People & land

Acknowledging the land and its people

Every find comes from land that is the ancestral homeland of Indigenous peoples. Where this collection began, that includes the Tonkawa, Coahuiltecan peoples, and others, who have lived there for more than 13,000 years; their descendants are still here today.

The objects in this catalog were made by people whose descendants are living communities. These objects are part of their heritage, not just curiosities or collectibles. We document them to learn and to keep a careful record, and we know our understanding is limited. Where we use type names and period labels, those are archaeologists’ categories, not the names or histories the makers’ descendants would necessarily use.

Learn from the source

• Tonkawa Tribe of Oklahoma official tribal website
• Texas Historical Commission state historic preservation office
• Texas Beyond History public archaeology of Texas

Our ethics

• No selling. Nothing in this catalog is for sale, and we make no value claims.
• No burial items. We do not collect or catalog human remains or burial-associated objects. If they are encountered, we stop, leave them in place, and contact the Texas Historical Commission.
• Permission only. We collect only on private land with the landowner’s permission, never on public land.
• Report significant sites. We encourage reporting significant sites to state archaeologists (the Texas Historical Commission and TARL).
• Protect locations. Exact find locations stay private so sites aren’t disturbed.

If you are a member of a descendant community and would like something in this catalog changed or removed, we welcome that conversation.

About & methods

UnEarthed Finds, the AI-Powered Catalog Tool, is a research record of surface finds from anywhere in the world: artifacts, fossils, and rocks & minerals. Each entry documents material, measurements, photos and a short list of possible identifications, so the collection can be studied, corrected and, if the owner chooses, shared with researchers.

Honest-AI principles

• Possibilities, not identifications. Suggestions are ranked options with a stated confidence level.
• Show the evidence. Each entry lists the features used and what is still missing (scale, base view, weight).
• The owner corrects the record. Hands-on observations (e.g. “stem edges chipped, not ground”) override photo-based guesses and are logged.
• Estimates are labeled. Every measurement says whether it was measured or estimated from a photo.

Disclaimers

This catalog makes no claims about authenticity or monetary value. Type names and date ranges are general references from published regional typologies and should be confirmed by qualified archaeologists.

Texas legal note

• Collect only on private land with the landowner’s permission, and record that permission.
• Collecting on public land (state or federal) is restricted or illegal.
• If you find human remains or burial-associated items, stop, leave them in place, and contact the Texas Historical Commission.
• Consider voluntarily reporting significant sites to the Texas Archeological Research Laboratory (TARL).

Reference Sources

AI suggestions compare your find with free, openly licensed references. Credits travel with every reference photo we show. These are look-alikes for research, not identifications.

• Wikimedia Commons: 274 reference photos (stone tools and artifact look-alikes, fossils, minerals, and natural rocks such as caliche and concretions that are often mistaken for artifacts). Only public-domain, CC0, CC BY and CC BY-SA files, each credited to its author with its license.
• The Paleobiology Database (PBDB): fossil taxon ranks and age ranges (48 Texas taxa). Data CC BY 4.0.
• Smithsonian Open Access (National Museum of Natural History: fossils and minerals, 17 images) and The Met Open Access (5 ground-stone objects). CC0, credited.
• PIDBA, the Paleoindian Database of the Americas: Paleoindian point measurements. CC BY 4.0.
• projectilepoints.net, Wikidata (CC0) and Wikipedia: type names, periods and regions (facts and links only).
• Texas Beyond History, the Hill Country Archeological Association point typology and Texas Archeological Society Bulletin 47: ages and type descriptions on the Learn page, restated in our own words. Link only.
• Digital Atlas of Ancient Life (Paleontological Research Institution): fossil identification pages. Link only: its atlases and encyclopedia are CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 (non-commercial), so we do not copy them.
• RRUFF Project: mineral photos and data. Link only; cite Lafuente, Downs, Yang & Stone (2015), “The power of databases: the RRUFF project.”
• U.S. Geological Survey: mineral and geology references. Link only.
• Puget Sound Knappers point database: a large point-type image collection. Link only (its images come from many third parties).

Details, licenses and what we import: docs/reference-sources.md.

Model: how the AI learns

GPS privacy summary

• Exact location is private by default and never included in the published data/catalog.json.
• Sharing levels: Private (owner only), County (county and state only), Fuzzed (~10 km area, fixed offset per site).
• Photo EXIF/GPS is stripped by re-encoding each image in the browser before storage.
• Exports leave location out unless you tick “Include private location”.
• Your additions are stored only in your browser (IndexedDB); nothing is uploaded.