The Science Advances article we published in early July has been a great success. Commentaries have been printed in at least 24 other languages (that we know of) and the press releases were printed worldwide. There has been some critique but surprisingly little uninformed bashing and we are beginning to see some serious critiques that will help us further refine our upcoming monograph on the Clovis and earlier occupations at the Gault Site. This article was the first to publish dates from the earliest occupations at the site but will not be the last. If you have not seen the article it is available at: http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/4/7/eaar5954.
The media attention has brought other forms of attention and the staff has been busy with requests for speaking engagements and even our summer tours. The regularly scheduled August tour, which normally has a small turnout due to our 100 degree plus temperatures in Central Texas, actually had 32 people signed up for it! This fall’s schedule looks busy as well – we have several public engagements coming up (see our events calendar on the first page for details) and presentations scheduled for the Plains Anthropological Conference and the Texas Archaeological Society’s Annual Meeting – both in San Antonio at the end of October
In November one of the older-than-Clovis projectile points will go on display at the Bullock Texas State History Museum and we will be premiering our new video - Exploring the World’s Last Frontier: The Peopling of the Americas. Like our previous video it will be available for free to educational organizations and available for purchase from our store. We also have a chapter in a book coming out in November (available from Amazon now for pre-purchase) People and Culture in Ice Age Americas, which looks at early evidence for humans in the Americas from both North and South America. I have also just seen proofs for a popular book about the excavations at the Gault Site Secrets in the Dirt: Uncovering the Ancient People of Gault by Mary Black which is due to come out in early 2019.
The lab is humming with activity as we near completion on the monograph and, with the end of the summer temperatures, fieldwork is beginning again here in Texas so we’re all looking at a busy Fall!
