Fascinating about that house, Steve. I did some research on the trees related to the "monkey puzzle" tree - they're all originally from the South Pacific. Odd thing is how adaptable they are, we had a couple of them in our neighborhood in Seattle and they didn't seem to suffer from the colder weather that far north.

There were people living in North America at the same time your Iron Age fort was built, but you have to go to certain parts of the New World continents to find the durable structures. From Central America spreading into the northern end of South America and the southern portions of North America you find many fine stone buildings, roads, water-management structures, agricultural sites, etc. Into Arizona, New Mexico, and California you find stone and adobe structures and things like ball courts. Moving north and east dwellings tended to be made of mud, wood, or skins and there are fewer archaeological signs; sites for rich information tend to be middens and burial sites.

There was an interesting interview yesterday on a locally produced public radio talk show about the problem of finding mummified human remains on private land in Texas. In particular in the driest area of West Texas. People can "own" these mummies and their artifacts. It's a disheartening state of affairs. Here's a link to the discussion and the blurb about it:

When Native American artifacts are discovered on private land, who owns them? New Yorker contributing writer Rachel Monroe joins host Krys Boyd to discuss the moral and legal questions of finding objects – even bodies – in Texas and who has a right to display them, profit off them and even own them. Her article is “The Bodies in the Cave.”