Annie Riegert is a Curatorial Technician at TARL. This article is part of the June 2018 TARL newsletter.
An ongoing digitization and records inventory project is underway at TARL. Under a 2017-2018 Texas Preservation Trust Fund (TPTF) grant, the project targets excavation and survey reports conducted in the late 1930’s as a subset of the larger Works Projects Administration (WPA) project. In the wake of the Great Depression and much needed employment, the program offered jobs on public works projects including archaeological survey and excavation throughout the country. Today, we are working on archiving the product of the WPA survey and excavation in Highland Lakes Area with a focus on Lakes Austin, Buchanan, and Travis. Further artifact analysis was conducted by the University of Texas in the 1960’s. Interest in the WPA project has produced many reports and analyses in various forms including records on microfilm. A database, which willhouse all excavation and survey data, will facilitate a more robust understanding of the extent of the WPA project in our local area. Additionally, digitization will enable greater access to records while also ensuring long term document preservation. We are looking forward to sharing the finished project for further research into the history of archaeology in central Texas.
Archive document depicting stone tools found at a WPA site in Travis County.
As many of you know, we have been hard at work for the last two years with UT’s Liberal Arts Instructional Technology Services (LAITS) trying to bring our 17-year-old website, Texas Beyond History, into the 21st Century. We are happy to report that this complicated “makeover” is nearly complete and promises both esthetic and functional improvements. The project transforms our main entry portals as well as educational activities and interactive graphics originally programmed in Adobe Flash into a more modern technology accessible on many more platforms. This will allow viewers –whether in the classroom or in the field–to use tablets and, to a lesser extent, cell phones, to engage in TBH’s interactive learning activities, open interactive charts and maps, and fully utilize the resources of the website. TBH will have a fresh, new look but more importantly should function more smoothly.
Website technology has advanced exponentially since the founding of TBH in 2001, when Steve and I, along with student website developer Meg Kemp, unveiled the website and the first 20 site exhibits. At the time, we were excited to offer many interactive features for maps, graphics, and student learning activities using Flash technology. The “cat’s meow” for its time, this program provided exciting tools to incorporate animation and other interactive capabilities in maps and graphics (e.g. opening up stratigraphic layers in a profile map). Unfortunately, Flash is no longer being supported by many browsers and has been dropped altogether by Apple and some newer Android devices. Viewers who use Apple products, particularly iPads and Mac books, may have been encountering blank pages where our traditional TBH interactive maps and Kids Only revolving carousel should be.
As further complication, TBH was designed for “mousing” on a desktop or laptop, before touchpad navigation came into vogue. Many of our interactive scenes where users “mouse over and click” on segments of paintings to access more detailed information and site-specific photos of evidence (ie., Frank Weir’s remarkable painting of a prehistoric burial scene from Loma Sandia cemetery) cannot be utilized on these devices. As might be anticipated, this is a particularly critical problem in the classroom, and for K-12 teachers in particular, as schools increasingly are providing individual tablets for student use. For LAITS, the process has been especially challenging due to the volume of Flash content on TBH and markedly different formats in each of the Flash activities. There has been no “one size fits all” solution to reprogramming this content. Over the last year, however, LAITS web developers engineered a process to strip out content and imagery and then recreate the 40+ interactives using HTML5.
Along with the technical changes, there also will be a new look for TBH. Instead of the interactive Texas sites map, TBH will soon have a colorful and streamlined portal for accessing all of the website sections. (A revamped version of the familiar TBH map page will be accessible in a section called Site Explorer and made functional for all browsers.)
Rollout of our revamped website is slated for sometime this Fall (2018). This is particularly important because TBH is heavily used in university archeology classes as well as in 4th and 7th-grade classrooms. We continue to receive emails from Social Studies teachers who have been stymied by the non-working Flash activities, but are anxious to once again use educational interactives such as “Through the Eyes of the Explorer: Cabeza de Vaca on the South Texas Plains.” Older students (even university students, according to Texas A&M professor Alston Thoms,) have used the kids Flash activity “Stratification in Action!” to better understand complex stratigraphic processes such as that which occurred over thousands of years on the Medina River at the Richard Beene site, on which the activity is based.
This summer (with Steve back at TARL just in time for the TBH review process!) we will continue testing the updated website, checking new functions, and kicking the tires, so to speak. It is a painstaking process with numerous technological bugs lurking in the 60,000+ files that comprise TBH. Fortunately TBH Associate Editor Heather Smith and Education Advisor Carol Schlenk have been able to join in the effort. While change can be difficult (if not agonizing), we at TBH are determined to embrace the opportunity to usher this much loved and critically acclaimed public education website into the modern era. We are grateful for the time and dedicated efforts of the LAITS staff and student technical assistants.
And as for what lies beyond the website revamp process, Steve is already at work creating new plans and a vision of the future for TBH. Stay tuned!
Ken Brown is a visiting researcher at TARL. This article is part of the June 2018 TARL newsletter.
Much of my research over the past couple of decades has focused on reconstructing Texas paleoenvironments by studying snails and sphaeriid clams. Snails are very moisture-sensitive, and most of the state (except east Texas) doesn’t have acid soils, so the shells usually preserve well, except where groundwater or shrink-swell processes have been active. If proper sampling is done, enough specimens can often be recovered to allow some rudimentary quantitative methods to be applied. Although snails are not especially temperature-sensitive, they make good paleo-moisture proxies, and because vegetation and moisture are correlated, snails can also hint at past vegetative cover. Aquatic snails are especially diagnostic of past hydrologic conditions. Some species can tolerate hot, stagnant, poorly oxygenated water with high solute levels, and others require cool, well-oxygenated, fresh flowing water, so an aquatic assemblage can tell us a lot about past stream conditions. Snails are sessile animals with short lifespans, which means that individual field samples capture paleoenvironmental profiles that are restricted in time and space.
Proper sampling means fine-mesh wet-sieving of fairly large samples and picking of whatever shows up, including shell fragments and juveniles. I use a standard nested set of oversize brass geologic sieves (18 inch diameter; Fig. 1). Mesh sizes are #10 (2 mm), #18 (1 mm), and #35 (0.5 mm). The British were the earliest proponents of this kind of research, and they often use one-liter samples, perhaps modeling their sampling methods after those of pollen analysts. But England is a wet place replete with snails, and while one-liter samples may be adequate there, Texas is a lot drier, so my target sample size is usually about 12-15 liters. There are perhaps 185 or so species of terrestrial snails native to Texas, and recent research suggests there might be another 60 or so aquatic species. Many of these (perhaps as many as 60% for terrestrial species?) are too small to be captured on quarter-inch archeological field screens. Most or nearly all the juveniles will fall through standard field screens, even for the larger species, so fine mesh sampling is essential if the complete spectrum of species is to be recovered.
Figure 1. Nested geologic sieves used for sampling snails.
For paleoenvironmental studies, I’ll try to collect a few pilot samples first to find out if snails are preserved at all, what condition they’re in, and how abundant they are. If the site looks promising, I’ll try to collect a continuous column of samples from a representative profile, perhaps in 10 cm vertical increments. To get the required 15 liters from a 5 cm thick sample requires a column about 60-80 cm wide, which is much more extensive than the usual pollen sample column. I try to avoid sampling features, since by definition features are places with extensive human disturbance, but for some reason many of the snail samples reported in the literature (for example, Wilson-Leonard) have come from cultural features.
In the field, I measure out 15 liters of sediment, plus a little extra allowing for shrinkage, bag it in sandbags, and return it to TARL, where it is weighed and the volume re-measured after drying. Then the 15-liter sample is soaked in tapwater overnight (with dispersant if clay-rich) and wet-sieved through nested sieves. Small specimens are identified with a binocular microscope at low magnification (usually no more than 10X). Shell fragments are also saved and weighed, because recovering fragments is the only way to estimate how many fragments have been lost to breakage. Juveniles are tabulated separately and identified if possible. Snails are much like vertebrates, in that individuals often don’t develop species-diagnostic characters until adulthood is reached, so sometimes juveniles can only be identified to the family or genus level. On the other hand, if there is only one species in a genus present at a site, it is sometimes possible to assume that all the juveniles are representatives of the same species. For example if the only adult Gastrocopta found at a site are Gastrocopta pellucida, it is probably safe to assume that any juvenile Gastrocopta belong to that same species. If juveniles can be identified, adult/juvenile ratios can be computed. This will tell us something about juvenile mortality, which is linked to environmental conditions. High juvenile mortality probably means severe water stress, although fecundity can also be an evolutionary adaptation to living in stressful habitats.
Most of the formal archeomalacological studies in Texas (those involving extensive fine sieving of sediments) have been done east of the 98º longitude line, or in other words east of the 32-inch annual precipitation isohyet, in the better watered part of the state. I’ve done studies at the Berger Bluff, Vara Daniel, and Fish Creek Slough sites, and other researchers have done studies at the Aubrey, Wilson-Leonard, Richard Beene, and various other sites. There have been a few studies in the Texas Panhandle and High Plains, at Lubbock Lake, Lake Theo, and at Mackenzie Reservoir (species lists with no specimen counts or sample volume given are provided for the Rex Rodgers and Snail Bed sites). Species lists are available for the Plainview site and several other sites on the High Plains (Neck 1995), but again, specimen counts and sample volumes are not given. At least one site (41CC112; Treece 1992:Table 15) in west-central Texas has been reported.
The northeast and southwest quadrants of Texas, on the other hand, are a blank slate. The archeomalacology of East Texas remains completely unknown. The acidic, sandy soils and constant saturation with phreatic water are hostile to shell preservation. Indeed, I would speculate that there may be some calcium-poor areas in East Texas where even living populations are absent today.
The southwest quadrant of Texas is mostly unexplored. One of the earliest archeomalacological studies in the state was done by Cheatum (1966) as part of the Amistad paleoecological project at Eagle Cave, Bonfire Shelter, Devil’s Mouth, and Devil’s Rockshelter, but the number of samples, volumetric size of samples, and number of specimens are not disclosed; intrasite provenience is reported only by stratum. Thus, we are left only with a laundry list of species. More recent studies at Bonfire and Skyline Shelter provide quantitative data, but both of these sites are rockshelters, and the Lower Pecos remains understudied.
In the entire vast area of the Big Bend (more than 12,300 square miles, not counting parts of Culberson, Hudspeth, and Reeves counties), no formal archeomalacological studies have been done until recently, as far as I know. The Big Bend is truly a blank slate. The potential of the driest two-thirds of Texas for these studies is largely unknown. Pierce (1987) recovered large numbers of specimens at Lubbock Lake, but most of these came from bedload gravels or cross-bedded sand in Stratum 1. The research potential of alluvial terrace deposits in west Texas has been largely unknown. Cheatum’s faunal lists from Devil’s Mouth, and Devil’s Rockshelter offer promise, but without specimen counts, their productivity is unclear. We know that snails are moisture-seeking organisms, and we know that they are most abundant and diverse in the wettest parts of Texas, but how well do they function as paleoenvironmental proxies in the driest parts of the state?
Figure 2. Site locations in Brewster and Val Verde Co.
In July, 2013, I visited the Genevieve Lykes Duncan site (41BS2615), a stratified Paleoindian site on the O2 Ranch, near the confluence of Terlingua Creek and Davenport Draw in Brewster County, and collected a continuous column spanning the entire Holocene. In May, 2016, I visited the Sayles Adobe site (41VV2239), a high terrace site in Eagle Nest Canyon near Langtry. Tori Pagano collected a discontinuous series of eight pilot samples for me, from sandy sediments representing about a 2500-year span of the Late Holocene. I have now processed and analyzed the samples from both of these sites (Fig. 2), and in future issues of this newsletter, I hope to summarize what I’ve learned.
References Cited
Cheatum, E. P.
1966 Report on Mollusk Shells Recovered From Four Archeological Sites in the Amistad Reservoir. Pages 227-243 in Dee Ann Story and Vaughn M. Bryant, Jr. (assemblers), A Preliminary Study of the Paleoecology of the Amistad Reservoir Area. Final Report of Research Under the Auspices of the National Science Foundation (GS-667).
Neck, Raymond W.
1995 Molluscan Remains. Pages 59-67 in Vance T. Holliday, Stratigraphy and Paleoenvironments of Late Quaternary Valley Fills on the Southern High Plains. Geological Society of America, Memoir 186.
Pierce, Harold G.
1987 The Gastropods, with Notes on Other Invertebrates. Chapter 6 (pages 41-48) in Eileen Johnson (ed.), Lubbock Lake. Late Quaternary Studies on the Southern High Plains. Texas A&M University Press.
Treece, Abby C.
1992 A Study of Five Annular Burned Rock Middens from the O.H. Ivie Reservoir, West Central Texas. Unpublished MA thesis, University of Texas at Austin.
Marybeth Tomka is the Head of Collections at TARL. This article is part of the June 2018 TARL newsletter.
Such was the title of a brown bag lecture that S. Chad Oliver, professor of Cultural Anthropology at the University of Texas at Austin, gave in the mid-1980s. This is the story of my connection to Dr. Oliver–Chad–that mirrors my lifelong relationship or infatuation with both science fiction and anthropology.
Dr. S. Chad Oliver, Professor of Anthropology and science fiction author.
Looking back, my interest in sci-fi probably came from two of my three brothers, who were science fiction fans–growing up, one’s older brothers were like gods. Maybe my attraction also came from the social interactions and missteps played out in science fiction, especially the sci-fi pieces that were popular when I was a kid. The science fiction of those days often involved nuclear war and invasion by aliens. I think most of this fiction was due to the fear of nuclear holocaust and the perception that scientists would lose of control of their inventions, which would be used for evil. This takes us back to the lecture by Chad. Gene Roddenberry, the creator of Star Trek, believed that humans would overcome their destructive phase and come out the other side as peace-loving and exploring peoples. Like Roddenberry, Chad viewed humans as possessing individual gifts that could be used for good, and this was reflected in his science fiction.
In the summer of 1978, I had finished my freshmen year at UT and was dating a man also fascinated with sci-fi. Knowing I was studying anthropology, he borrowed a book from one of his mentors, who of course was another sci-fi nerd. The book was about an anthropologist studying a small town in south Texas that held an entire population of aliens. I was excited because I had just taken my cultural anthropology intro class from the author, none other than Chad Oliver. Unbeknownst to me at the time, Chad had spent time at the World War II internment camp in south Texas with his medically-trained parents, an experience that influenced his writing of this book. I loved the book and continued to read Chad’s fiction as I progressed through my graduatestudies. One of my favorites was his fictional take on the story of the battle at Little Big Horn. The book, other than the fictional content, was almost verbatim his Plains Indians class lectures leading up to the Battle and Custer’s fall. The hours in the classroom with him that semester were so enjoyable, and when he would see me checking my mail in the grad lounge after class would ask how he did that day. My dear Dr. Oliver, you were always a riveting lecturer.
This spring, a colleague here at TARL who shares my passion for science fiction and I got onto the topic of Chad’s collected works. I began searching on Kindle for his work and was rewarded with a gold mine of reading pleasure. During my reading I came across a passage in the short story “Now to grieve a little” that made me exclaim out loud about Chad’s cleverness of weaving reality into fiction. Several pages later after the discovery of the mystery artifact central to the telling of the story and its background secrets, our lead character travels to Austin to visit the archaeologist at UT:
“He walked rapidly across the almost deserted campus of the University of Texas in Austin, feeling the hot sun beat down on his back and trying not to think, for a moment, about the tiny plastic disc that had so altered his life. He looked at the Main Building as he passed by, . . .He walked into Waggoner Hall, . . .walked into the Anthropology Museum. He passed through the empty museum, hardly glancing at the familiar exhibits. Campbell and Krieger were both working with Joe Cason down at Falcon, so the museum was even quieter than usual. “
Those reading this of a certain age and knowledge of Texas archaeology will immediately recognize the names of these people as those who left lasting effects on the practice of archaeology and the very collections that TARL holds.
The connection between this story of Chad Oliver, who always wanted to teach a class about anthropology in science fiction but never had the time, and TARL’s history is just another of the wonders of working here. But one final comment: Chad was wrong–there was an anthropologist on Star Trek’s Enterprise for one episode. I let him know after the lecture, and I like to think that he appreciated my candor as appreciated the unique personalities and talents of each of his students. My dear Dr. Oliver, you could reach out and grab your students with your lectures. After all these years, we miss you still.
Original artwork for Chad Oliver’s science-fiction novel “Fires of Forever.”
David Glen Robinson is a visiting researcher at TARL. This article is part of the June 2018 TARL Newsletter.
Recent ceramic petrographic work at the Texas Archeological Research Laboratory (TARL) has identified an unusual tempering material in a sherd of Leon Plain pottery from the Albert and Bessie Kronkosky State Natural Area in Bandera County, Texas. In petrographic work performed on a sherd of Leon Plain for Texas Parks and Wildlife Department under the supervision of Aina Dodge, the author identified the mineral olivine. The mineral was a co-temper with the more usual bone temper common in Leon Plain ceramics.
Olivine is an igneous mineral forming deep within volcanic vents or channels. It is considered an intrusive mineral and a component of basic, granular volcanic rocks such as gabbros. At the earth’s surface, olivine and other intrusives erode relatively rapidly, thus they are somewhat rare in surface deposits and not widely distributed. In hand samples, or gem forms, olivine is olive green, hence the name, and has vitreous luster.
The microphotographs presented here are all from the subject sherd, BN266, designated from its site, 41BN266. All the photos are taken in cross-polarized light, or xpl. This was done to show the array of distinctive colors of various specimens of olivine in the sherd matrix.
Given the rarity of olivine, the likely production locale of the pottery was several score miles northeast of 41BN266 on the Llano Uplift, where intrusive rocks were brought to the surface during the uplift events. An alternative source for intrusives is in the Big Bend and Marfa volcanic regions hundreds of miles to the southwest of Bandera County. More specific estimates of the sherd’s resource/production locality are not feasible at this time.
Figures 1-4.Microscopic petrographic images of olivine mineral temper identified in Leon Plain pottery from 41BN266.
Acknowledgement
The ceramic petrography on the 41BN266 sherd was sponsored by TPWD and supervised by Aina Dodge. Timothy K. Perttula served asthe ceramic consultant to the project. Their guidance is gratefully acknowledged.
Timothy K. Perttula is a visiting researcher at TARL. This article is part of the June 2018 TARL Newsletter.
Plain and engraved gorgets are rare occurrences on ancestral Caddo sites in the southern Caddo area, as they have been found in burial features at only 13 sites in Southwest Arkansas, Northwest Louisiana, southeastern Oklahoma, and East Texas (Table 1). These include 12 plain and 28 engraved gorgets, and the engraved gorgets have a number of different styles as defined by Brain and Phillips (1996). A number of these gorgets are in the collections of the Texas Archeological Research Laboratory at The University of Texas at Austin, and I have documented them as part of the recent study of a 15th-16th century engraved gorget from the Pipe site (41AN67) in the holdings of the Gregg County Historical Museum in Longview, Texas.
Fifty-five percent of the gorgets (and 57 percent of the engraved gorgets) from southern Caddo sites are from Middle Caddo period Sanders phase burial features in the East Mound at the T. M. Sanders site (Figure 1), and no other site has more than three gorgets (see Table 1). The gorgets occur in Middle Caddo (ca. A.D. 1200-1400, n=22) (Figure 2), Late Caddo (ca. A.D. 1400-1680, n=16) (Figure 3), and Historic Caddo (ca. A.D. 1680-1800, n=2) burial features (see Table 1).
Figure 1. Engraved turkey gorget in Burial 20 at the T. M. Sanders site (41LR2) in the Red River basin.Figure 2. Plain gorget from the Jess Alford site (41HP5) in the South Sulphur River basin.
More than 77 percent of the plain and engraved gorgets from the southern Caddo area are from burial features in Middle and Late Caddo period mound centers on the Red River, and approximately 83 percent of the southern Caddo area sample come from burial features on Red River valley sites. The remainder of the gorgets are from sites in the Ouachita (n=1), Little (n=1), Sulphur (n=1), Sabine (n=2), and Neches (n=2) river basins in southwest Arkansas, southeastern Oklahoma, and East Texas. The gorgets in sites in the Sulphur, Sabine, and Neches river basins in East Texas are from non-mound burial features.
Figure 3. Triskele style engraved gorget in Burial 19 at the Paul Mitchell site (41BW4) in the Red River basin.
Although rare, the clear association of marine shell gorgets with ancestral Caddo burial features (typically the burials of adult
males) found at mound centers is indicative of the display of marine shell jewelry as a prestige good (Deter-Wolf and Peres
2015:179). Such goods were restricted to the use (in life and at death) of the Caddo social elite living at these mound centers,
as they (a) signified and enabled access to supernatural powers and ritual knowledge by the wearer of the gorget, (b)
legitimized political power in communities both local and regional through the acquiring and display of symbolic materials
with high value social currency, and (c) sanctified claims to ancestral Caddo origins, landscapes, and landmarks (cf. Deter-Wolf
and Peres 2015:170; Marquardt and Kozuch 2016:23). The iconography present on marine shell gorgets on Caddo sites
warrants detailed consideration, therefore, because it reflects belief systems of different Caddo groups, as well as the social
relationships between different Caddo groups as well as more far-flung Mississippian groups (see Brain and Phillips 1996).
References Cited
Bell, R. E. and D. A. Baerreis
1951 A Survey of Oklahoma Archaeology. Bulletin of the Texas Archeological and Paleontological Society 22:7-100.
Brain, J. P. and P. Phillips
1996 Shell Gorgets: Styles of the Late Prehistoric and Protohistoric Southeast. Peabody Museum Press, Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University, Cambridge.
Deter-Wolf, A. and T. M. Peres
2015 Embedded: Five Thousand Years of Shell Symbolism in the Southeast. In Trends and Traditions in Southeastern Zooarchaeology, edited by T. M. Peres, pp. 161-185. University Press of Florida, Gainesville.
Etchieson, M.
1981 A Shell Gorget from the Kirkham Site. The Arkansas Archeologist 22:1-3.
Harris, R. K., I. M. Harris, J. C. Blaine, and J. Blaine
1965 A Preliminary Archeological and Documentary Study of the Womack Site, Lamar County, Texas. Bulletin of the Texas Archeological Society 36:287-365.
Jackson, A. T.
1934 Jess Alford Plantation on old channel of South Sulphur River 2 ½ miles North of Nelta and 18 ½ Miles Northeast of Sulphur Springs, Hopkins Co., Trenched July 16, 1934 to July 17, 1934. MS on file, Texas Archeological Research Laboratory, The University of Texas at Austin.
Jackson, A. T., M. S. Goldstein, and A. D. Krieger
2000 The 1931 Excavations at the Sanders Site, Lamar County, Texas: Notes on the Fieldwork, Human Osteology, and Ceramics. Archival Series 2. Texas Archeological Research Laboratory, The University of Texas at Austin.
Krieger, A. D.
1946 Culture Complexes and Chronology in Northern Texas, with Extensions of Puebloan Datings to the Mississippi Valley. Publication No. 4640. The University of Texas, Austin.
Marquardt, W. H. and L. Kozuch
2016 The Lightning Whelk: An Enduring Icon of Southeastern Native American Spirituality. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 42:1-26.
Moore, C. B.
1912 Some Aboriginal Sites on Red River. Journal of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia 14(4):526-636.
Perino, G.
1981 Archeological Investigations at the Roden Site (MC-215), McCurtain County, Oklahoma. Potsherd Press No. 1. Museum of the Red River, Idabel.
Perttula, T. K.
2011 The Pipe Site, a Late Caddo Site at Lake Palestine in Anderson County, Texas. Journal of Northeast Texas Archaeology 35:47-80.
2014 The Mitchell Site (41BW4): An Ancestral Caddo Settlement and Cemetery on McKinney Bayou, Bowie County, Texas. Special Publication No. 32. Friends of Northeast Texas Archaeology, Austin and Pittsburg.
Skinner, S. A., R. K. Harris, and K. M. Anderson (editors)
1969 Archaeological Investigations at the Sam Kaufman Site, Red River County, Texas. Contributions in Anthropology No. 5. Department of Anthropology, Southern Methodist University, Dallas.
Todd, J.
2011 An Unique Shell Gorget from Wood County, Texas. Journal of Northeast Texas Archaeology 35:1-4.
Webb, C. H.
1959 The Belcher Mound, a Stratified Caddoan Site in Caddo Parish, Louisiana. Memoirs No. 16. Society for American Archaeology, Salt Lake City.
TARL has thousands and thousands of photographic prints, slides and negatives in our collection, dating from the early 1920s through present day. Currently we receive digital photographs almost exclusively, but the collection includes a variety of older formats—even glass plate and silver nitrate negatives. The nitrate negatives in particular are a challenge to maintain, as they are somewhat volatile and must be stored in freezing temperatures. The photos are (mostly) project and site specific and in many cases are a glimpse of not only sites found during the early years of Texas Archeology, but also the archeological methods used through time and Texans’ life in general. The photographs taken during the WPA archeological projects, for example, show distinctive methods such as the stair-step type of excavations done at deeply buried sites and raised platforms for mapping and taking photos. These photographs also show the local people hired during the Depression to work on archeological sites, adding an element of human interest and historical documentation.
TARL’s photographic collection is available for students, professional and avocational researchers to use. Please let TARL staff know ahead of time so we can assist with identifying and retrieving the photographs you have requested. Professional archeologists doing contract projects are charged for using TARL’s records, photographs, and maps. Any photos to be used in a for-profit publication will also incur a fee. TARL does not charge for pro bono or student work.
Photo from TARL photographic archive: Site 41TV41 Step excavation—west wall (1938-1939).Photo from TARL photographic archive: Site 41BW3 Datum station—taken from camera tower to the north (1938).Photo from TARL photographic archive: Site 41BW3—Staff in front of office tent (1938).Photo from TARL photographic archive: Site 41BW3, Men using wagon and team to haul excavated earth (1938).
I have been studying your cultures and primitive technologies for several years. See my first report below.
Although I have made many friends during my time at TARL, I feel I have learned as much as I can about this planet by staying here. I will be checking on the activities at TARL as time goes by. A new watcher will be coming shortly. They may not identify themselves, except by their human designation. You are still expected to continue turning in site forms, sketch maps, and shapefiles, fill out worksheets when at TARL, and send in complete information for file searches.
I am heartened by the amount of archeological and historical work that is still taking place today. That is one of this planet’s saving graces. The verdict on Earth is still out. The rest of the universe is watching Earth—from a distance.
Jean Hughes
Jean’s First Report in the TARL Staff Directory:
Born on the planet Zxelon in a “galaxy far far away,” Jean Hughes braved being sanctioned by the Intergalactic Council by traveling to that eternally quarantined planet, Earth, to study the mysterious, wild, and sometimes violent species that refer to themselves as “humans.” Disguised as a mild mannered TexSite and Atlas Coordinator at the Texas Archeological Research Laboratory, she works with ArcGIS, does records searches, and when possible, paper conservation of TARL’s voluminous collections. In her spare time she studies earthlings through community service in East Austin and those wonderful mediums for collecting personal information: Nextdoor, Neighborhood Watch, and occasionally YouTube—where humans display the best of their intellectual and artistic talents.
Jean Hughes with husband Richard and TARL Registrar Rosario Casarez at the TARL Archeology Fair in 2016.
It is with both sadness and warm wishes that we are announcing the retirement of a long-time TARL staff member, TexSite and Atlas Coordinator Jean Hughes. Jean will be leaving TARL at the end of August 2018 after 26 years of service. Jean has been a fixture in the Texas archeological community since the 1970s, and worked under Dr. Jim Neely at WS Ranch for many years. Jean is well-known in the Texas Archeological Society and always volunteers with community and educational events.
In addition to her work at TARL, Jean is a dedicated member of her synagogue and choir and was also active with wildlife rescue for many years. She is also very active in her University Hills neighborhood, contributing many hours to the community garden and other efforts. We are sure her husband of 40 years, Richard, her adult children Kate and Burt, and the rest of the Zxelonians are looking forward to spending more time together as Jean retires. We will miss her and wish her all the best!
