Still a little bit of 2010 left to enjoy but, wow, what a great year! We had a lot of old friends come and help us out at Gault; the New Hampshire State Conservation and Rescue Archaeology Program, the University of Exeter, the PaleoCultural Research Group, and the Archaeological Society of Virginia. More than 1300 people toured the site this year – some paid tours thanks to our friends at the Bell County and Williamson Museums – and a lot of school children. An NSF grant enabled us to hire help out at the site to make our excavation goals and we REALLY appreciate Dr. Steve Howard, Zach Windler and Nick Swift. They, and the volunteers who put in time over the year, have discovered new information regarding the Texas Archaic period and have worked down to Paleoindian 5 cm at a time. Dr. Bruce Bradley also officially became the co-Principal Investigator at Gault which gives us some great new perspective and guidance.
The GSAR received a grant from the Archaeological Institute of America which helped us expand our educational programs and try out some new approaches. We now have a wonderful Teacher’s Guide for our DVD An Adventure in Time (available as a pdf on our Outreach page) and had a great experience with our first Teacher’s workshop. The GSAR and our partners (Shumla, the Texas Archeological Society, the Texas Historical Foundation, and TexasBeyondHistory.net) were able to attend three Texas teacher’s conventions and talk to thousands of teachers. We also premiered a new Prehistoric Texas heritage trail with Gault as one anchor site.
Our new offices at Texas State University are inhabited and the lab log shows an ever increasing amount of volunteer and intern time working on processing materials. We have a steady influx of students for the first time in a long while as well! Many of those students were able to participate in the excavation of a mammoth (or mastodon) tusk in Temple this fall.
We are now just starting our 2011 membership drive and we hope to see all of our old members renew but also have faith that we’ll see a number of new members. Your membership in the GSAR is very important to us – your support makes many of our programs and our research possible. We are continually applying for grants but they do not cover all expenses. One of the goals for 2011 is also to institute some new membership benefits in terms of functions and speakers. Membership is relatively inexpensive and one privilege of membership is that it allows you to participate in the excavation of a world-famous site. When you receive your renewal card please fill it out and return it promptly. If you are not a current member please take the time to check out our membership page, fill in an application and send it in today!