Our new website is up and running with most of the bugs taken care of. Dr. Tom Williams has spent a lot of time on the bells and whistles and I think he’s done a great job. We are currently working on setting up the member-only section which will offer copies of GSAR articles, the newsletter articles and other things as we think of them.
A lot has happened in the last several months. First, the deep excavation at the Gault Site (Area 15) is finally backfilled. After minutely recording everything in it and getting all sorts of samples to be run in the future we were able to get several people to help in July in getting it filled. It was a two-day procedure and we’re still dealing with sorting through all the equipment etc. that came out of the excavation structure. That means that excavation at the site is now officially over.
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That doesn’t mean that GSAR excavation is over and Field Director Dr. Steve Howard has been busy with sites near Temple, Evant and Canyon Lake among others. We survey and test 20-30 sites a year in Texas to look for an intact Paleoindian site to compare to Gault. By any stretch of the imagination Gault is an unusual site and we would like to see what the “norm” was here in Central Texas. Steve works with a great group of volunteers – if you’re interested in fieldwork the only requirement is that you be a GSAR member and we will put you on the email callout list.
We may be done with excavation at Gault but we are still working on a publication regarding the Clovis and Older-than-Clovis occupations at the site. A draft is scheduled for Spring 2017 but there is still a lot of work to do and we are trying to coordinate input from around 40 researchers. We will continue to publish articles about some of the specifics (see our online bibliography for some of the latest) and we have so far had 6 Ph.D dissertations and 12 M.A. theses come out of the site materials – two more M.A. theses are currently in the works.
We will continue to administer and maintain the Gault Site for the Archaeological Conservancy and currently are working on plans to upgrade and enhance our tour signage and materials. We offer monthly tours of the site organized by the Williamson and Bell County Museums (alternately) and the GSAR schedules tours for any group of 10 or more.