In the sun-scorched lands of prehistoric South Texas, where the winds whisper across dry plains and coastal marshes, echoes of ancient rituals lie buried beneath the surface—carved into the very bones of the people who once thrived there. Long overlooked and misunderstood, these modified human bones have begun to reveal a deeper, richer narrative about the cultural practices of indigenous communities that lived on the edge of the Gulf of Mexico. Thanks to the work of bioarchaeologist Dr. Matthew S. Taylor, a new light is being cast on these enigmatic relics, pulling them from obscurity into the center of a vital discussion about ritual, identity, and memory in ancient America.
The Forgotten Bones of South Texas
Modified human bones from southern Texas have long been an archaeological curiosity—recognized but rarely studied. First mentioned in the early 20th century by W.B. Pearce in 1932, and again by Thomas Hester in 1969, these bones were typically noted in excavation reports and then left unanalyzed in collections. No major interpretative framework had been applied to them. That is, until Dr. Taylor decided to revisit them with fresh eyes, guided by his passion for understanding the lives of Texas’s prehistoric peoples.
Dr. Taylor’s interest was born from a deeply personal connection to the land. As a child exploring his grandparents’ ranch in Central Texas, he discovered the traces of long-vanished peoples etched into the landscape. “The desire to learn more about who made them led me to archaeology,” Taylor recalls, “but I realized that bioarchaeology allowed me to study the people themselves.” That curiosity, rooted in the soil of his own childhood, has grown into a professional mission: to reconstruct the lives of ancient Texans not just through their tools or settlements, but through their bones.
A Collection Reawakened
Dr. Taylor’s reanalysis focused on twenty-nine modified human bones housed at the Texas Archaeological Research Laboratory (TARL) at the University of Texas at Austin. Each bone was a clue, not just to death, but to what death meant in this ancient society. The collection had sat in curatorial limbo, but Taylor’s methodical work, undertaken with respect for both the science and the communities connected to the remains, breathed new life into their story.
The analysis was conducted under the ethical and legal guidelines of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), ensuring that tribal voices and rights remained central to the study. The Comanche Nation, Caddo Nation, Mescalero Apache, and Kiowa Tribe—all with ancestral ties to the region—had previously been consulted. As no direct cultural claims had been made, the bones could be studied further, providing rare access to a little-understood chapter in regional prehistory.
A Deliberate Transformation
What Taylor found was nothing short of remarkable. The bones, primarily long bones of the arms and legs, bore distinct signs of intentional modification. Cutmarks told of defleshing, a process that occurred after death, likely performed with stone tools. Once cleaned, the bones were dried and then subjected to the “groove-and-snap” technique—a deliberate method involving deep incisions that weakened the bone, allowing it to be snapped along the groove.
This was not random breakage or post-depositional damage. It was purposeful, practiced, and culturally significant.
Such processing has been documented in various regions of the Americas, but in southern Texas, evidence has been rare and scattered. Taylor’s work suggests that these practices were more widespread and meaningful than previously assumed. “If nothing else,” he writes, “the human bone artifacts act as confirmation that early peoples on the Gulf Coast did not view human bodies, or the reduction of human remains, as taboo or off-limits.”
This insight upends assumptions that such practices were foreign to southern Texas cultures, suggesting instead that death and the dead were embedded in the spiritual and social lives of these communities.
Ancestor Worship or War Trophies?
Why did these people alter the bones of their dead? Two main hypotheses dominate the archaeological literature: ancestor worship and trophy-taking. Both practices have been observed among Native American tribes in various regions, yet neither is clearly documented for prehistoric South Texas.
The idea of ancestor worship gains plausibility from ethnohistoric sources. In the early 16th century, Spanish explorer Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, who survived shipwreck and spent years living among Gulf Coast tribes, reported a striking ritual. He described how the bones of holy men were cremated, mixed with water, and consumed by tribal members—an act rich in symbolic meaning and likely intended to imbibe the wisdom or spiritual essence of the deceased.
Such practices reflect a profoundly different relationship with the dead—one in which the remains are not discarded but transformed into conduits of memory, power, or divine presence.
The second possibility, that of war trophies, also bears consideration. In neighboring regions, especially across the southern Plains, scalping and the keeping of body parts as trophies were well-documented. Warriors displayed their triumphs over enemies through the physical remnants of their foes. Yet again, South Texas remains curiously silent in the historical record. No direct accounts exist of such rituals in this region, making any conclusion tentative.
Still, Taylor’s analysis opens the door to the possibility that such practices did occur—perhaps adapted locally, or infused with different symbolic meanings.
A Musical Humerus and the Sound of the Past
Among the bones studied, one specimen stood out above all the rest. A left humerus, recovered from the site designated 41KL39, had been carefully carved into a musical rasp. Known in Nahuatl as an omichicahuaztli, this instrument was traditionally made from animal or human bone in post-Classic Mexico and used in ritual performances.
The South Texas example bore 29 engraved notches and a zigzag pattern. Wear marks confirmed that the instrument had been used—its notches rhythmically rubbed to produce a reverberating sound, perhaps during ceremonies that honored the dead, celebrated the seasons, or summoned the divine.
This artifact is not just a musical instrument—it is cultural resonance made tangible. It suggests an intricate blend of spiritual expression and cross-cultural influence, possibly linking the peoples of South Texas with the great Mesoamerican civilizations to the south.
Dr. Taylor notes that while such instruments were more commonly made from femurs in Mexico, the South Texas version—crafted from a humerus—may represent a localized adaptation or imitation. “The similarities between the South Texas and Mexican artifact types is a factor inferring influence,” he explains. “The musical rasp seems like an attempt at a copy, in my opinion.”
This raises the intriguing hypothesis of the Gilmore Corridor—a proposed trade and cultural exchange route that may have stretched along the Gulf Coast, linking Mesoamerican societies with indigenous groups across what is now the American Southeast. Though still speculative, the idea finds tantalizing support in artifacts like the musical rasp, which speak in the tones of distant influence.
Cultural Hybridity on the Edge of Empire
What emerges from Taylor’s study is a picture of South Texas as a zone of cultural hybridity. Far from isolated or monolithic, its ancient communities may have been engaged—however intermittently—with ideas, goods, and symbols from larger cultural spheres.
Yet their rituals were also distinctly their own. The modification of human remains reflects a worldview in which death was not an ending, but a transformation—a journey that continued in the hands of the living. Whether commemorating ancestors, marking triumph over enemies, or channeling distant traditions through music, these acts stitched the dead into the fabric of communal identity.
It is a sobering but also beautiful reflection: the dead were not discarded or forgotten—they were reshaped into tools of memory, resonance, and belonging.
Conclusion: The Living Legacy of Ancient Bones
The work of Dr. Matthew S. Taylor transforms these bones from cold archaeological specimens into vibrant cultural artifacts. They no longer sit silently in drawers or display cases—they speak, they sing, and they challenge our assumptions about how prehistoric peoples engaged with death.
As Taylor continues his research, his findings not only enrich our understanding of ancient Texas but also invite a broader reckoning with the diversity of indigenous traditions across the Americas. These bones do not reveal a culture of brutality or taboo-breaking, but one of complexity, adaptability, and deep symbolic engagement with the human body.
They remind us that memory is not always written in books or painted on cave walls—it can be inscribed in bone, reverberating through time in the quiet music of the past.
Reference: Matthew S. Taylor, An Analysis of Pre‐Columbian Modified Human Bone Artifacts From the Western Gulf Coastal Plain of North America, International Journal of Osteoarchaeology (2025). DOI: 10.1002/oa.3402