Honey Creek (Mason County, Texas) facts for kids

Honey Creek is a small stream that flows into the Llano River in Mason County, Texas. It is also the name of an important archaeological site located on the Edwards Plateau. This site, known as 41MS32, helps us learn about people who lived in Texas long ago.

What is Honey Creek?

Honey Creek is a stream that runs through a part of Texas called the Edwards Plateau. This area is between the towns of Grit and Streeter. The archaeological site at Honey Creek is a special place where scientists have found clues about ancient life.

A Special Discovery

The Honey Creek archaeological site was first found in 1987. A worker named Glenn T. Goode from the Texas Department of Transportation discovered it. He was working on a road project when he found the ancient remains.

After this discovery, researchers from the Texas Archeological Research Laboratory studied the site. They included Honey Creek in a larger project looking at "burned-rock middens." A midden is like an ancient trash pile, but these are special piles of burned rocks.

Ancient Cooking and Tools

The burned-rock midden at Honey Creek was used by ancient people for cooking. They would heat rocks in fires to bake native plants. Scientists believe this site was used between the years 1110 and 1700 AD. Over these 600 years, people built about 165 different ovens at this spot!

These ancient cooks were hunter-gatherers. This means they found their food by hunting animals and gathering plants. An expert in ancient plants, Phil Dering from Texas A&M University, found traces of 14 different plant types in the burned remains.

The oldest item found at Honey Creek is a tool called a "Martindale dart point." This point was likely used for hunting, like a spear tip, around 5000–6000 BC. Later, people reshaped it to use it as a different kind of tool at the cooking site.