Border Wall Construction Threatens 6,000 Years of History on Private Lands
Border Wall Construction Threatens 6,000 Years of History on Private Lands
边境墙建设威胁私有土地上 6000 年的历史遗迹
Outrage has exploded over border infrastructure that recently began tearing up pristine desert landscapes in Big Bend National Park. But there’s a quieter battle taking place on private lands in Texas, where the US border wall is set to cut across some of North America’s richest archaeological sites, digging up ancient indigenous artifacts and fracturing millennia-old rock art in its path.
近期，在大弯曲国家公园（Big Bend National Park）内，边境基础设施建设开始破坏原始沙漠景观，引发了公众的强烈愤慨。然而，在得克萨斯州的私有土地上，一场更为隐秘的斗争正在上演：美国边境墙计划横穿北美一些最丰富的考古遗址，沿途挖掘出古老的土著文物，并破坏了数千年的岩画。
The US Department of Homeland Security and Customs and Border Protection awarded billions of dollars in contracts this year toward the construction of a wall and other barriers in West Texas along a remote 500-plus-mile (800-plus-kilometer) riverfront expanse of the US-Mexico border that includes Big Bend National Park and other idyllic parklands.
美国国土安全部和海关及边境保护局今年授予了数十亿美元的合同，用于在西得克萨斯州沿美墨边境一段超过 500 英里（约 800 多公里）的偏远河岸地带修建围墙和其他屏障，其中包括大弯曲国家公园及其他风景优美的公园用地。
Bipartisan backlash against border wall construction in the national park was swift, ultimately prompting DHS to scuttle plans for a 30-foot steel bollard wall, instead replacing it with miles of riverside vehicle barriers and 200-plus miles of road construction. Bulldozers began clearing along the Rio Grande corridor near Santa Elena Canyon on August 6.
针对国家公园内边境墙建设的两党反对声浪迅速高涨，最终促使国土安全部放弃了修建 30 英尺高钢柱围墙的计划，转而以数英里的河岸车辆屏障和 200 多英里的道路建设取而代之。8 月 6 日，推土机开始在圣埃琳娜峡谷（Santa Elena Canyon）附近的格兰德河（Rio Grande）沿岸进行清理工作。
Construction has since been paused in the park in response to lawsuits. But the agency is still planning to construct the wall, as well as a web of road construction, over mountains and across canyons outside the national park. That includes private property that ranchers and other landowners say have archeological sites worth protecting, too. And they’re concerned that construction of the wall will bifurcate their own land and damage archeological sites, many of which have yet to be fully studied.
由于诉讼，公园内的施工目前已暂停。但该机构仍计划在国家公园外的高山和峡谷中修建围墙及错综复杂的道路网。这其中包括牧场主和其他土地所有者拥有的私有土地，他们表示这些土地上也有值得保护的考古遗址。他们担心围墙的修建会割裂他们的土地，并破坏许多尚未得到充分研究的考古遗址。
Archeologist Bryon Schroeder has been digging on rancher Jeff Fort’s property for two years. Schroeder runs Sul Ross University’s Center for Big Bend Studies, a research program dedicated to studying the cultural, historical, and archeological legacy of the region. He removes 4 inches (10 centimeters) of sediment at a time, and his meticulous digs have uncovered pottery and melted adobe slick building material from as early as the year AD 800. He’s found turquoise, too, and marine shells, both signs of trade outside the region. Evidence shows the site is related to Paquimé, an UNESCO World Heritage site that’s 200 miles away in Mexico.
考古学家布莱恩·施罗德（Bryon Schroeder）在牧场主杰夫·福特（Jeff Fort）的土地上挖掘了两年。施罗德负责苏尔罗斯州立大学（Sul Ross University）的大弯曲研究中心，这是一个致力于研究该地区文化、历史和考古遗产的研究项目。他每次清理 4 英寸（10 厘米）的沉积物，通过细致的挖掘，发现了最早可追溯至公元 800 年的陶器和熔化的土坯建筑材料。他还发现了绿松石和海贝，这些都是该地区以外贸易的迹象。证据表明，该遗址与位于墨西哥、距离此处 200 英里的联合国教科文组织世界遗产帕基梅（Paquimé）有关。
Schroeder’s dig site, Canta Recio, is directly in the path of the proposed wall. Some of it is set to be bulldozed over. If the wall is built, other parts of the site will also become effectively inaccessible.
施罗德的挖掘点 Canta Recio 正处于拟建围墙的路径上。部分遗址将被推土机夷为平地。如果围墙建成，该遗址的其他部分也将变得无法进入。
Schroeder likens Canta Recio to how Egyptians set up shop along the Nile, surmising the site was settled four or five times between 800 and 1400 by groups who were likely drawn to fertile land afforded by routine floods. Of course, those floods also mean that groups were eventually forced to move on when the Rio Grande overtopped its banks, only for another group to eventually settle the area once the silt firmed up. A settlement, a flood, an exit, on repeat.
施罗德将 Canta Recio 比作埃及人在尼罗河沿岸定居的方式，推测该遗址在公元 800 年至 1400 年间曾被定居过四五次，这些群体很可能是被定期洪水带来的肥沃土地所吸引。当然，这些洪水也意味着当格兰德河漫过河岸时，这些群体最终被迫迁走，而一旦淤泥变硬，另一个群体又会在此定居。定居、洪水、撤离，周而复始。
“There’s some bigger, cooler sites up the river that are just insane,” Schroeder said. “They have so much pottery, they have Mesoamerican copper bells, they have turquoise. They have all sorts of crazy stuff.”
“在河流上游还有一些更大、更酷的遗址，简直令人难以置信，”施罗德说。“那里有大量的陶器、中美洲的铜铃、绿松石。还有各种各样的奇珍异宝。”
The paradox facing Schroeder and other archeologists: They can’t fully measure what’s at risk because many of the archeological sites exist on private ranches and have never been studied.
施罗德和其他考古学家面临的悖论是：他们无法完全评估面临的风险，因为许多考古遗址位于私人牧场上，从未被研究过。
That means construction may erase history before anyone gets to record it. A Customs and Border Protection spokesperson told WIRED that the agency is conducting environmental and cultural reviews to minimize impacts and balance operational needs with responsible land stewardship.
这意味着施工可能会在任何人记录之前就抹去历史。海关及边境保护局的一位发言人告诉《连线》（WIRED）杂志，该机构正在进行环境和文化审查，以尽量减少影响，并在运营需求与负责任的土地管理之间取得平衡。
But previous studies haven’t stopped historically important sites from being sentenced to destruction. A 30-foot bollard wall is set to go right through the Polvo site, in Redford, Texas, which is home to a prehistoric village complete with burial ground dating back to the 1300s. The same site also has evidence of a Spanish mission that was built in the 1600s. Eagle Nest Canyon in Langtry, one of the most significant and intensively studied archeological sites in all of Texas, is also slated to see some form of barrier erected through it. That site includes the southernmost bison jump site in the US, where Native Americans hunted the animals en masse by funneling them over a cliff.
然而，以往的研究并没能阻止具有重要历史意义的遗址被判处“死刑”。一座 30 英尺高的钢柱围墙计划直接穿过得克萨斯州雷德福（Redford）的 Polvo 遗址，那里有一个可追溯至 14 世纪的史前村庄，并配有墓地。同一遗址还有 17 世纪建造的西班牙传教站的证据。位于兰特里（Langtry）的鹰巢峡谷（Eagle Nest Canyon）是得克萨斯州最重要且研究最深入的考古遗址之一，也计划在其境内修建某种形式的屏障。该遗址包括美国最南端的野牛跳崖遗址，美洲原住民曾在此通过将野牛驱赶下悬崖进行集体狩猎。
Patrick Zuberbueler, a rancher 350 miles downriver in Comstock, Texas, population 268, spent his youth picnicking in the shadows of 6,000-year-old rock art, with some displays up to 50 feet tall and hundreds of feet wide, across his family’s property. The government took some of that land by eminent domain in the 1960s and 1970s, forming the Amistad Reservoir and Seminole Canyon State Park, but he and his family still hold onto thousands of acres.
帕特里克·祖伯布勒（Patrick Zuberbueler）是一位住在下游 350 英里处得克萨斯州康斯托克（Comstock，人口 268 人）的牧场主。他年轻时常在自家土地上 6000 年历史的岩画阴影下野餐，有些岩画高达 50 英尺，宽达数百英尺。政府在 20 世纪 60 年代和 70 年代通过征用权收回了部分土地，建立了阿米斯塔德水库（Amistad Reservoir）和塞米诺尔峡谷州立公园（Seminole Canyon State Park），但他和家人仍持有数千英亩土地。
As a child, Zuberbueler would catch minnows in a stream running through Painted Shelter, a limestone rock shelter on his family’s property. To him, it was “a place we’d go picnicking.” To archeologist and rock art expert Carolyn Boyd, it’s “one of the most important archeological sites in the region.”
小时候，祖伯布勒常在流经“彩绘岩棚”（Painted Shelter）的小溪里捉鲦鱼，这是一个位于他家土地上的石灰岩岩棚。对他来说，那是“我们去野餐的地方”。而对于考古学家和岩画专家卡罗琳·博伊德（Carolyn Boyd）来说，它是“该地区最重要的考古遗址之一”。
Painted Shelter has three distinct styles of rock art, painted between 6,000 and 1,000 years ago. Rock artworks encode stories and cosmologies, and are “libraries of human knowledge,” says Boyd, a research professor at Texas State University in San Marcos who founded Shumla Archaeological Research and Education Center in 1998.
彩绘岩棚拥有三种不同风格的岩画，绘制于 6000 年至 1000 年前。博伊德说，岩画编码了故事和宇宙观，是“人类知识的图书馆”。博伊德是圣马科斯得克萨斯州立大学的研究教授，于 1998 年创立了舒姆拉考古研究与教育中心（Shumla Archaeological Research and Education Center）。
Painted Shelter is also right in the path of border construction. “A vehicle barrier going in just immediately above it will destroy the stream, and it will potentially destroy the paintings themselves,” says Boyd, one of the nation’s leading scholars on rock art.
彩绘岩棚也正处于边境建设的路径上。“在它正上方修建车辆屏障将摧毁小溪，并可能摧毁岩画本身，”作为全国领先的岩画学者之一，博伊德说道。
Vibration from construction could potentially cause the limestone to spall, or sheet off, she says, leaving the rocky canvas in tatters. She knows of 12 other rock art sites across the region that are also at risk from construction, while another 79 will become inaccessible.
她说，施工产生的振动可能会导致石灰岩剥落或碎裂，使岩石画布变得支离破碎。她知道该地区还有 12 处岩画遗址也面临施工风险，另有 79 处将变得无法进入。