One in Hole. Kay Woodward was just the right size to work in the
sinkhole. |
Joan Baker watching over the sinkhole and making sure the notes were complete
and the bones properly handled and documented. |
Two Woodwards in a Two Holer,
Kay and Woody.
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Cramped quarters, but Jose Contreras and Kay are having fun. |
Dan Potter asks Reeda Peel to keep it down while Chuck Hixon and Candy
Smith look on. |
Bedrock mortars at the Mortar site. This cluster was chosen for experimental
work so we could better understand how these may have been used to pulverize
acorns and mesquite beans. |
Reeda Peel did her own experiments aimed at figuring out how long it took
for a mortar hole to form. The answer? Not very long – in less
than a half an hour Reeda had a functional shallow bowl-shaped depression. |
Reeda shows the group what she has learned during an afternoon session
on bedrock mortars. |
Mike Fulghum’s crew tested a suspiciously flat spot near the bedrock mortars
where Steve Black suspected evidence of houses might be found. |
Early going proved rocky. What the heck were all these scattered
burned rocks doing in an hypothesized living area? |
Linda Faulkner finds a flint flake as Charlie Burton and Donna Molson tell
her to calm down and keep digging. |
On the last day of the field school, naturally, we finally located the
earth oven pit (depression lined with flat rocks) that had generated so
many broken up rocks. Steve’s new hypothesis is that the Mortar site’s
Flats served as a cooking area where plant foods processed in the nearby
mortars – acorn cakes? – were baked. |
Roy Banning exits the 1880s
Viejo Post Office. |
A test pit inside the Viejo Post Office helps crew chief Frank Faulkner
figure out that the small rectangular hole at the bottom of the wall served
to ventilate the wooden floor that once existed just above the hole. |
Graffiti Rock near Rock Springs where pioneering settlers made their mark.
Left to right, Julie Stiver, Diane Couch, and Bill Stiver. |
Debbie Hammond and Roy Craig lurk in the juniper shadows of the Upland
Midden site. They collected all the flint from this 2-x-2-m square
and learned that most of it was broken by nature, not by humans. |
Tom Miller finds something to smile about at the Valley Midden site, while
Mark Cohen screens in the background. |
Lyn Kraft and Skip Kennedy sift for clues at the Valley Midden site. |
Rob Thrift contemplates the meaning of the numbers generated by a hand-held
computer (called a data collector) that is part of the total data station
(TDS), a sophisticated mapping instrument on loan from TARL.
Rob, an undergraduate student at the University of Texas at Austin, was
able to attend the field school because he was awarded one of the STAA’s
Student Scholarships. |
Barbara Harlan and Tom Castanos at work in the field laboratory (Bill’s
partially completed workshop). |
Dr. Steve Tomka of the Center for Archaeological Research at the University
of Texas at San Antonio explains the finer points of stone tool making
and classification during an afternoon workshop. |
Glenn Goode, longtime professional archeologist and expert flintknapper
from Dripping Springs, demonstrates how stone tools are made. |
Dinner time! Most of the field school participants signed up
for catered meals and got all they could eat and more. The oak trees
in the Stiver’s yard provided welcome shade. |
Steve Black points out something or other during one of the popular sunset
tours. This shot was taken at the Scraper site, a newly discovered
locality that appears to be a camp occupied by buffalo hunters and their
familes about 600 years ago. |
One of the many hide scrapers found at the aptly named Scraper site.
This end-scraper was probably used to prepare buffalo or deer skins.
The site will be the excavation site during the 2000 field school. |
Steve Black explores a small overhang on the steep bluff overlooking the
Scraper site. Larger rockshelters with evidence of human occupation
may be present along the West Bear Creek valley. Come to the 2000
STAA Field School and you can help us explore the area. |
To 1999 Field School Story
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