There was a tour of the Texas Archaeological Research Laboratories (TARL) of the University of Texas at Austin and the Gault Site during the recent Society for American Archaeology Meetings (SAA) held in Austin from April 25 to 29, 2007. I was one of the lucky people to go on the tour since it was limited to around 60 people. The Gault site is one of the most important Paleoindian sites in the United States. Over 1 million artifacts (mostly flake debitage, but plenty of other tools, bones, etc.) have been recovered from Gault making it the largest Clovis site in terms of artifacts, known in North America. It is estimated that the Gault site artifacts represent over 50% of all Clovis materials recovered in North America.

The tour started out by taking us to the TARL labs where we were shown the facilities. Clovis and possible Pre-Clovis materials recovered from the Gault site were laid out for us to examine. Michael Collins (in the orange shirt and suspenders in the accompanying photographs) from the University of Texas at Austin, who is in charge of the excavations at Gault, took us around the labs.

The Gault site is the only site that has produced evidence of portable rock art for Clovis peoples. Limestone cobbles were inscriped with a series of intersecting lines, some in geometric motifs and other in dendritic patters that may represent plants or leaves.

The Gault site is noted for its Clovis component. Above are the complete and broken finished Clovis points (i.e., they were broken during use and not broken during manufacture) from the site.

However, Clovis people at the Gault site also were visiting it because chert was easily obtained nearby. They chipped the chert into various tools and the complete manufacturing sequence for Clovis points is found at Gault. Above are some of the Clovis preforms that broke during manufacture of Clovis points.

The Gault site is also one of the few sites that has produced artifacts in good stratigraphic contexts below Clovis materials. It is believed that these earlier artifacts were not made by Clovis people, but no diagnostic points have been found that conclusively show this. Excavations into the levels below the Clovis materials has been limited and may not have exposed a large enough area to find diagnostic remains. It is possible, but believed unlikely, that these materials may represent older Clovis occupations of Gault. However, the flaking style displayed by the flakes recovered is not the same as the Clovis remains found above them. The above labeled photograph shows where the possible Pre-Clovis remains were found. The numbers on the right side correspond to the level numbers in the follwing photographs of the flakes recovered from the test unit.

After the lab tour, we went out to the Gault site. It is located in the Buttermilk Creek Valley on the Edwards Plateau northwest of Austin.

The above photograph is of the Edwards Plateau immediately above the Buttermilk Creek valley. It shows the scattered, prickly pear, grass, juniper and oak characteristic of the area. The white rocks in the center and center left of the photograph are Edwards Plateau chert that was one of the attractions of the area to the Clovis people living at Gault.

The above photograph is of Buttermilk Creek near the areas where the Gault excavations were conducted. It is lined with cottonwood, oak and pecan trees.

Michael Collins showing us the only petroglyph known to be near the Gault site in rocks along the edge of the Buttermilk Creek valley. It is a historic petroglyph of a church with a cross on top. It is much later than any of the prehistoric occupations of the Gault site, but just when it was carved during the historic period is not known.

This is the second of two test units at Gault that Michael Collins had opened for us to view. The upper layers down to the deeper and smaller test unit cut in the floor were Late Prehistoric and Archaic burnt rock midden deposits dating from roughly 400 years ago down to 9000 years ago (from the surface to the top of the stepped in smaller test unit). These levels were largely looted in the past. Previous owners of the property had let collectors dig into the burnt rock midden for $25 a day. Fortunately, they usually stopped digging at the base of the Archaic midden and did not disturb the Paleoindian remains that were below it.

The above photograph is a close up of the strata in the smaller test unit dug into the bottom of the larger unit in the previous photograph. These are the Paleoindian layers. Plano and Folsom remains were recovered in the upper portion of this profile, while Clovis and the possible Pre-Clovis artifacts came from the lower levels.

Collins indicated that they plan to build a roof over the area around this test unit and expand excavations down to the possible Pre-Clovis levels. This probably will take two years of work with the first year concentration on removing the Late Prehistoric and Archaic occupation levels. The second year will concentrate on the Paleoindian levels and trying to confirm that the lowest materials are definitely Pre-Clovis in age. Gault still has a lot to contribute to Paleoindian studies and I will be looking forward to seeing what they find.

The tour of Gault and the TARL labs was very interesting and I would like to thank Michael Collins and his crew for all their work on the tour. It was well worth spending the day getting to view the artifacts and general setting of Gault. I now have a much better knowledge of the site and where materials were recovered. You do not always have a good idea of what the site is like from simply reading reports, etc. The trade off was I missed many papers presented on Friday at the SAA meeting. I don't regret that, though, since I probably will get a chance to see published versions of those papers in the future. However, I may not get another chance to visit the Gault site. The Gault site is an important Paleoindian locality and one that will continue to provide new information about the earliest inhabitants of North America.