[Source: Teya Vitu, Tucson Citizen] -- Archaeologists are having a field day with their trowels, scraping away layers of dirt just outside what was the outer wall of Mission San Agustín. Three weeks of excavation uncovered 2,000-year-old arrowheads. They were found a few feet from the first mission-era American Indian home discovered in Tucson, and they were only a few feet away from a 1930s barbecue pit. "I can't think of anywhere in the United States where you have this layer cake of cultural change," said Michael Brack, project director at Desert Archaeology, which is conducting the dig.It's believed the Tucson area ranks as the longest continuously inhabited region in the United States, stretching back for at least 4,000 years. But the site at the west end of Mission Lane presents the first evidence of so many historical eras in one spot going back 2,500 years. That could expand another 1,000 to 1,500 years as Desert Archaeology digs another 2 to 3 feet. The dig precedes reconstruction of the Mission San Agustín, the centerpiece of Rio Nuevo's Tucson Origins project, in which the mission's adobe convento and chapel should start taking shape in October. Hundreds of artifacts, from intact 2,000-plus-years-old clay bowls to remnants of a 300-year-old rib dinner, are being removed. The site will be filled in again to preserve the footprints of dozens of structures that vanished hundreds of years ago. This includes 20 round-pit houses from 2,000 and 2,500 years ago and a small, single-room rectangular house built by an American Indian family a few feet outside the mission wall. [Note: To read the full article, click here.]
