Obsidian blade could be from Coronado expedition fabled to be looking for 'Cities of Gold'
A greenish obsidian blade, believed to have been found on the Texas Panhandle, may be from the 16th-century expedition led by the Spanish explorer Francisco Vázquez de Coronado, a new study suggests. The sharp tool's provenance is hazy, but a chemical analysis of the obsidian reveals that it came from the Sierra de Pachuca mountain range of Central Mexico, where many Indigenous people on the expedition got raw materials for cutting tools, the researchers found. It's possible that an Indigenous person traveling with Coronado crafted the blade in Mexico and later discarded it in Texas, which could help determine Coronado's exact route through the Lonestar State, the researchers said. "Although Coronado's exact route through the Texas Panhandle in AD 1541 is uncertain, current understanding suggests that it passed through or close to Mclean," the researchers wrote in the study, published in January in the Journal of the North Texas Archeological Society . R...