Wow, what a summer! If you’d ever like to see what it would be like to practice archaeology on the planet Mercury Texas might be the place for you. More than 70 days of triple digits (Fahrenheit) with humidity and it still doesn’t get appreciably cooler at night. This might have slowed us down a bit but the Gault Project continues year round…
Although short staffed we have accomplished a lot so far this year. We have nearly doubled the number of people who have gone through our educational programs (Speakers, workshops, tours) and from the look of the fall schedule so far it looks like we will more than triple that number for 2011! We held a successful teacher’s workshop in July at the site and are starting to prepare for our attendance at three large teacher’s conferences this fall. We cosponsored a conference on Preceramic Mesoamerica in Antigua, Guatemala this summer and it was well attended and received.
The excavators have moved more than 3 cubic meters of dirt in 5 cm levels. A few of the units are down well below the Clovis strata and we are continuing to find diagnostic tools -some Clovis-like and some not but it will be a while before we can tell you what all this means. Dr. Jack Rink (McMaster University) recently paid us a visit and took about 20 new OSL samples so we hope to get more dates back. We have had groups of volunteers from the Virginia Archaeological Society, the University of Exeter, the New Hampshire State Conservation and Rescue Archaeology Program and, most recently, a field school from Idaho State University.
We have a lot of upcoming events (check the events section from our homepage) this fall and expect to be very busy. We are always looking for great volunteers out in the field or in our lab in San Marcos BUT we also need volunteers who can help in other ways. We need some limited electrical and plumbing work done at our field house and are also always on the lookout for good carpenters. The campus has been plagued the last few years with fallen trees so if chainsawing is your thing we have just the place for you! And if your passion is the history and archaeology of Gault then you could sign on as a docent and learn to give tours of the site. There are many ways to get involved.
Join the GSAR and come volunteer. You can be part of the excitement as archaeological science helps to define a new story for the peopling of the Americas!