The Gulf Coastal Plain, the Edwards Plateau, the river corridors connecting interior and coast — these are not peripheral landscapes.

They are central to the major environmental zones of North America: the interface between the eastern woodlands and the western grasslands, the connection between tropical and temperate environments, the boundary between the humid and the arid.

Populations moving through Texas were populations navigating between different worlds.

The ancient Texans of the Early Archaic were not isolated actors.

They were part of the continental web of relationships — exchange, kinship, shared cultural traditions — that connected populations across the hemisphere.

The marine shells in their burials reflect this connection.