The marine shells found in the burials at Bering Sinkhole and other Texas sites speak to a different kind of adaptation: the maintenance of trade and exchange networks across enormous distances.

The Gulf of Mexico coast is hundreds of miles from the Edwards Plateau.

Marine shells that have been found in interior Texas Archaic burials were not transported by accident.

They were traded, carried, valued — objects that had traveled far from their origin and were considered worth placing with the dead.

This exchange was not exceptional.

It was routine.

The people of Archaic Texas were embedded in continental-scale networks of exchange that connected communities across the southern half of North America.

What The DNA Might Have Said