Mary Anna Evans - Faye Longchamp 03 - Effigies by Mary Anna Evans

Author:Mary Anna Evans
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Mystery: Thriller - Archaeology - Mississippi
ISBN: 1590583426
Publisher: Poisoned Pen Press
Published: 2007-01-02T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Quitting time had come and gone, but only Bodie and Toneisha had left. They had driven away, laughing so loudly that Faye could still hear them after their car door had swung closed. Before strolling to the car, Bodie had taken a few minutes to show off his atlatl skills for his new girlfriend. The flintknapped head of his spear was well-weighted, and his control of the hinged throwing mechanism multiplied the significant power of his arms. His spear left the thrower with a force that left no doubt in Faye’s mind that Bodie would never starve if he were stranded in the wilderness.

She surrendered to an unwelcome vision of a spear very like Bodie’s piercing a man’s neck from behind with such power that its head protruded through his throat. She had once watched a man die in just that way. Shaking her head to chase away that image, she searched around for something more pleasant to watch.

A few yards away, outside the trailer where she sat, Faye could see Joe getting paid for having fun. He was crouched in the shadow of the project trailer, squatting in the position that all humans used before chairs were invented. His feet rested in the center of a large drop cloth, and he held a rock in one hand and a piece of antler in the other. Chuck hovered just outside the boundary of the drop cloth, watching Joe’s every move.

Joe, as relaxed as ever, hung motionless in a squatting position that would have made Faye’s entire body shriek. Using the antler tool, he patiently shaped the stone in his hand into something useful. It would have been more useful a few centuries in the past but, for people like Joe, it would still serve its purpose.

Chuck took notes every time the antler pressed out another stone flake. Periodically, he motioned for Joe to stop what he was doing, so that he could take pictures and note each flake’s shape and size. Then he marked identifying numbers on the chips that corresponded with numbers he inscribed on the drop cloth.

It was interesting work that they were doing. Preliminary testing at the site—augmented substantially with the records that Oka Hofobi had kept as his life’s work—suggested that ancient Americans had used portions of the land under their feet as a factory of sorts. They had manufactured stone tools on this one spot, and they had done little else. They hadn’t cooked or made pottery or tanned hides here. Oka Hofobi had found tenuous evidence of those other activities over the years, but not within many yards of the spot where they were now digging. To avoid muddying the waters, Joe and Chuck had picked a spot for their re-enactment where no artifacts had been found, to avoid contaminating an old site with their modern research.

Fully investigating this site would give an overview of how a society organized itself, a topic that was of some interest to current archaeology. Faye knew that

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