The Secrets of Porvenir

Sometimes all it takes is one small artifact to tell an entire story. In 2015, during a metal detector survey in the Big Bend region of western Texas, archaeologist David Keller found one such object under windblown sediments that had likely protected it in place for around 100 years. “It was a heavy moment,” Keller says of his initial examination of the object with a hand lens. He called over the rest of his team to have a look. It was a fragment of a .45-caliber bullet, which later analysi

Samir S. Patel is a contributing editor at ARCHAEOLOGY.