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Levi Jordan Plantation |
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Archaeological Investigations at the Levi Jordan Plantation State Historic Site, Brazoria County, Texas
The Center for Archaeological Studies conducted limited test excavations at the Levi Jordan Plantation State Historic Site for the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department. The Levi Jordan Plantation was established by Levi Jordan in 1848. At its height, this antebellum sugar and cotton plantation sat on more than 2,000 acres of rich river bottomlands in the Gulf Coastal Plains of Brazoria County, Texas. Limited test excavations focused on areas around and within the main house, in addition to areas to be developed for interpretation and public access to the site. Survey and excavations were conducted during June and July of 2005 Excavations at the main house support an occupation that extends from the antebellum period through the end of the twentieth century. Numerous artifacts and features uncovered during excavations provide valuable information about the historical development of the main house and site. This data will be utilized by TPWD for long-term stewardship, interpretation, and management of these resources.
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Texas River Center, Hays County, Texas
Some of the richest archaeological sites in North America surround Aquarena Springs at San Marcos along the edge of the Balcones Escarpment. Early Paleoindian through Late Prehistoric occupations were documented by the underwater excavations by Professor Joel Shinner and Paul Takac of SMU, and Texas State University-San Marcos field schools under the direction of Professor James Garber and Catherine Brown. Recent geological cores studied by Prewitt and Associates of Austin demonstrate the existence of late Pleistocene and Holocene deposits extending to depths of 9.2 meters and prehistoric occupations to depths of at least 6 meters. A recent historical study of the area by the Public History Program under the direction of Dr. Cindy Brandimarte at Texas State University-San Marcos reveals the rich eighteenth and nineteenth century history of the springs.
In a collaborative project, Texas State University-San Marcos and Texas Parks and Wildlife Department are establishing an educational center, the Texas River Center, that focuses on the ecology, hydrology, archaeology, and history of the springs and the San Marcos River. Preceding the construction, archaeological investigations will excavate in areas that will be impacted by construction activities. This study will provide a wealth of new information on the unique prehistoric and historic record of Aquarena Springs. |
Zeekoe Valley GIS Study, South Africa
From 1979-1982 a team from SMU under the direction of Garth Sampson conducted the Zeekoe Valley Archaeological Project (ZVAP) survey, the largest survey in Africa. Britt Bousman (an original member of the ZVAP), Matt Melancon, and Duncan McKinnon from CAS, and Garth Sampson are converting the ZVAP survey data to electronic media. Continuous work in the semi-desert valley since the survey has focused on elaborating the survey record by defining ceramic and lithic chronologies for the Later Stone Age, the Middle Stone Age and Acheulian industries, determining the spatial and social strategies used by Khoi herders and Bushman hunter-gatherers, developing a better understanding of their technological strategies, studying past environmental changes, and documenting the spectacular rock art. Still the original ZVAP survey is a unique data set with over 19,000 prehistoric and historic components that document the use of the Zeekoe Valley by hominids over the last 250,000 years. The present project, funded by the National Science Foundation and under the direction of Britt Bousman and Garth Sampson, will convert the ZVAP survey data into ArcView (GIS) format and provide site locations and topographic maps for the region. The project has three objectives.
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L7 Ranch Survey, Crosby County, Texas
The Texas Army National intends to lease approximately 4,000 acres for tank maneuvers and individual troop training on the privately owned L7 Ranch, in the Texas Panhandle. The vast L7 Ranch expands across the eastern edge of the Llano Estacado and the Caprock Canyonlands below the escarpment. We surveyed the property to identify any cultural resources that would be impacted by the training. CAS documented 61 prehistoric and historic sites. The prehistoric sites date from the Early Archaic period to the Late Prehistoric period. In addition, three cutbank profiles were described in conjunction with a geomorphic study designed to accompany the archaeological work.
Archaeologists found the remains of ancient campsites, such as this scattered burned rock and large metate shown. Numerous rock shelters exist on the edge of the Caprock. Archaeologists were able to examine a few of them, some accessible only by ladder. Also, the cache of Alibates chert scrapers along with a Marshall dart point dating to perhaps 1,000 years BC. Alibates chert is found in the Canadian River valley 150 miles north of the L7 Ranch. We also found several pieces of pottery and obsidian. The obsidian came from the Jemez Mountains north of Santa Fe, and some pottery sherds came from the El Paso and Southeastern New Mexico areas. This shows us that the Native Americans in the Panhandle were part of an extensive trading network for hundreds, if not thousands of years. Also, we found the headquarters of one of the earliest ranches in the area, dating to the 1880s, and on another site were standing timbers representing the remains of a professional government trapper's cabin dating to the 1930s when coyotes were a menace to cattle ranching. Click here for photo gallery. |
Burleson Cabin, Hays County, Texas
In 2000, Texas State Univeristy-San Marcos Texas Archaeology Field School students excavated the General Edward Burleson cabin site overlooking Aquarena Springs in San Marcos. The excavations, directed by Kathrine Brown and Britt Bousman, attempted to locate evidence for the original location of the Burleson cabin and recover information that could be used in future interpretations for the public. Intact evidence of the original cabin was not found, but an outside cooking area was discovered. This cooking area was focused around a limestone bedrock bench. Six small niches were carved into the vertical face of this bench and one linked to a natural solution chimney. This chimney top was also carved to form a circular platform. Abundant charcoal at the base of the bench and thermal alteration of the limestone shows that the bench functioned as a stove. Artifacts scattered around the base of the bench and downslope can be used to suggest that this was an outside kitchen area. Other artifacts demonstrate that the original cabin was nearby but its exact location could not be found. Historic research documents that the original cabin was built in 1848 and fell down in a storm in 1917. In 1960 the original cabin was dismantled and some materials such as the rock was stored for the construction of a replica cabin built in 1964.
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Camp Mabry, Travis County, Texas
During September and October 2001, the Center for Archaeological Studies conducted an intensive 275-acre archaeological survey on the grounds of Camp Mabry. Camp Mabry, located within the city of Austin in Travis County, is one of the more significant bases for the Guard. Camp Mabry houses the headquarters facilities of the 49th Armored Division, and the Adjutant General's Department of Texas (AGTX). Camp Mabry was originally created in 1892 as the first permanent summer encampment ground of the Texas Volunteer Guard. The camp evolved over the next twenty years as the Guard was reorganized and its training activities were increasingly professionalized under federal guidance. By 1913 the original 85-acre campground had grown to about 400 acres and a number of permanent buildings and training facilities had been completed.
The survey resulted in the discovery of one previously unrecorded archaeological site within the confines of Camp Mabry. The data generated during this survey provided some important insights regarding historic and prehistoric occupations within the Camp Mabry project area. |
An Archaeological Survey of 307 Acres at Camp Swift, Bastrop County, Texas
In September through November 2003, the Center for Archaeological Studies conducted an archaeological survey on 307 acres at Camp Swift, Bastrop County, Texas. A total of 11 new archaeological sites were documented. Seven have prehistoric components only, two sites have only a historic component, and two have both prehistoric and historic components. A total of 668 shovel tests and nine backhoe trenches were excavated within the project area.
Eight of the prehistoric sites were open campsites with burned rocks from campfires and chipped stone tools, and one was a lithic procurement site where Native Americans gathered chert cobbles and fashioned them into tools. The historic sites contained the remains of three farmsteads, an outbuilding, and a stone dam across a ravine. Five sites will require additional investigations to determine their integrity. Only one of the historic components was considered to be significant. When we reviewed all of the temporally diagnostic artifacts from this survey as well as those from previous surveys, we found that there were none from what is known as the Middle Archaic period in Central Texas, about 4,000 to 6,000 years ago. Whether the area was not occupied during this period because of a changing climate, or whether any evidence of occupation during this period has been scoured away is an issue that needs further research. Click here for photo gallery. |
An Archaeological Evaluation of 20 Sites at Camp Swift, Bastrop County, Texas
In December 2002 and January 2003, CAS conducted an intensive cultural resources inventory on 20 archeological sites at Camp Swift. Eighteen of the sites were occupied by prehistoric Native Americans, while three of the 20 were occupied in historic times. The historic sites included a winery, a mine, and an isolated historic burial. Three of the prehistoric sites contained burned rocks from ancient campfires. At others we found sufficient remains so that we recommended that they be protected until additional archaeological work could ascertain with certainty their NRHP eligibility.
The winery was operated by a Frenchman named Antoine Aussilloux. He settled in northern Bastrop County in 1875 where he cultivated two vineyards and prospered in the winemaking business for 34 years before Prohibition forced the closure of all wineries in 1919. He was also constructed the Scott Falls dam which was used to irrigate his vineyards. Following the enactment of the 18th Amendment, Aussilloux let his fields go untended; instead he farmed and raised cattle until his death in 1924. A neighbor found Aussilloux lying dead in his front yard. The remains of the Sayers Mine consisted of a railroad bed, spoil piles, artifact scatters representing a company store and residences, a cemetery, roads, and presumably many abandoned shafts. Originally, miners recruited from Mexico worked the lignite deposits as a slope mine; that is, they simply followed the slope of the lignite deposits into the ground. After a fire closed the slope mine in 1924, Dennison's workers excavated a shaft to new lignite deposits, and built an upright tipple to vertically hoist lignite from below. This apparently worked well until another mine fire in 1928 forced the mine to close. Click here for photo gallery. |
Archaeological Testing at Camp Swift, Bastrop County, Texas
In June through August 2002, the Center for Archaeological Studies tested excavated 20 prehistoric archaeological sites and conducted geoarchaeological studies at Camp Swift in Bastrop County for the Texas Army National Guard. During this project we excavated a total of 120 excavation units. Using multiple lines of evidence, we found that portions of some sites contain intact soils, artifacts, and cooking hearths. Floatation and macrobotanical samples revealed charred hickory nut fragments, acorn nutmeat, oak and hickory wood, and bulb fragments, while faunal remains included deer and black bear. Diagnostic artifacts include a possible Clovis perform, and Late Prehistoric and Late Archaic projectile points. Conspicuously absent was evidence from the Middle Archaic period. Radiocarbon dates ranged from 490 B.P. to 5980 B.P. with a Middle Holocene gap. Archaeomagnetic analysis of fire-cracked rocks corroborated the existence of intact hearths. Magnetic soil susceptibility and quantifying unburned rocks also supported formation process models. The comparative data provided evidence of intact cultural deposits, and of landscape stability/instability and depositional sequences. Click here for photo gallery. |
Excavations at Cross Bar Ranch
During the summers of 2004 and 2005 Britt Bousman taught a field school at the Cross Bar Ranch in Potter County north of Amarillo, Texas. The Cross Bar Ranch consists of 11,000 acres in the Canadian Breaks with rolling hills crosscut by seasonal streams and extends to the southern bank of the Canadian River. A single Antelope Creek farmstead, 41PT109, was excavated. The site is located on property that is currently owned and managed by the Bureau of Land Management.
The Antelope Creek Phase is made up of a cluster of sites situated along the Canadian River valley in Texas and Oklahoma. To adapt to the climatic conditions in the panhandle, the Antelope Creek peoples built semi-subterranean houses. They used upright dolomite slabs in the construction of multi-room compounds or single-family homesteads. The Antelope creek peoples are often characterized as Plains villagers. They were sedentary, as is evidenced by the stone slab houses, and practiced a mixed economy. The presence of arrow points, end scrapers, bison scapula hoes, bison tibia digging sticks, manos and metates, indicate that they subsisted off of a combination of small scale horticulture, hunting, and gathering of wild plants. The Antelope Creek phase is further defined by the almost exclusive use of the brilliantly color-banded chert from the nearby Alibates quarry to create tools and weapons that had both functional and aesthetic value. The BLM awarded Texas State University a Grant In-Aid in both summers to excavate site 41PT109. In June of 2004 and 2005, Britt Bousman along with graduate and undergraduate students spent five weeks each summer excavating and surveying the surrounding land. Students were instructed in various archaeological methods including pedestrian survey, excavation, mapping, artifact analysis, and curation. This field school not only offers an incredible archaeological experience, but also gives students a chance to camp out in the wilderness of the Southern High Plains. Click here for photo gallery. |
2003 Excavations at Baden-Baden, South Africa
In July 2003 Britt Bousman and Abby Weinstein excavated the site of Baden-Baden in South Africa. The project was funded by the Leakey Foundation and Texas State University. This work was in collaboration with James Brink, the director of the Florisbad Research Unit at the National Museum, and Louis Scott, a palynologist at the University of the Free State, both in Bloemfontein.
Baden-Baden is a spring mound formed at a series of mineral springs. Before the Boer War a metal bath house was build there. Artifacts were seen around the edge of the mound. Detailed mapping has shown that the "mound" is actually a series of mounds that have grown together. Some are large and others much smaller. Excavation units were placed in a number of locations at the base of the mound. The main block of excavations exposed well stratified sandy deposits and a circular spring eye. We were lucky to work with the Florisbad archaeological crew. These men have been excavating, refitting, and cleaning artifacts and bone from Stone Age sites in the Free State for the last 20 or so years and they are among the best field crew. In the main block excavations artifacts and poorly preserved bones were recovered. Included was a warthog tooth and a bored stone. In an adjacent excavation unit, we found a bone concentration that we believe is a kill-butchery site. James Brink's analysis demonstrates that the South African and Kalahari springbok species are present along with wildebeest. Phalanges were split lengthwise to extract the marrow. We also visited the site of Erfkroon, which is loaded with exposed fossil remains and artifacts, and we mapped the surface topography at the site of Cornelia. The gallery link below shows pictures of our work there.
Click here for Baden-Baden photo gallery. |
Sessoms Creek Diversion
In 2004 CAS conducted excavations at the Sessoms Creek diversion structure on the campus of Texas State University. The structure is located within the boundaries of the prehistoric State Archeological Landmark 41HY161, the Ice House site. Excavations of a 3x4 meter block were directed by Eric Oksanen and Dave Nickels. Throughout 70 cm of cultural deposits, Early Archaic occupations were associated with a single style of projectile point, Gower. The lithic assemblage included bifacial performs, flake tools, debitage and cores made from locally available materials. Faunal remains included deer, bison, rabbit, bird, raccoon, and the lower mandible of a dog or coyote. Two small clusters of burned limestone were probable cooking features. The Ice House site lies at the edge of the Balcones Escarpment, the boundary of the Edwards Plateau to the west and the Blackland Prairies to the east. This region afforded the habitants access to a stable water source and a diverse subsistence base and raw materials for tool making. The site is a rare opportunity to investigate a poorly understood period, since Early Archaic assemblages are frequently mixed with earlier or later cultural components. |
Blydefontein Site Formation StudyThe primary objective of this National Science Foundation funded project is to better understand the geological and anthropogenic formation processes that deposit and alter sediments in rock shelters. Secondly, this project is designed to determine if domestic stock contributed to the deposits of the rock shelter by analyzing the sediment micromorphology and associated pollen, diatoms, and phytoliths. Britt Bousman, Paul Goldberg (Boston University), Louis Scott (University of the Orange Free State, South Africa), Barbara Winsborough (Austin), and Glen Fredlund (University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee) are studying the site formation processes in the Later Stone Age deposits at Blydefontein Rock Shelter, South Africa.
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