of obsidian, a type of black volcanic glass that rarely occurs naturally in Texas. It is lanceolate in form with a contracting base; both sides have been flaked in parallel patterning. Although the morphology of this point is enigmatic, its Late Pleistocene context suggests an early type, such as Clovis. Trace element analysis on a small fragment of the base indicated the material derived from a geologic source in Queretaro, Mexico, roughly 620 miles (1000 km) to the southwest. According to archeologist Thomas R. Hester, who coordinated the obsidian study, Paleoindian projectile points made of obsidian are rare in Texas.

Campbell lists almost 100 cores of several different types in the Kincaid inventory, including several blade cores. One small, nearly expended, polyhedral blade core was found in Zone 4 and is attributed to Clovis peoples. The remaining blade cores from Zones 5 and 6 probably were made by Late Prehistoric Toyah folk, who also used blade technology to make their tools and weapons.

Several types of bevel-edged tools, or adzes, used in woodworking, boneworking, and perhaps hide scraping, were recovered from Kincaid. One type, known as Clear Fork tools or gouges (because of their initial classification at sites near the Clear Fork of the Brazos River in northwest Texas), encompasses both bifacial (chipped on both sides) and unifacial (chipped on only one side) forms used by prehistoric peoples from Paleoindian to Late Archaic times. Another type, termed Guadalupe tools because of their predominate distribution in the Guadalupe River basin of south Texas, are long, thick, and rounded with a sharply truncated bit (or working) end. At other sites, these tools have been found chiefly in Early Archaic contexts. More than 25 Guadalupe tools were found at Kincaid.

Prehistoric workers put these tools to heavy use, as is evidenced by battering and wear on the bits and by the reworking and gradual attrition of the tools. Tool bits broke off during use or were deliberately knocked off and re-sharpened by the workers to create a fresh, more acute-edged, and more effective working end, as is illustrated in the example above. The specimen at right has been reduced by use and/or successive resharpenings to a size roughly half that of most of the other specimens.

UT-Austin archeologist Dale Hudler examined 40 of the 45 Clear Fork tools from Kincaid in 1996 as part of a larger study to try to determine usage of 195 tools of this form. Microscopic analysis of the bits, or beveled-edged ends, of the tools showed polish and striations which was then compared to that on replica tools used in a variety of experimental uses. Six Kincaid specimens (one bifacial and five unifacial) had a distinctive "smooth, linear polish" on the bit which Hudler correlated with use on a very hard contact material, such as bone or antler.

Hudler also determined that the unifacial Clear Fork tools from Kincaid tended to be wider than most others in the statewide study. However, variations in shape, size, and bit end morphology of both unifacial and bifacial Clear Fork tools have not yet proven to be meaningful. More likely, these differences in morphology, particularly in length dimension, simply reflect use and resharpening.

Grinding and Milling Implements

Pecked and ground stone milling tools were not common at Kincaid. The inventory consists of three complete grinding slabs, or metates, four fragments, and some 45 handstones, or manos. With few exceptions, all were found in Zone 5 or are unprovenienced.

The metates are worn; one shows use in a back and forth motion, another in a circular motion. A third has a circular basin that is roughly pitted.

The manos showed a variety of wear, including grinding facets and striations, while others had central pits, or slight depressions. These pitted specimens may have been used as anvils, or platforms, for cracking nuts. Many manos showed combinations of wear patterns.

Perhaps prehistoric cooks used these tools for multiple purposes: a handstone for grinding seeds and other foods, a platform for cracking nuts, and as a surface for cutting fibrous materials, meat, or hide. (Other examples of possible cutting platforms are shown in Mysterious Stones section.)

A number of objects from Kincaid were less utilitarian and practical than stone tools and weapons. Along with a quantity of engraved stones and paint-making materials (see Mysterious Stones section), there were several artifacts of shell and bone likely worn for personal adornment as well as fragments of a probable steatite pipe.

Two pendants made of very thin, freshwater mussel shell had conical perforations drilled from the concave surface of the shell. The objects may have been worn suspended around the neck as jewelry. There were also several pieces of bone that appear to have been beads. These hollow sections had been grooved and snapped, and were likely strung on a cord as a necklace.

Generally, the collection of bone and shell artifacts was scant, however, and this is doubtlessly due to damp conditions in the shelter which took their toll on these and other, even more perishable items made of fiber and wood.

Eight fragments of a vessel made of soapstone (steatite), shown at right, appear to be the remains of a tubular pipe that, based on rim sections, was roughly 2.5 inches (6.4 cm) in diameter. Soapstone is a metamorphic rock, a talc which occurs in both eastern and western parts of the United States. When freshly mined, it is soft and can be easily shaped with hand-held tools. Tool marks can be seen on both the interior and exterior of the Kincaid vessel. In Texas, natural deposits closest to the site are in Hudspeth county to the west, or in the Llano Uplift, some 65 to 100 miles northeast of the Kincaid site.

This large rim sherd had deeply scored lines across the exterior, a technique perhaps used to make the vessel less slippery if it was used to carry water. Photo by Aaron Norment.	One of two sandy textured sherds found at Kincaid. Photo by Aaron Norment. Click to see full image.
Fragments of thin-walled, bone-tempered pottery typically are termed "Leon Plain."

During the late part of the prehistoric period (roughly A.D. 1300), Kincaid occupants began using pottery vessels to store food, water, and other resources. Investigators found some 50 pottery sherds, chiefly in the upper levels of terrace deposits in front of the shelter. At least three different pottery types are present, representing perhaps eight or nine different vessels. These include thin-walled, bone-tempered sherds (typically referred to as Leon Plain) and a thicker version with vertical lines scored across the exterior (cf., Boothe Brushed). Other sherds had a sandy texture and apparent grog temper (crushed pottery sherds mixed into the clay paste). Prehistoric potters used various tempering agents, or additives, including sand, grit, crushed shell, and bone, to improve the clay texture and cause more even drying and firing.

Pottery-making technology was late to catch on over much of what is now central and south Texas. The Caddo villagers of east Texas made exceptional pottery as early as 1000 years ago. The pottery at Kincaid was made during the latter part of the Late Prehistoric (Toyah interval, circa 400 to 700 years ago) and some of it (the Leon Plain sherds) can be attributed to mobile groups who used Perdiz arrowpoints and a distinctive tool set associated with buffalo-hunting. Similar sherds were identified at the nearby La Jita site.

A few historic-period artifacts were found at Kincaid, indicating the presence of visitors—hunters, fishermen, soldiers (or former soldiers), ranchers, and picnickers—from the 1850s to modern times. Along with a variety of ammunition, metal construction materials, and glass, investigators found an 1857 half-dime and a brass button from a Confederate infantry officer's uniform. T.N. Campbell, in communicating with a militray expert in San Antonio, learned that the button likely is attributable to an officer on the staff of General H.H. Sibley, who led a brigade through the area of Sabinal in 1861 en route to New Mexico.

Ammunition found at the site included cartridge cases bearing head stamps marked W.R.A. Co. (Winchester Repeating Arms Co.) and variants, assignable to the late 19th and early 20th centuries.