13 new archaeological sites discovered in Region Nine

Archaeologist attached to the Boise State University, Dr Mark Plew on Tuesday disclosed that 13 new archaeological sites have been found in the Rupununi Savannah, Region Nine. At the time, Dr Plew was delivering the feature presentation during a public lecture organised by the Culture, Youth and Sport Ministry and the Walter Roth Museum of Anthology at the Umana Yana, Kingston.

Dr Plew disclosed that the discoveries were made in the past weeks during a field visit to the Karanambo Ranch, Region Nine.
According to the archaeologist, previous surveys only produced four or five sites at once as he tagged the latter the most successful in recent times.
On the 13 sites, several habitats or villages were discovered. “So we found habitation sites where in the past they would have had structures and pottery. So these people were cooking,” Dr Plew explained.
However, the most shocking of the 13 sites was the discovery of a huge plot of land where people were making stone tools. “So there were stone hoes and stone knives, we have never found anything like this in the Rupununi and as large as those. Some of them were three or four times the size of the Umana Yana, really large area and the raw material is really dense, it’s really a lot of it, so there were a lot of activities. I have never seen anything like that,” he further explained.
According to the archaeologist, the stone tools and habitats date back to 300 years ago.
The recent discoveries will now be housed at the Walter Roth Museum of Anthropology at the Culture, Youth and Sport Ministry, Main Street facility.
In addition to the recent discoveries, the Walter Roth Museum of Anthropology trained seven students, with two persons from Georgetown and the remaining five from the Rupununi Savannah.
Trevon Baird, an aspiring archaeologist who is among the recently trained, said his journey to the Rupununi was truly fulfilling. “At lot of things have been learnt in terms of survey methods, identifying artifacts and all these things empower us to tell people about the vast archaeological sites.”
In 1974, the Walter Roth Museum of Anthropology was established from a collection of the late Guyanese anthropologist Dr Denis Williams. It was the first museum of anthropology in the English-speaking Caribbean.