IN MEMORIAM

O. B. BRAMBLETT

Orgel B. Bramblett of Austin, Texas, passed away February 26, 1991 at the age of 84. He was the father of UT-Austin physical anthropologist Dr. Claud Bramblett. Mr. Bramblett and his family were long-time residents of Carrizo Springs, where Claud was a member of the Carrizo Springs High School Anthropology Club (later Archeological Society) founded by Wade House.

Mr. Bramblett worked for many years as an employee of the Texas Highway Department. In summer, 1964, I worked in his crew, as we cleaned the rights-of-way along Dimmit County's highways and farm-to-market roads. Most days, Mr. Bramblett would park the highway department truck for lunch -- and he would park it at an opportune place. While the rest of the crew napped in the shade, Mr. Bramblett and I would hop the nearby fence and go off in search of Indian artifacts. This led to the recording of several sites, including 4lDM41 and 41DM42, during that summer.

During his many years in Dimmit County, Mr. Bramblett assembled a very large collection of artifacts. Though he and Claud made an effort to catalog them, most can be best described as representative of that particular county. In 1965, members of the Carrizo Springs High School Archeological Society recorded some of Mr. Bramblett's Collection (Pena Pow-Wow, Vol. III, No. VI, pp. 111, March 26, 1965). They noted that Mr. Bramblett had been collecting in Dimmit County for 26 years. They recorded and illustrated Carrizo points, Archaic and Paleo-Indian dart points, Late Prehistoric arrow points, drills, shell and stone beads and pendants, and metates.

When I last met with Mr. Bramblett in November, 1990, he wanted to start donating parts of his collection to the Texas Archeological Research Laboratory (TARL) at UT-Austin. Following his death, Claude completed the task. The O. B. Bramblett Collection, now housed at TARL, will be a valuable reference and teaching collection for South Texas archaeology.