{"id":8354,"date":"2018-04-20T17:01:56","date_gmt":"2018-04-20T17:01:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/?p=8354"},"modified":"2018-04-20T17:02:38","modified_gmt":"2018-04-20T17:02:38","slug":"utrgv-juniors-research-revealing-centuries-of-rgv-pre-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/?p=8354","title":{"rendered":"UTRGV Junior\u2019s Research Revealing Centuries of RGV Pre-History"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Maria Elena Hernandez<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

RIO GRANDE VALLEY, TEXAS \u2013\u00a0<\/strong>Many people think life in the Rio Grande Valley started when Spain began handing out land grants. But the work of one junior at The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley could help change that impression.<\/p>\n

Brandi Reger, a UTRGV interdisciplinary major, is examining the geochemical and statistical characteristics of rock types used to make stone tools in the Rio Grande Valley.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s basically opening up a window onto 10,000 years of occupation in the Valley, that people were actually living and working here,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Reger will present her stone tools research project during the\u00a0Society for American Archeology<\/a>\u2019s 83rd\u00a0annual meeting<\/a>, April 11-15 in Washington, D.C.<\/p>\n

The project is possible because of the unique chert found in the Rio Grande Valley, she said. In general terms,\u00a0chert<\/a>\u00a0is a type of rock made of microcrystalline quartz that can form in different ways.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is probably the only place in the world that you\u2019re going to find a kind of chert outcrop that we have, because it\u2019s related to a volcanic ash deposit in Starr County,\u201d Reger said. \u201cIf I were in anywhere else in the world, and I\u2019m just looking at a bunch of gravel stuff, I couldn\u2019t tell the gravel from anything else.\u201d<\/p>\n

But that chert outcrop in Starr County has a specific geochemical signature, which is measured with a portable X-ray fluorescence instrument or, as Reger once referred to it, a \u201csuper cool X-ray gun.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSouth Texas is really unique in that we don\u2019t have a lot of rocks, so people had to use special unique materials,\u201d she explained. \u201cWhen you get over here toward the coast, you\u2019ll find most the tools are made from shells, and they reserve the chert for the drills and the really hard tools they wanted to make.\u201d<\/p>\n

The chert was re-shaped frequently until only slivers remained, she said, because the supply for people near the coast was limited.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you get to Starr County, you get the pretty stuff because they had the better rocks to work with,\u201d Reger said.<\/p>\n

Multiple\u00a0Golondrina<\/a>-type points (a type of sharp point used on arrows and other projectiles) were found.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat is a point style that\u2019s about 10,000 years old. We know with dating and multiple avenues of evidence that that\u2019s 10,000 years old, and we found multiple of those made from this resource in Starr County,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Reger\u2019s enthusiasm about the findings and the research into stone tools already has taken her to an archeological\u00a0site in Turkey with the\u00a0Institute for Field Research<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat was awesome,\u201d she said, smiling broadly.<\/p>\n

\"Brandi<\/a>

Brandi Reger, left, a junior at UTRGV and an interdisciplinary major, in March invited the community to bring in their own collection of rocks, or to use hers, to try out a special tool called the X-ray flourescence spectrometer, a tool she uses in her research to determine the elements, quantitatively, in any sample. The demonstration was part of a UTRGV Geology Club event at the Edinburg Scenic Wetlands and Birding Center. Reger will present her stone tools research project during the Society for American Archeology\u2019s 83rd annual meeting, April 11-15 in Washington, D.C. Photo: David Pike\/UTRGV Archive<\/p><\/div>\n

There, she worked at a site that was discovered to be a village at least 10,000 years old. When she returned to the Rio Grande Valley, she was eager for more.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was just looking for any research project that there was, and my professors have been investigating that specific outcrop in Starr County,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

They needed someone to scan all the samples. \u201cThen I just took it from there,\u201d Reger said.<\/p>\n

Faculty from the UTRGV College of Sciences and College of Liberal Arts are advising her on the project. Associate Professor Dr. Juan Gonzalez, and Lecturer Dr. James Hinthorne, both with the UTRGV School of Earth, Environmental, and Marine Sciences (SEEMS) are advisors for the geology and geochemical aspects. Dr. Russell Skowronek, associate dean of the UTRGV College of Liberal Arts and a history professor, is advising on the archaeological component.<\/p>\n

Reger said she hopes to continue working on the research as a graduate student.<\/p>\n

\u201cMost people think that the history of the United States starts with colonization, with the Europeans, and that once the Europeans came, the story gets interesting and that\u2019s when things start,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut I\u2019m trying to show that the story was already interesting. There were people here living multiple different ways, and their story needs to be told, too. And I think that that\u2019s the most important part of my research \u2013 the past stories,\u201d Reger said.<\/p>\n

ABOUT UTRGV<\/strong><\/p>\n

The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley (UTRGV) was created by the Texas Legislature in 2013 as the first major public university of the 21st century in Texas. This transformative initiative provided the opportunity to expand educational opportunities in the Rio Grande Valley, including a new School of Medicine, and made it possible for residents of the region to benefit from the Permanent University Fund \u2013 a public endowment contributing support to the University of Texas System and other institutions.<\/p>\n

UTRGV has campuses and off-campus research and teaching sites throughout the Rio Grande Valley including in Boca Chica Beach, Brownsville (formerly The University of Texas at Brownsville campus), Edinburg (formerly The University of Texas-Pan American campus), Harlingen, McAllen, Port Isabel, Rio Grande City, and South Padre Island. UTRGV, a comprehensive academic institution, enrolled its first class in the fall of 2015, and the School of Medicine welcomed its first class in the summer of 2016.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Maria Elena Hernandez RIO GRANDE VALLEY, TEXAS \u2013\u00a0Many people think life in the Rio Grande Valley started when Spain began handing out land grants. But the work of one junior at The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley could help change that impression. Brandi Reger, a UTRGV interdisciplinary major, is examining the geochemical and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":8355,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8354","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-valley"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8354","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8354"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8354\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8356,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8354\/revisions\/8356"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8355"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8354"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8354"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8354"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}