The most fundamental limitation of the archaeological record of the ancient Texans is not methodological.

It is not a problem that better dating methods or more sophisticated DNA analysis will solve.

It is the silence of the voices themselves.

The people buried at Bering Sinkhole and Buckeye Knoll had languages.

They spoke to each other, told stories, explained the world to their children, argued about where to camp and when to move.

They had words for the sinkhole they used as a cemetery — words that described what it was and why it mattered, words that encoded the cosmological understanding that made the dark shaft sacred.

They had names for each other, words for the relationships between them, expressions of grief when someone died and joy when someone was born.